The broken record to the bunting

'I thought I’d look different
At this point in my life.
Travel-worn, bearded
Au fait with strife.
(A bedpost notched to Bable?
Some viral escape?
From the knuckling down
The earnt reputation you made. )
But
It was hard to predict
This stasis of aging
That wrought in iron, features
From the shadowy teens.
When I’d peer in the glass
Expecting to emerge
From a chrysalis dewy,
Frail but assured.'

'Guess its trickier than I thought.
To acquiesce with the fiction
That past’s can end
And Start as the cinema taught.'

'The precession across the water
Has not yet begun. Already
Its there on my collar;
The malignant tug of this province
Reeling me out of
Costume.'

‘I’ll have a coffee please’ said the man after a disproportionate period of contemplation, and chin stroking.
‘how?’ answered the barrister in his wig and blackshirt.

‘Excuse me?’

‘How will you your coffee?’

‘In a mug, I suppose, unless you’ve progressed now beyond the necessity of containing a liquid in order to consume it? Unless it is that you can now mould a translucent pocket of air in which my dark broth shall be suspended for the duration of its want? Or perhaps it’s a specification of the type you desire? A clear articulation of how you are to combine the cow’s milk and the ground filtered and processed bean? Yes…’

His eyes dropped to the white nametag pinned beneath the blackshirts embroidered logo.
‘Yes, Gary, I sense that is what you wished to decipher. By jove! I am doing well today. “Did you get that Cassandra?” (the speech marks are to delineate the particular vocal inflection and pitch this man uses when talking to his wife)

‘I did Steven and I don’t think I was the only one’ She responds twirling her head around in a survey of each allocated seating booth to inspect the collage of disinterest and outrage etched on their faces.

‘Well? Isn’t it marvellous how your husband succeeded in deducing such a conclusion, succeeded in decoding the true intent of Gary here’s question given the meagre provisions he had to work with? This is what we once called “relying on One’s wit’s’” it was on the curriculum when I went to school- in fact moments of such analytic prowess as we just witnessed are when I’m grateful for the tireless efforts of Mrs Hatchet’s tuition!”

‘Indeed’ said Cassie

Gary yawned provocatively, stretching his mouth to its full O shape so that the rattle of his tonsils was visible as he inhaled with creased eyes.

‘Of course it go’s without saying-

‘thyngudhnes fahhthat’ he barely masked with the reflexive exhale.

‘Pardon?’

‘I do believe he said thank goodness for that’ Steven’

‘How very peculiar… Now where was I? Needless to say…’
(An inaudible combination of sibilants)

‘Wits appear to be in rather short supply in media res, one might even go as far to say that they’ve become something of a hot commodity. Gosh commodity how extraordinarily red of me, comrade!’

He wrinkled his nose until it resembled a furrowed carpet of un-lustrous fabric and with a wink positioned his fist against his head sternly. If it helps imagine this posture as remaining throughout the duration of Steven’s sojourn here.
‘Well I’ll have burnt soya milk flagellated and anesthetized by the phallic aluminium screeching steamer- poured clumsily on top of a 6 shot carcass espresso, but I’m not sure about him’

The removal of Cassie’s enthusiastic and seductive half-squint from Gary to her husband left the former felling like he was tanning on a beach as the clouds obscured the sun. Her cashmere pullover hung over her elegantly sloping shoulders to mould the sinuous curve to her buttocks in that dignified evolution of the buffalo spirit hood, and her skirt was pleated like a Japanese fan with its twin slits proudly exhibiting stretches of tanned slender thigh, which led to knees like nobs of butter and progressively intertwining golden calf’s, one of which rubbed against the other as though sharpening it. Their surface Gary now mentally traversed with his mouth, delicately grazing his interloping patted kisses towards the warm sweat fringed periphery of her skirt as Stephen responded;

“Well that sounds decidedly vulgar darling, we don’t want Gary to get any idea’s after all!” Oh I do wish you’d abandon that strange poise of anticipation, lingering behind that till as though my deliberation has hit the pause button on your control panel! Propped up in blank contemplation of me, like I have a Medusa gaze. Ha! Why am I even wasting my breath? Your hearing is probably only responsive to Coffee jargon. For you this is just an indecipherable preamble to a finely enunciated ‘Cup A Chino” just my long and dwindling way of declaring my desire for a “Latte” right?”

At this Gary moved over to unhook the twin filters and with a perfect economy of movement was on the verge of bashing the black compacted patties into the metal draw when Steven intervened.

“No! I didn’t mean I actually wanted either a’ He paused and exaggeratedly mimed the toxic phrase to the barrister ‘or a’ his mouth formed the second order.

‘I haven’t yet placed my order- look what I’m trying to achieve here is nothing less than your personal de-institutionalisation my man!’

