www.Sam Bennetts.com

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2010-05-29T16:18:00.002+01:00

THIS BLOG IS NO LONGER IN USE PLEASE VISIT WWW.SAMBENNETTS.COM AND WWW.META-AGORA.COM

Victory for the pirates!

2010-05-17T11:06:00.000+01:00

Had a unproductive weekend as went out for Tim Rawlings birthday two nights running and was thoroughly messy. Fantastic fun to see so many old faces again.

Went down to Camborne on Sunday to see the rugby, a great victory was won as the Cornish Pirates beat Munster 23 - 14 to win the British Irish Cup!

Full write up here

Discuss...

2010-04-30T16:35:00.001+01:00

"In light of the traumas of modernity, where millions were slaughtered because they fell on the wrong side of the imaginary Aryan/non-Aryan divide, the project of deconstructing binaries should have been a positive development. In fact the primary way of disturbing categories – pointing out that the primary term is only defined through exclusion of the other – might have effectively stalled the pseudo-scientific Nazi eugenic project. The problem with the postmodern approach, however, was that it came too late. While it could have offered a way out of the genocide of World War II, by the time the project of deconstructing distinctions was widespread in academia and had filtered down to society at large, oppression lay not in the maintenance of dualism but in the opposite: increasing hybridization. That is the irony of contemporary philosophy: what we take to be a tool of resistance, the application of cutting-edge theory to our contemporary moment, turns out to be a hammer of our oppression. And by rejecting binary thought outright, we were not challenging the status quo … we were helping it along."

Discuss...

The Blurbomatic is coming!

2010-04-30T15:19:00.001+01:00

I am excited to announce that next week I will be launching a new COMPETITION on my site!

In conjunction with the Coalition of Revolutionary Artistic Justificationists I present Blurbomaticism!

The project is to be called Blurbomatic and by its devices I intend to make every human being alive who wishes into a critically acclaimed modern artist. The premise is simple, provide me with a example of your work and I will write a thousand word euology to its genius and explain why it deserves to be considered one of the great works of our time.

The purpose of this is simple, the academic nature of modern art criticism and its detachement from the hipster dominated journalistic field of aesthetic critique has allowed modern art to fall victim to a reductionist decline.

Id est, we as a society have argued so much about what constitutes art that we have reduced arts scope and nature. The fact that beauty, meaning, ugliness, hollowness etc are no longer contingent to the definition of an object or concept as art is a good thing. Art does not have to possess any one specific concept to be beautiful.

What is more dangerous to the existence of art and a legitimate intellectual concept and of its practice as a verb with any real meaning in our society is the steps we have taken to argue for more extreme and over reduction in its meaning. The fact that a balance of differential deviation between various different possible contingent definitions is no longer considered sufficient for defining art as a concept has broken and deprived the word of art of its legitimacy.

Highbrow discussion of definitions of "where art goes next?" are unhelpful, like a chinese finger trap post modernism pulls tighter the more you seek to escape. The only way to escape is to plunge deeper into the belly of the beast.

The distinct between the art of the people, the art of popular culture and the high art of academia is simple: Justification.

Academic and intellectual art is insecure, it must create -ism's and critiques, inspire and engage in dialectics and discursive conversations. Yet many people go to art college because they can paint or draw or sculpt. They are not necessarily academically intelligent. They are not necessarily unfortunate enough to be mere sordid Justifiers. They are artists.

When someone who can paint produces art which is pretty and sells and is loved by the public but does not engage in the academic game of justification and analysis the self elected High Councils of Art decry them - accuse them of prostituting their talent, when it is in essentiality a physical skill like any other.

BUT NO MORE! For Blurbomatic is coming, anyone can create art and we the Coalition of Revolutionary Artistic Justificationists will justify it for them.

Does it matter whether the concept is designed by the artist or by a distant person behind a computer working from a blurred camera phone photo of the finished project? NAY! For who will be able to tell the difference?

You shall know us for our motto is "A Good Justication Of A Piece Is A Good Piece, A Good Presentation Of A Project Is A Good Project"

So if you want to make it as an artist send us your work, we'll get some blue sky thinking on, synergise, have a roundtable Conversation and JUSTIFY!

Of song..

2010-04-30T14:44:00.003+01:00

People keep asking me what music I like and here is a fairly exhaustive list...

