When you go traveling you're supposed to find out new things about yourself. I've just been traveling for about a year, and I found out nothing til I got back. I discovered how much I love home.
There's nothing like being in other countries to make you realise how wonderful England is. Disembarking from my aircraft was like surfaceing from an eternity spent under water. Everything was back as it should be:
The t-less accent
The obscenely lush grass and general foliage
The oppressive, grey, chilly August sky
The heaps of "dismal suburbia", as my dad put it
Nice old doddery ladies with curly white hair
Hairless middle-aged men wearing five layers and muttering soft obsenities at the tube train
The creepy ooze that finds its way into the cracks of everything, especially bus windows
Ridiculous teenage girls with scarves and "ug" boots
Steaming cups of perfect -perfect!- tea
Kkkkrazzzy Kebab Shops
Cars that indicate more than half a second before turning
The usual apocalypse blaring out from three-inch high shock-horror headlines (Even the Economist welcomed me with a front page proclaiming Britiain would be electicityless within weeks)
The whole country seems - always has and always will - plunged into a nation-wide psychosis. Everyone is completely delusional. But the reason I love it more than anything in the world is that no matter how insane everything here is, it's so full of soul. The place is palpably deep, heaving with depth. It gives one life force, like a drug.
I swore that I would never be nationalistic enough to love a country, but I LOVE England. Ach bah humbug.
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Monday, 10 August 2009
We all love to Dance!! -or------Human Objectivity?
When I was studying for something important, I remember coming across some sociologist or philosopher or someone, I can't remember his name, it might have been a chap called Habermas, but it might have been someone else, who had this trippy theory about how if everyone alive and who had ever been alive were brought together in one big discussion room and were somehow able to have enough time etc to talk about things, without any external pressure or predetermined irrational mindsets or anything, we would all eventually come to a solid agreement about what was beautiful and true and good etc etc.
In other words, he thought that everything was ultimately objective, and that subjectivity is just a peculiar human phenomenon resulting from social factors such as upbringing, social norms etc etc.
What's cool about this theory is not that he thought that quality is objective, which is what lots of people think but cannot prove, but that he thought that quality is humanly objective, i.e. the quality of, say, beauty, does not lie inherently in a rose, but rather all of humanity could theoretically be in total agreement that the rose possesses beauty.
I often think that the music I listen to is undeniably, irrefutably, brilliant, and that everyone would agree with me if they were only free of the burden of having been brought up listening to S-Club Seven and the Bee Gees. A few weeks ago I met someone who didn't like the Beatles. I was astonished. I hadn't even realised not liking the Beatles was an option.
But have you ever actually met someone that didn't think, say, that a sunset is beautiful? There are certain natural things like night skies, oceans and butterflies, that everyone, no matter the culture, age, upbringing, gender, etc etc etc agrees are aesthetically agreeable. The extent to which they are agreeable may differ, but nobody is actually repulsed by the thought of, for example, the bluey hue of a cloudless summer sky.
There is also nobody who doesn't like all forms of music. Almost no one is not a sucker for a good story well told. We love art, whatever the form. Aesthetics obsesses us, be they the shape of a car, the voice of an opera singer, the tale of Odysseus or the grandeur of the Taj Mahal.
It's clear therefore that mankind's affinity with what we have dubbed "quality" (perhaps just a product of some quirky twist of brain evolution) is just that: a species-wide phenomenon. No one is exempt from our irrational love of what art.
Whether this translates to the potential of full-blown human objectivity is another question, but it's worth pondering.
---
Side note: One thing I know Habermas DID talk about is communication. Adequate communication may be the one thing preventing us from reaching agreements on this kind of thing. Worth more research, me thinks.
In other words, he thought that everything was ultimately objective, and that subjectivity is just a peculiar human phenomenon resulting from social factors such as upbringing, social norms etc etc.
What's cool about this theory is not that he thought that quality is objective, which is what lots of people think but cannot prove, but that he thought that quality is humanly objective, i.e. the quality of, say, beauty, does not lie inherently in a rose, but rather all of humanity could theoretically be in total agreement that the rose possesses beauty.