He whispered ‘is that a real word?’ into where he approximated his wife’s ear lay beneath her raunchily untidy ‘dirty’ blonde hair. This approximation was inaccurate however and prompted Cassie to coyly tuck several aureate strands in the ravine behind her ear. This incidentally was the furthest extremity that Gary’s fantastic exploration had now reached, haven taken in every mown canyon, toned and smooth plain and radiant range since its outset from the calf, his mouth now enacting a tender nibble along the outermost ridge of her ears Pythagorean spiral.

Having received a not altogether definitive nod for feedback, Steven continued;
‘Yes your de-institutionalisation! The preliminary stage of which is almost complete, and involves deprogramming your responses, clearing out your synthetic etiquette and mirror-honed charm to leave room for authentic human reaction to blossom. Now, evidently, given how deeply your training has been ingrained into you this will be only the first stage in what will prove a long and arduous process, and I am afraid is as far as one man can proceed along the schedule of deprogramming. I have dutifully performed my role, ‘primed you’ as it were for the next stage, which will be carried forth in a few days by my associates- who are chiefly concerned with reconfiguring your emotions. Now that I’m done here, in the meantime I’ll have a, umm…’

His tongue was actually now inside her ear, probing slowly in the way the expedition had become so practiced at throughout its travels, treating this final glorious orifice as a sort of victory lap- a vindication of everything they had learnt and discovered.
‘….a skinny latte?’

‘Certainly sir, and where will you be sitting?’

‘Just over by the window on the sofa’s over…’ he gestured in the direction ‘there, you see?’

‘Fantastic, that’s £4.40 please sir.’ He handed over a £20 and Gary issued the amount of Change specified on the screen in front of him.

‘We’ll bring those over to your table when they’re ready’

‘Great thanks’

‘Wonderful thank you’ Cynthia withdrew with Steven close behind over to their green couch in the corner.
Gary looked up from the till draw,

‘Good afternoon, what can I get for you today?’

An Epitaph

Arrogantly Wasted™ on the shore:
-Spread eagled, topless, flesh stamping pebbles-
Crab-crawling to shelter from a polyphonic tide
Processing the blur and with brown paws
Unwrapping his Extraodinary Gifts.

A Limited Gift Artfully Deployed™ in a vehicle
-Poker propped, Bermuda printed, inflating pupils-
Swerves a ‘cut-here’ line wrapped in a “phew”
To pivot turn, slip-release the wheel and
Steady a droopy wink on you.