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Arlo Guthrie, Ian & Sylvia , Eric Andersen , The Wurzels , Nico , The Allman Brothers Band , Grateful Dead , Jerry Lee Lewis , John Fogerty , Grinderman , John's Children , The Rolling Stones , Buddy Holly & The Crickets , The Peasall Sisters , Phil Ochs , Marc Bolan , Janis Joplin , Lou Reed & John Cale , Regina Spektor , Chuck Berry , Phil Ochs , Buddy Holly & The Crickets , Kasabian , Judy Collins , Marc Bolan , Marlene Dietrich , Little Richard , Dire Straits , Deep Purple , Lou Reed , The Jimi Hendrix Experience , Édith Piaf , Patti Smith , The Soggy Bottom Boys , Jerry Garcia , Buffalo Springfield , Joan Baez , Dire Straits , The Jimi Hendrix Experience , Deep Purple , ZZ Top , Buffy Sainte-Marie , The Soggy Bottom Boys , Patti Smith , John Sebastian , The Band , Jefferson Airplane , Tom Paxton , Norman Blake , Bo Diddley , Melanie , T. Rex (1 play) age 4 of 9 Previous page Next page Janis Joplin , Lou Reed & John Cale , Regina Spektor , Chuck Berry , Phil Ochs , Buddy Holly & The Crickets , Kasabian , Judy Collins , Marc Bolan , Marlene Dietrich , Little Richard , Dire Straits , Deep Purple , Lou Reed , The Jimi Hendrix Experience , Édith Piaf , Patti Smith , The Soggy Bottom Boys , Jerry Garcia , Buffalo Springfield , Joan Baez , Dire Straits , The Jimi Hendrix Experience , Deep Purple , ZZ Top , Buffy Sainte-Marie , The Soggy Bottom Boys , Patti Smith , John Sebastian , The Band , Jefferson Airplane , Tom Paxton , Norman Blake , Bo Diddley , Melanie , T. Rex , The Yardbirds , Norman Blake , Melanie , Bo Diddley , Eric Clapton , The Be Good Tanyas , Bill Monroe , Yonder Mountain String Band , Old Crow Medicine Show , The Cox Family , Jack White , Ralph Stanley , Nickel Creek , Hayseed Dixie , Alison Krauss & Union Station , Elvis Presley , Eagles , The Tallest Man on Earth , The Cox Family , Bill Monroe , The Be Good Tanyas , Yonder Mountain String Band , Jack White , Old Crow Medicine Show , Ralph Stanley , Hayseed Dixie , Franz Ferdinand , Creedence Clearwater Revival , T. Rex , Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds , Morrissey , Big Bad Voodoo Daddy , Peter Murphy , Devendra Banhart , Estradasphere , Richard Wagner , Dmitri Shostakovich , Ute Lemper , Ulver , Sir Edward Elgar , Alien Sex Fiend , Fairport Convention , Johannes Brahms , Kurt Weill , Zarah Leander , Lotte Lenya , Giuseppe Verdi , Iggy Pop , Pink Floyd , The Cure , David Bowie , Cocteau Twins , The Doors , Leonard Cohen , Jerry Garcia , Buffalo Springfield , Joan Baez , Dire Straits , The Jimi Hendrix Experience , Deep Purple , ZZ Top , Buffy Sainte-Marie , The Soggy Bottom Boys , Patti Smith , John Sebastian , The Band , Jefferson Airplane , Tom Paxton , Norman Blake , Bo Diddley , Melanie , T. Rex , The Yardbirds , Norman Blake , Melanie , Bo Diddley , Eric Clapton , The Be Good Tanyas , Bill Monroe , Yonder Mountain String Band , Old Crow Medicine Show , The Cox Family , Jack White , Ralph Stanley , Nickel Creek , Hayseed Dixie , Alison Krauss & Union Station , Elvis Presley , Eagles , The Tallest Man on Earth , The Cox Family , Bill Monroe , The Be Good Tanyas , Yonder Mountain String Band , Jack White , Old Crow Medicine Show , Ralph Stanley , Hayseed Dixie , Franz Ferdinand , Creedence Clearwater Revival , T. Rex , Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds , Morrissey , Big Bad Voodoo Daddy , Peter Murphy , Devendra Banhart , Estradasphere , Richard Wagner , Dmitri Shostakovich , Ute Lemper , Ulver , Sir Edward Elgar , Alien Sex Fiend , Fairport Convention , Johannes Brahms , Kurt Weill , Zarah Leander , Lotte Lenya , Giuseppe Verdi , Iggy Pop , Pink Floyd , The Cure , David Bowie , Cocteau Twins , The Doors , Leonard Cohen , The Smiths , Bob Dylan , Marilyn Monroe , Donovan , Jimi Hendrix , Bob Marley , Tom Waits , Igor Stravinsky , Ludwig van Beethoven , Bert Jansch , Echo & The Bunnymen , New York Dolls , Enya , Geneva Jacuzzi , Noah Georgeson , Siouxsie and the Banshees , Metallic Falcons , Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti , The Yardbirds , Norman Blake , Melanie , Bo Diddley , Eric Clapton , The Be Good Tanyas , Bill Monroe , Yonder Mountain String Band , Old Crow Medicine Show , The Cox Family , Jack White , Ralph Stanley , Nickel Creek , Hayseed Dixie , Alison Krauss & Union Station , Elvis Presley , Eagles , The Tallest Man on Earth , The Cox Family , Bill Monroe , The Be Good Tanyas , Yonder Mountain String Band , Jack White , Old Crow Medicine Show , Ralph Stanley , Hayseed Dixie , Franz Ferdinand , Creedence Clearwater Revival , T. Rex , Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds , Morrissey , Big Bad Voodoo Daddy , Peter Murphy , Devendra Banhart , Estradasphere , Richard Wagner , Dmitri Shostakovich , Ute Lemper , Ulver , Sir Edward Elgar , Alien Sex Fiend , Fairport Convention , Johannes Brahms , Kurt Weill , Zarah Leander , Lotte Lenya , Giuseppe Verdi , Iggy Pop , Pink Floyd , The Cure , David Bowie , Cocteau Twins , The Doors , Leonard Cohen , The Smiths , Bob Dylan , Marilyn Monroe , Donovan , Jimi Hendrix , Bob Marley , Tom Waits , Igor Stravinsky , Ludwig van Beethoven , Bert Jansch , Echo & The Bunnymen , New York Dolls , Enya , Geneva Jacuzzi , Noah Georgeson , Siouxsie and the Banshees , Metallic Falcons , Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti , The Beach Boys , The Beatles , Bubonic Plague , Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions , The Deserts of Träun , Antonín Dvořák , Vetiver , The Pentangle , The Mockingbirds , The Idle Race , CocoRosie , Rupert's People , Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band , Joanna Newsom , The Creatures , Gogol Bordello , Gustav Mahler , Jarvis Cocker , The Cox Family , Bill Monroe , The Be Good Tanyas , Yonder Mountain String Band , Jack White , Old Crow Medicine Show , Ralph Stanley , Hayseed Dixie , Franz Ferdinand , Creedence Clearwater Revival , T. Rex , Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds , Morrissey , Big Bad Voodoo Daddy , Peter Murphy , Devendra Banhart , Estradasphere , Richard Wagner , Dmitri Shostakovich , Ute Lemper , Ulver , Sir Edward Elgar , Alien Sex Fiend , Fairport Convention , Johannes Brahms , Kurt Weill , Zarah Leander , Lotte Lenya , Giuseppe Verdi , Iggy Pop , Pink Floyd , The Cure , David Bowie , Cocteau Twins , The Doors , Leonard Cohen , The Smiths , Bob Dylan , Marilyn Monroe , Donovan , Jimi Hendrix , Bob Marley , Tom Waits , Igor Stravinsky , Ludwig van Beethoven , Bert Jansch , Echo & The Bunnymen , New York Dolls , Enya , Geneva Jacuzzi , Noah Georgeson , Siouxsie and the Banshees , Metallic Falcons , Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti , The Beach Boys , The Beatles , Bubonic Plague , Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, The Deserts of Träun , Antonín Dvořák , Vetiver , The Pentangle , The Mockingbirds , The Idle Race , CocoRosie , Rupert's People , Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band , Joanna Newsom , The Creatures , Gogol Bordello , Gustav Mahler , Jarvis Cocker , Secret Chiefs 3 , Hildegard Knef , Franz Schubert , Felix Mendelssohn , Sergei Prokofiev , Richard Strauss , Tin Machine , A Hawk and a Hacksaw , Josephine Baker , Jean Sibelius , Orange Tulip Conspiracy , DeVotchKa , Mão Morta , St. Vincent , Siouxsie , Vince Lee , Anton Bruckner , Animal Collective , The Smiths , Bob Dylan , Marilyn Monroe , Donovan , Jimi Hendrix , Bob Marley , Tom Waits , Igor Stravinsky , Ludwig van Beethoven , Bert Jansch , Echo & The Bunnymen , New York Dolls , Enya , Geneva Jacuzzi , Noah Georgeson , Siouxsie and the Banshees , Metallic Falcons , Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti , The Beach Boys , The Beatles , Bubonic Plague , Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions The Deserts of Träun , Antonín Dvořák , Vetiver , The Pentangle , The Mockingbirds , The Idle Race , CocoRosie , Rupert's People Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band , Joanna Newsom , The Creatures , Gogol Bordello , Gustav Mahler , Jarvis Cocker , Secret Chiefs 3 , Hildegard Knef , Franz Schubert , Felix Mendelssohn , Sergei Prokofiev , Richard Strauss , Tin Machine , A Hawk and a Hacksaw , Josephine Baker , Jean Sibelius , Orange Tulip Conspiracy , DeVotchKa , Mão Morta , St. Vincent , Siouxsie , Vince Lee , Anton Bruckner , Animal Collective .

