Dennis Hopper, whose portrayals of drug-addled, often
deranged misfits in the landmark films “Easy Rider,”
“Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet” drew on his early
out-of-control experiences as part of a new generation of
Hollywood rebel, died at his home in Venice, Calif., on
Saturday, according to reports. He was 74.
What does one do?
What do you do?
I’m in deep silence
Who am I?
Where do I come from?
I am Antonin Artaud
and I say this
as I know how to say this
immediatly
you will see my present body
burst into fragments
and remake itself
under ten thousand notorious aspects
a new body
where you will
never
forget me.
This picture is of a young Antonin Artaud.
But it might as well be Dennis Hopper.
Neither made the pact with the devil.
Both died in pain. Both raised hell.
LOVE
G
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A disaster in abstraction: Two covered heads I’m staring at: Quantum part (1)
While I sit here and wait yet for another plane, I wonder what to do and how to do it. What to say, and how to say it. No, a crisis is not a joke. Yet, literally speaking, a crisis should push one forward. Yes, forward.
I’m staring at two religious radicals (both heads covered (maybe a fear of showing their baldness or simply a fear of falling objects from the universe), of opposite cleric convictions – while each sits with in full garment as if to make a statement about their “gods”. “Mine is better than yours”, one of the two must be thinking. “I hate your guts and want to blow you up”, is probably hovering around the head of the other.
So much for history. Yes, history. I’ve always claimed (in workshops, lectures, interviews, whatever) that one ought to know everything (and I mean or meant EVERYTHING).
But today, Wednesday, reality hits me in the face. It takes my skull and shakes it as does a Beckett conundrum “For to end, yet again, skull alone in a dark place pent bowed to begin”. For to. Non existing combinations. Joycean and Beckettian language: “for to” is meant to sound as 4 – 2 and then…. Pent. Oh yes: pent stands for the number five. 4-2-5. Was that the number of a train or tram line or does it stand for the unsolvable enigma that Churchill used to illustrate Russia (article below). 425 may well be a cabalistic number which, in reverse order or maybe summed up in cadences of (….) add up to some significance. One of the radical religious persons I am staring at has studied. Probably studied profoundly.
And why? What do we need to know about ourselves that hasn’t already been told in a better shape and form????? Please tell me.
According to Nathan Lane (starring in the Broadway show “The Adams Family” which was trashed, panned by the critics), it’s simply GREAT that Americans don’t read. So he says: ignorance is great.
Adams Family is a success, regardless of the negative reviews. In the past, a play or musical on Broadway would close within 3 days of its opening if panned by the critics, In fact, a parody of this ‘ritual’ starred Nathan himself in Mel Brook’s fantastic “The Producers”. However, now, he claims victory for illiteracy.
Well, there is something to be said about this. I’m looking at two radicals in full garment who study (daily) their commandments, their protocol of manners and behaviors according to their “god”.
Nathan Lane claims that the best thing now – in this age of info bombardment – is simply to be illiterate and not keep a memory alive or, even, remember what ‘specialized opinion’ has to say.
Where do you stand, beloved reader????
If it weren’t for curiosity (and this is to be read as an anti-Lane statement), I would never have come across such names as Isaac Newton, for instance, or
James Maxwell, James Prescott Joule, Kelvin, Milton, Dante, Bruno or Max Planck.
I confess to be a frivolous reader when it comes to Quantum Physics, astrophysics and/or any other riddle which Churchill….No, forget Churchill for a moment and concentrate on the following formula
h = 6.626068 × 10-34m2kg/s
Yes, take your time: read it again:
h = 6.626068 × 10-34m2kg/s
Lots of people know what this stands for. But billions of others like myself do not. And here I fall into Nathan Lane’s category of the ‘glorious illiterate’.
Yes, illiterate and indignant. Why? Because I see the world in the light of a constant catastrophe. One happening and one about to happen. Why? Because I see our lives as worthless specks of nothingness and …a curious desire to counterbalance this “important self within us” with the immenseness of the Universe. Or, should I say, “our curiosity in measuring our size in relation to the galaxies”. C’est un joke.
