The opposition between town and country is a perennial obsession of modern Western narrative art. The idea of the division becoming diffuse and permeable, of the one bleeding through into the other, appears to be deeply threatening. For Titus Andronicus, in a play in which precisely this bleeding effect occurs, Rome's degradation leads it to become a "wilderness of tigers".
This obsession is one that began at around the same time as modern map making.
What people don't realise is that maps lie to us. They present a geographical landscape which is profoundly at odds with human psychic landscapes.
We think of the town having borders, beyond which there lies the country. No matter how we nuance this, it is untrue. We think of the country as a great field of emptiness between cities and towns. No matter how we nuance this, it is untrue.
What actually happens is that the further you venture into the country, the more country you find. The country isn't a two-dimensional field, it is a three-dimension well which stretches ever downwards into more of itself. Like the fractals generated by the Mandelbrot Set, the further you go into the country, the more it expands out ahead of you. The more you sink down into it. The towns get smaller, the desolation gets more and more desolate, the isolation gets more and more isolated. The sinister vibe gets more and more sinister.
The city, meanwhile, has no borders. It is carried across all borders inside the mind of the city-dweller. And all cities are connected. If you walk far enough into London you will eventually find yourself in Paris or New York or Rome. The more you walk into any city, the more you walk into its history, and the history of every city is the history of its relationship with other cities. Walk far enough into modern London and you eventually find yourself in ancient Rome.
ideas are icepickproof
Monday, 27 October 2014
The Abandoned Line
All disused London Underground stations are connected via ghost trains
that traverse conceptual topography. It's called the Abandoned Line.
London’s Abandoned Line is in a state of perpetual Cold War with Metro 2, the secret parallel underground system in Moscow which was used to transport Party officials around the place. One of the many ideological differences between Metro 2 and the Abandoned Line is the very question of Metro 2’s existence. The Abandoned Line insists that Metro 2 exists. Metro 2 itself stubbornly denies this.
London’s Abandoned Line is in a state of perpetual Cold War with Metro 2, the secret parallel underground system in Moscow which was used to transport Party officials around the place. One of the many ideological differences between Metro 2 and the Abandoned Line is the very question of Metro 2’s existence. The Abandoned Line insists that Metro 2 exists. Metro 2 itself stubbornly denies this.
Tuesday, 14 October 2014
Build High
Some tumblr jottings, curated with pictures.
Modernism. The International Style. Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier, etc.
A clean, white world of clean white buildings and glass boxes. Machines for living in. Born of the utopian hopes of early Modernism. Destined to become the opulent apartment blocks and corporate skyscrapers of Chicago capitalism.
Based on a dream of optimised people in an optimised world. You had to be perfect to live in a glass box. And the glass boxes were going to make people better, cleaner, fitter, healthier, more productive, and now this sentence is (tellingly) becoming the lyrics from that Radiohead song. Because that’s where that kind of top-down utopianism ended up; the dream of Modernism became the malaise of late-C20th/C21st modernity.
Whatever the admirable radicalism - and there is much admirable radicalism in Modernism - it culminated in a convergence with the Nazi fantasies of order and hygiene (even as the Modernists were hated and driven out by the Nazis) and, in the end, with the corporate capitalist fantasies of perfect and rational utility. The skyscraper as a machine for doing business in.
In both iterations of the same anti-human and elitist reactionary fantasy, the individual becomes a cog, to be permitted as long as they play their role within the machine, as long as they do not disgrace the gleaming interior of the glass box.
It found its way into another iteration: C20th century elitist reformism, the provision of rational living units for the drones, the erection of housing estates and tower blocks. Look at those 60s constructions - built along the same elitist/top-down/utopian lines as all Modernist architecture - and today they seem like ugly sinkholes (the vile word used to describe them), but at the time they were supposed to be clean, ordered, rational, humane and utopian.
So, in 'Paradise Towers', the tower block becomes the once-hopeful/now-decaying symbol of entropic utopianism. Social democracy, with its aesthetic roots in Modernism, falling apart in the neglect and ruin of the dawning neoliberal age. Inside, of course, are trapped the archetypes (in parodic form) of Thatcher’s Britain. Feral kids, Daily Mail readers, the Police.
And the roving, murdering cleaners are clearing up the “human garbage” to make way for the return of Kroagnon’s anti-human and authoritarian vision of cleanliness and order. The dark side of the Modernist dream returns from the gothic basement of repression to take revenge on the last remnants of Modernism’s own light side. The authoritarian variant tries to reconquer the self-defeated social-democratic variant.
