Morning coffee, overhead

 

Joseph Conrad

“Have you ever read Joseph Conrad?”

“Joseph Conrad, the writer?”

“No. Joseph Conrad, the acrobat.”

“Joseph Conrad, the acrobat?! No, no, I can’t say I have. I’ve never even heard of him, to be honest. I’ve heard of Joseph Conrad, the writer fella all right, but I haven’t read him either.”

“Good man.”

Revolution and Counter-revolution, Protest

 “How would you describe the use of and attitudes towards protest movements within socialist/Marxist doctrine or methodology?”

“Well, there’s a bit of a dichotomy when it comes to our views on protest.”

“Really? I thought it would be quite a uniform attitude.”

“Well, all protest is to be encouraged when at the stage of  undermining the fabric, structures, mindsets, etc of society and its citizens. However extreme or violent, this is all legitimate protest against the evil that must be overcome.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But then when we have attained power - through open revolution or less obviously by infiltrating and overthrowing from within, so to speak, then there’s a shift in attitude regarding the legitimacy of protest.”

“Oh right. And what kind of shift does it amount to?”

“Well, once we have attained power, now if you protest you are counter-revoutionary scum who should be silenced, imprisoned, worked to death in the gulags, executed or whatever. We go from justifying everything revolutionary to justifying everything that crushes revolution. It’s quite amusing actually.”

“Interesting. I suppose example of this dichotomy of attitude would be the attempts to silence all resistance, even questioning of the totalitarian impositions and restrictions during the ‘pandemic’ era.”

“Of course, yes. Everything is permitted in the attainment of absolute power, but then nothing is permitted in resisting that power. You could even say we are the greatest hypocrites on earth, and which accusation would indeed be true, except for the fortunate fact that we are the most pure and enlightened people on earth!”

“And if hypocrisy serves the cause . . .”

“Well then it’s sanctified!”

Hot Air

 

“If you were high up way above the ground in a hot air balloon and somehow or other you fell out of it, what would you be hoping as you were hurtling towards the ground?”

“That I might land in another one.”

“Another hot air balloon?”

“Exactly.”

Stationary

“You know the way there’s the word stationary with the a near the end, meaning not moving, and stationery with an e instead of that a near the end meaning writing materials - that kind of stuff.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“What if I said: ‘My stationery is stationary” - you know like meaning my stationery, my writing materials, are not moving. They’re static.”

“Yeah, you could say that all right.”

“I was thinking about it all last night. I hardly slept.”

Swimming

“You know what I was thinking?”

“No idea.”

“If you’re in the sea and you stop swimming against the current or the tide, you might feel like you’re stationary but you’re not.”

Boxing Champion Masterplan

“If you wanted to become a heavyweight boxing champion of the world, how would you go about it - or champion of any weight division for that matter?”

“From a position of not already being a boxer?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, join a boxing club, get good instruction, get really fit, be super dedicated, and in time if you develop the skills, toughness and so on, go up through the ranks and see where you get to.”

“Nah.”

“What do you mean Nah?”

“That’s where everybody goes wrong. There’s no need for any of that stuff. There’s only one thing you need to do. Will I tell you?”

“Go on.”

“Tai Chi chair workouts.”

“Tai Chi chair workouts?”

“Exactly. Fifteen minutes a day. You’ll be unstoppable.”

“I’d have my doubts.”

“That’s because you’re operating within a system of limiting thought beliefs. You’ll never become a world champion with that kind of mindset - I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

Sacred Love

There Seems to be plenty versions on Youtube of this beautiful piece by 20th century composer Georgy Sviridov, two of which are below, the second one quite a bit quicker in tempo:

And, why not, here’s a third version:

The Rise of Cultural Marxism in 5 Minutes

 

Very much worth five minutes of one’s time. As he says, wokeism is simply Marxism rebranded, and a quote from The Count of Monte Cristo, spoken by Edmond Dantes, the count, therein seems apt:

 “Things change their name and the vulgar do not follow them. That is all.”

Practically

Fake News Shitstorm have just recorded a beautiful new slice of musical art: We Are Practically Beyond Parody.

There is also an accompanying b side: If You Find Consciousness to Be a Burden, We’ll Relieve You of It.

Crowd

shoRe

 

direction

“If you could only look in one direction, which way would you look?”

“Ahead I suppose.”

“What about having a mirror in front of your face, so that when you’re looking ahead you’re actually looking behind?”

“No, I’d do without the mirror.”

Unnifished

 

Going Through Hell

“What would you say to someone who’s going through hell?”

“Keep it up.”

“Keep it up?!”

“Yeah, keep it up - keep on going. How will you get through it if you don’t keep going? Don’t stop. And whatever you do, don’t lie down there.”

“Or if you do, get back up.”

“That’s true too.”

ScrIBble

 

Stoned to Say the Least

By Saint Etienne.