I often think that the music I listen to is undeniably, irrefutably, brilliant, and that everyone would agree with me if they were only free of the burden of having been brought up listening to S-Club Seven and the Bee Gees. A few weeks ago I met someone who didn't like the Beatles. I was astonished. I hadn't even realised not liking the Beatles was an option.
But have you ever actually met someone that didn't think, say, that a sunset is beautiful? There are certain natural things like night skies, oceans and butterflies, that everyone, no matter the culture, age, upbringing, gender, etc etc etc agrees are aesthetically agreeable. The extent to which they are agreeable may differ, but nobody is actually repulsed by the thought of, for example, the bluey hue of a cloudless summer sky.
There is also nobody who doesn't like all forms of music. Almost no one is not a sucker for a good story well told. We love art, whatever the form. Aesthetics obsesses us, be they the shape of a car, the voice of an opera singer, the tale of Odysseus or the grandeur of the Taj Mahal.
It's clear therefore that mankind's affinity with what we have dubbed "quality" (perhaps just a product of some quirky twist of brain evolution) is just that: a species-wide phenomenon. No one is exempt from our irrational love of what art.
Whether this translates to the potential of full-blown human objectivity is another question, but it's worth pondering.
---
Side note: One thing I know Habermas DID talk about is communication. Adequate communication may be the one thing preventing us from reaching agreements on this kind of thing. Worth more research, me thinks.
Friday, 24 July 2009
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
The Prophesy of the Four Crows
Of all the indiginous cultures that were anihilated in the name of progress by the Europeans, I've always thought the Native Americans of what is now north-east USA were the most tragic. So I was pleased to be confirmed in my soft spot when I stumbled across this ancient prophesy at an exhibit in UPenn's anthropology museum (navaho language followed by English):
Lomewe, luwe na okwes xu laxakwihele xkwithakamika.
Long ago it was said that a fox will be loosened on the earth.
Ok nen luwe newa ahasak xu peyok.
Also it was said four crows will come.
Netami ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan wichi Kishelemukonk.
The first crow flew the way of harmony with Creator.
Nisheneit ahas kwechi pilito entalelemukonk, shek palsu ok ankela.
The second crow tried to clean the world, but he became sick and he died.
Nexeneit ahas weneyoo ankelek xansa ok koshiphuwe.
The third crow saw his dead brother and he hid.
Neweneit ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan lapi wichi Kishelemukonk.
The fourth crow flew the way of harmony again with Creator.
Kenahkihechik xu withatuwak xkwithakamika.
Caretakers they will live together on the earth.
The random fox bit at the beginning is a tad puzzling, but otherwise I think this prophesy matches exactly with what I would predict. I'd say right now we're around crow #3, though perhaps still suffering some of the remenants of #2.
Lomewe, luwe na okwes xu laxakwihele xkwithakamika.
Long ago it was said that a fox will be loosened on the earth.
Ok nen luwe newa ahasak xu peyok.
Also it was said four crows will come.
Netami ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan wichi Kishelemukonk.
The first crow flew the way of harmony with Creator.
Nisheneit ahas kwechi pilito entalelemukonk, shek palsu ok ankela.
The second crow tried to clean the world, but he became sick and he died.
Nexeneit ahas weneyoo ankelek xansa ok koshiphuwe.
The third crow saw his dead brother and he hid.
Neweneit ahas kenthu li guttitehewagan lapi wichi Kishelemukonk.
The fourth crow flew the way of harmony again with Creator.
Kenahkihechik xu withatuwak xkwithakamika.
Caretakers they will live together on the earth.
The random fox bit at the beginning is a tad puzzling, but otherwise I think this prophesy matches exactly with what I would predict. I'd say right now we're around crow #3, though perhaps still suffering some of the remenants of #2.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Fate v Chance, the showdown
So the opening remarks of J. M. G. Le Clézio's 1969 novel Terra Amata concern the likelihood of the book which the reader is now reading. Le Clézio asks what is the probability of that particular book being read by that particluar person might be, and he got me thinking about fate and chance again...