Weekly pick of the web.

2010-04-25T21:29:00.000+01:00

Been reading the new translation of The Second Sex this week as I met a girl in a bar who uttered the terrifying line "I don't really think of myself as a feminist..." shortly after asserting she had no idea who Simone De Beauvoir was. Am planning to present her with a deluxe edition as soon as I've finished with it!

Otherwise been looking at the sociology of hipster culture,where I found this brilliant critique of hipsters in Adbusters which contrasts hilariously with this defence of cool as a code of honour. Also in the territory of hipsters a Spanish language website here, Playground a net based magazine I found during my research.

Have been inspired by this article on The New Middle Ages I read in Foreign Affairs and bemused by the strange MEMO website...

For more information on the practical politics and international law of neo-mediaevalism I recommend this article on legal concepts of the state and nation in post-Westphalian Europe. Fascinating and well worth a read.

Finally if your finding it too easy to sleep read this about the horror show of far right counterculturalism in the texbook case of neo-mediaevalism - Italy.

And on a lighter note, curly furry pigs. Extremely cute,

Google Reveals Number Of Goverment Censorship Requests Around The World

2010-04-23T12:33:00.000+01:00

This is absolutely terrifying and at the same time utterly unsurprising. I am exhilirated that anybody anywhere can risk pissing off the governments of the world this much and get away with it. Disappointed aye that it comes from the ivory towers of google, yet the fact that after reading this I can stumble it, tweet it, facebook it and blog it makes me aware of how close we are to achieving the dream of the original libertarian anarchist hackers who built the internet.

Google Reveals Number Of Goverment Censorship Requests Around The World

In the early C20th the Jesuit monk Teilhard de Chardin suggest that the history of the world consisted of geogenesis (the beginning of earth), biogenesis (the beginning of life), anthropogenesis (the beginning of human-like life), christogenesis (jesus, well he was a monk) which would suit be followed by noogenesis (the development of the world mind) and then a Omega Point at which divinity would be actualised in the sense of eschatological emergence.

Certainly the internet has been a moment of emerging world mind and I find it remarkable how widespread and quitely subversive technology can be..

After Luncheon

2010-04-19T00:56:00.000+01:00

The post-prandial disputation
Launched into debate without hesitation
So its false logic routines
Derived no derivation from the mean
Their syntax so flawed
That I wept as they bored
pendulum marking click-clacking tiraded
While invisible tears, bled and softly cascaded

Evolutionary Inactivism: Obliquity as a dialetical progression towards Eudaimonic Society

2010-04-13T14:03:00.000+01:00

Evolutionary Inactivism: Obliquity as a dialetical progression towards Eudaimonic Society

i) The Failed Present Consensus

The divisory and brutal realities of Late Capitalism have become increasingly apparent in the twenty odd summers since the fall of the Old Left.

The development of post-Keynesian monetarist theories of economic planning (id est. Non-planning) over the period 1970-2008 has belied the central flaw of most 20th century attempts at Marxist social development.

These flaws were highlighted as early as the 1920's with Lenin's articles in Pravda heralding the NEP (New Economic Plan) - even he realized a limited free market would be required for the industrialization of the fledgling Soviet Union. The free market is a natural system, indeed is the natural system of human organization - supposedly impossibly so, hence the neo-liberals telling us that attempts to escape it will cause disaster. However the natural state of mankind also involves sitting a tree eating your dinner while it still wiggles, though the free market possess all the rises and falls of any ecosystem this is not a recommendation of it.

ii) Of Moloch

Often I have thought that while James Lovelock was accurate in describing the biosphere of Earth as a super-organism he may have been ill advised in naming the super-organism Gaia - the new age connotations have biased many against his theory ever since. The main logical flaw of his theory seems to be that he is so rabidly opposed to anthropocentricity that he could consider mankind only in the context of a cancer harming Gaia who Gaia would inevitably wipe out.

The way in which mankind exists in relation to the Earthly Super organism (Gaia for conventions sake) seems more akin to a parasitical mammalian foetus. The child floating within the womb of Earth, sucking nutrients though an thinning placenta and leeching minerals, steel and oil from her bones. Humanity represents the only possibility of Gaia reproducing and forming other biospheres (Mars, Venus, Europa, Alpha Centauri terraformed would fill this analogy) yet at the same time it seems that like a hundred year cactus the Earth may die in childbirth.

The economic activity of mankind, the titular “Market” seems to represent a separate superorganism regulated by different rises and falls and a markedly different modus operandi to Gaia. “The Market” seems to be the super organism Moloch which rises within and in competition in Gaia – her son the cuckoo. Lovelock is wrong, mankind may outlive Gaia and all that is green and crawls upon the Earth, Moloch could devour his mother.

iii) Pubescence

Thus the short Twentieth Century seems more likely the beginning of a difficult species wide pubesnence. As our population soars so to our bandwidth of tastes shrink – daily we shed languages, faiths, tastes and entire systems of thought.

The formation of the global market and birth of Moloch due to Western technocratic expansionism has allowed the emergence of a discernable ‘cultural character’ for the whole of humanity in our age.

Despite the obvious Great White Hero Saves The Natives myth behind films such as Avatar their concerned citizen portrayal of meta-pragmatic moral blind future humanity shows one vision of our future. Indeed it seems likely that we will soon (if we have not already) box ourselves into corners from which decent or pleasant escape seems impossible.

The fact that such movies have proved so resonate with the trend setting cultures of the West is telling. Of what, no man can say.

iiv) Dissonance

The university student who lurches from student loan funded binge of sambuca shots and high street slave made clothes to the oppositional paradigm of anti-materialist environmentalist leftist orthodoxy find themselves trapped within cognitive dissonance.

