Friday, 3 February 2012
Friday, 9 December 2011
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
O Come
Best arrangement of a carol, David Willcocks' O Come All Ye Faithful (tune Adeste Fideles). Particularly the descants on the last two verses (starts 2m15s in).
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Monday, 14 November 2011
URBAN GUERRILLA CONCEPT
"Urban guerrilla warfare is based on the analysis... that when conditions will be ripe for armed struggle, it will be too late to prepare for it". Red Army Faction in 'If you want peace prepare for war', Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group, p. 9
"Is the left never prepared to adopt a particular tactic if it entails escalation? Is it content to remain a purely reactive force, even when the state is on the verge of introducing Emergency Powers Acts here and using its army against its own people? (How many Derrys will it take till...)" p. 11
"If one sets a car on fire, that is a criminal offence. If one sets hundreds of cars on fire, that is political action." (Ulrike Meinhof)
"Is the left never prepared to adopt a particular tactic if it entails escalation? Is it content to remain a purely reactive force, even when the state is on the verge of introducing Emergency Powers Acts here and using its army against its own people? (How many Derrys will it take till...)" p. 11
"If one sets a car on fire, that is a criminal offence. If one sets hundreds of cars on fire, that is political action." (Ulrike Meinhof)
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Sunday, 6 November 2011
More time for cinema.
Since leaving employment at my local independent art-deco establishment and finding myself having to pay to watch films, I have returned to my discerning ways. My usual utter disappointment in films that are not only overexposed and overrated by film magazines and critics but were shoved down my throat through ticket sales and daily performances has finally abated.
I saw a couple of films at the BFI London Film Festival. The first was Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey, the subject matter of which is of such interest to me that it was never going to disappoint. In fact it far exceeded my expectations. An important moment for me was when Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (leader of the National Anti H-Block/Armagh Campaign) described the hunger strike as a cycle of death and grieving. This links in with Allen Feldman's description of the hunger strike as a production line of corpses, a conveyor belt, which I touched on in my dissertation.
The second film was part of the Gay & Lesbian film festival. I had meant to see a different film but got the wrong day. I was miserably hungover. We got to the BFI with about 10 minutes to spare and then found out the film was showing at Vue, Leicester Square. So hungover and having slept in contact lenses I then had to dash over Hungerford Bridge (following the massively tall JW whose pace is about 2.5x mine). I was ready to give up and go home but I persevered. The film was a South African film called Skoonheid, or Beauty in English, and it was incredible. One of the best films I've seen for a long long time. I really hope it widens its audience from the gay & lesbian market which it was obviously promoted to at the BFI LFF, because it should have a much broader appeal.
Here is the trailer:
I also saw Tyrannosaur which was brilliantly acted, scripted, directed. It was horrific, peculiarly British, raw and moving. It felt real.
Last week I went to see Throwing Muses in a rare London appearance. I have a few TM albums but do not know their entire back catalogue. The set was diverse (although thin on Real Ramona stuff) and seemed to miss out the Tanya Donnelly songs which was a shame as 'Not Too Soon' is probably the perfect pop song. A few other hits were missed out (Counting Backwards, Snakeface) but it didn't even matter, because Kristin Hersh's voice is just incredible.
I saw a couple of films at the BFI London Film Festival. The first was Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey, the subject matter of which is of such interest to me that it was never going to disappoint. In fact it far exceeded my expectations. An important moment for me was when Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (leader of the National Anti H-Block/Armagh Campaign) described the hunger strike as a cycle of death and grieving. This links in with Allen Feldman's description of the hunger strike as a production line of corpses, a conveyor belt, which I touched on in my dissertation.
The second film was part of the Gay & Lesbian film festival. I had meant to see a different film but got the wrong day. I was miserably hungover. We got to the BFI with about 10 minutes to spare and then found out the film was showing at Vue, Leicester Square. So hungover and having slept in contact lenses I then had to dash over Hungerford Bridge (following the massively tall JW whose pace is about 2.5x mine). I was ready to give up and go home but I persevered. The film was a South African film called Skoonheid, or Beauty in English, and it was incredible. One of the best films I've seen for a long long time. I really hope it widens its audience from the gay & lesbian market which it was obviously promoted to at the BFI LFF, because it should have a much broader appeal.
Here is the trailer:
I also saw Tyrannosaur which was brilliantly acted, scripted, directed. It was horrific, peculiarly British, raw and moving. It felt real.
Last week I went to see Throwing Muses in a rare London appearance. I have a few TM albums but do not know their entire back catalogue. The set was diverse (although thin on Real Ramona stuff) and seemed to miss out the Tanya Donnelly songs which was a shame as 'Not Too Soon' is probably the perfect pop song. A few other hits were missed out (Counting Backwards, Snakeface) but it didn't even matter, because Kristin Hersh's voice is just incredible.
Friday, 4 November 2011
It's a hard life for historians.
History books are always on the top floor of the library. Is it some academic in-joke about the study of history being an uphill struggle? Or perhaps a deterministic conception of historical progress? Either way, my lungs and knees don't appreciate the struggle.
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Health is a bourgeois concept.
"To be healthy thus means to be expropriated and exploitable."
#2. Illness being the totality of conditions of capitalist relations of production is the productive power par excellence for capitalism.
#7. Illness is the veiled unemployment and in the form of social security contributions being imposed illness is crisis-buffer par excellence in neo-capitalism.
#11. Health is nothing but an ideologistic-fascist figment of the mind.
(SPK: Turn Illness into a Weapon)
The system and the capitalists physically weaken you and psychologically damage you through belittlement and criticism, and money is no fair compensation to this treatment.
SPK state that illness is the currency of capitalism and its method by which it can sustain its dominance. It sickens you into compliance, until you are made to be grateful for its assistance in numbing your pain.
"A new economic space has been delineated - the bioeconomy - and a new form of capital - biocapital."
"...our somatic, coporeal, neurochemical individuality has become opened up to choice, prudence, and responsibility, to experimentation, to contestation, and so to a politics of life itself."
(Nikolas Rose 'The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century')
#2. Illness being the totality of conditions of capitalist relations of production is the productive power par excellence for capitalism.
#7. Illness is the veiled unemployment and in the form of social security contributions being imposed illness is crisis-buffer par excellence in neo-capitalism.
#11. Health is nothing but an ideologistic-fascist figment of the mind.
(SPK: Turn Illness into a Weapon)
The system and the capitalists physically weaken you and psychologically damage you through belittlement and criticism, and money is no fair compensation to this treatment.
SPK state that illness is the currency of capitalism and its method by which it can sustain its dominance. It sickens you into compliance, until you are made to be grateful for its assistance in numbing your pain.
"A new economic space has been delineated - the bioeconomy - and a new form of capital - biocapital."
"...our somatic, coporeal, neurochemical individuality has become opened up to choice, prudence, and responsibility, to experimentation, to contestation, and so to a politics of life itself."
(Nikolas Rose 'The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century')
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Monday, 17 October 2011
FREEDOM ONLY COMES IF YOU TAKE IT!
All historical experience confirms that men might not achieve the possible, if in this world they had not, time and again, reached out for the impossible. - Max Weber
Freedom only comes if you take it! - Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Freedom only comes if you take it! - Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Thursday, 13 October 2011
The Grapes of Wrath.
And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.
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