Yes, today at this airport lounge I’m staring at these two religious radicals of opposite cleric convictions and I am incredibly nervous about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A newspaper’s headline on the adjacent seat reads: A disaster in abstraction. For weeks, a threat floating somewhere out there.
“Really?”, I ask. “A disaster in abstraction?” Will we ever learn? Or are we on stage? An oil rigged stage?
“ATTACK THE WELL”
A well. The name says it all. So does the verb follow? Attack? Not being able to understand WELL and to spell to verb means to spill the verb.
Some people worry about the whereabouts of Lord Mandelson who was seen in a 250.000 GB sterling pounds Ferrari being driven to a dinner with Russian oligarchs who were closing a deal worth 500 million GB pounds. Yes, I guess it is rather worrying when he writes in a disclaimer “not have known it to be a business dinner”. Ha. C’est un joke.
Why? Why do I worry about things like that? Human nature, human species, the species as a whole and the size of what’s above our covered or uncovered heads. It’s all dark. All completely dark and solvable via riddles and….
And nothing, since, in the end, or at our last breath we are, as we’ve always beennothing but a “for to end yet again skull alone in a dark place pent bowed to begin.”
Gerald Thomas
25 May 2010
Thank you, Jorge and Sandra Futoshi Yamamoto for the inspiration.
AND PLEASE WATCH JOHN PAUL JONES IN “Them Crooked Vultures”
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No news to report! I’d say this is rather good, wouldn’t you?Part of Russia’s mystery – and remember, Winston Churchill once described it as a riddle wrapped inside a mystery hidden in an enigma – is the geography and the history. Russia is a vast country, spanning nine time zones, bordering three continents. It has gone through major geopolitical trauma, having watched its massive multinational empire collapse almost overnight.
“IT HAS ALL BEEN A BIG MISTAKE”
(below this article, there’s yesterday’s article: “Autobahnkirche” a rest place for the soul)
It’s strange. I am not exactly responsible for this. On the same token, I’ll say the opposite. I am completely responsible for this. And this is not what you’re thinking. Or, maybe, it is exactly what you’re thinking.
It’s what I’m daydreaming. A nightmare. A nightmare played out in Rome (rather than in Venice). Day after day I find myself confined to a room, a smaller and smaller room, looking at the ceiling. Day in, day out, I’m looking at a smaller ceiling –usually some kind of white tone or yellowish tone that makes the white turn older.
Yes, I’m in Rome, have you noticed? And have NO desire, whatsoever, to be engulfed by hoards and hoards of people who fill up the streets, “Rome-ing” in one direction, or roaming in the opposite direction carrying ones soul and soles where one doesn’t want to go. Some of these millions are seeing this for the 1st time. This is even more depressing. They are Columbus in reverse order: the discovery and the enthusiasm of the “old world”. Fuck them!
Yes, the ruins are still here where I played as a child. Problem? Too many ruins. It’s all one gigantic ruin. The ruin that produces good economic results. Photographs are taken, cameras are snapping of one photographing the other for the billionth time. And where will these images end up? In some kind of blog or log book or in a porn slide show without the porn part.
In the 70’s when I used to come here, it was usually in connection with work: I was here because Amnesty was doing “this or that” or the League for the Liberation of People –Senator Lelio Basso’s NGO – was doing something more to the left of what Amnesty International was doing.
Back then, just as now: always hoards and hoards of people but I seemed less affected and perhaps less aware of the global problems and the density of this thing we call overpopulation or information overload or – what else do we call it? -,oh yes: globalized world. All in all and all ARE all outside this window close to Via Tritone on Via Arcione.
Yes, I’m living a Beckett life. Which? I don’t know. But I seem stuck in a Beckett story, be it The Lost Ones where people roam each searching for their lost ones……be it in a Murphy or Molloy situation of watching the world go past my elbow and being unable to respond to the pressure.