I think most people assume that fate and chance are opposites, that we must choose to see the world either in terms of fate - in other words that all our lives are dictated from the outset - or in terms of chance - in other words that what happens is not predetermined but happens spontaneously as we move along the curve of time. Both views agree that we have little control over what happens to us.
But fate is nothing more than chance seen through the lense of time. Chance happens now, and after a given period of time, fate happened then. They are perspectives on the same thing.
The idea that we can influence the odds of what chance throws at us is thus made laughable when we look back at things from the high seat of hindsight, and see that we were all just pawns in the game of fate. People think they can affect their chances, but if they are made to believe that they are actually under the influence of fate, they cease to think that they can affect their fate. The word fate, produces a different - a more hopeless - mindset. If fate and chance are the same thing, then this is a clearly ridiculous attitude.
I think most people assume that fate and chance are opposites, that we must choose to see the world either in terms of fate - in other words that all our lives are dictated from the outset - or in terms of chance - in other words that what happens is not predetermined but happens spontaneously as we move along the curve of time. Both views agree that we have little control over what happens to us.
But fate is nothing more than chance seen through the lense of time. Chance happens now, and after a given period of time, fate happened then. They are perspectives on the same thing.
The idea that we can influence the odds of what chance throws at us is thus made laughable when we look back at things from the high seat of hindsight, and see that we were all just pawns in the game of fate. People think they can affect their chances, but if they are made to believe that they are actually under the influence of fate, they cease to think that they can affect their fate. The word fate, produces a different - a more hopeless - mindset. If fate and chance are the same thing, then this is a clearly ridiculous attitude.
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Bybee blues
Argentina's La Nación newspaper has as its US correspondent a brilliant man named Mario Diament, who writes a fascinating column about American happenings for his Latinamerican audience. Most recently, this article looked at the much-pondered question of why people do cruel things like exterminating Jews or, in this case, waterboarding terror suspects. His piece focuses on one man in particular, a certain Jay Scott Bybee, a Mormon priest and US judge who was one of the many who appended his signature to the document which gave the CIA executive permission to continue with their practises of extracting information through torture. Diament understands why people such as Bush or Cheney might have done such a thing for reasons of politics/evilness/not-knowing-what's-going-on, but he asks how Bybee, a man known for being humble, intelligent and generally pleasant and normal, could join their ranks. Below are the final paragraph's of Diament's article, followed by my rough translation:
Pero el misterio sigue siendo Bybee, quien corrió a ayudar a sus hijos con sus deberes y a lavar los platos el día de su confirmación, un experto en derecho constitucional y procedimiento civil, padre de 4 hijos, ex boy scout y misionero de la Iglesia mormona. En el panegírico publicado por la revista Meridian , se afirma: "Bybee cree que la sociedad funcionaría mejor si la gente demostrase una actitud de reconciliación en lugar de venganza".
En 1961, durante el proceso a Adolf Eichmann en Jerusalén, Hannah Arendt acuñó el concepto de "banalidad del mal" para sintetizar su percepción del acusado. Su tesis era que quienes cometen crímenes atroces, como Eichmann, responsable de gerenciar la "solución final" del problema judío en la Alemania nazi, no son habitualmente fanáticos enloquecidos, sino, más bien, individuos ordinarios, quienes simplemente aceptan las premisas del Estado y las cumplen con extrema eficiencia.
Al elaborar su memorándum, Bybee debe haber pensando, seguramente, que lo que se esperaba de él no era otra cosa que una interpretación legal, un ejercicio intelectual divorciado de su contenido y del efecto sobre sus posibles víctimas, en el que la tortura se vuelve una abstracción.
***
But the mystery of Bybee remains, who went to help his children with their homework and wash the dishes the day of his confirmation [to high office], an expert in constitutional rights and civil procedures, father of four children, ex-boyscout and missionary of the mormon church. In an appraisal published in the Meridian magazine, it is stated that "Bybee believes that society functions better if people show an attitude of reconciliation rather than revenge."
In 1961, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt coined the concept of the "banality of the evil" to create her portrate of the accused. Her theory was that those who committ atrocious crimes, like Eichmann, who was responsible for carrying out the "final solucion" of the Jewish problem in Nazi Germany, are not by nature mouth-frothing fanatics, but rather, normal people, who simply accept the edicts of the State and carry them out very efficiently.
