The first undeniable element in this life is due to the city's nature as a parasite. She absolutely cannot live in and by herslf. And this, moreover, characterises all of those works of man by which he seeks autonomy. Everything takes its life from somewhere else, sucks it up. Like a vampire, it preys on the true living creation, alive in its connection with the Creator. The city is dead, made of dead things for dead people. She can herself neither produce nor maintain anything whatever. Anything living must come from the outside. In the case of food, this is clear. But in the case of men, also. We cannot repeat too often that the city is an enormous man-eater. She does not renew herself from within, but by a constant supply of fresh blood from outside.
It is not enough to repeat, for example, the common remark that within the lively Parisian intelligentsia everything of any worth is imported from the provinces or from foreign countries, or that all the Parisians can produce is spiritless imitation. What is most important is that the growth of the urban population is not equal to arrivals from the outside, and not because the former move elsewhere or go back to the land, but because the city devours men. Sterile marriages, infant mortality. And these are not just ideas to be tossed about.
The city, then, cannot function except as a parasite; it needs constant contributions from the outside. One might be tempted to speak of exchange, but the city has nothing to exchange. What the city produces is for her own use. Notwithstanding tractors, electricity and fertiliser, what the city can produce for the country is absurd and ridiculous compared with what she receives. As for her spiritual worth, her ferment of ideas will be of use nowhere but in the city. On the other hand, she spoils peasant values with remarkable virtuosity. Such values are disappearing under the urban influence because they are the "defects" of urban values. The very character of the city, in the economic field or the intellectual, artistic or humanitarian, is to receive from the outside, to consume, and to produce things without value or meaning, usable only inside the city and to her gain.
- Jacques Ellul, "The Meaning Of The City"
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Saturday, 11 May 2013
Bureau Rock
I do find Coldplay a rather fascinating phenomenon. There's a visceral dislike of them prevalent among the cognescenti; they're viewed as the epitome of bland, white, middle-class unfunky introspection, but it's clear their appeal is pretty broad. They're a very Appollonian band, living cleanly and supporting worthy causes that no-one could disagree with, outside the Chinese politburo at least.
I suspect that the people who dislike them most are progressive or anti-structural types who see music as a radical force for re-shaping society. Coldplay are the opposite of tricksters; there's no demonic energy animating their songs or informing their worldview. Indeed structure is the first thing I think of when I hear their music - bold, clean chord progressions on which are hung their poignant mini-melodies, that are always aesthetically attractive, but never ravishing. They're a very bureaucratic band, and like those founders of bureaucratic music, U2 and R.E.M, they're probably going to be around for a very long time. All bureaucracies are expert at perpetuating themselves, after all.
Chris Martin's role is particularly interesting because he represents the yearning soul repressed by the bureaucratic machinery. He doesn't actively rebel against it. How could he? All he can do is plaintively wish it away. But even this mild struggle leaves him feeling ennervated and wan. And this is what gives the band their appeal; they effectively convey the weltanschauung of the contemporary West - a deep inner weariness with the bureaucratic, disenchanted world and the ceaselessly proliferating technologies that facilitate it. Everyone secretly carries this weariness like an inner weight, wondering when it will be they who can no longer keep running to catch up. It's a more truthful evocation of the contemporary condition than the grotesque self-pity of Radiohead. We're not really tortured by neoliberalism; we're spiritually fatigued by it.
It goes without saying that Coldplay produce the sort of music that a dying civilisation would create, an aural Dignitas - the life-feeling has long ebbed away, leaving only a wistful ghost to haunt the hospital corridors. I think they're important for this very reason. They accurately reflect the kind of people we are, and the kind of society we live in.
