PsyGeo : psychogeography from Z to A

a great philosopher… now departed 14 years

Arriving… the contextually obvious Trainspotting posters in Waterloo station in 1996… that helvetic’d-orange wetlook look did MacGregor a lot of favours. Danny Boyle is not exactly of the intellectual timbre of fellini, bergman or fassbinder but he did set a context for postmodern Scotland that mirrored what Welsh was writing – nae shortbread-tin views of bonnie scotland here, just social deprivation and a time and place contextualised by drugs and acid house and spinning gobos – sounds awful now, and some people knew then it was going to change perceptions possibly for the worse, despite Welsh’s somewhat naive-in-hindsight protestations that this was a necessary restart.

What did that period give to scottish culture? Was there a re-enlightenment via the dancefloor, like Manchester? I think Diana’s death distracted greatly (that’s not to lessen the event in the Pont d’Alma by any means) from the changes initiated in the scots’ psyche; and the placement of Fettes boy Tony Blair and the Kirkcaldy/Loretto lot somehow satisfied the need to express any further difference – in a sense the new parliament, at that time, was an extra bonus (and most people realised it was only for the politicians’ benefit anyway, to save north britain labour apparatchiks the tedious trip to the smoke).

People discovering Trainspotting for the first time now will I imagine still want to relive the few Edinburgh scenes actually filmed whence in the city – John Menzies (closed in 1998) on Princes Street, Montgomery street, Leith Fort. But 14 years is a long time. Welsh is a faded voice at present and Ebeneezer Goode is victorian again.

||While drugs are obviously dangerous, that factor alone hardly makes them stand out amongst our modern addictions. We know that hamburgers sold in the big fast-food chains are fecal-ridden and infected with diseased animal feed, of the type that shouldn’t be fed to ruminates. Yet we still consume them, largely because they taste good due to being saturated with aromatic chemicals from a factory in the New Jersey Turnpike. We still exercise this freedom of choice negatively, even though as a society, we’re becoming fatter and less healthy as a result. We know that children become addicted to fatty foods and that it’ll do them no good at all in the long run. Yet we still allow those dangerous products to be advertised, knowing that many kids will become obese and die of heart disease at an early age as a result of ingesting this crud.

The primary model for the development of globalisation is the American one of the internal combustion engine, low oil prices, motorways, fast food outlets, poor educational opportunities for service workers and low costs (or wages). And this in a de-politicised and de-spiritualised, post-democratic society where a trivialist, sensationalist media constantly urges us not to defer gratification. Bearing this in mind it would seem almost inevitable that the outcome is going to be more guns, more crime and more of what we seem to insatiably want and need: drugs.||
Irvine welsh : quoted here

original image : empiredesign (couldn’t resist…)

beauty in numbers

Magical realism and Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) were bookmarking periods in literature and art that attempted to offer alternatives – a kind of healing – to the confusion of crowd meltdown. I’ve always been particulary interested to the weimar period because there was something tangible in the air that made communication an imperative, contradictorly; an attempt to reach the unknown mass collective through independent dethink. However, what Heartfield Grosz and Brecht got for their efforts was Stalin and public relations. Checkmate. Ever wondered why the police use a chequerboard as icon? Because they control all the squares and all the moves.

One factor that is central to our sedated age is the creativity of trauma. I see Paula Rego as Balthus reincarnated, reincarnating. No-one’s telling her she’s rearranging the furniture for remake/retake – her work is too valuable as angst-sink in high places. With Damian Hirst its the blankness of male insensitivity; flailing around in a meaningless fussball-laddcentric vacuum with patrons who will never see no wrong, because there is no wrong, mate. Both however are eastended in a western world where we’ve swapped the caddy’s fins (courtesy of the fins of little boy/fatman) for a squirrel-friendly organic pesto from waitrose.

This “lack of moral traction,” pioneered by the B-29 and its successor B-52 (still flying after 55 years) is an endgame, kept fresh by the odd flurry of insurgency (current UK threat level on march 2 2010 is Severe) and financial collapse. It is the price we’ve paid to keep the west on bubble-support.

Some believe the crowd, in numbers, can change contexts. This is incorrect. It is the few who control the many, giving the illusion of complexity. The reality is there is only one mandelbrot, fibonacci, queen bee necessary.

theauteurs online cinema

The auteurs (in beta) is a streaming film site that looks to give vimeo-like quality at £3 a go. This looks like a great site for non-hollywood (OK some stuff but decent) and includes material seen at festivals too. If you’re tired of forking out for BFI dvds (I’ve just bought Chris Petit’s Radio On after listening to Jarvis on kraftwerk for £10 – there are extras tho, plus you’re supporting your local shop), give this a go. Properly thought out interface too – this is the link for the scottish film forum.

believe in better (hurrah the butter is unbelievable)

Seen on a Sky TV 48-sheet somewhere in Greenock from the 906 bus, believe in better is the total corporate statement.