Pressure.
When an image comes to mind, it has already been done. “But you used to kick the door open or shooting your enemies dead and only AFTER the corpse lay there, only then, would you ask questions.” Yes, that was then.
Ceiling.
Nobody can write the diary of a ceiling. A ceiling has no life, not even the Sistine Chapel has a life without the hoards of whores in horror of queuing up to look up and stay there looking up at Michaelangelo’s masterpiece. The holes where the lights are built into look like stars or dead planets or your firmament, firm in stating that I’ve grown over sensitive to the news, the overwhelming news of plane crashes, suicide bombers, improvised or not improvised explosive devices and my mind and body are scattered as if an IED has hit it right where the brain makes its decisions.
I’m from the Brave New World.
And this world, such as any other, seems bleaker than usual.
Yes, water is pouring out of the Fontana di Trevi and, yes, 1 million people sit on the Spanish Steps.
And why? Why do they sit there? Why do they throw coins into the Fontana? Because they expect their lives to have a closer encounter with…..with what? Eternity? Oh, of course, I’d forgotten eternity.
Because I am in bed, almost immobile, looking at the ceiling with no horizon in mind. My mind (at this moment) are the steps at Piazza d’Espagna or the water flowing out in huge amounts, from the ruins of the di Trevi, Da Vinci, di Modena or the water which surrounds Taormina, Sicily.
Nobody knows a thing about History.
Maybe I know too much about it all. Yes, a white ceiling may just be the most appropriate scenario for here and now.
“Service station with a soul or Rest Stops for Christ!”
Yes, people take time out and off when driving the German super highways and pray: “a moment with myself and for myself and my soul” says a guy who just parked his Porsche outside of an autobahn praying station. No, before you ask, his God’s name ain’t Diesel.
As for me, en route to Rome ( this Tirreno is tricky and dramatically historical), I’m wondering if I’m going to bump into Antonio, Sebastian, Trinculo and all other foes who displaced (uncrowned) the Duke of Milan, Mr. Prospero.
The Tempest: Shakespeare’s last play (1611) and his only tragedy NOT ending in blood or bloodshed.
Prospero plays around and even tortures his enemies but acquits them in the end (through the applause of the audience – which condemns HIM to continue with his Renaiscence soliloquy for the rest of eternity on the makeshift island called THE STAGE.
I had no idea that Picasso and Braque were friends. I had no idea that Cubism was actually a common and ongoing joke between the two of them. I always thought they were enemies.
In the Cubist world, there is no Tempest because there are no waves, There might be square angled waves, as there is a Star Spangled Banner but the question remains:
IF, in fact there had to be a pardon issue between Picasso, Braque and Matisse…would they have had the dignity to act like Prospero/Shakespeare?
Don’t think so.
That was a “French Ship”, hardly a friendship. Bullfighting fans and painters who live in exile and protest against dictators such as Franco, could hardly be forgiving humans.
Are we able to be forgiving? I mean, now, in the age of nothingness, are we forgiving? Or do we look at a bleak future without a proper (prosper) ideology, since it’s all done and dead and dead for nothing.
When I looked out of the window and saw the yachts of the STINKING rich in Cannes yesterday, it dawned on me that (perhaps) we shouldn’t be all that forgiving after all.
Yes, a Stink King rich!!!. The Brave NewWorld of the former Duke of Milan.
I sit alone and wonder if Caliban will eat me up alive – or chew up and suck my bones dry after I’m dead. And…what difference does it make anyway???
Yes, the TemPEST,
Best Regards
Gerald Thomas
PS uptdate on Saturday May 22
Eugenio Barba speaks to Zero Hora (in Porto Alegre, BR)
Zero Hora – Aqui no Brasil recentemente foi assunto o fato de Gerald Thomas, um conhecido dramaturgo e diretor, dizer que estava deixando os palcos por estar cansado de mesmice no teatro, que, como em outras artes, nada mais apresentava de novo. Qual sua opinião sobre essa posição, observando o panorama global do teatro?