And Kroagnon’s shocktroops the cleaners are clean, white constructions in straight lines. They are miniature, mobile buildings in the International Style of high, early Modernism.
They are like Corbusier houses crossbred with Mies skyscrapers, come alive and on the attack.
Corbusier was friendly with a fascist sympathiser, Pierre Winter. They both joined the right-wing Faisceau Party.
Fascism lurks within the utopianism of Modernism, which lurks within the utopianism of social democracy. As Benjamin might say, fascism lurks within the entire C20th.
*
Modernism. The International Style. Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier, etc.
A clean, white world of clean white buildings and glass boxes. Machines for living in. Born of the utopian hopes of early Modernism. Destined to become the opulent apartment blocks and corporate skyscrapers of Chicago capitalism.
Based on a dream of optimised people in an optimised world. You had to be perfect to live in a glass box. And the glass boxes were going to make people better, cleaner, fitter, healthier, more productive, and now this sentence is (tellingly) becoming the lyrics from that Radiohead song. Because that’s where that kind of top-down utopianism ended up; the dream of Modernism became the malaise of late-C20th/C21st modernity.
 |
| Prora, the elephantine Strength Through Joy holiday camp. Nazi Butlins. |
Whatever the admirable radicalism - and there is much admirable radicalism in Modernism - it culminated in a convergence with the Nazi fantasies of order and hygiene (even as the Modernists were hated and driven out by the Nazis) and, in the end, with the corporate capitalist fantasies of perfect and rational utility. The skyscraper as a machine for doing business in.
In both iterations of the same anti-human and elitist reactionary fantasy, the individual becomes a cog, to be permitted as long as they play their role within the machine, as long as they do not disgrace the gleaming interior of the glass box.
It found its way into another iteration: C20th century elitist reformism, the provision of rational living units for the drones, the erection of housing estates and tower blocks. Look at those 60s constructions - built along the same elitist/top-down/utopian lines as all Modernist architecture - and today they seem like ugly sinkholes (the vile word used to describe them), but at the time they were supposed to be clean, ordered, rational, humane and utopian.
So, in 'Paradise Towers', the tower block becomes the once-hopeful/now-decaying symbol of entropic utopianism. Social democracy, with its aesthetic roots in Modernism, falling apart in the neglect and ruin of the dawning neoliberal age. Inside, of course, are trapped the archetypes (in parodic form) of Thatcher’s Britain. Feral kids, Daily Mail readers, the Police.
And the roving, murdering cleaners are clearing up the “human garbage” to make way for the return of Kroagnon’s anti-human and authoritarian vision of cleanliness and order. The dark side of the Modernist dream returns from the gothic basement of repression to take revenge on the last remnants of Modernism’s own light side. The authoritarian variant tries to reconquer the self-defeated social-democratic variant.
And Kroagnon’s shocktroops the cleaners are clean, white constructions in straight lines. They are miniature, mobile buildings in the International Style of high, early Modernism.
They are like Corbusier houses crossbred with Mies skyscrapers, come alive and on the attack.
Corbusier was friendly with a fascist sympathiser, Pierre Winter. They both joined the right-wing Faisceau Party.
Fascism lurks within the utopianism of Modernism, which lurks within the utopianism of social democracy. As Benjamin might say, fascism lurks within the entire C20th.
*
In 'Paradise Towers', as in the 80s DWM comic strip ‘Profits of Doom’, the old capitalism/tentacles connection still lurks, largely abandoned and almost forgotten.
Friday, 26 September 2014
Once More With Feeling?
It is incredibly depressing to realise that I have been asking the rulers of the state I live in to refrain from bombing Iraq for my entire fucking life.
There's an extent to which the 'it won't work' critique is entirely valid as an objection to waging yet more war upon the Middle East. Because the surface aim of the politicians is almost certainly to impose 'stability' on 'the region'. They like stability. No threats to embarass them, no revolts to topple their friendly dictators, no threat to Israel, no danger to neoliberal exploitation of local resources and markets, etc. And, as has been shown, it doesn't work. They try and try to bomb the Middle East into passive compliance, and all they succeed in doing is generating more troubles for their empire.
This is, of course, what empires have always done. Create the problems of tomorrow by viciously conquering the problems of today.