The rise is such dissonance within personalities and societies as people try and deal with conflict between personal tastes and instincts and the nonsensically different views of are society are among the most obvious causes of the correlation in rising levels of unhappiness and mental illness in the Advanced Cultures and the encroachment of the condition which is termed Late Captialism.

It would seem that the failiure of the Old Left both in the form of Authoritarian Bolshevik Collectivism and European/Latin American Socialism was based on a combination of lack of adequate mathematics or computing for the adequate economic modelling of the Control (id est Planned) economies. This technical failure of history and technological progression not coincided prevent them from being able to guarantee similar QOL (Quality of Life) and QLY (Quality Life Years) to the liberal capitalist democracies.

This historic oddity which left the west convinced of its apparently final victory and its population unsure of the likelihood of the possible future failure inherent in non-reserve banking, profit generation based social hierarchies, exponential growth literalism and long term private ownership of all forms of property.

iv) Mensheviks rising

I would like to argue that any New Left or Fifth International must take Bakunin, Proudhon or Kropotkin as its starting point instead of Lenin or Trotsky, the future it seems is inevitably Menshevik. One of the ironies of our time could be that the West has unknowingly walked the path to inevitable communisation faster in its embrace of the market than the old nations of the Warsaw Pact.

To embrace any ideology as clearly modernist in subtext as socialism takes courage in the age of post modernity – yet it may be that the semiotic chaos of Late Capitalism intellectual sphere is a contingent condition for actualising communisation.

The priest giving opiates to the modern masses are the great megacorporations of America and Zaibatsus of Japan while the academic world bows before the secular saints of capitalist epistemology Baudrillard and Fukuyama.

If the dialectic exchange of ideas that Marx predicted in Das Kapital has truly come full circle then it must be considered that the current dissonance is a desirable necessity for the generation of the socio-political analysis and discussion for ideological reconstruction.

v) A spectral tune is haunting Europe...

Europe is passing into a neo-medieval age, since the Berlin Wall fell the economic order has become almost mercantile in its adventurism and this is now spreading abroad with Chinese explorationism in Africa. The multitude of rising quangos and transnational’s compete for territory with in the Western Noosphere and attempt to fill the roles of the old guilds and holy orders. From Brussels the European Union looks on as it neatly assumes the role the 13^th century church, with its Council a committee on the throne of a Holy Roman Emperor.

However quietly invisible committees wait, and the shift to alternative models of economic activity develop as advocated by the Transition Towns, Lett systems, Freegans, Sustainable communities and internet pirates. The quiet side step of millions of people leaving the normal economy to go into the black, grey and green externalised parallel markets is a massive challenge to the current order.

Rather than being a revolution of guns and fire it is an evolution of obliquity and indirect consequences emerging from ten million actions all reacting in response to the horror of the market. Every step in the daily increasing commonality of intellectual property and mass media is a element of the process of communisation, furthermore the efforts of transitionism and greenism to return food production directly to its pre-industrial localism represents a gradual unconscious attempt to wither the state.

What has begun this last ten years will not culminate in riots in the street, though they may be symptons of its passing, nor will it overthrow governments, though they may crumble before it, nor lynch aristocracies, though they may be displaced by it – it is the sound of a great green spectral song which stalking Europe once more, dancing to the tune of a billion actions of obliquity producing the echo of the Warsaw concerto. It is the spectre of inactivist evolutionary communisation.

Workers of the world forget your chains. Workers of the world are united whether they know it or not.

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Source: www.sambennetts.com

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Tracheotomy of Gaia

2010-04-13T12:58:00.000+01:00

Your public school pronunciation
A piercing tracheotomy
Loosening the bounds which bind me chest
Exhaling the poison of the sphere

But sentences, verbopompous
Dhannel the memories, a child
Stood in the mud,
dueling with the billowing
Murdoch broadsheet rag

Disbelieving

Forasmuch belief now:

The roofs are all painted white
The tarmacadam is white
The civic lakes foam with algae, blooming in the baking winter sun

The mine workers are coming up besmeared and frowzy
Long day spent burying carbon pellets
Beneath the commissioners sentinel dog gaze

aged regret
and the senile repent

While a baron rides by on his horse

Event square duel

2010-04-13T12:51:00.001+01:00

White hot chocolate
Skein glistens – plastic gold dusting

The square is empty now
The fake oakley’s a mirror, night
And we slurp our drinks
Cheap lipsticks smiles
Overlooking, the wither comes
Will she draw her gun?

Dealers Houses

2010-04-03T18:06:00.000+01:00

Dealers houses are a weird purgatory
A temporary autonomous zone
Were different rules apply

I remember so many times, not that long ago
Following friends into those twilight lands
Drifiting slowly into dimly lit rooms in Stoke and Greenbank and Mutley and Tavistock and Shoreditch and Devonport and Mosside and Mannamead

Blank cream walls
Artex encrusted ceilings
Decorations few and predictable:
- Scarface movie poster large
- Johhny depp film most
- Long thin poster of a woman bending to get beer from the bottom shelf of a fridge exposing her thong

Manic goblins jerk furiously before the xbox screen while the dealer talks big and pretends he’s a player
Dropping hints about grands and collectives and Colombian connections
While he sells your kid friend cheap amateur hash or moist shit weed

His depressed friend sits like a installation shaman, burbling pseudointellectual madness
Conjoing Grecian prefix to latinate root, norman French to Japanese
Stupid theories cite fight club and fear and loathing endlessly
- Wikipedia baudrillard and Wittgenstein the only support references
While on the shelves are intellectual books with their spines unbroken

They try and convince you want to buy their pills, telling you their a bit speedy, like the uninspiring phrase ‘a bit speedy’ is a Saatchi and bloody Saatchi advertising slogan
Tell you about a cool squat party and you leave and as you wander down the street your friends and you laugh about broken and mad the dealer and his friends are

While you wonder quietly if your friends know they’re becoming them

Keeping the watch

2010-04-03T18:05:00.000+01:00

The cries of the black top tabloids howl down the high streets
Decrying our age
Slurring England with elder insults:
Fallen, polluted, overwhelmed, past her best, crazy

Yet when I stood in the drizzly rain in a grizzly little town – I see a host which betrays the lies of the angry men of fleet street

Because they stand in the rain waiting
A silent solid citizenry
Keeping the watching
Though our island is remade in culture, creed, politics and structure since last the blitzkrieg raged
They remain indefinably – us

Massoud and Fatima are stood outside the grocer in the rain
Caeden stands scarred with his baseball cap pressed tight against his chest
Chelsea lowers her blonde tresses and shuffles her trainers