Obligatory contribution to the online DFW appraisal

The Pale King is not best describable as an 'unfinished novel'. Certainly it is true the work was left uncompleted when the Author David Foster Wallace's relapse into a particularly bad surge of the depression that had plagued him since his teens, which (relapse) was in part precipitated by his cancelling the prescribed antidepressants he felt where beginning to stifle his creativity, resulted in his committing suicide in 2008. There is also the contentions of the authors notoriously painstaking approach to his prose, his occupational neurosis, dissatisfaction with his novels to that point and evident desire to achieve a level of thematic perfection in his work which give credence to the tagline on the cover page and of course subsequently raise the debate over the ethics of publishing an artists work when said artist is no longer in a position to discuss it. If you then add to which that the non-linear transitory POV's which stitch through the novel discovered upon his desk after his death, where, as described in the prologue by the editor to whom the task of publication was assigned, without any definitive order regarding the arrangement or order of the chapters, and you are led to ask whether you should even be reading this? Whether in fact Wallace even intended for the novel to see the light of day? And if he did, whether the version you then held would be shorn of the faults that all to often draw you out from the narratives longish breadths of genius, to consider its tragic contextual background? Well ‘if’ then yes yes and yes. However, unfortunately such speculation is now fruitless and what there is to review must ultimately be considered upon its true merit rather than potential. Luckily with a writer of such poetic brilliance and imagination, assessing this novel for what it is; rather than for what It could be, stills places it amongst some of the most creative prose I’ve ever read.
It is worth mentioning that the form the book takes, is one of a whole elaborately rendered paradigmin within which the reader is at liberty to dip in and out- practically at any point without disrupting the stories cogency. Although characters reoccur TPK is by and large episodic-, which is partly explainable by DFW’s ruse that the whole plot is in fact sourced from, his own formative experience spent in a IRS tax office making it actually a pseudo-memoir. The whole confounding lexicon of the tax system, its strange GS- hierarchy, system of ‘wiggler’s’ in ‘chalk’s processing forms held in their ‘tingles’ whilst adjusting to a new policy drive to marketise the tax system and reap greater revenues which is dubbed the ‘initiative’ is a perfectly alien habitat to the average citizen. This makes it a brilliantly chosen lens for Wallace to view the themes that unite each chapter together, which concern the concepts of Tedium in extremis, Existential longing, The purpose of work, ethics of taxation, life in bureaucracy and Memory. The most prevalent of which is the issue of Boredom, and the fascinating doctrine he occasionally posits that “[It] is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.”
So we see an employee of the Regional Examing Centre where the novel is set whose death remains unnoticed for four days and whom later begins to appear on the desks of Examiners stranded at the utmost nadir of their ennui to muse philosophically upon the how’s and whys. We see how 'Toni’s' habit of acting catatonically during her traumatic upbringing, literally playing dead to avoid death, endears her to an occupation at the IRS.
Then we are introduced to the incredible, but all 360 degree human, cast of freaks who are drawn towards a drudgery almost unparalleled in other human endeavour. A series of physical and mental neurosis' are the principle common denominator ; although the tasks they are assigned- the mountains of forms that require just enough brainpower to be engaging- may be dull, the people perpetrating them are anything but. One character’s condition is a hilarious satire on the atomised ‘data’ we accumulate through modern life. He has something called ‘Random Fact Intuition” whereby streams of highly precise, entirely irrelevant and irrefutable ‘intelligence’ appear to him with no provenance at any given moment. One episode shows him trying to streamline his disorder into one that could assist him, to no avail.
Another character fictionalises Wallace’s own well-documented anxiety about public perspiration- on a level that is at once unfathomably uncomfortable yet entirely relatable, given the tone of non-sequiters and digressions which so perfectly match the quality of true thought. Each new invention offers myriad delights, by turns funny and repellent yet still revelatory about a profound aspect of the human spirit. Its hard to pick a favourite, but the child who decides heroically at the age of 7 that he intends to touch every region of his body with his lips but is subsequently confronted by the impossibility of certain areas, as a method of exploring the necessity of human relationships and the limitations of egotism as well as the frailty of human dreams is something of a tour de force.
There are times when you are so in awe of your narrators ambition- the pure effort he exhorted in pursuit of the readers enjoyment, that you revolve back once more, agog, to what it could have been where DFW to have remained stable! The hilarious deconstructions of everybody's unredeemable faults are positively Flaubertian for a writer who was so defiantly anti-realist. Wallace has to be the undisputed master in the modern age of the humour of hate, the comedy of errors, the perpetual examination of fault as a route to finding true beauty. Stumbling across his Brief Interviews With Hideous Men in an Italian bookstore, I was transfixed by the enormous determination of every story and how the collection was, as I’m certain no reviewer phrased it, ‘all killer and no filler’. Few short stories collections have scored such an imprint- indeed remarkably few aspire too- particularly the now alarming prescient and sullenly sardonic deconstruction of his own condition, and so many others, ‘the depressed person’. In which the narrative voice’s endless self-flagellation barely allows one sentance to transpire without subjecting it to an analysis about how it might have been perceived and a further recrimination about their own act of analysis and how said analysis is such a manifestation of their own endemic flaws. It perfectly places on the scales the combination of one hand guilt and on the other great irritation for the interlocutor without judging them for it that will be so familiar to those coping with the mentally ill. I have made it sound tedious but it is anything but, which Is so utterly typical of me ;)

Where you to approach the Pale King and find your self immediately wading through a strange nomenclature related to a trade you have no particular interest in or desire to learn about- bogged down in 7 page paragraphs, then trust that time spent within this excruciatingly real paradigm is more worthwhile than some of our more approachable fiction. Wallace and his friend Jonathon Franzen entered into a dilemma about the best way to preserve and sustain the novel when every facet of 'the information age' is competing for the readers attention at any one moment, how 6 hours with one viewpoint could possibly be considered worthwhile at a time when there is more ‘entertainment’ than ever before. JF chose to revert to the medium of a great story- the ripping yarn- appropriating in a way the classical form-using suspense and thrill to great effect as a way to inject intellectual novelty into popular fiction. What makes DFW the prototype, the paragon, for me was that he chose for the victim to imitate the illness. To make the novel a sprawling, disparate, post-modern web of interlacing themes- what Delillo on the backcover is quoted as calling DFW’s wish to
“be equal to the vast, babbling, spin-out sweep of contemporary culture”
No one could ask for a more fitting epitaph than this novel, to the memory of a vitally needed voice for the 21st century silenced all to soon.F and W were in coalescence on one thing though, which was on the rewards available through intense patience and dedication to a book- and the trouble we are to find if we allow the monoculture to erode these qualities. Also the absence of irony and purge of satire in an analysis of 'the man', 'the system' and 'the establishment' directs through to the new narrative tone DFW agonised to hone, and ultimately fell short of. Although it does at times take stullifying patience and concentration on the reader’s behalf The Pale King more than reimburses them in the pleasure it distributed as it stakes what are unusual claims for our leisure-saturated times; that there is dignity and nobility to be found in boredom, that life owes you nothing and that it is through your relationships with other people that you can achieve eudemonia.

The Irritation of Complicit Agreement

"I'm not sure their fingerprints are on this actually Richard. You know why i think that? First catalogue their initial reaction, as the truth is least stifled in an immediate response, they give this vague statement lacking clarification about their position: WHO exactly they support in the conflict. For a further three days they dithered trying to cement their stance, first defending, then advising and finally resolving to admonish the actions of Muburak's government. Now if they had masterminded or at least gone a way towards instigating the protests, wouldn't their diplomatic response have been slightly more prepared?"