Eugenio Barba – Conheço o Gerald Thomas. O que posso dizer é que percebo, sim, uma falta de interesse global pelo teatro. É uma arte para a minoria. Mas é preciso saber de que teatro estamos falando. Teatro tem muitos gêneros, diferentes objetivos, diferentes espectadores. Creio que 95% do teatro que se faz no mundo é feito por anônimos. As pessoas não tomam conhecimento deles, que fazem teatro em cadeias, hospitais psiquiátricos, campos de refugiados. É um teatro que cumpre a função de ajudar na interação das pessoas.
Thanks Eugenio.
LOVE
Roma: 22 May, 2010 I am in Eugenio Barba's town
You Too.
G
Comments Off on Around the world in 5 days! “qui non usare acqua per spengere-incendi – “Rome-ing” while I look at the Ceiling: it has all been a big mistake!
There seems to be a Rodin moment in our lives when we oyster ourselves and our fists-to-forehead become a shelf of sad memories. And we panic.
Panic.
The wind outside blows, the depth of the water is unimaginable and the sphere we live on is far too vast to understand. The sound all of this makes is a nervous sound. Today we are in Cannes.
I find myself in a ridiculously painful moment. Yes, painful. Was it Barcelona? It is Cannes? Obviously NOT.
The very idea of survival is ridiculous. The idea of having to justify, justify and justify becomes a parable of the unjustifiable: Gaudi may well represent the justification of the inexplicable. Why? Must there always be a WHY?
“Why is this?” “why are you…?”
“Who was that?” “who IS that?”
“When was this and that?”
There seems to be a Warhol moment in us when the WAR fills the Hole and we are nothing but multiples of ourselves or mobiles of our souls floating or hanging as if in a Calder piece or a Calderon character.
When we realize that the oyster in us has gone on to become a seafood platter, then all is gone.
It is all in a can. No, I can’t.
Time Stops.
It does. But the clocks go on ticking whilst our internal hands and fingers do the walk to reflection or reflexion and we end up where we always end up: nowhere and with a question: what is all this for?
Malaga. Algiers. Tunis. Sicily where I….No. Where I nothing!
To spend a lifetime answering the most stupid and banal questions is not why I’m here. Yet! I’m here on a ship, sailing the waves of Britannia and the Mediterranean letting the wind tell me that we’re moving ahead. La Nave Va.
But I live back there, remember? Remember where I live?
Remember where my mind was built or coined as if a Tower of Pisa and where no antioxidants will ever keep me from getting old. Old. Old.
I see no point in jogging, fitnessing, sweating, steaming, rowing, foaming and looking for the fountain of youth.
Gibraltar.
Malta.
Altar.
We thin our bloods. We take blood thinners, mood stabilizers when this Queen Victoria doesn’t seem to be able to cope with tiny waves. But sinners and thinners in our system to prolongue life. But prolongue what? This incredible STAGE of illusions? I cry because I cannot laugh when people still approach me with questions such as: what was this, or that, and who was he, of she and what did they do 300, 200, 100 years ago?
There’s a Goethe moment in all of us when time has stopped and we simply realize that we are nothing but a speck of dust and…
All this information!
All this historical knowledge!
All this education!
All this curiosity!
All this erudite something….hinders. Yes, it hinders what we are because it will not further us from where we are NOW.
We do, indeed, rust. There is no cream or ointment of antioxidant pill that will ever stop this ridiculous mental cycle. Mental cycle.
There is a Duchamp moment in all of us and there is a Picasso moment in all of us and there is a John Cage moment in all of us where silence. Yes, simply where silence. As the silence that prevails after the sound of a bomb blast.
We exist in order to eat or satisfy the unsatisfiable HUNGER!
We exist to digest and shit.