In front of the church the boy scouts stand in silent rows with their flags hanging limply in the mist
On the park bench the tramps and anarchists nod in slow respect
A girl with pink hair and a shaking lip ring clutches her mothers burton coat and cries
While in wheelchairs two old boys with medals on their chests stair thousand yard stares towards guns fifty years silent
And endless hosting of m&s England
Aldi England
Bin raiding England
Every England
Standing silent
Standing silent keeping watch
While the black cars drive by
While the black cars drive by

Once we were sounded out

2010-04-03T18:04:00.002+01:00

Me and mine we been angry boys and angry girls all our scarce few years:
Marched with four hundred children at my back, fighting the councils lies
- When we were fourteen

Told the home secretary what we thought of him
Heckled the side show conference panel
- When were fifteen

Went to meetings in the commons
Oxfam suit hanging off my sticky shoulders
Putting a case carefully researched
Every point supported
- When we were sixteen

Elected to the trustees board
Wrote documents and travelled for research
Bought a round by our right honourable colleagues
- When we were seventeen

Though maybe we could win
Prevent the loom generation war
A conceit, i guess, only teens can know
Was surprised on being sounded out
Bastards in pinstripes telling us of the power we could have. If we would tow the line. Too principled to change things they said.
If only we’d be our times Petain.
- When we eighteen

With every step society takes towards the yawning void I smirk and laugh and the angry young men and angry young women smirk with me
Those who were degraded by the toy town politics practice their speeches and draft the leaflets.
And the angry young men and the angry young women are waiting.
- For now we are twenty two

The baby boomers ruined the world.
They used up all the dreams and theres no future left for us.
The solutions simple:
We won’t pay their pensions.
We won’t pay their pensions.
We won’t pay their pensions.
We won’t suffer for their greed.
We won’t pay their pensions.
War between the generations.
No pensions.
No pensions.
No pensions for you.

Sound Swarm

2010-03-31T19:55:00.000+01:00

Fascinating use of sound in progress recommended to be by the Aktivist (see her blog on the sidebar)

Thunderspider!

2010-03-26T14:35:00.000Z

I advise you all gaze upon in wonder the website: http://www.myspace.com/thunderspiderrocks

Spoken Word Gig On Friday

2010-03-23T15:59:00.000Z

This post is just to announce that this Friday I will be headlining The Complex in Devonport (Plymouth, United Kingdom) opposite the Royal Marine Barracks. I'll be supported by a variety of local rock and folk bands but will be producing more normally mix of contemporary blues and beat poetry.

As I'm recording my new live album this Friday I'd like as many people there to cheer me on!

The facebook event is here email if you need lifts or help getting there!

Sins of our time

2010-03-23T15:02:00.000Z

Any civilisation sinks slowly into the night when it loses the will to continue, a society must have faith in its ability to meet the challenges of its time if it is to survive.

In a democracy, and make no mistake nor any form of conceit about 'big brother' states - this is a democracy, the people are to blame for the government. In democracys where people choose wise governments they are to be congratulated, when they chooses badly or foolishly they are to be condemned.

The deferring of blame in our society is a disease of the mind, we the people blame MP's, first past the post, corporations + capitalism despite the fact that all these things they have chosen and continue to choose. The British people created modern Britain, they have only themselves to blame. We could have chosen the Lib Dem's a generation ago, likewise the SDP or a populist reformist platform. We did not.

Like wise nice as it is to believe that greedy bankers caused the Credit Crunch they were far from alone, we elected governments and put our savings into banks that were supported by and supporters of unsecured reserve banking. It was us, the British public, which borrowed on store cards, overdrafts, student loans for idiot degrees, finance scheme widescreens + stupid mortgages.

The Swiss happily live their entire lives with seventy percent of their population in rented accomodation. That is the mature solution to high level prices, not the £500,000 hundred year mortgages we plan to leave for our grandchildren to inherit.

Our first sin was pride, even though our Empire was gone to the dust of history we insisted on trying to be a world power. Even though we could not pay for them we thought every Englishman had a right for his home to be a castle, that every Englishman even needed to own a home. Thus was the difference between needs and wants lost to us.

Our second sin was bad faith, we didn't believe in the power of votes, in the viability of solutions or the ability of human will + reason to built a better world. We gave up in our ability to steer the ship of society and gave it up the stormy seas of the markets.

Our third sin was willful ignorance, as a society we turned to bitter anger blaming George W Bush, Whitehall mandarins, bankers, the poor and the alien. We refused to accept the responsibility for our own inaction and cursed those who's attempts at action were imperfect.

These were the chief of the sins of our time. They were sins foremost against our reason and our humanity, in conclusion they are causing us to fall into blind hubris and will realise they were in consequence and implication sins against the integrity of our liberty.

All we can hope is that in terror and repentance we will make a fast return to reason and belief in the power of reason to solve our problems. In these latter days we can only survive if we return to being Modern.

City Boy

2010-03-23T14:48:00.000Z

Child of grey concrete cancer
gazes fierce with Ahab rage
thru toughened glass

gestation, larval now mature
all within the electromagnetic briezeblock cage
some primitivist methodist instinct
loaths the neon
and sambuca downing whores

gimcrack desperation
falsely talks the nous
into the sweet delusion
of rural wisdom, of counterfeit sentiment
the lie of ruddy faced merry olde england waiting

such is the want to be better than the city kin,
the imitation envy of the yokels
becomes the unconscious unintentional mocking of pretense

I wish I knew the names of the birds and trees and fish and clouds and stars and mushrooms and plants and smells in the night and sings of a storm and and and...

I'm just a city boy
Just a city boy
Just a city boy

City boy

Oh no

Digital Lomography? Blasphemy!

2010-03-22T14:45:00.000Z

Not sure of anyone else out there likes obscure soviet cameras but I do. http://www.lomography.com/ is the home of great and beautiful genius, its something in the popping crackling colours. If only they snapped my return to childhood would be complete.

If you doubt me just look at the startling work on the photo section at http://www.lomography.com/photos

Well rumour has it that these photos can be done...digitally. Blasphemy. I have no intention of trying. If anyone else wants to try How to make digital photos look like lomos

Chicken Scratched

2010-03-22T14:17:00.003Z

I am suffering terrible three pronged wounds, that cut me soul, body and nous. The three pronged claw that is the mind of Deal hath struck me and for a day and night I was prone and resting east of Eden in far Nod. I blame myself set and squarely, for I volunteered for the assignment proffered without putting sufficient thought to its application.