"well i suppose that makes sense"

"but...?"

"No, now that you mention it, it is apparent, i mean i hadn't given the diplomatic reaction much thought if i'm honest"

"Oh Come oon Richard, you actually bought all that? You are actually so culpable to believe that any middleastern revolution, even the slightest disturbance in an area so abundant in the natural resources the West covets, could be free of US orchestration? No, every fressh announcement..."

"But i thought?"

"...Shines a light on the puppet strings that are managing this."

To Whom It May Concern

I

To a poem of mine

(Not quite yet refined)

Last night I dreamt

You were not written

But found as I passed

Through a Volume of

Ezra Pound.

II

Have I the courage

To profess (Half-Moon’s

At rest on my nose

Bridge) that “the second

Is as infinitely rich (if

Not richer)”? In a

Word, Yes.

The Artocracy and Its Enemies

We live in an Artocracy. The artocrats who form the make-up of this society are, let it be clear, accountable to no-one and no-thing except themselves. Following its birth the Reader was outsourced to a Nanny and from that point never spoken of or visited. True artocrats have no checks or balances. They aren’t Public Servants, Employee’s or Knight’s of the Garter in any standard conception and therefore have no views to canvas (if you’ll excuse the pun) vested interests to please or instructions to bear in mind when making their work. If such a lapse of dignity on the unfortunate souls part was made towards considering the ‘reception’ their work might receive, the ‘issue’s’ it should address or the ‘publicity’ it had the potential to generate then, assuming they did not have the basic human grace to conceal this base intention by vigorously denying it (hara-kiri), it would be fitting for the artist in question to be permanently exonerated from the ranks of the Artocracy.

Servitude should at no point infringe upon the creative process and those who do entertain such aspirations of dominion over the Creative Individual, who shamelessly seek to profit from the singular expressions of an artocrat- the productivity of whom is only marginally comprehensible to them- are afforded the same level of enmity we give in civilised society to paedophiles, politicians and serial killers.

The power structure that actually exists between the Craven Materialists and the Artists they are fortunate enough to gain the slightest intimacy with is the absolute inversion of what they naively conceive it to be. For it is plain that if there was nothing to publish, release, exhibit or broadcast then the derivatives of these actions (the publishers, networks, record labels, galleries et al), the whole malaise of secondary exploitation could not exist, therefore depriving their thousands of comfortable employee’s of livelihoods. Although heavily blinkered to the truth in their plush offices, the “CM’s” are wholly dependent upon a replenished and inspired artocracy, for where it ever to enter a state of decline due to malnourishment they too would starve.

It transpires, logically, that the Artocrat is always in control, that the balance of power is always tipped in their favour, and that the only sustainable relationship that can remain between the two hierarchies is an unbroken, unilateral stream of command issuing from the Creative Individual to Craven Materialist (acting here instead as a Facilitator On Request)When they where part of the “CM’s” mass deception these people once placed emphasis upon buzz-terms like ‘100%Creative Control’ and ‘Artist’s license’ believing they where benevolent bonuses bestowed from ivory towers upon the struggling and hard up; some condescending kind of philanthropic welfare. These terms are tautologies. Furthermore they are the Sine qua non of any possible deal brokered with the artist. However as the “FOR” they are humbled and understand now that such statements weren’t exceptions but basic truisms in our Artocracy were there is, and has always been, a singular prerogative and mode of control: the artists.

She leaves and the town is immersed in an indigo dye that inflates and fidgets against the windows. From upstairs i hear my grandad chatting to the answering machine, he's saying

"antonio illness has gotten worse"

his voice has that phone inflection. Then i hear the realisation followed by his own imperfect cadence to every message "okthenbye"

Looking at the melancholy mid-afternoon palette the beer seems bitter. The dubstep on the cd player is all moody atmospherics, manipulated warbling and nuanced sorrow. There are organs that rise and fall like subordinates as a leader enters the room. I feel the weight of the spindly fingers flexing and pressurizing the keys.Trying to shape the sound, to craft and give actuality to the afternoon. I've been neglecting my appetite. The song takes a sequence of octave leaps and is joined by a bass that circulates round the room like an enormous wasp, panning both ears. It's music built on gaps, unafraid to democratise- a symposium of contained energy that allows multiple-authorship. Five second spaces where street noises surges and is saturates, ten second lapses to allow the couple sitting behind on the buses conversation to enter the sonic amphitheatre with the seagulls. These awnings and alcoves remain for enough time to allow cobwebs to gather in the dark- only to sweep them away. The beer is isolating its ingredients to my palette, laying them before me. This wasn't why it was uncapped, i wanted the monotonous frothy warmth of last night, the impression of being blown up through a nozzle like a lilo.

My emails are read from the fluorescence of the screen in the darkening room, they offer me

'rewards today'

As their subheadings ask of me whether I

''need 750 GBP?"

and don't give me time to respond before adding

"OK!"