I suspect that the people who dislike them most are progressive or anti-structural types who see music as a radical force for re-shaping society. Coldplay are the opposite of tricksters; there's no demonic energy animating their songs or informing their worldview. Indeed structure is the first thing I think of when I hear their music - bold, clean chord progressions on which are hung their poignant mini-melodies, that are always aesthetically attractive, but never ravishing. They're a very bureaucratic band, and like those founders of bureaucratic music, U2 and R.E.M, they're probably going to be around for a very long time. All bureaucracies are expert at perpetuating themselves, after all.
Chris Martin's role is particularly interesting because he represents the yearning soul repressed by the bureaucratic machinery. He doesn't actively rebel against it. How could he? All he can do is plaintively wish it away. But even this mild struggle leaves him feeling ennervated and wan. And this is what gives the band their appeal; they effectively convey the weltanschauung of the contemporary West - a deep inner weariness with the bureaucratic, disenchanted world and the ceaselessly proliferating technologies that facilitate it. Everyone secretly carries this weariness like an inner weight, wondering when it will be they who can no longer keep running to catch up. It's a more truthful evocation of the contemporary condition than the grotesque self-pity of Radiohead. We're not really tortured by neoliberalism; we're spiritually fatigued by it.
It goes without saying that Coldplay produce the sort of music that a dying civilisation would create, an aural Dignitas - the life-feeling has long ebbed away, leaving only a wistful ghost to haunt the hospital corridors. I think they're important for this very reason. They accurately reflect the kind of people we are, and the kind of society we live in.
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Friday, 3 May 2013
Farrago
It's congratulations I see to the Tunbridge Wells Revitalisation Movement, otherwise known as UKIP, after capturing a swathe of county council seats across England, and inspiring much fevered speculation among the professional punditry about what it all means.
For myself, Nigel Farage appears to be an archetypal figure that is known as a trickster. Other high profile tricksters in contemporary European politics include the likes of Geert Wilders, Beppe Grillo and George Galloway. In his excellent book on the trickster archetype, the American writer George Hansen notes that the fundamental quality of tricksters is that they are anti-structural - their fundamental instinct, regardless of any political leanings they may have, is essentially destructive. They are there to pull down or otherwise disrupt existing structures of power, usually with a certain disregard as to the consequences.
Most commentators on UKIP's success seem to be attributing it to popular frustration with immigration, the EU, and/or a general disillusionment with the remoteness of the political class. However, the British public seemed to exhibit a grudging tolerance of all of these as long as the elite bureaucracy could deliver an expanding economy and higher standards of living. So, I think the real driver for Farage's success, and what provides him with the opportunity to create exquisite mayhem going forwards is that a) the UK's economic problems are basically insoluble, and b) the internal economic tensions within the EU guarantee its eventual dissolution. Neither of these unpleasant facts can be acknowledged by the governing parties.
So, based on this analysis, I don't think Farage is really going to position UKIP as a party of power. Being a trickster, he would no doubt find being a minister with responsibilities as deadly dull as Galloway obviously finds the drudgery of being an MP. What he will be doing, and is doing already, as both the Conservatives and Labour have started to take on parts of the UKIP agenda, is to locate intersections of friction within the otherwise smooth (but not necessarily productive) running of the bureaucracy and try to rupture them open. For the fun of it.
A good example would be an intervention in the Abu Qatada deportation saga (Qatada is a trickster himself, of course), which would offer a spendid opportunity to both disrupt relations between the UK Government and the ECHR (and by extension the EU), as well as those between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Whatever the declared reasons behind such an intervention, the important political effect will be a kind of queasy anarchy, as the schisms between the Home Office and the legal bureaucracy will be exposed and exaggerated, and the issue of who really has power will be brought to the fore. The end result being that the legitimacy of the entire system comes into question.
But, as Hansen points out, tricksters are an innate feature of humanity, just as all structures have their corresponding anti-structures. And, as existing structures start to decay, so the tricksters start their work. Expect them to multiply across Europe and the rest of the West in the decades ahead.