On the Sabbath of the Paulines I rose early from broken surreal sleep and ran without cessation for three miles across my home city. When I fell gasping ceaseless having sweated the poison of printer ink from my blood I stood silent clad in nought but tracksuit bottoms and vest while using the age old motions of the chi gong I rebalanced the energies of my torn and ruined soul. People looked at me as I stood among the sycamores in a strange park as if the Mark of Deal was affixed upon my brow. They feared me as the Arab fears the mad dog, if I was mad what disease did I bear?

Sprinting home I wondered whether my mind was work, it seemed that my reason had been recast and was now as absurd as the design of Microsoft Publisher. I threw myself into the shower and washed the sweat of publishing from my skin and ascended - as if Jacob up a ladder - the wooden hill to my roof top eyrie. A few grey marks dabbed my left arm where Kitiara had prodded me with inky fingers, like Blind Pugh telling me my fate. Was not Tiresias for seven years a woman?

Roderick's eye burned bright and I danced on my roof top with fire and Summer Pimm's while drifting through the Grauniad and being glad that my brain worked once more. I chuckled and talked with my friends as they talked of their plans to flee and move. I smiled and concurred and watched the cobalt heavens. As the sun set I realized with shock that I could still reason and comprehend the wheeling of the heavens and mark the stars by name. My mind had survived. Just.

Curse you Chicken Scratch. Curse you Hewlett and your kin. Curse you Packard unto the seventh generation. Curse you Deal spawn of the land of Gwydion.

---------

Chicken Scratch is a arts, illustration and cultural zine produced in Plymouth in the South West of England on inappropriate equipment. For a copy contact me or the other foolhardy inviduals involved at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=377429691807&ref=ts or sophiedeal.blogspot.com or the one who kept me sane and alive during its production Kitiara Pascoe at kitiarainwonderland.webs.c

Pick of the web this week

2010-03-09T14:52:00.001Z

Discover a few minutes ago that some people somewhere have never heard of postsecret. I cannot concieve of this so here it is http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Also for the dipsomaniac with time to burn a magazine for your needs http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/

Beautiful photography on:
http://darkpassagetravelogue.blogspot.com/

Achingly cute baby animals:
http://www.zooborns.com/

Beautifully designed staircases:
http://www.stairporn.org/

And for anyone who can't follow the conversation of the internet geek, knowyourmeme.com is a brilliant database of all the memes spawned by the greatest time waster of all. The internet.

EDIT: 15:36 GMT - Also I forgot to add it earlier but some of you might remember a most about three weeks ago when I'd posted some song lyrics I wrote for a band called the Georgia Crawl. There currently trying to get on the Unsigned Bands tour of British Universitys (colleges for you yanks) sponsored by Jack Wills. So please go to http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=352712699126&ref=mf or www.jwunsigned.com and vote for The Georgia Crawl. Cheers ya'll!

Of fine local bands and the long missed alternative press.

2010-03-08T17:37:00.000Z

A short post today on the subject of non-music Zines and local music scenes. One of my friends has recently talked to me about beginning a paper printed old school zine so I started thinking about some of the best zines I'd seen over the years. Ironically as she specifically wants a cultural, artistic, lifestyle and literary zine I began to think about how the local music scene in my home town had died since music zines died out.

Plymouth has some great bands and acts such as the following:

Kat Marsh

My friend Vinces band The Wildcards.

HIV & the positives - all of whom I know well or have lived with...dangerous days.

My friend Mikes band Mad Dog Mcrea

And the sorely missed Circus of Sound.

But away from music and onto zines and literary things. My interested in paper zines goes back to the late nineties when I read old Riot Grrl zines I found in my school library (don't ask why, maybe I thought it was market research!). Riot Grrl was a primarily zine driven movement launched into the world with its seminal manifesto which is a must read for anyone who would call themselves either a feminist or zine editor. Its after effects as a movement still echo today as summed up well in this guardian article by Laura Barton.

In my late teens I read 200 Trips From The Counterculture and Free Press: Underground and alternative publications 1965-1975 both of which were written by the late great Jean Francois-Bizot.

Something about the iconic imagery of magazines of L'Actuel, The East Village Eye, International Times and Oz captured my imagination and I found myself longing for the days when the Free Press was a genuine reality of small newspapers. Now I enjoy every copy of the last remaining papers such as Pagan Dawn or Peace News or Class War that are still produced. In America the Alternative Press Syndicate has been replaced with the hideous AltWeeklies. For any of you who are seeking the alternative press that remains I recommend the Alternative Media Gateway or the archive of old articles at Hippy Land.

How we are served by the media and how we fail to serve the media

2010-03-05T16:42:00.000Z

It oft seems that there are two opinions held about the media in our age, either it is in crisis or it is undergoing a great rennaisance. I am unsure which of these these is true, I see emerging mass engagement projects such as Ctrl.Alt.Shift which seem at first to hold great promise. On closer examination it is a front organisation for Christian Aid which is trying to engage with young people through the appropriate and non-patronising methodology of binge drinking and hip hop.

"Want to be gangsta? Join Christian Aid." I can smell impending doom at a hundred paces and their website stinks of it.

The irony is that high quality good publications such as the New Left Review or the fantastic New Internationalist do not seem to be as widely read among the young as one would hope. Every school in the country as a display in its library offering discount subscriptions to the National Geographic or The Economist. The fact that The Economist is considered required reading by all A Level Politics or Economics students quickly creates a situation in which economic neo-liberalism is presented in the tones of Fukuyama; as the inevitable conclusion of history.

The fact that Marx and Socialist theories are only discussed in modern education in the context of "Marxist Doctrines In Controlled Economies" or the A Level politics video "The Death of Socialism" creates an implied bias in the education system which has now be sustain for a generation. The implications raised by this for a society where a decades worth of economics graduates have no knowledge of how to deal with anything over than a unfettered free market are huge. When that market is failing they are terrifying.

Worse than that is the degree to which the language of made up professions and practices has seeped into every corner of our language and our thought. Those in their early twenties happily refer to them selves as 'creative practioners' and of the need for 'synergy' in their 'round table discussions' without irony or self consciousness. In the words of Mallory's Arthur "Words are for poets Merlin".

It is an accepted part of modern literary criticism and social theories, as well as postmodernist philosophy, that are use of language influences are perceptions of reality and society. If language is the limit of our reality then changing our languages changes are capabilities as people. The danger of the new mumbo jumbo is that it obscures are reasons and hampers our attempts to think clearly or engage with the pressing issues of our time.

The medieval age was a time of superstition of dangerous words, heresy, blasphemy, magick, alchemy, natural philosophy, one true holy roman apostolic catholic church, feudal, divine right of kings, mercantilism, that for a thousand years kept Europe imprisoned in a cage of words and meaningless concepts. Only that kind of age would have asked Shakespeare to doctor the King James Bible.

