The Sleep of Reason

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters — Goya
imagination

Two Sculptors — Daumier
politics

Half Man — Malevich
reductionism

The Raft of the Medusa — Gericault
incompetence

Orange Morning — Rothko
essence

Betty — Gerhard Richter
observer

Judith Beheading Holofernes — Gentileschi
praxis

Judith — Gentileschi
revolution

The Swing — Fragonard
what we are here for

Redemption Song . . . . again? Version Two

Its happened again, I've just heard yet another very well-meaning person, choosing as solace, a piece of music that covers-up more than it can ever hope solve, despite it also having the best intentions at the heart of it. This is 'Redemption Song' by Bob Marley, one of the last recorded works of his exceptional career.

"Old pirates yes they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I from the
Bottom less pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the almighty
We forward in this generation triumphantly
All I ever had is songs of freedom
Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had redemption songs, redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the book

Won't you help to sing, these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had, redemption songs, redemption songs, redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Yes some say it's just part of it
We've got to fulfill the book

Won't you help to sing, these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had, redemption songs
All I ever had, redemption songs
These songs of freedom, songs of freedom"

I'm sad that this is the one Bob Marley song that is the most commonly cited favourite of his work amongst POWC. Some white people have jumped on this piece out of all his other words, as they presume that it absolves them of their complicity — Well, they'd like to think it is, but it is no such thing:

Perhaps one sentiment, such as this granting of our absolution IS possible, but it has to be remembered that these lyrics could also be read as some of the most bitter and accusatory that we will hear: This is something that we have to hear, and meditate on, yes . . . but that we (the oppressors), have earned this one person's forgiveness from all the way back in 1979 I find to be too neat and tidy, and the whitey-we conveniently presume this one man has been appointed by the generations-of-slavery to forgive us; the mini-me mighty-whitey-we for our destructiveness— A lot's happened since then, but nothing's changed, and looks like we've been let off the hook, for our shame. Behind Marley, it feels like there's a vested-interest who's holding this valuable witness to ransom.

I can't bear hearing this song, because it reminds me of the Liberals I knew who hadn't/haven't a clue quite how painful, ever-present, and current racism still is. I've watched them aghast when at the end of a crappy party of white pople (god forbid there was black gatecrasher) when they would ritualistically put that "Choon" on (to signal end of the night), and with their drunken smiles and half-closed eyes, wanting to think 'the struggle' is over, and all that just by hearing his weary voice singing those great words.

"See you Dahling, I hope you don't have any trouble on the way back home, the streets are dreadfully dark!!"

Mainly I can't bear hearing that song, because it isn't even Bob Marley anymore: How typical for white fans to select this naked and unplugged recording —its like a man stripped bare for inspection at market— rather than his groundbreaking work with the Wailers who perfected a Brand New Genre that demonstrates their command, sophistication, and facility with electricity: what had made this modern man such a hero and icon has been taken away from him, and this song is more like the supplication, or the final plea, of the captive: its about as close to banging out a pattern on the bars — how ironic that is:

Picture . . .
it sounds like this recording came without his friends who he transformed music with; it is like a piece of performance art — almost like a confession written by the torturer; it is also emphasised by the fact he appears alone, and ON OUR OWN WHITE TERMS of the 'fear of syncopation' and using as much of our style of language as he could bear to utter, not his; and confined like the prisoner he is singing about, he has again been separated from the energy of his own identity, before we (the unmusical) can bear him to forgive us...

Was it was naive of Marley to think that his words would not be interpreted in any other way?

It is said that "We enter the world alone and with nothing, and we leave the world alone and with nothing".

Stick this in your Memes and smoke it!

Clint Eastwood

Sorry I've been away for so long, it is a rubbish story of medicalised lethargy; part of which I will eventually write about Kathleen — you are right to suggest I should try to document my condition.

The Guardian newspaper had an article on saturday which has confirmed Clint Eastwood's values for me. I will post it here unedited. How can a person be so blindered to evidence and testimonies?

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Here goes . . .

From Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Friday October 20, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

"Absent from history: the black soldiers at Iwo Jima"

Nearly 900 African-Americans fought on the Japanese island but not one appears in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-tipped film, writes Dan Glaister

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Friday October 20, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.
"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former US marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's prayer, over and over and over."

Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island. While the battle scene's in the film - which opens today in the US - show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter.
The film tells the story of the raising of the stars and stripes over Mount Suribachi at the tip of the island. The moment was captured in a photograph that became a symbol of the US war effort. Eastwood's film follows the marines in the picture, including the Native American Ira Hayes, as they were removed from combat operations to promote the sale of government war bonds.

Mr McPhatter, who went on to serve in Vietnam and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the US navy, even had a part in the raising of the flag. "The man who put the first flag up on Iwo Jima got a piece of pipe from me to put the flag up on," he says. That, too, is absent from the film.

"Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you never see a black face," said Mr McPhatter. "This is the last straw. I feel like I've been denied, I've been insulted, I've been mistreated. But what can you do? We still have a strong underlying force in my country of rabid racism."

Melton McLaurin, author of the forthcoming The Marines of Montford Point and an accompanying documentary to be released in February, says that there were hundreds of black soldiers on Iwo Jima from the first day of the 35-day battle. Although most of the black marine units were assigned ammunition and supply roles, the chaos of the landing soon undermined the battle plan.

"When they first hit the beach the resistance was so fierce that they weren't shifting ammunition, they were firing their rifles," said Dr McLaurin.