It is firstly plusgood – fascination with fussball and celebratrons is normal – The People’s Choice. Secondly, there is conjugal entropy implicit – advertising and lowest common denominator make good sofacitizens, sliding down the back like forgotten pennies and the remains of carelessly-oven’d pizzas (and that is precisely where they want you – pinned down by obesity, eyes forward, remote and card at the ready).

A day later than later, believe in better still pings me around the pinball plane, but in ways thankfully the cool dudes at Sky (hold the Sky – peeps like these are driving all this) have unforseen. BiB is the media equivalent of holocaust denial done daily on a daily basis…

…yeah, hey, like (adopting TBlair patois) we know that statement is, like, utterly devoid of moral traction, BUT… y’know, we, BELIEVE it brings a solution that IF repeated oft enough WILL achieve (grips podium, slight pause) IT’S aims… no, really, ha ha – we feed YOU, uh, 5-minute slices of filler, you SHUT up and, er, ACCEPT the 8-minute collateral cultural AND societal shrapnel. Um, OK? Yeah, think that worked. Uh… who am I? I shattered all your dreams, did I not?

Some continue with the delusion that x-factor is infantile, EastEnders a highly damaging psychological influence saturation-broadcast to keep the majority of us labratted sofasaps, constantly fighting plasma ghosts rather than the reality of present times. This time around, there is no solidarity in the valleys, no Jarrow. But it is The Peoples’ Choice not to see. And so the strategy is brandengineering; pluralisation; dilution of difference – happy little-voice bunnies one and all, endlessly needing a little help with our groceries. Still confused/frustrated/angry? Easy – get on those Daily Mail comment boards – it’s what they’re there for.

Now, what happens when we have to discern, quickly, the difference between truth and “truth”? What and who will we choose? Diana or Jessica? (guys you can have that gameshow concept for gratis).

image : John Heartfield : Hurray, the butter is gone

st james centre edinburgh

The 60s deep-space prison-chic of Edinburgh’s St James shopping centre remains in stasis awaiting removal of asbestos before demolition begins. A wander yesterday on the upper deck attracted not one security guard – and also surprisingly, considering all the awkward dead ends hidden from lines of sight and the easily accessed sloping glass/perspex roofs, the place is still intact with very little vandalism/graffiti. For all this, it sounds better than it actually is – the most interesting part of the deck is the babble of voices and strains of music coming from the mall underneath.

At least Stalinist architecture had an underlying social mentality and intention – St James is utterly soulless (much like the stupendously banal, formulaic contemporary buildings opposite at Greenside). Yet as is often pointed out, people flock to it. I think the reason, after many years of strolling through this poor relation to a Paris arcade myself, is that the low ceiling, pyramid skylights, the dogleg route and the entrance and exit points create the feeling of a cosseting, blinkered maze; or a warren. The best feature is the multilevel John Lewis department store which also dissuades you from any plans on going home – why windowshop when you can be in the window itself. But of course the real reason it’s still popular is that it’s the only place to go if you want to shop in the centre but can’t handle the Princes street crowds or the social cachet on George street.

London Perceived 2

Just have to share this piece of text by V. S. Pritchett from my favourite book on London – London Perceived. If you have an interest in London, it’s a fine one to look out for second-hand (see previous post Evelyn Hofer :: london perceived).

(talking about the Tower of London…)
“All European cities have these lumps of dead history in them; they obstruct the mind, lie inertly across it for centuries and do no more than alert the fancy for an hour or two in these happy times when a sense of the past is a personal taste, a passing wonder before which we congratulate ourselves on our progress or, at any rate, on our change. But a real sense of the past cannot exist without a sense of the present. We are now closer to the Middle Ages than the Victorians were. [here I think he's talking generally about the just-experienced brutality of WWII as a retrograde step] These picturesque lumps bristle and wake up. In what way does the medieval ethos now differ from that of Europe or, indeed, the greater part of the world? The Tower means murder now, torture now, stranglings, treacheries, massacre, the solitary cell, the kick of the policeman’s boot. The scratchings on the walls of the Tower are the scratchings of Auschwitcz. We are reminded of what the words “struggle for power” mean in our own age. It may have astonished Victorians that Wren’s uncle, a harmless, dull, and climbing bishop, was shut up here for eighteen years; but that sort of thing does not astonish us today. It is normal. I say nothing of the Great. The Tower, grey and nasty, is awake again, and the dirty waters of the Thames lapping under Traitors’ Gate, where they rowed the fellows in, looks sly and has the light of a conniving eye.”