To write his memorandum [justifying torture], Bybee must have thought, surely, that what was required of him was nothing more than a legal interpretation, an intellectual exercise divorced from its contents and the effect on its potential victims, in which torture becomes an abstraction.
***
Diament, the master journalist that he is, finishes his article here, and refrains from penning a concrete conclusion to be taken from these musings. The conclusion is, like those famous "rights", self-evident. Evil can happen when people do not feel directly responsible.
A famous psychological experiment was conducted in which volunteers were told to ask questions to actors who the volunteers thoughts were only other volunteers. For each question that was answered incorrectly, the volunteers had to electrocute the actor. Although no current was actually applied to the "subject", they nevertheless acted the symptoms of electrocution. To begin, a small current was "applied", and the actor gave a twitch. The current gradually got larger and larger, and the actor would manifest signs of extreme pain. The volunteer would ask not to continue, but the scientists monitoring the experiment would tell them that it was OK, they [the volunteers] were not responsible for anything that happened, all possible blame would be laid at the feet of the scientists. Most volunteers continued electrocuting their "subjects" until they appeared dead.
This phenomenon, this tucked-away, sinister little part of human nature only becomes real or dangerous when political and social systems contrive to create a situation in which the evil designs of a tiny number of high-ranking individuals need to be carried out by many hundreds of ordinary people in order to occur. Unfortunately, almost every social system in the world is formed in this way. As any sociologist will tell you, the phenomenon of people obeying orders is a direct product of society and the near-total control that it can exert over its members. Social forces are, in this way, often the undoing of the individual.
Of course, it is also self-evident that without society, the individual would be nothing. And if society did not demand fealty from the individual, then it would cease to be: each person would only act for himself, and nothing would join people in the common purpose that is the very essence of society, and the essence of what makes humankind prosperous. But this fealty need not bee unthinking. Just as it is important to feel a common bond with those around you, it is equally important that this bond does not overthrow the rational workings of your consciousness. You should not shirk your share in constructing a great civilisation, but if this construction involves doing harm to others, it makes much more sense to abandon your social ties.
This is why it is dangerous when people talk about (for example) feeling pride in their country. Love for one's countrymen is fine, but a such a pride is utterly irrational, and in my view the first step in the more harmful, but equally large-scale irrationality of, say, condoning torture for national security.
Pero el misterio sigue siendo Bybee, quien corrió a ayudar a sus hijos con sus deberes y a lavar los platos el día de su confirmación, un experto en derecho constitucional y procedimiento civil, padre de 4 hijos, ex boy scout y misionero de la Iglesia mormona. En el panegírico publicado por la revista Meridian , se afirma: "Bybee cree que la sociedad funcionaría mejor si la gente demostrase una actitud de reconciliación en lugar de venganza".
En 1961, durante el proceso a Adolf Eichmann en Jerusalén, Hannah Arendt acuñó el concepto de "banalidad del mal" para sintetizar su percepción del acusado. Su tesis era que quienes cometen crímenes atroces, como Eichmann, responsable de gerenciar la "solución final" del problema judío en la Alemania nazi, no son habitualmente fanáticos enloquecidos, sino, más bien, individuos ordinarios, quienes simplemente aceptan las premisas del Estado y las cumplen con extrema eficiencia.
Al elaborar su memorándum, Bybee debe haber pensando, seguramente, que lo que se esperaba de él no era otra cosa que una interpretación legal, un ejercicio intelectual divorciado de su contenido y del efecto sobre sus posibles víctimas, en el que la tortura se vuelve una abstracción.
***
But the mystery of Bybee remains, who went to help his children with their homework and wash the dishes the day of his confirmation [to high office], an expert in constitutional rights and civil procedures, father of four children, ex-boyscout and missionary of the mormon church. In an appraisal published in the Meridian magazine, it is stated that "Bybee believes that society functions better if people show an attitude of reconciliation rather than revenge."