But there's another sense in which the 'it won't work' argument is fatally flawed, because there's a sense in which it does work. It may never achieve 'stability' but it does keep the machinery of empire chugging, and the fuel of empire flowing. Because the fuel of empire is as much war itself as the resources extracted via war. The neverending war keeps the military-industrial complex in work, the contracts coming, the factories producing, etc. It keeps the corporate media busy and happy, reporting yet more incomprehensible strife from 'over there' and 'our' attempts to make things better. It keeps the endless circular debate about intervention circling (the system can tolerate a tortuous and muddled debate, what it doesn't want is clarity). It keeps the public money flowing into the vast state run apparatus of military spending, and into all the R&D that is done under the aegis of this and then handed over (free) to private enterprise. It keeps the empire's power and prestige in the ascendant, with the machinery of death inspiring the fear - and projecting the apparent invincibility - that every empire needs.
No, the war never 'works' in the sense of achieving a stable imperium, but it does 'work' - at least in the short term - in achieving a powerful empire. One of the paradoxes of empire is that its power relies upon it never being stable. So even when the bombing doesn't work, it actually does.
Meanwhile, of course, people die. And die and die and die.
There's an extent to which the 'it won't work' critique is entirely valid as an objection to waging yet more war upon the Middle East. Because the surface aim of the politicians is almost certainly to impose 'stability' on 'the region'. They like stability. No threats to embarass them, no revolts to topple their friendly dictators, no threat to Israel, no danger to neoliberal exploitation of local resources and markets, etc. And, as has been shown, it doesn't work. They try and try to bomb the Middle East into passive compliance, and all they succeed in doing is generating more troubles for their empire.
This is, of course, what empires have always done. Create the problems of tomorrow by viciously conquering the problems of today.
But there's another sense in which the 'it won't work' argument is fatally flawed, because there's a sense in which it does work. It may never achieve 'stability' but it does keep the machinery of empire chugging, and the fuel of empire flowing. Because the fuel of empire is as much war itself as the resources extracted via war. The neverending war keeps the military-industrial complex in work, the contracts coming, the factories producing, etc. It keeps the corporate media busy and happy, reporting yet more incomprehensible strife from 'over there' and 'our' attempts to make things better. It keeps the endless circular debate about intervention circling (the system can tolerate a tortuous and muddled debate, what it doesn't want is clarity). It keeps the public money flowing into the vast state run apparatus of military spending, and into all the R&D that is done under the aegis of this and then handed over (free) to private enterprise. It keeps the empire's power and prestige in the ascendant, with the machinery of death inspiring the fear - and projecting the apparent invincibility - that every empire needs.
No, the war never 'works' in the sense of achieving a stable imperium, but it does 'work' - at least in the short term - in achieving a powerful empire. One of the paradoxes of empire is that its power relies upon it never being stable. So even when the bombing doesn't work, it actually does.
Meanwhile, of course, people die. And die and die and die.
Wednesday, 17 September 2014
Reimagined Moments #3
Onboard the Silver Carrier, the Doctor and Jamie are eating square blocks of food from a dispenser.
"Doctor, what do you think Victoria's doing now?"
"Now? Well, she's dead Jamie."
"Dead???"
"Yes, of course. We left her in the late-twentieth century. Looking at this technology, we must be at least a couple of hundred years on from then. So unless she somehow managed to live to be more than 200 years old, she'll have aged and died a long time ago. Right now she's probably just a brittle skeleton lying in a coffin, the flesh long since having bloated and peeled away and rotted and been consumed by bacteria and maggots and weavils and worms and stuff. Unless they burned her up in a big fire. In which case she's probably scattered around somewhere in tiny fragments or sitting in a vase."
"Doctor, what do you think Victoria's doing now?"
"Now? Well, she's dead Jamie."
"Dead???"
"Yes, of course. We left her in the late-twentieth century. Looking at this technology, we must be at least a couple of hundred years on from then. So unless she somehow managed to live to be more than 200 years old, she'll have aged and died a long time ago. Right now she's probably just a brittle skeleton lying in a coffin, the flesh long since having bloated and peeled away and rotted and been consumed by bacteria and maggots and weavils and worms and stuff. Unless they burned her up in a big fire. In which case she's probably scattered around somewhere in tiny fragments or sitting in a vase."
Tuesday, 16 September 2014
Things That Worry Me #1
You know the pre-titles sequence in For Your Eyes Only, in which Blofeld tricks Bond onto a remote-controlled helicopter?
Why does the vicar make the sign of the cross as Bond departs in the chopper?
If he knows something deadly is afoot, he must be in league with Blofeld, so either...
a) he's not really a vicar but actually one of Blofeld's men disguised as a vicar, or
b) he is an actual vicar who's been paid by Blofeld to be part of his assassination conspiracy.
If a), why? And why doesn't Bond ask about this new guy at the Church where Tracey is buried?
If b), why? What would induce a presumably average, ordinary, law-abiding vicar to team up with Blofeld? And also, why doesn't he just shoot Bond in the graveyard?