The tyranny of the new language creates a cryptolect for the yuppies, the youthful, the third way apparatchiks which serves to seperate them from their parents generation but also the literature and thought of the past. Generally argots are only created by thieves or conspirators - here it is be done for a seperate reason; laziness.

It is a consequences of failiures in education and social planning that most young people are unable to use concise accurate language or engage with complex concepts without using non-terms. It is the fault of the leaders of our charities and media that they have produced so many low brow and generally inferior products in pursuit of a rotten zeitgeist that they have prevented the young from accessing the serious press. In time the serious press will die, and it will be the fault of the bluesky thinkers who tried to make it cool.

The horror of buzz words is that they allow foolish people to look intelligent and convince the intelligent they are fools for not knowing them. We are tricked into thinking that they're users are in touch with the times or the avante-garde of the digital age.

In fact they are the charlatans who betrayed the enlightenment.

Online article of the week:
Mathematics, relationalism and the rise of modern literary aesthetics.

Amazon pick of the week:

Relational Aesthetics by Nicolaus Bourriard

Pick of the web this week

2010-02-26T20:54:00.000Z

This weeks pick is short, biased and exclusive:

Miss Amber Donovans beautiful illustration blog, particularly lovely are the michael morpurgo animations.

Ms Felicity Russell's Blog darned with faint praise with lots of sewn goodies and general artiness

My high school drop out cousins blog on life after rustication three prosecco four

New moving pictures!

2010-02-26T15:34:00.005Z

I've updated the videos on the new youtube channel which should be visible as sidebar. Heres a selection of vignets of my life.

Me, Dmitri and Timo Franc discussing Russian Literature on SoundArt FM

Dangerous Joe Robinson and Triangular Lenkiewicz singing Bob Dylan.

Me breaking the news that Dave might be a secret Tory to his girlfriend.

Davie shortly after his girlfriend has glassed him.

Experimental 360 dome projection by igloovision.com showing a piece of a classical violin piece.

Sophie Deals Cartoons

2010-02-23T15:46:00.000Z

I am drawing everyones attention to the fact that my friend Sophie Deal has just begun a blog for her cartoons on at blogspot @ Sophie Deal Cartoons I use to sell her postcards at the Chestnut Tree so I'm sure that some of you will definitely remember them!

She has a website which contains a broader selection of her cartoons on webs which you can see here. I'm a bit of a fan of Sophies work so encourage you all the check out!

Pick of the web this week

2010-02-17T15:08:00.002Z

I'm restarting my pick of the internet for this week with various stories I've found in my trawling:

An interview with utopian pessimist Peter Thiel about how radical technology can save the world

An article about Josef Ganz the jewish designer of the VW Beetle who was robbed of his idea by the nazis

DollyQ one of the most interesting corsetry designers I've seen in a long time

Brilliantly crafted brass victoriana computer accessories

Liquid Fire Mantra - a unique and fascinating jewlery designer

the fantastic magazine new internationalist

Two links here about arcologies arcology.com with information about this alternative to urban sprawl and acrosanti, where one is being constructed!

Two websites for my fellow federalists Federal Union for European Federalists and the World Federalist Movement for others who still dream of a world state.

Also if anyone as ever read any Marcus Garvey then I recommend looking to the current agenda of the African Union to see how his dream of a United States of Africa is coming along!

And finally in preparation for an article I'm currently writing for Dagmar Schwitzgebel this link about inactivist thought my be interesting. Her blog Aktivism is visible on the links bar to the side.

enrapture rising

2010-02-14T12:04:00.003Z

Like a prisoner fleeing
up barbed wire I climbed
pissed on mysticated wine
shaven thugs with ties and cards
seized me ankles
pulled me down, cast me out

In the neon-flecked precipitation
wandered without destination
amidst the fate-scatter'd crowd
met a lover wandering also

Not then so tempestuous in seeming
white wine bottle in her grip
enraptured converse failing
walking emoting ceaselessly

The words of engagement seemed unheeded
sometimes there is no war for she is who is already fired
slipped, whispering clenched in amorous prevailance
the darting hover of the hummingbird an elusive long sort orchid testing

Reclining gently, rising with the fury of an angel that has woken
Into a play a dozen amorous devices, hoping hoping
yet no forebearance from this lustrous deity
she is as a household sun
demanding the re-orbit of all the old presumption

For beneath the coy exterior their is a wantoness revealed
as the floor is hidden beneath garments thrown and scatter'd
with a silent wild delicacy

I kiss soft skin dappled with the sea tanged dew that hints at ambergris & more.
our limbs cavorting in orient arrays
as vistas open a titillating potential of myriad unsuspected ravishment's

Laying exposed and animal in repose
tongues wag and touch
such the fearful wonder of diversity in possible future constacy arises
as if a sign glimpsed in elder heavens by an untrained priest

Some wonder of Mnemosynes design
plunges me to my affections to resign
yet as into sleeps embrace slowly sink
she stands leaving turns and winks goodbye

With the promise of correspondance to ensue
yet the jotted digits and single kiss besides the name
lets me wonder, shall I see miss x no more?

The garments on my chamber floor foretell
of parcels to be sent and addresses needed
as I twirl the pink cotton flowers from her hair
and sink into rembrance slowly

Glowing as I think of her bosoms heaving in orange light
as she shuddered with her flesh inflamed enveloping.
think how quietely she suspired
as I gabbled my enfrighte'd pride
reeling as I seek to hold that radiance
even at the risk of hubris in a world
where all else is now hubris besides!

New lyrics for Rose D'Anjou

2010-02-13T12:32:00.000Z

Was asked yesterday to come up with new lyrics to Rose D'Anjou a song that most of you have probably heard, if not you can here it here

Planned it as a series of double quatrains with a repetative central chorus. Have used half rhymes though as it enunciated too heavily and lost the necessary breathy quality when using true rhymes.

Chorus:
I throw up my all as the light burns me
I'm about to speak as the fights surround me

Verse 1:
I caught your eyes in the line
and I found myself but a lowly mime

chrous rept 1

Verse 2:
Surrounded by the far off sky
Found the star light streaming from our eyes

chrs rept 1

Verse 3:
Stranger in my own home town
Saw through it all to you

chrs rept 1

Verse 4:
Broken gasping we ran out the door
newly made beneath the moon

Am heading down to the Cornish Pirates versus Plymouth Albion derby later, An Vorladron Gernewek! My ny vynnav kows Sowsnek!

SoundArt FM, live music in the James Street Vaults and planning a trip to Tinkers Bubble.