Spam breeds. Junk has been allocated to the wrong folder whilst the vital and long awaited is relegated to JUNK. My life in part governed by this ineffectual, impersonal algorithm. Taking subject headers that promise too much, that smile too earnestly, as outright false, as too dramatically at odds with authentic relationships.

Outside is now veridian and the dubstep has segued into piano balladery, the beer continues to put its ingredients in separate dorms and she's still in Bristol.

November

The best and worst of days drip like stalactites from her whole.

Cursing the indefatigable soul,

and spots congregate beneath my hair.

I can sit here for days and watch my hair grow,

Listening for the tree

Calling in the silent forest.

Bodies that lie in the path of trains of cognition

Staging a coronation of my mystery aches with

Grand Names.

I'll sit and let the entropic room decide my fate.

To be pacified or roam, my skins gained a

Mahogany veneer after my trip away i'm told.

Days of serving eclairs to the old have me

Entertaining byronic flights around the continent,

Their faces creased as used tissues and just as sanitary-

Hair Growth dipersed in the gardens by their looping ears and tunnelling nostrils.

The state box tells me that the french are striking,

As does page 25 of sentimental education.

Oh Well,

I think,

Let them

Roast cars

Served with

Molotov's on the

Platter of the

Tarmac!

The suburbs are an inferno tonight.

Here amongst the retired i'm catching the tails of fancy-

Climbing aboard towards an exploration of the soul-

Its facets, the beeches, the mist urge in

wist for my departure.

Check In

Tudor facades, mocked as we crept from the crypt

Beneath Maples that cradled Phosphor.

Suburbia, napping, yawns and allows

Tintoretto to drape over the scene

A Venetian sky’s light pollution,

St Mark’s body brought to Venice.

Bound In tandem with the estuary

A needle stitching the seam of dusk,

Where it seems a comfort to be free,

Brush the strewn paper along the aisle,

Sit idle, and draft

The tableau of my arrival.

press release for the bland tangerines

The Black Tambourines, are not:
A group of percussionists
A beck cover act or
A plural of the seminal 80’s noise band

What they are is Cornwall’s premier surf-rock band. The lineup is: Jake Willbourne, the formidably creative punk Buddhist who croons, yelps and plays bass, Paddy Staccpoole the taciturn guitarist who catcalls, paints, sings and rarely smiles, Jim Sibley the urbane drummer and keen cyclist who defies every tub-thumping stereotype going and Josh Spencer the languid hip-hop enthusiast who’s wall of guitar noise unifies the group.

The fourtet emerged in a puff of weed smoke from the primordial soup of Truro College’s music course and began to notch up regular appearances at gig’s put on by the tireless promoters at Duelling Kazoo’s and Dirty Sunday’s. After only a series of gigs the band began to generate real excitement amongst local music fans, as people flocked eager to witness the risk and energy of genuine rocknroll. For too long the Cornish had been limited to yawning through sets of either post-hardcore macho posturing or banal surf-songwriters at local gigs, so the arrival of the BT’s sent a strain of enthusiasm through the college populations.

Having recorded their eponymous first EP themselves in a hazy week last summer and finished college they set about consolidating the attention that surrounded them in more hectic performances. The songs on the ep deal with: unwanted attention ‘I don’t want to be yr lover’ the affectations of a local hipster ‘tommy’ and sticking two fingers up other peoples expectations ‘I can’t surf’ (and wishing happy birthday to paddy’s dad) All of this wrapped up in their rad and raucous blend of lo-fi garage. Achievements to date include their split seven inch on up and coming south-west imprint ART IS HARD RECORDS with like-minded Exeter dudes New Year’s Evil, with whom they shared a ferocious gig at Exeter cavern and are planning a Spring tour. Having shared a stage with acts like Jeff the Brotherhood and The Automatic (in steeply descending order of brilliance) and hosted their own smoky/strobe-lit gigs emblazoned in projected visuals of skateboarding, the band rarely turn in a dull show.

Perhaps the best crystallization of the disparate influences that are fused in the Black Tambourines circuits is their most recent ‘HOMBRE’ Ep (again self-issued & recorded). The EP does away with the murkiness of its predecessor to reveal the sheer strength of their current set of songs that now share triple vocal duties between Spencer, Jake and Paddy. As the songs clearly show, the BT’s don’t shy away from melody- and songs like ‘Vitamin D’ with its final emphatic refrain demonstrate their love for the likes of Brian Wilson. This isn’t a band likely to buckle to musical orthodoxy or one that can’t evolve. No, this music defies the homogenization of your standard listening experience to present you pure, undignified creativity at its most intact, affecting and downright fun.

FUCK SHIT UP 2K11

The Conversation

As Gene Hackman (a very appropriate name as it happens) peers through the mist in his dream sequence he asserts, "i'm not afraid of death" and then after grasping for a few seconds concludes 'but i am afraid of murder" This hypnotic scene is perhaps the most unnerving and Lynchian part of a film that manages to detect the neurosis and frustrated responsibilities of the modern man in a distorted conversation with the viewer.