The failure to transfer the active role played by African-Americans at Iwo Jima to the big screen does not surprise him. "One of the marines I interviewed said that the people who were filming newsreel footage on Iwo Jima deliberately turned their cameras away when black folks came by. Blacks are not surprised at all when they see movies set where black troops were engaged and never show on the screen. I would like to say that it was from ignorance but anybody can do research and come up with books about African-Americans in world war two. I think it has to do with box office and what producers of movies think Americans really want to see."

He added: "I want to see these guys get their due. They're just so anxious to have their story told and to have it known."

Roland Durden, another black marine, landed on the beach on the third day. "When we hit the shore we were loaded with ammunition and the Japanese hit us with mortar." Private Durden was soon assigned to burial detail, "burying the dead day in, day out. It seemed like endless days. They treated us like workmen rather than marines."

Mr Durden, too, is wearied but unsurprised at the omissions in Eastwood's film. "We're always left out of the films, from John Wayne on," he said. Mr Durden ascribes to both the conspiracy as well as the cock-up theory of history. "They didn't want blacks to be heroes. This was pre-1945, pre civil rights."

A spokesperson for Warner Bros said: "The film is correct based on the book." The omission was first remarked upon in a review by Fox News columnist Roger Friedman, who noted that the history of black involvement at Iwo Jima was recorded in several books, including Christopher Moore's recent Fighting for America: Black Soldiers - the Unsung Heroes of World War II. "They weren't in the background at all," said Moore.

"The people carrying the ammunition were 90% black, so that's an opportunity to show black soldiers. These are our films and very often they become our history, historical documents." Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to Eastwood and the film's producers pleading with them to include the experience of black soldiers. HarperCollins, the book's publishers, sent the director a copy, but never heard back.

"It would take only a couple of extras and everyone would be happy," she said. "No one's asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It's a lie."

The first chapter to James Bradley's book Flags of Our Fathers, which forms the basis of the movie, opens with a quotation from president Harry Truman. "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." It would provide a fitting endnote to Eastwood's film.

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Now we know what to call the 'Man With No Name': He's a White-washing perpetuator.

BOYCOTT Flags of Our Fathers!

Comments pages

I'm getting nowhere fast: my daily "I'll just check what the bloggers said while I was sleeping" has become roughly 3 hours in the morning and 3 more at night. Comments pages are a delight normally, but when you get a right-wing rantosaur and left-wing plodadactyl mudslinging shitfest, I guess you know you're site is doing well: click on the title of this post.

Just want to say that Hugo Chavez becoming an ENEMY of the USA because he happens to believe that Bush wants to eliminate him is the largest bunch of misrepresentation I've heard for a long time. Like a number of Chavez's statements, there is much calm logic to it.

Being called an ENEMY?? Chavez is right for 'folding' in this "Texas Hold 'em" in full public view.

High Wycombe, the world, and my Father

Yesterday there were a number of police raids in three areas of England, one of these places was my town. Of course I'm saddened by this event; by what's caused these events; and by the cause behind the cause of these events. And that where I grew up has changed so totally over my life, which has never bothered me because Change is the only Constant. Before I became too ill, everywhere that could be mapped, was logged up here — I hated it of course, resented it, but I savoured it.

With my parents it is a different story:
They met on the daily bus to Wycombe in the early sixties where they had joined the design school, they discovered themselves there, and they were involved in the growing hub of music and style that was 'swinging', then 'way-out', then 'hippy'. The town that nurtured this was renowned for its furniture industry, and its twisting 16th century streets and slums, at turns conservative, insular. They chose to stay here because my sister and I had arrived and the town was close enough to the surrounding countryside, there was a conscious decision to join in an ethnic mix that wasn't found in other towns, and is close enough to London to be not feel provincial.

My Father is an odd person; a brilliant self-taught musician but also a very decent designer, and resolutely self-employed. There has always been a certain desperation to his various ventures. Growing up under the regime meant never knowing what was going to happen next or whether we'd ever go on a normal holiday. People have let him get away with his work-mania because he is a joy know in other ways.

Last night was bad, we hadn't got together for a while so a curry at the best place around should've been a treat. But he just couldn't let the terrorist news go, it was eating him up: He was talking as if he'd been had, all that time he'd put into living in Wycombe he felt his trust had been abused by the Asians of the town, his voice getting louder all the time — it was disgusting really, and embarrassing because I know how much love and patience there still is in my Dad.

I'm glad they are going to be moving out of the town next year, I hope it'll return the person I remember.

Terrorist — John Updike

Last week I read an extract from John Updike's latest, "Terrorist".

Its a duff book in many ways, a vehicle for a person to express sustained misanthropy, because the 'protagonista' is a resentful Muslim in the heart of America. I detect a certain amout of glee for this opportunity to vent.

I don't know any of his other work, as it doesn't really travel, but I've heard it said that the old man's a classic WASP.

Based on the short excerpt that I read, its a collection of stereotypes, and very little effort has been put in to try to understand all the other motivations of this 'viper in the nest'.

It surprises me most that Updike has written this Now . . . 5-6 years ago [at the time of 9/11] it would have been much more understandable for an American to present this sort of picture, but after half a decade, to only have come up with the same old crap suggests to me that there's been a traumatic failure of intelligence — the rabbit in the headlights.

The other direction he could have gone . . . is to present two characters; one who lives an insular life, who can't understand how another person lives and has no interest in how things affect others; and the other who's been raised to see how every interaction results in a clear winner and clear loser in a global sense.

Updike's had a neural-collapse in his metaphor department.

"Pity the Nation"

2 years ago I read the book which is by Robert Fisk, a correspondant for 'The Independent' in Beirut for 25 years. As it keeps getting referenced at places I've visited recently, I'll mention it here. It has the same feel and level of relentless detail that you'd find in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's work. Its an exhausting read, but I must add, it isn't all joyless either.

The link here is more expansive than I can be right now.