Kant and the Good Action

I’m reading a biography of Beethoven by Jan Swafford, and in painting the sociological background of Beethoven’s world and times Swafford writes of the huge influence of the philosopher Immanuel Kant:

For Kant, the moral part came down to what he called the “categorical imperative”: every person must act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”. Every act should be done with the conviction that if everyone did likewise, life would be good. 

So the very first action to look at to see if it matches up to the idea of one’s behavior amounting to a universal law for all is Kant’s act of writing a book of philosophy. And so we see that apparently every living person should write books of philosophy - otherwise this act of writing a book of philosophy doesn’t constitute a maxim of universal law, and is a self-contradictory piece of thought at its very root. Otherwise, armed with this code of behaviour, you don’t go one step without gong wrong. So everyone should write books of philosophy, and then life would be good. As an aside, who will read all these books, I wonder, that we should be all spending much of our time creating?

Extending this, a bit of dialogue comes to mind:

“Hi Immanuel, how are things?”

“Oh good, good.”

“You know who’s i met earlier?”

“Who?”

“Joseph. Joseph Bosch.”

“What’s he up to?”

“He seems to be doing well. He’s a shoemaker now.”

“Everyone should be a shoemaker!”

“Really?!”

“Of course! Goodness and freedom are at stake here, you fool!”

Image 0809

 

wall

 

Pray

“You know what I pray?”

“I’ve no idea. That you win the lottery?”

“No, no, no, no, no!”

“What so?”

“I pray that when I leave the world the world doesn’t follow me.”

Bourgeois Intelligentsia Lecture Hall

Student: “And who are the ‘good citizens’ in this desired society?”

Lecturer: “The good citizens are those who let themselves be re-educated without being pushed, merely prompted.”

Student: “And the not-so-good ones?”

Lecturer: “Well, there’s different gradations. There’s not-so-good ones, as you put it, who can become good ones - those who become re-educated after being pushed, for instance. The really not good ones are those who refuse to be re-educated even after being pushed.”

Student: “But the younger generations - they don’t often have to be re-educated as simply educated, is that so?”

Lecturer: “Yes, that is so.”

Tudor

 

Spruce Intelligentsia

More music news, and rock star icon Spruce Pipedream has teamed up with the aforementioned Bourgeois Intelligentsia to chisel from the caverns of consciousness a new anthemic antidote for our times: With My Tight Fitting Jeans and Your Intellectual Mastery, Together We Can Seize the Means of Production.

Rolling Stone magazine have called the song, which they are hoping to hear soon, “incisive and inspiring”.

There is also a b side, the catchily titled: The New Global Citizenry Will Comprise of Children Who Have Been Purified Ideologically (The Rest Are at Best Compost).

Gimme, Gimme

Bourgeois Intelligentsia have just released their newest song into the war zone that is the cultural landscape: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme a Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

There is also a b side: I Just Can’t Feel Comfortable Around the Working Classes.

Harsh

The following is a key and emotionally charged scene from a powerful melodrama I’m thinking of writing called possibly The Reckless and the Ravishing:

“Damn you and damn your money!”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Well damn you and damn your poverty so!”

“That’s a bit harsh.”

“It is what it is.”

Kicking

“You know a thought that came to me is that in a way being attacked is a good thing because it shows, for whatever reason, you’re worth attacking.”

“That’s not much consolation though if you’re down on the ground getting your head kicked in.”

“Maybe not. But - if that is it doesn’t finish you off completely - the kicking might at least wake you up to the need to be able to defend yourself.”

“And in time you might even end up giving the kicking instead of getting the kicking.”

“Well, whatever about that.”

Room

“If you were in a room and it was all dark, and then someone came in and turned the light on, what would you do? You’d want it turned off again, wouldn’t you?”

“Would I?”

“Of course you would! You wouldn’t have had it dark in the first place unless you wanted it to be dark.”

“Maybe not.”

“What do you mean maybe not?!”

“Well, maybe I just didn’t know where the light switch was and I couldn’t find it in all the darkness. Or who knows, maybe I was incapacitated. So I could maybe be grateful to whoever it was that came in and brightened up the place.”

“Ridiculous!”

ImagE

 

skEtCh

 

Earthquake

“If there was an earthquake just about to happen and it was right under your feet - there was this crazy rumbling or however you describe it - what would you do? You only had seconds in which to react, would you jump to the right or the left or what before it’s too late?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to offend anyone.”

“What?!”

“I’d like to stay neutral.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’d try to stay in the middle.”

“The middle? The middle of the earthquake?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’d try to do. If I could.”

flesH

 

Mindscape 0815

 Another older piece I came across and am cleaning up or tinkering with a bit.

A bit

 Some quick thing from a while back I just tried to work on a bit.

All Our Yesterdays

More music news and those perennial triers Fake News Shitstorm have a new song they’re just releasing: Covid Is Yesterday’s News, Just Move On Already.

There is also a b side: We Just Bombarded You Nonstop With the Best Available Information We Had at the Time (The Death Tolls Were Great by the Way).