For myself, Nigel Farage appears to be an archetypal figure that is known as a trickster. Other high profile tricksters in contemporary European politics include the likes of Geert Wilders, Beppe Grillo and George Galloway. In his excellent book on the trickster archetype, the American writer George Hansen notes that the fundamental quality of tricksters is that they are anti-structural - their fundamental instinct, regardless of any political leanings they may have, is essentially destructive. They are there to pull down or otherwise disrupt existing structures of power, usually with a certain disregard as to the consequences.
Most commentators on UKIP's success seem to be attributing it to popular frustration with immigration, the EU, and/or a general disillusionment with the remoteness of the political class. However, the British public seemed to exhibit a grudging tolerance of all of these as long as the elite bureaucracy could deliver an expanding economy and higher standards of living. So, I think the real driver for Farage's success, and what provides him with the opportunity to create exquisite mayhem going forwards is that a) the UK's economic problems are basically insoluble, and b) the internal economic tensions within the EU guarantee its eventual dissolution. Neither of these unpleasant facts can be acknowledged by the governing parties.
So, based on this analysis, I don't think Farage is really going to position UKIP as a party of power. Being a trickster, he would no doubt find being a minister with responsibilities as deadly dull as Galloway obviously finds the drudgery of being an MP. What he will be doing, and is doing already, as both the Conservatives and Labour have started to take on parts of the UKIP agenda, is to locate intersections of friction within the otherwise smooth (but not necessarily productive) running of the bureaucracy and try to rupture them open. For the fun of it.
A good example would be an intervention in the Abu Qatada deportation saga (Qatada is a trickster himself, of course), which would offer a spendid opportunity to both disrupt relations between the UK Government and the ECHR (and by extension the EU), as well as those between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Whatever the declared reasons behind such an intervention, the important political effect will be a kind of queasy anarchy, as the schisms between the Home Office and the legal bureaucracy will be exposed and exaggerated, and the issue of who really has power will be brought to the fore. The end result being that the legitimacy of the entire system comes into question.
But, as Hansen points out, tricksters are an innate feature of humanity, just as all structures have their corresponding anti-structures. And, as existing structures start to decay, so the tricksters start their work. Expect them to multiply across Europe and the rest of the West in the decades ahead.
Monday, 29 April 2013
Sluggin' For Jesus
You may not be familiar with miracle revival evangelist preacher R.W. Schambach, but there's a good chance that you've heard his voice, as he's a favourite source of samples for many industrial bands. Front 242's "Welcome To Paradise" is primarily constructed of samples from Schambach's sermons. He's worth a listen, the overall effect being akin to a one-man Black Sabbath:
I used to presume that the interest that bands such as Cabaret Voltaire had in sampling these preachers was to convey the groteque atavism that motivates the American Right, but after listening to Schambach's Manichean paranoia, I'm starting to think differently. After all, is there really any difference between his idea of the Devil inhabiting the atmosphere, infecting the very air that we breathe, and the Structuralist-Deconstructionist-Lacanian idea of Power anonymously nestling within the social structure and pervading the mediascape? For all the rationalism of the French philosophes and analysands, is not their conception of "Power" simply a synonym of "Satan"?
As such, is not the real reason that the Cabs, and their legions of imitators, feel the instinctive need to sample Schambach and his associates because no matter how much they might deny it, they identify with him?
I used to presume that the interest that bands such as Cabaret Voltaire had in sampling these preachers was to convey the groteque atavism that motivates the American Right, but after listening to Schambach's Manichean paranoia, I'm starting to think differently. After all, is there really any difference between his idea of the Devil inhabiting the atmosphere, infecting the very air that we breathe, and the Structuralist-Deconstructionist-Lacanian idea of Power anonymously nestling within the social structure and pervading the mediascape? For all the rationalism of the French philosophes and analysands, is not their conception of "Power" simply a synonym of "Satan"?
As such, is not the real reason that the Cabs, and their legions of imitators, feel the instinctive need to sample Schambach and his associates because no matter how much they might deny it, they identify with him?