I haven’t done it but I imagine googling Tower of London will not trawl up anything even slightly approaching this analysis – written 47 years ago – and still good for our own time.

magnificat

Last year whilst writing about geomagnetism in birds, I listened to Messiaen much more carefully. This year has begun with Arvo Part, starting with Bjork’s late 90’s series on Minimalism. The second clip, Part’s Magnificat (paired here by the youtube poster with 50s stock footage from Philadelphia, sourced from the excellent Internet Archive), becomes eventually like a Diane Arbus homage. The religious aspects of Part’s aural lullabys to the ineffable cease to matter, under the influence of humanity’s river – time, inference, memory – as it converges into a koyannasquatsi-esque lament to the impatience of the seconds into minutes into generations timeline we’re all being conveyed on.

harlem river to river clyde

As the last post on this month’s chosen city, New York, it seems fit to present an alternative viewpoint on the just-deceased J D Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye. Naturally this links perfectly with Burns’ night just past on the 25th. Apologies in advance for being so downbeat but it did seem pertinent.

I’m writing this less than 35 miles from Alloway, Robert Burns’ birthplace. This doesn’t help at all, even if it is the rural location near the metaphorical Rye fields. We need to go to Edinburgh to set the context for Salinger’s New York visitor, Holden Caulfield, and the beginnings of the beat generation; and also its end in 1980.

Holden’s effective role model, Burns, is a precocious, cautious young celebre who speaks his mind on the Edinburgh literary circuit in 1786 – but not mature. He’s driven by the sexual energies and moral abandon of youth which he finds completely natural – bawdy – despite the severe calvinist attitude of his contemporaries – the mirror of Holden’s “phony” all-american family values of the 1950s. And Burns, like Holden, is actually interested in relationship and intimacy – they verbalise it constantly; Robert in love and full of emotion for his muse via lovers; Holden in empathy and care for his siblings via the protectorate of the edge.

Both uncover fear and repression within themselves, horrified yet distant, telescoping their candour into the psyche of male teenage angsts everywhere – Caulfield in his people shooting hat, taking on those he feels have misled him (Mark Chapman). These are not allegories. They are constants in male sexual and power mentalities. This is Trocchi, McIlvanney, Vettriano – people despised and revered at the same time here in the west of scotland – a kind of tartan creative mafia, wannabe De Niros revelling in the underclasses / debauched upper classes as surely as any standard middle-class crimewriter that knows their audience.

As one of momus‘ anonymous commentators posits on momus’ Salinger post, the monologue by the conman Paul in the film Six Degrees of Separation correctly analyses the force majeure of the disaffected, juvenile male – a nice boy, always reading catcher in the rye…

maggie nesciur: NYC walker

Not done an entry on walking yet – kind of important – so feel this is a fab one to start with. Maggie Nesciur walks 90 miles a week through the hoods thankful she’s still able to walk and breathe after surviving cancer – discovers life is good. This is a complete breath of fresh air – and judging by the comments, I think Maggie’s life is all up from here…

There you are short n nice for a friday afternoon. So perfect. Found via SwissMiss > Protect New York, then a cracking interview that restored my faith in human nature (and nice pics) at the New York Times.

photograph of Ms. Nesciur by Todd Heisler for the NYT

daPi

For every modern-era decade since probably the James Watt-refined Newcomen engine, there’s been a single functional object that’s defined culture for that time.

And these objects have mostly been met with either outright hostility or deep cynicism (as evidenced in the “it’s rubbish” vitriol coming from many comment posts in the online broadsheet tech sections today). So yes, iPad is no different in that some people won’t see the possibilities, instead seeing ways in which it compacts, rather than expands experience; or actually erodes those cultural values it seeks to enhance and liberate. Some see the reverse.

Jobs says Apple are “at the intersection of technology and liberal arts (sic)”. This is more true than most give Apple credit for – in terms of intelligence and aesthetics Apple are years if not a decade in front of what are effectively standard washing-machine tech companies like Nokia or Sony, with their creative focus on the proliferation of confusing, wasteful, constantly-changing product lines that essentially change nothing. And it’s not as if Apple are using necessarily better components – it’s the attitude that makes the products so pleasing (here’s a little reminder of what a Blue Meanies world looks like).

So for once, it’s the tech audience who don’t get it. It’s not the limitations of the device – no multitasking, no camera – it’s the fact that it’s the first to fully utilise the most sensitive part of the human body – the fingertips.

iPad might still be Job’s SS Great Britain, but who in 2110 will likely revere the Kindle DX as touchstone for a revolution?

With apologies to Yellow Pages Let your Fingers do the Walking…