The story of Harry Cole, an uptight but professionally esteemed eavesdropper, bugger and phone hacker who taps into his conscience whilst recording an elliptical conversation held between a couple in a San Fransisco park. A devout catholic, the film follows a man though his existential dillema as it gradually dawns on him that the ethics of his trade are not as seemingly mundane as he had supposed. As he begins to suspect devious underlying motives beneath the malaise of his assignment, Cole is intent upon confronting the Director to get assurance that the couple will not be harmed. The futility of his efforts at locating the 'director' were evocative of K's struggle in The Castle to gain a meeting with the enigmatic Klamm, and the administrative hurdles thrown across his path (the obstinate receptionist, and Harrison Ford's malevolent personal assistant) just further reinforced the Kafkaesque impression.

I think it can be legitimately referred to as a postmodern film due to both its content and form. In a similar way to how Hitchcock's Rear Window makes the viewer bedfellows with a peeping tom, and consequently forces them to re-evaluate the voyeuristic side of the cinema, the conversation achieves the same self-analysis by looking behind the curtain of the couples unfolding narrative at the observer on the other side. The jerky, non-linear and fragmentary nature of the espionage makes for a prevailing spirit of suspense, manufactured, as it was in Rear Window, through the most minute of changes in the visibility or audibility of the subject. The subversion employed is that of revolving the lens onto the director of the recording, cole, who at first deflects any interest in the case onto the 'director', who is made unattainable by the machinations of his secretary- all of whom we then understand are pliable to the instructions of the true director Francis Ford Coppolla, shielded at all times from the scrutiny of the lens.

Harry Cole's dysfunctional,shrewd and mechanical dealings with people in combination with his catholic upbringing where reminiscent of Pinky in Brighton Rock, and how both manufacture an enigma around themselves in order to conceal a desperate loneliness. When Cole visits the prostitute he begins to illuminate an affection previously absent from his character yet this is reflexively withdrawn as soon as she begins to question him. This idea of the guarded and secretive inquisitor, skilled at peeling away the mysteries of others lives but cautious to the slightest intrusion into his own, is a fascinating paradox that has deservedly appeared in many thrillers. The most recent recycling of the Cole prototype would appear to be the protagonist in the real-life story of East German oppression The Lives Of Other's, who throughout yields no interference by his colleagues into his own opinions, interests or hobbies so as to avoid suspicion. Meanwhile he is documenting the every movement of the counterculturists under his surveillance, from discussion about minutia down to his bemused paraphrasing of their sex. In fact despite the different settings, the breadth of similarities is such that you have to stop to remind yourself that however fantastical such an environment may appear, the Stazi did exist and where active during the period coppola made his movie.

Overall a magnificently shot, compelling and disturbing drama- the final coda of which is still vividly present to my mind.Harry Cole slumped on the floor mournfully improvising on saxophone over the snaking piano theme, his shirt unfurled and clammy, surrounded by the detritus of the street-lit apartment he has turned upside down and stripped bare to find a trace of surveillance.

The NME within

The NME

For many years I have drafted letters to you in an idle moment, usually associated with some slight concern over the placement of a band or an unfair review. I’ve finally taken the plunge this time- chiefly due to your exclusion of moi once again from your list of top tips for 2011. Now perhaps it would be wise to tackle your immediate responses that this gratuitous omission is because “we’ve never heard your music” “Neither has anyone we know” and perhaps because “in fact you’ve not played anyone your music”. Well to satisfy your concerns here’s a brief description set in the closest the fickle and limited system of language can come to fully encompassing the ethereal majesty of the album, as yet unrecorded, practiced or written, that I have mentally devised.

They are songs which catapult the unassuming listener headlong into the musical equivalent of a Borges novel, where they are diverted on every path by a fresh crescendo- noise solo- spoken word indictment of the hipster scene- percussive interlude- surf-pop riffing- 4 point harmony- cascades of analogue synth wizardry- slap bass solo- doo-wop reinvention-irreverent name drop-minimalist homage- unusual and unpredictable fusion- anthemic chorus (featuring an assortment of motivational phrases ‘hold your head up’ sort of deal) which finally twists towards the majestic climax, a haunting but euphoric finale of rap-orientated math-rock. All of this shrink-wrapped in the kind of production that Eno, Godrich, Martin, Street et al have fruitlessly spent their careers attempting to replicate.

Now I fully appreciate that your allegiance to a band involves a kind of investment in them, and that you've become scarred and made wary by your involvement with many proverbial Northern Rock’s in the past (The Darkness, Twang, Courteneers, Brother, Travis) Therefore I can categorically assure you that a late inclusion of me and my oeuvre to either the Best of 2010 or New List 2011 (i'd settle for a pre-emptive insertion into next years list) would involve only a slight amount of risk. I think you’ll find it prudent to massively market my genius now so as to hasten the predictable clamour of assorted music publicists, blogs and magazines claiming they discovered me, when I actually record or devise some music. Think of it as a musical ‘Ponzi’ scheme in which everybody gets rich and no one gets hurt if it makes you feel more committed?