In 1961, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt coined the concept of the "banality of the evil" to create her portrate of the accused. Her theory was that those who committ atrocious crimes, like Eichmann, who was responsible for carrying out the "final solucion" of the Jewish problem in Nazi Germany, are not by nature mouth-frothing fanatics, but rather, normal people, who simply accept the edicts of the State and carry them out very efficiently.
To write his memorandum [justifying torture], Bybee must have thought, surely, that what was required of him was nothing more than a legal interpretation, an intellectual exercise divorced from its contents and the effect on its potential victims, in which torture becomes an abstraction.
***
Diament, the master journalist that he is, finishes his article here, and refrains from penning a concrete conclusion to be taken from these musings. The conclusion is, like those famous "rights", self-evident. Evil can happen when people do not feel directly responsible.
A famous psychological experiment was conducted in which volunteers were told to ask questions to actors who the volunteers thoughts were only other volunteers. For each question that was answered incorrectly, the volunteers had to electrocute the actor. Although no current was actually applied to the "subject", they nevertheless acted the symptoms of electrocution. To begin, a small current was "applied", and the actor gave a twitch. The current gradually got larger and larger, and the actor would manifest signs of extreme pain. The volunteer would ask not to continue, but the scientists monitoring the experiment would tell them that it was OK, they [the volunteers] were not responsible for anything that happened, all possible blame would be laid at the feet of the scientists. Most volunteers continued electrocuting their "subjects" until they appeared dead.
This phenomenon, this tucked-away, sinister little part of human nature only becomes real or dangerous when political and social systems contrive to create a situation in which the evil designs of a tiny number of high-ranking individuals need to be carried out by many hundreds of ordinary people in order to occur. Unfortunately, almost every social system in the world is formed in this way. As any sociologist will tell you, the phenomenon of people obeying orders is a direct product of society and the near-total control that it can exert over its members. Social forces are, in this way, often the undoing of the individual.
Of course, it is also self-evident that without society, the individual would be nothing. And if society did not demand fealty from the individual, then it would cease to be: each person would only act for himself, and nothing would join people in the common purpose that is the very essence of society, and the essence of what makes humankind prosperous. But this fealty need not bee unthinking. Just as it is important to feel a common bond with those around you, it is equally important that this bond does not overthrow the rational workings of your consciousness. You should not shirk your share in constructing a great civilisation, but if this construction involves doing harm to others, it makes much more sense to abandon your social ties.
This is why it is dangerous when people talk about (for example) feeling pride in their country. Love for one's countrymen is fine, but a such a pride is utterly irrational, and in my view the first step in the more harmful, but equally large-scale irrationality of, say, condoning torture for national security.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Johnny Foreigner
I'm really excited about this band I discovered the other day as the support act for Hundred Reasons. They're not really very close to the kind of thing that I would normally consider within the sphere of my music taste, but they have such an infectious sincerity and passion that I fell in love with them instantly. They strike me as an embodiment of everything that's good about the British music scene at the moment. The music is boundlessly creative and emotional, but there is an overpowering sense of realness and just-normal-people-doing-awesome-things-not-because-they're-awesome-but-because-it-comes-naturally. As an example of what I mean, read this bio in their own words:
hello this is the ongoing interactive story of johnny foreigner. there are 3 of us, we come from birmingham, we dont go out too much and we have a tendency to overcompensate. we write noisy pop songs for people what like the same bands as we do. last year we put out two 7" records on Laundrette Records. they both sold out and got played on the rah-dio and stuffs. we were pretty fucking proud. last summer we signed a proper record deal, with cone-tracts and everything, for Best Before Records. we recorded an eepee called arcs across the city at southern studios, it got mega good reviews from magazines we'd almost stopped buying and a lot more people started listening to us. we went to new york to make a proper album at the end of last year, it came out in spring and we had like, 4 months living in a van and peoples floors touring it round the country (with the occasional overseas holiday/show). we spent the summer alternately jetting around the world and vanning around the uk playing festivals. we just finished a yookay tour with some awesome other bands, if you weren't there you so missed out.. junior lost his ipod, alexei went crowdsurfing and kelly got totally bloody.