We exist in order to fulfill the DARKNESS of the universe we float in just as we exist in order to sail or sell our souls, or sail on in these vast waters as nothing but a tiny speck of dust or ash, yes ash, while looking up at the stars while this ship sails on: La Nave Va.
In Barcelona, Christopher Columbus is better known as Colon. Theatro Colon, Buenos Aires. Ha! Certain things in the old world such as in Cartagena make sense. Others take time. Colon is the most beautiful Opera house I know.
Yes, and there is OUR moment in all of us.
And I cry.
(In memoriam of Samuel Cunard, Einstein, John Fante and Sergio Vieira de Mello.)
Gerald Thomas
Mediterranean off the coast of Spain.
May 17, 2010.
EL PAIS has President Lula all over the front page. Once for having formed the Mercosul Group which will trade with Europe. And once again for: “Iran firma un pacto nuclear con Turquia y Brasil para evitar sanciones: EE UU y sus aliados rechazam el acuerdo.
Si, estoy de acuerdo con las sanciones!
THE INDEPENDENT (London) bought at a news stand in Barce: US OUTFLANKED IN BID TO BRING SANCTIONS AGAINS IRAN.
And again, Lula shaking hands with (oh my Gull) …Ahmadinejad! (what are they thinking????
Comments Off on Time Stops. Cannes: rainy, windy and we’re anchored…. down below in PS:
I wish I could describe to all of you what enduring this ‘thing’ on the Queen Victoria has been. And this is only the second day!!!!!
HEEEEELLLLPPPPP
MAN OVERBOARD (we’re told by the fire drill official) to scream if we see someone jump ship of fall into the sea.
I promise you all that I’ll do it in the middle of the night when the waves are high and the surrounding (flat) planet is in complete darkness.
It’s quite incredible that a ship of this size and importance, such as the Queen Victoria, is such a wasteland of plastic imitations of what used to be this Cunard Line of vessels.
Second day and I’m almost jumping ship: yes, “man overboard”. Or overly bored. Quite silly, really, considering that the average age of people here is 100 (or above) dribbling and sleeping over their alcoholic drinks.
Smoke wasted on 100 year old DEAD people
This is a shopping mall floating along the coast of Spain now, about to turn the corner at La Coruña. High waves and stabilizers almost not working. Swimming pools are fresh water. Silly. Should have one where you could enjoy fresh oil spills and squids and so on…
None of that. Just an elevator going up 10 stories and NO INTERNET IN THE room as promised.
Oh yes, the theater is lovely; looks just like the Metropolitan Opera House.
Food? Amazing. Had the most amazing sole (not Dover) but a real shoe sole for breakfast in the form of what they call a “toast”. As for the coffee…well……Need I go further? YES! I want to be able to see LAND!!!
Thanks Captain.
LOVE
G
Sunday: on Tuesday we arrive in Barcelona for…..half a day. Fish are jumping. Shrimp are shrimping and waves are waving. No, they’re not. Waves are waves are waves and (can you tell?) are waves….
Dress Code on the “Queen Victoria”: daily requirement.
“Sunday: TONIGHT’S DRESS REQUIREMENT.
Formal dress: Tuxedo, dinner jacket or formal dark suit with tie for the gentlemen, Evening dress or other evening attire for the ladies. Please note that the “Formal Dress” code applies from 6:00pm this evening. Out of respect for your fellow guests, the dress code enforced. The Lido restaurant provides an alternative for those guests who prefer a more relaxed evening attire.”
PS: RELAXED????? How can I relax with some of the aberrations I’ve seen? This is absolutely amazing: a sunny day outside and people are going to be getting into their tuxes and long long tacky dresses in order to…….eat!
Fancy that!
LOVE
G
Comments Off on Sunday update: log book: Blog book:Man Overboard: lecturing people on how to jump ship!
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Will Resign as Labour Party Leader By September
“When 50 is a stronger number than 300”
Saint Ives, Cornwall: Rocks that don’t roll, Tristan und Isolde, “my vote counts”, “press the hash key, UK – press the pound key – US”, if Britain were to press the pound key, the City would make billions!” Hash!