Kind Regards,

The Face Of Music To Come,

Cornwall.

HARDCORE

As it is swiftly becoming cornwall’s premier musical export, in as much it has any, I’m struggling to understand the appeal of Hardcore.

It is a scene that has organically developed its ethos upon values of integrity, a D.I.Y approach to marketing/promotion/merchandise and an emphasis upon pure expression and authenticity with a leftwing slant. So in its core values then it appears not too dissimilar to any musical movement, which strives to develop in the shadow of major label or mainstream recognition- and in fact seeks to exclude them. Its essential basis as a cultural movement is virtually, to the uninitiated, undecipherable from punk rock or indie. As far as I can make out, not professing to be any hardcore scholar, its roots lie in the early 1980’s West Coast scene when Punk was imported to the states and swiftly got brasher, brattier, faster, arguably less fun and snottier. These origins perhaps explain why the scenes intertwined with skating, metal and ripped jeans, caps and all its other sartorial choices. If this is taken into account then it is undeniably impressive that a scene approaching middle age has managed to resist being branded, packaged and marketed in the way so many of its forbearers were. Perhaps this is the enduring attraction for a lot of people- the sense of involvement with fostering a scene in your local area, where your friend’s bands play with your bands your other friends design the shirts and flyers and others take the pictures/ spread the word/ distribute the e.p’s. All very honourable anti-authoritarian stuff involving a communal outlook countless other scenes could do well to emulate. However the confusion for me doesn’t arise from all the paraphernalia but the actual music itself.

Now your first bonafide hardcore gig is likely to leave you feeling deeply impressed, probably slightly concerned and saturated in sweat. There’s traditionally a diminutive tattooed shirtless and angry singer hurling himself around in a frenzied assortment of contortions, messianic postures and ferocious screams at the crowd. The final coda of the set will resolve (?) with this glistening homunculus coiled on the floor in the microphone lead bellowing like a newborn whilst the rest of the band sheepishly depart offstage, not without forgetting to rest the guitars by the amps in an inferno of feedback. Your witnessing this scene of roars, lunges and flung fists by the, predominately white, crowd you know by day to be largely content, bourgeois and vegetarian with stupefaction- who’s the enemy here? So in search of a clue you return home to consult the lyric sheet that came attached with the gatefold ep and are confronted only with vague revolutionary platitudes, some odes to beer and Evil Dead style brutality.

So maybe you’ve missed the point, after all the majority of contemporary music’s purpose isn’t held in the words. Well that leaves the dishwater where muddied guitar tones languish at snail speed with break beats and dissonance clashes in a dirge. If atonality is the point then anything involving john cage or Schoenburg’s 12 note scale fits the bill, if its raw power then Mahler is hardcore or if the qualification is minimalist and aleatoric then Steve Reich slips under the manifold. This is not to say that the gigs aren’t enticing but it’s more for the theatre and the flamboyance of the stage show than any conviction in what’s being said or heard. There’s an illusion of depth to it all- reinforced in part by the budding cultural theorists and Marxists amongst them, which you can be forgiven for thinking involves some subversion of audience expectations/established rock conventions. But it’s fundamentally so derivative at every junction that the original impression of fascination fades to reveal the lack of ambition and imagination at the core of many of the bands.

Regardless of how insightful the content may be, the form it takes ultimately maroons them beyond either critical or mainstream appreciation. Precisely because so many of the key participants in a scene like this are so stable, genuine and outgoing in real life- its hard to pinpoint where their vehemence originates from. Not that I’m suggesting that art should be confined to the artists mood alone but if not it should at least be imaginative- otherwise its hard to reconcile creator with creation. Which then, despite all the expressions of sincerity, comradery and authenticity, makes it all seem rather false and disingenuous- more a simulation of what the impassioned and furious look like than an accurate reflection. Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Much have I travelled in the Realms of Gold

The Lolcat logged on and mused ‘Nom Nom Nom’

Before alluding to the six dislikes with a pithy remark,

And halting to *correct a noob’s spelling.

When the bad speller reappropriated the *

LoLcat was nonplussed, scouring his files

For a gif that read ‘cool story bro’

Such heavy artillery confounded the speller

So on he prowled, disambiguating a trail of

11!!1!’s and casual racism behind him.

Schooled in the art of trolling,

He rickrolls joylessly, propregating memes

Deep into the suburban night.

He’s derisive, well informed

Armies of irreverence observe his every

stroke of the Keyboard cat on his lap.

Yet this artisan of 4chan

Slumped in his chair,

Poring over the

Scripture of Courage wolf,

Is plunged in despair

By his loss of the game,

By a taken domain name

By the knowledge that no O Rly will spare him the reaper,

That no accusation of Creeping will chase off the

Scythe, that whilst a winner online he’s a FAILer in Life

and his mind inscribes in bold white cap’s

LIFE FAIL across every tragic mishap he endures

in the 3^rd dimension.