After that, there was a headline tour of the UK (again) with Dananananakroyd (yay) and then the end of 2008 saw us playing the biggest places we've ever played in support of the Futureheads, who are all amazing, and equally very, very tall. In 2009 - this year - we sat and wrote songs and songs and more songs. Then we did our first tour of Europe with Sky Larkin. That too was good. Show great. Repetition. Show amazing. Repetition. We like gigging. On 8th March we flew from Sweden to Heathrow, we then didnt leave Heathrow and got on another plane to NYC which is where we are right now recording ALBUM NUMBER TWO. You'll be hearing more about that real soon. After we're done we're playing more gigs with 100 Reasons and then... TBC. But obviously it will involve more gigs. Obviously...
Anyway, the plan is to keep playing shows and making records until we explode or run out of fingers. we're permanently achey but its still the best job we'll ever have..we do what we can...
Exactly.
Johnny Foreigner get exactly the right ratio of all the worrying things that make Britain so terrible, and the exciting things that make it so wonderful and inspiring. I am particularly struck by their lyrics to the song "Cranes and cranes and cranes and cranes": we make our own mythologies...if I had the guts I promise I would cut the power lines, tape the letterbox shut...I don't worry about these things, from one grey mess to another grey mess, distance knows a heavy heart less, every single night out...tear down our nightclubs, put up flats, burn down our pubs and put up flats...if I had the guts I promise I would.
I've actually been thinking quite a bit recently about how we live, and I think having guts is possibly much more important than I'd like it to be. What strikes me is that we are so uniform in the way we live. I don't mean that at all in a disparaging or accusatory way - it's just interesting and surprisingly uncommented on. Every alternative-leaning person in the western world, which is the vast majority actually, has heard the mantra of going against the flow, that we should be individuals and should live lives in our own way, not the way of everyone else. But what is assumed - always - is that the difference between being an individual and the ever-victimised "sheep" is a matter of details: trivia like clothes, eating habits and manners of speaking. Nobody even thinks about challenging major aspects of lives, like communication, walking or seeing things. When we talk about eccentric personalities that behave in apparently such outlandish fashion, nobody notices that in the vast majority of important manners of living, even such "individuals" are identical to everyone else.
What about the bubble boy who has such a weak immune system that he has been kept in a disinfected bubble from birth and can have contact with nothing because it would cause rapid death? Now that is a truly different manner of living. People talk of doing something crazy like...moving to a remote village somewhere and raising crops by themselves...wouldn't that be radical!? But you still walk, talk, use normal facial expressions, sleep in a lying down position probably on a soft surface under a roof, get up in the morning and eat and drink in the regular fashion in order to maintain your health. People consider themselves to be making a big statement by playing guitars, wearing colourful clothes, long hair and having sex with whomsoever they want. In the range of things, however, almost nobody has breached a tiny hairswidth of possibilities.
Sure, it takes very little thought to realise that trying to be truly radical in one's way of life will lead to a much less pleasant existence than sticking to the tried and tested means of living that humans have always utilised. We can't decide not to eat or sleep. We can't walk on our head. We live in uniform fashion for a good reason - the strict limits of physics. Even if we were able to be heedless of social pressure, our lives would all work in roughly the same way.
Still, I find it very difficult to concede that I should not try some form of experimentation and boundary pushing with my life. It just seems like something more should be possible. While my heart and my mind are more than content with the incredible range of inspiration to be found in human achievement, my soul yearns to be entirely different, to create something not good, but really really new. There is a part of me that is sickened by even this act of writing in such a normal way, with the conventional rules of spelling and grammar, and even with regular means of expression, as hundreds of writers have used before. Part of me wants to scrawl my messages in primal symbols, heedless of the fact that this would cease to be communication, and fulfill no aim at all. This part does not care about aims, and the normal way of doing something to achieve something else. This part of me rejects effect and cause as something unoriginal --- but even as it retreats into a firelit cave and howls at the storm - or whatever movements that are making the shadows on the walls - this part of me knows that even this desperate rejection of everything has itself been done before, that even it, which is desirous of nothing more than pure originality, is a creature of its inspiration, that it is incapable of not being in some tiny way a product of what it has previously experienced. It dies with the arrow of knowledge through its heart: the knowledge that originality seeps slowly through human history, it is not a thing that is instantly accessible to those who want to escape normal existence. The arrow was fired by another part of me, the part that embraces this system, that glories in inspiration and the slow, painstaking evolution of originality. It knows that what humanity eventually produces will be worth the wait - nay - will be better because of the wait.