Greece is in shambles, in shreds, in tatters, but if you go to the British Museum, you’d see part of the Greek ruins still there where Sofocles played as a child!”. Athens is burning! Atenas ligadas!!!!! Antenna.
“WHEAL DREAMS”
“That time, that last time, were the ruins still there where you played as a child…..When was that?” (Samuel Beckett). It’s amazing. But not many people know who he is! “When was that”. I’m looking at the Scilly Isles and, far away, the coast of Ireland, where Beckett was born and where the ruins are where he played as a child. “When was that?”
Have you heard of “Waiting for Godot”, I ask.
“no, not really”, he answers looking at me with small wide open 20 year old eyes.
“Never heard of Endgame, Godot, etc?”
“no, never”.
Hmmmm.
“In the National Interest, it’s best to move forward”. Not my words. These are Alastair Campbell’s words. This is our man. Blair’s man. Blair’s conspiracy man. The man who is capable of forging words, forging documents and the man who (ultimately) took the UK into Iraq. I can imagine an Alastair as he would be perceived by Andy Warhol. Imagine all the Campbells, all the Elvises and all the Maos and Monroes together in stark pink and yellow. That’s my man! Star Spangled Banner! Rauschenberg has always been a HOAX. Not Jasper Johns but Robert Rauschenberg. Castelli needed a few and made them up as they came along.
I’m writing from Saint Ives, Cornwall where King Mark no longer reigns and where Tristan, Isolde, Kurwenal and Brangaene fought for their lives, love and revenge. Brazil’s emperor, Don Pedro, gave Wagner the idea: and the most incredibly beautiful opera was born. This is where I walk along its very very incredibly very narrow alleyways and look at the ocean, from the corner of my shy eyes: “The Boat, The Boat (Das Shiff, Das Shiff) ”, as if it where the delirious last scene of a Richard Wagner opera which ends with the transcending of love and death: his Liebestod. Our lovedeath. Our deathlove.
And looking at the low tide with its boats almost capsized, resting its sides on the sands and on its sides as if a collapsed government, I realize that math has played a huge trick on us: Fifty is stronger than 300. Clegg has managed to become a pop star! Wow!
Everyone wants to go to bed with him: he holds THE power, in spite of the small representation he has. Make sense? Does it?
This proportional vote here in the UK must change. And so must the American system of electing officials who form the electoral college, change. I mean, CHANGE!!!!!
D-Day early morning: Great day. Clegg, Cameron and Brown are seen in a “presidential or prime ministerial manner” standing behind the Prince of Wales , Charles.
UNLOCK DEMOCRACY
Yes, we can.
REFORM THE ELCTORAL SYSTEM
Yes, we can.
Harrods has been sold.
Another Fayed is dead.
I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
Terror: London Calling.
Doomed by ASH clouds whether up here in the North. Or down below, in the Gulf of Mexico.
SHAME.
No we can’t!
Gerald Thomas
9 May 2010
some rocks don't roll
FOOTNOTE: Again a reminder: my TWITTER name is
geraldthomas1 (with the number 1 following my name, as you could easily notice)
any other – especially those badmouthing Brazil – is NOT me!
Em Por-au-Gois:
Mais um lembrete: no twitter eu sou
geraldthomas1 (NUMERO 1 atras)
qualquer outro – especilamente um IMBECIL que so fala mal do Brasil, nao sou eu.
MINE HAS MY PHOTO. MY IDENTITY and leads to my blog.
O MEU TEM A MINHA FOTO, MINHA IDENTIDADE, e tem ligação com meu blog
Comments Off on Breaking news: London calling. Gordon Brown will resign: 50 is a number stronger than 300: the anti Darwinism has finally arrived: more on Monday
L.I.E – The expressway to doubts, sorrows and longing.