The ventriloquist who invested in his dummy found

That in his lair

He’s granted the freedom of a gentrified lord.

To patrol his grounds, to denigrate and deplore to just

Look at this fucking hipster

Migrating

In Cognito from each comment,

Hoping to soar and infect.

Inboxes, to skim the tops of the long grass

Whilst vultures circle overhead,

swooping Presto to Adagio

at the rest of a fingers click.

Escher's Stairs

Days and weeks on escher’s stairs

Facing only ever what is yet to tread,

How long must these ritual bounds

These lapping entanglements

Continue? Descending only to glimpse

Up on high my pensive self stuck

In transit. Clenching a banister

Head swimming,

And a tumultuous gut.

I’ll mount a rescue, peer into the gathered fog,

Map paths in the condensation.

IF On A Winters Night A Traveller

If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, outside the town of Marbork, leaning from the steep slope, without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow, without fear of wind or vertigo, in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon, around an empty grave- What story down there awaits its end?-he asks, anxious to hear the story.

Calvino paints a myriad grid of interlacing story lines, mistaken identity, fraudulence, plagiary and parody in several different colours, each more dazzling and vivid than the next. Its a virtuoso pastiche of not only the cheap airline novel - in which ourselves as the 'reader' are passively dragged from situation to situation, clandestine group to group, along the way falling in love, tripping over ourselves and repeatedly losing sight of our original objective,- but it is also a profound meditation on authorship and multiple interpretations. It could be seen, given its vantage point (1980), of foretelling the decade of Deconstructionism which was to spawn endless fields of critical debate. One scene which ingeniously parodies this is the chapter after the reading of 'without wind or vertigo' in which the professor and his students instantly submit the text they have just heard to a critical dissection, attaching tags and labels each more ludicrous than the last to the authors intentions, 'at this point they throw open the discussion, Events characters, settings,impressions are thrust aside to make room for the general concepts'

"the polymorphic-pervese sexuality.." "the laws of a market economy..." "the homologies of the signifying structures"

Calvino's thoughts upon the role of the reader are made fairly transparent in his choice of heroine 'the OTHER reader' (no doubt to many feminists chagrin) Ludmilla, who see's in the text- not the author as an auteur, not the context he wrote in or his sublimated political, social or otherwise- but the possibility of immersion, of abandoning oneself nakedly to the written word and its power and admires 'novels that bring me...into a world where everything is precise,concrete,specific. I feel a special satisfaction in knowing that things are made in theat certain fashion and not otherwise..." In a move of ingenuity then Calvino crafts a novel of such fluctuations and fragmentation that his heroine would most likely abandon it upon discovering the first change of narrative voice to second person, and the intentional fluidity of the characters, who seem to give up the fight against the rapids that determine their course. This is of course meant to signify the experience of the reader, faced with the novel, so despite the impression Calvino crafts of our autonomy he is in fact throughout dictating our thoughts and intentions- an experience so unfamiliar and eccentric that it is at first quite unnerving. The stories that partition the narrative of the reader, or in reality give meaning to the exterior narrative that bookends them, are (with the exception of two) each distinct and vividly crafted tales that if expanded upon would surely justify and satisfy separate publication and expansion into novels. BUt this is precisely the glory of this most escher-like narrative maze, that we are every second chapter drawn into these immaculately rendered worlds only to be rudely interrupted and withdrawn at the moment of highest tension. It's a book which collects stolen moments and almost mocks how easily transfixed us fickle readers can be, he plays with our sense of anticipation, expectancy and desires like a chess-player arranging his pawns. The idea of the incipit lies at the core of 'if on a winters night...' as the author exposes how a book of multiple beginning's can sustain the awe and vulnerability the reader encounters on starting a novel, which is often nullified as they proceed to the Middle and End of their journey.

There are so many more paragraphs i feel i need to unleash to fully give voice to all the sensations i traversed when reading this book, but i'm not sure i will be able to ever quite exhaust the level of themes that are deducible from it, it is in short a triumph. There is one paragraph towards the end , from the dialogue held between Reader's, which i believe to exhibit one of the most acute understanding of The Readers experience yet demonstrated in print by The Writer, who we could reasonably expect to be as cut off from such matters as a CEO of a company is from the discussions held between his corporations secretaries:

"Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in the way that reading proves fruitful for me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an intinerary of reasonings and fantasies that i feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until i have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, i manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which i can never exhaust."

This is a phenomenon i went through several times in the course of reading Calvino's novel, so much so that chapters seemed to take longer to conclude than some more throwaway material as idea's he minutely touched on snowballed in my mind so that they began to obscure and cloud everything else on the page. An example which it took the longest to resume reading once i had considered, was the suggestion (small though it was) by the 'true author?' Silas Flannery that his next novel should simply be reduced to a list of words and their frequency of appearance from which the reader would guess the plot.