---
Well we've come a long way from the raw lyrics of Johnny Foreigner, but the yearning for originality is still far from dead of course - it is immortal, and only grows stronger the longer it is frustrated, no matter how much I know that it is impossible.
I think that we should start with the small things, as identified by Johnny Foreigner. Can I even be original to the extent that people normally think originality requires? Do I even have the guts to live a marijuana-filled life on a Caribbean island somewhere? Or play folk music in tie-dye with friends called Starbeam and Lovesocks? Or give all my money to charity? Or cut the power lines and tape up the letterboxes? To be fair to me, I do have major disagreements with all these means of living, but still: do I have the guts to be even a little bit original? I want to be original in music making - but this requires no sacrifice at all. Every time, I simply take refuge in my inspirations, I live a elation-filled life and ignore the yearning which is defeated by cowardice - or is it actually that I don't want to be original? That I like my life, and really I am content? Now that I dare to think it, this makes a lot of sense. I do enjoy life. I don't want to change it that much. I have fair grounds for failing to be original.
The yearning seeps away into the horrific gaping chasm of anticlimax. But like a bad movie with a sequel, you never see it die.
hello this is the ongoing interactive story of johnny foreigner. there are 3 of us, we come from birmingham, we dont go out too much and we have a tendency to overcompensate. we write noisy pop songs for people what like the same bands as we do. last year we put out two 7" records on Laundrette Records. they both sold out and got played on the rah-dio and stuffs. we were pretty fucking proud. last summer we signed a proper record deal, with cone-tracts and everything, for Best Before Records. we recorded an eepee called arcs across the city at southern studios, it got mega good reviews from magazines we'd almost stopped buying and a lot more people started listening to us. we went to new york to make a proper album at the end of last year, it came out in spring and we had like, 4 months living in a van and peoples floors touring it round the country (with the occasional overseas holiday/show). we spent the summer alternately jetting around the world and vanning around the uk playing festivals. we just finished a yookay tour with some awesome other bands, if you weren't there you so missed out.. junior lost his ipod, alexei went crowdsurfing and kelly got totally bloody.
After that, there was a headline tour of the UK (again) with Dananananakroyd (yay) and then the end of 2008 saw us playing the biggest places we've ever played in support of the Futureheads, who are all amazing, and equally very, very tall. In 2009 - this year - we sat and wrote songs and songs and more songs. Then we did our first tour of Europe with Sky Larkin. That too was good. Show great. Repetition. Show amazing. Repetition. We like gigging. On 8th March we flew from Sweden to Heathrow, we then didnt leave Heathrow and got on another plane to NYC which is where we are right now recording ALBUM NUMBER TWO. You'll be hearing more about that real soon. After we're done we're playing more gigs with 100 Reasons and then... TBC. But obviously it will involve more gigs. Obviously...
Anyway, the plan is to keep playing shows and making records until we explode or run out of fingers. we're permanently achey but its still the best job we'll ever have..we do what we can...
Exactly.
Johnny Foreigner get exactly the right ratio of all the worrying things that make Britain so terrible, and the exciting things that make it so wonderful and inspiring. I am particularly struck by their lyrics to the song "Cranes and cranes and cranes and cranes": we make our own mythologies...if I had the guts I promise I would cut the power lines, tape the letterbox shut...I don't worry about these things, from one grey mess to another grey mess, distance knows a heavy heart less, every single night out...tear down our nightclubs, put up flats, burn down our pubs and put up flats...if I had the guts I promise I would.