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Ah, pity the poor Charlatans, a band mostly remembered for their least interesting music; the wheezy baggydom that commenced their career.
It's a shame, because their best records were a musical delight, abounding in detail and depth. This is a magnificent piece of Zep-inspired symphonic graunch:
This was their speciality: post-MBV studio layering turned into Northern elementalism, like morning mist rising from The Pennines. The slide guitar keens like sunlight glinting on rain-dappled rocks.
Homage to Curtis Mayfield. They were never going to win any prizes for innovation, I suppose, but they were the most elegant of the retronauts.
It's a shame, because their best records were a musical delight, abounding in detail and depth. This is a magnificent piece of Zep-inspired symphonic graunch:
This was their speciality: post-MBV studio layering turned into Northern elementalism, like morning mist rising from The Pennines. The slide guitar keens like sunlight glinting on rain-dappled rocks.
Homage to Curtis Mayfield. They were never going to win any prizes for innovation, I suppose, but they were the most elegant of the retronauts.
Monday, 22 April 2013
Sunday, 21 April 2013
And this is the real thing I suppose:
I've resolved to listen to this song every day for the next month, as part of an experimental therapeutic regime I'm devising which I'm going to call Mana Infusion Therapy. The benefits should include a greater sense of personal and social well-being and an increased comfortableness with spontaneity. If my Theory Of Mana is correct, then you too will gain similar benefits, simply by reading this blog!
Interesting that all Sam & Dave fanvids are black and white, just like their Sixties TV appearances. Stranger still is that even their mid-Seventies TV performances also seem to be in black and white. I'm not sure whether this was deferentially done by the producers at the time, or whether it's done by the Youtube uploaders to give a more "authentic" feel. Whatever, it seems that the soul duo are encased in a black and white world that they can never escape from.
The switchover from b&w to colour circa 1968-72 in the UK, which I just missed as a kid, is I suspect a far more significant event than it is generally given credit for. Maybe McLuhan had something to say about it, I dunno. For me personally it's a watershed between "old" and "contemporary". Or not quite, as that glam-rock period between '71-'75 seems to be an over-reaction to the introduction of colour, a sort of childish, silly delight in being able to display the most primary colours possible. Colour-wise, punk seems to be a return to drab-realistic muted colours. Like the grainy 16mm of "World In Action" and "The Sweeney". I suppose '76 - present is "modern" for me, with about '76 - '86 being "modern-dynamic" and '87 - present being "modern-static".
I've resolved to listen to this song every day for the next month, as part of an experimental therapeutic regime I'm devising which I'm going to call Mana Infusion Therapy. The benefits should include a greater sense of personal and social well-being and an increased comfortableness with spontaneity. If my Theory Of Mana is correct, then you too will gain similar benefits, simply by reading this blog!
Interesting that all Sam & Dave fanvids are black and white, just like their Sixties TV appearances. Stranger still is that even their mid-Seventies TV performances also seem to be in black and white. I'm not sure whether this was deferentially done by the producers at the time, or whether it's done by the Youtube uploaders to give a more "authentic" feel. Whatever, it seems that the soul duo are encased in a black and white world that they can never escape from.
The switchover from b&w to colour circa 1968-72 in the UK, which I just missed as a kid, is I suspect a far more significant event than it is generally given credit for. Maybe McLuhan had something to say about it, I dunno. For me personally it's a watershed between "old" and "contemporary". Or not quite, as that glam-rock period between '71-'75 seems to be an over-reaction to the introduction of colour, a sort of childish, silly delight in being able to display the most primary colours possible. Colour-wise, punk seems to be a return to drab-realistic muted colours. Like the grainy 16mm of "World In Action" and "The Sweeney". I suppose '76 - present is "modern" for me, with about '76 - '86 being "modern-dynamic" and '87 - present being "modern-static".
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