No, I’m not going to destroy your mind with descriptions of the Long Island Expressway or, for that matter the GRAND Central, or even the M4 motorway that leads me here. Lies. That’s what we do best.
Maybe the best description for our period (yes, period!) would be the midtown tunnel or the Holland Tunnel. Yes, tunnels. Darkness. Claustrophobia.
The theater is a dark place. It’s the place where we tell the truth by lying. Yet, the system is passing us by just like speeding cars do on the LIE. Except that cars don’t speed on the LIE. It’s a bumper to bumper deal, if anything, especially when the passengers mouths are wide shut and approaching the tunnel or the toll booths. Imagine Munch’s silent scream inside one of those tunnels. No, don’t imagine that.
I said, in the previous post down below that “we should rethink ART as the GREATEST form Of ART itself. Not as a fearful act of expression, but as an act of eternal transgression.”
But our bumper to bumper period (yes, period!!) isn’t up to much transgressing. Sucking the past dry, I realize … no, leave it alone: let it be. Let it be nothing. Well, sucking the past dry, we are in a recycling period and that makes me cry. I’m alive.
The current vacuum or void seems to me like an empty stomach starving for new ideas.
And that’s a huge question.
I’ll leave it up to Hamlet to solve.
But Hamlet has never solved a thing! Yet he thrives in our imagination dead imagine, buried deep inside our brains as the eternal “what to be and what to do” He is the epitome, the prototype and the encapsulation of insecurity, low self-esteem, narcissism and self destruction. If the Hamlet in us ever does look at his own reflection, it will be in a pool of his/our blood just before death, rather than in a thin pool of water.
menopause on an island
I’m in tears while writing this because I’ve just spent hours watching/listening to John Paul Jones (the bass guitarist for Led Zeppelin) and it dawned on me that….No. Leave that alone for the moment.
“Ramble On”
I am simply in a state of wonderment or nostalgia or maybe I’ve come to realize that the Led, as well as Hendrix were products of the Cold War era. I mean, the byproducts of the Beatniks, hippies and all the names that’s fit to print in order to describe the “counter culture days” – or the Anti Vietnam War movement and all the peace and all the love we use to flag around and which has turned into so much hate, hatred, green kale and greed. Let’s say that the real world is more like Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin or Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and the blues. Oh yes, the blues.
We’re in 2010. These guys were making the most amazing things and CHANGING THE WORLD in the late sixties, early seventies. Meaning that 10, 15, 20 years after the Second World War, there really was a REVOLUTION from OLD to NEW.
And now? Nothing. This has all been FORTY years ago. So, what was our crime? What is this fucking punishment?
We are bombarded with LIES and sit still. “or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them”, oh Shakespeare my love: that was almost 500 years ago. And now? We sit still and type. We type and wonder.
But it’s all blind, it’s all Braille. We type and type in vain. Better to spit into an empty glass of Barolo, I think.
When Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones formed Zeppelin, or when Hendrix, Mitchell and Reading formed the “experience” there was a UNIVERSE hidden in them. And a universe with a beat, a sound, a bass so loud that it resembled your own heart when in love. YOUR HEART WHEN IN LOVE.
Yes, and the lungs could barely take it.
Very little moves and that motto: “we should rethink art as the GREATEST form Of ART itself. Not as a fearful act of expression, but as an act of eternal transgression…has become nothing but a retrospective and introspective sound I hear, something that my soul hears, my subconscious knows but I sit still.
Yes, perhaps I will give Hamlet a call, after all and arrange to meet his father, the ghost. What better place than, say, somewhere along the LIE?
Gerald Thomas
3 May 2010
PS May 5
Faisal Shahzad, 30, a U.S. citizen from Pakistan, faces charges including attempting to use weapons of mass destruction. BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THIS BASTARD. MAKE HIM TALK. (yes, I used to work for Amnesty International as a volunteer). Now I just don’t care: Nail him to a chair, beat the m*f* until he gives us all the info about these FUCKING COWARDS!
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