And what does Blofeld need him for? Okay, he delivers the fake message about Bond being needed at HQ. But this is seemingly the only thing he does in the conspiracy (if he is indeed part of the conspiracy, as opposed to an innocent vicar who unwittingly relays a fake message) but the message could have been far more easily faked, given the apparent laxity of Bond's precautions (he just accepts the message at face value without checking it in any way).
And I repeat: if he's not a real vicar, why the religious sentiment with the sign of the cross?
And even if he is a real vicar, but an evil one who conspires to murder people with international gangsters, why is he still worried about giving Bond the last rites?
He's either a genuine vicar with terrorist-connections and a deeply ambivalent and wildly fluctuating attitude to his faith, or a hood with a very dark sense of humour... and possibly a sardonic vein of anti-clericalism in his character.
Or... another possibility entirely... he's a genuine vicar with the gift of second sight and a fatalistic attitude to the future.
Or he's a genuine (if morally weak) vicar with the gift of second sight, and he hates James Bond for some reason... so much so that he opportunistically chooses to let Bond go to his death.
Or possibly he hates the helicopter pilot for some reason and opportunistically chooses to let him die.
That actually makes a lot more sense because, if he can see the future, that must mean that he knows that Bond will escape the trap and only the pilot and Blofeld will die. (It can't be that he hates Blofeld because Blofeld isn't there when he - the vicar - makes the sign of the cross, so there'd be no point.)
The only problem here is the implausibility of a specific guy who that particular vicar hates just happening to turn up at the vicar's church in a helicopter on the day when he's about to be murdered by Blofeld as part of an assassination conspiracy... but coincidences do happen.
As far as I can tell, this is by far the best explanation.
My god, Roald Dahl was a great writer, wasn't he?
I wonder why the fatalistic, cynical, vindictive, morally-ambivalent psychic vicar/seer hated the helicopter pilot so much.
(UPDATE: Yes, I know Roald Dahl didn't write this one. It was a joke.)
Why does the vicar make the sign of the cross as Bond departs in the chopper?
If he knows something deadly is afoot, he must be in league with Blofeld, so either...
a) he's not really a vicar but actually one of Blofeld's men disguised as a vicar, or
b) he is an actual vicar who's been paid by Blofeld to be part of his assassination conspiracy.
If a), why? And why doesn't Bond ask about this new guy at the Church where Tracey is buried?
If b), why? What would induce a presumably average, ordinary, law-abiding vicar to team up with Blofeld? And also, why doesn't he just shoot Bond in the graveyard?
And what does Blofeld need him for? Okay, he delivers the fake message about Bond being needed at HQ. But this is seemingly the only thing he does in the conspiracy (if he is indeed part of the conspiracy, as opposed to an innocent vicar who unwittingly relays a fake message) but the message could have been far more easily faked, given the apparent laxity of Bond's precautions (he just accepts the message at face value without checking it in any way).
And I repeat: if he's not a real vicar, why the religious sentiment with the sign of the cross?
And even if he is a real vicar, but an evil one who conspires to murder people with international gangsters, why is he still worried about giving Bond the last rites?
He's either a genuine vicar with terrorist-connections and a deeply ambivalent and wildly fluctuating attitude to his faith, or a hood with a very dark sense of humour... and possibly a sardonic vein of anti-clericalism in his character.
Or... another possibility entirely... he's a genuine vicar with the gift of second sight and a fatalistic attitude to the future.
Or he's a genuine (if morally weak) vicar with the gift of second sight, and he hates James Bond for some reason... so much so that he opportunistically chooses to let Bond go to his death.
Or possibly he hates the helicopter pilot for some reason and opportunistically chooses to let him die.
That actually makes a lot more sense because, if he can see the future, that must mean that he knows that Bond will escape the trap and only the pilot and Blofeld will die. (It can't be that he hates Blofeld because Blofeld isn't there when he - the vicar - makes the sign of the cross, so there'd be no point.)
The only problem here is the implausibility of a specific guy who that particular vicar hates just happening to turn up at the vicar's church in a helicopter on the day when he's about to be murdered by Blofeld as part of an assassination conspiracy... but coincidences do happen.
As far as I can tell, this is by far the best explanation.
My god, Roald Dahl was a great writer, wasn't he?
I wonder why the fatalistic, cynical, vindictive, morally-ambivalent psychic vicar/seer hated the helicopter pilot so much.
 |
| This guy may be the most complicated and fascinating character ever to appear in a Bond movie. |
(UPDATE: Yes, I know Roald Dahl didn't write this one. It was a joke.)
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