I've actually been thinking quite a bit recently about how we live, and I think having guts is possibly much more important than I'd like it to be. What strikes me is that we are so uniform in the way we live. I don't mean that at all in a disparaging or accusatory way - it's just interesting and surprisingly uncommented on. Every alternative-leaning person in the western world, which is the vast majority actually, has heard the mantra of going against the flow, that we should be individuals and should live lives in our own way, not the way of everyone else. But what is assumed - always - is that the difference between being an individual and the ever-victimised "sheep" is a matter of details: trivia like clothes, eating habits and manners of speaking. Nobody even thinks about challenging major aspects of lives, like communication, walking or seeing things. When we talk about eccentric personalities that behave in apparently such outlandish fashion, nobody notices that in the vast majority of important manners of living, even such "individuals" are identical to everyone else.
What about the bubble boy who has such a weak immune system that he has been kept in a disinfected bubble from birth and can have contact with nothing because it would cause rapid death? Now that is a truly different manner of living. People talk of doing something crazy like...moving to a remote village somewhere and raising crops by themselves...wouldn't that be radical!? But you still walk, talk, use normal facial expressions, sleep in a lying down position probably on a soft surface under a roof, get up in the morning and eat and drink in the regular fashion in order to maintain your health. People consider themselves to be making a big statement by playing guitars, wearing colourful clothes, long hair and having sex with whomsoever they want. In the range of things, however, almost nobody has breached a tiny hairswidth of possibilities.
Sure, it takes very little thought to realise that trying to be truly radical in one's way of life will lead to a much less pleasant existence than sticking to the tried and tested means of living that humans have always utilised. We can't decide not to eat or sleep. We can't walk on our head. We live in uniform fashion for a good reason - the strict limits of physics. Even if we were able to be heedless of social pressure, our lives would all work in roughly the same way.
Still, I find it very difficult to concede that I should not try some form of experimentation and boundary pushing with my life. It just seems like something more should be possible. While my heart and my mind are more than content with the incredible range of inspiration to be found in human achievement, my soul yearns to be entirely different, to create something not good, but really really new. There is a part of me that is sickened by even this act of writing in such a normal way, with the conventional rules of spelling and grammar, and even with regular means of expression, as hundreds of writers have used before. Part of me wants to scrawl my messages in primal symbols, heedless of the fact that this would cease to be communication, and fulfill no aim at all. This part does not care about aims, and the normal way of doing something to achieve something else. This part of me rejects effect and cause as something unoriginal --- but even as it retreats into a firelit cave and howls at the storm - or whatever movements that are making the shadows on the walls - this part of me knows that even this desperate rejection of everything has itself been done before, that even it, which is desirous of nothing more than pure originality, is a creature of its inspiration, that it is incapable of not being in some tiny way a product of what it has previously experienced. It dies with the arrow of knowledge through its heart: the knowledge that originality seeps slowly through human history, it is not a thing that is instantly accessible to those who want to escape normal existence. The arrow was fired by another part of me, the part that embraces this system, that glories in inspiration and the slow, painstaking evolution of originality. It knows that what humanity eventually produces will be worth the wait - nay - will be better because of the wait.
---
Well we've come a long way from the raw lyrics of Johnny Foreigner, but the yearning for originality is still far from dead of course - it is immortal, and only grows stronger the longer it is frustrated, no matter how much I know that it is impossible.
I think that we should start with the small things, as identified by Johnny Foreigner. Can I even be original to the extent that people normally think originality requires? Do I even have the guts to live a marijuana-filled life on a Caribbean island somewhere? Or play folk music in tie-dye with friends called Starbeam and Lovesocks? Or give all my money to charity? Or cut the power lines and tape up the letterboxes? To be fair to me, I do have major disagreements with all these means of living, but still: do I have the guts to be even a little bit original? I want to be original in music making - but this requires no sacrifice at all. Every time, I simply take refuge in my inspirations, I live a elation-filled life and ignore the yearning which is defeated by cowardice - or is it actually that I don't want to be original? That I like my life, and really I am content? Now that I dare to think it, this makes a lot of sense. I do enjoy life. I don't want to change it that much. I have fair grounds for failing to be original.
The yearning seeps away into the horrific gaping chasm of anticlimax. But like a bad movie with a sequel, you never see it die.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