2010-02-11T16:49:00.000Z

Have just been in the studio at SoundArt FM in Dartington today doing a talk radio piece with Timo Franc about Russian art and culture and how they relate to the current West. We had a live Russian folk musician in the studio and discussed his youth playing reggae behind the Iron Curtain!

It was quite exciting as I had no idea what I was going to be asked and had to provide quick fire answers about Russian history and politics. If you have a listen the podcast is here - I think its fairly obvious I was utterly unprepared but somehow blagged my way through!

In other news the Georgia Crawl had a good gig at the James Street Vaults last night which was only slightly marred by Joe's decision to fight Vince Lee for the title of coolest blues player in Plymouth. C'est la vie.

Also Adam Whittaker is planning a Plymouth counterculture group expedition to the long established sustainable community at Tinkers Bubble. Those of you who know the great, frequently late Michael Chant will know he grew up here so this could be an interesting opportunity to meet the people to blame. How could a week of pottering in a rural idyll and enjoying the future the sixties deserved be a bad thing?

Growling the blues

2010-02-09T21:32:00.002Z

Blues lyrics with the Georgia Crawl. 15/01/2010

Lyrics I improvised at a recent Georgia Crawl rehearsal, I've joined them at a live gig or too recently and they rehearse at my cottage which is pretty cool.

You can check em out on their myspace at though there aren't any recordings with me in up! http://www.myspace.com/thegeorgiacrawl

If your interested in book them send me a message on the facecrack! Its http://www.facebook.com/sampsonbennetts if your not already friends with me on there (its seems half the bloody world is!)

------------

One day I heard tell mah son was marrying a cajun queen.
So I headed down to his white house by the beach.
Saw a boy by the side of the road, chewin on an apple. All full of maggots.

Asked a copper for directions, he made me wanna hurl.
Dusty chapel with peeling paintwork, bloody bride weeping on the stairs. The sign reads:
"For sale: baby shoes never worn."

Made love with a blonde behind a bar in Naples, scars ain't faded yet.
Bought my father a vodka cherry coke and couldn't meet his eyes.
Stark memories etched acid on a sailors soul, he's seen oceans which ain't on maps.

Glorious righteous, whisky in my soul. All the girls a dancin and the air smells fine.
Supercalifragilisticpsychedeliclotions.

Woke up on a icy beach, walked out to sea with my mother to pray.
Seems there was only moss betwixt the trees, music ghosts across the water.
Clad in white samite mystic wonderful.

Lucid moments captured by flashing lights. Punctuate punctuate.
Don't cry over spilt mojitios, mint diffuses the liquors pallor and a subtle sweet shroud envelops our proceedings.

All stand and clear the court, Henman's lost and the jurys out.
Back to back we face the future, lost in a roaring gyre cracked raw lips seeking the rough mixture rolled inside the leaves.

The band is playing across the threshold of the day!
Lo! In a noose of sound we capture the city of the sultans and drink sweet mint tea as the night falls down.
This night ain't just for dreamers, everyone of blood see's the writing on the wall.
Problem is we can't read, no no, no no we can't.

Dogs howling at the sky, empty bowls throughout the city.
The owners won't wake up.
We are free. We are free again.
Fission bombs beat the sound of a mournful retreat.

Bitter coffee, hungover dawn, sun lights the way to work and we march the road as yester.

My father live in this and and my grandfather lived in this land and soon it will be washed away.
A million King Canutes wave placards and lords of men sleep badly, but the world heads up and the great wheel spins ever faster.

Indians cry blood in the jardin of le chat morte and we love our wives and they love their knives and take and their wives and they raise their knives once more... (repeat x3)

Their is a room in the cellar where a door is hidden behind a box, and in the door is a lock so intricate that six keys must be turned to make it yield.

And so it goes that the chord the song finishes with is the same that it stars with. And so it goes.

Fenestre across the web, tune to a thousand shifting chatter stations waiting for the word: Alas, babylon has fallen!

I have made a mess of the html

2010-02-09T14:26:00.000Z

Hey all, sorry the blogs been chaotic lately have been trying to code it into the website with little luck and seem to have lost all the comments, have reposted quite a few posts but I'm afraid lots of the links and such are dead now.

All the short comic strips that I own the copyright to are available at http://sampson-bennetts.magix.net/ and some of the comments are visible on www.myspace.com/sambennetts. Quite scary realising the the first issue of Providence Delta was 2006 and the poetry performances were in '04!

In news Chris Summerfield emailed me the link to these rather ancient photos of the early days of the cafe, Grant will shoot me for publicising them but such is life - I was shocked how strange I used to look!
http://www.slide.com/r/yL6m9sGJwD-_t1hTpS-YXgi3opbZSY9C?map=2&cy=ms

Hopefully I'll have the posts reordered later today!

- Sam

Ancient entry of the amsterdam journal

2010-02-09T14:16:00.000Z

Of Wisdom

2010-02-09T14:13:00.000Z

>I sat upon a small forgotten isle
>Built from the cast off shells
>Of a thousand human dreams
>
>Trees of knowledge lifted above my head
>And swayed in the endless wind of despair
>And all around me
>Water water everywhere
>
>But not a drop to drink
>No poison for my taste
>All specified to palates as yet unborn
>
>Everyone has an area
>In which they excel
>And my was lost with the passing of the age of dreams
>
>In lost canyons and hills of forest green
>Where the mountains touch the sky
>My place was among the alleys of Constantinople
>The Armies of Great Alexander and Egyptian traders sailing
>
>For from the beaches of my island stretches an ocean
>As vast and uncharted as human intellect doth span
>Specked with islands and glimpses of the truth
>
>This vast ocean contains all ignorance
>Every unknown, every not fact
>All the antithesis's to common sense
>
>My path is clear I will sail upon the sea
>I will build a boat of knowledge fill my sails with the windy desperation
>And head towards the setting sun
>
>I can fly higher than the highest gull
>For no wind blows beneath my wings
>I can go faster than the blazing tachyons
>
>For my I am motivated, by the fear of death
>(and the loss it entails)
>I can travel further than the mindless probes
>
>For I am the last great, British, explorer and born for this journey
>
>I can go anywhere I can touch the stars
>And into the west I head, away from the bent world
>
>Fleeing before
>
>The candle flame of hope flickers and dies in the wind of despair
>And that briefest light of human intellect is gone
>And I am alone
>
>Last sailor heads towards the setting sun, alone in cold galaxy
>These are his twilight days
>He has touched the sky
>
>He has left the mortal herd
>And must find a place to die
>
>-
>
>July `04

This was written about me:

2010-02-09T14:06:00.000Z

This was written about me by the Gloucester based poet Kate Daniels:

He is a spectre.
Indefinite,
pouring like sand from my cupped hands.

I am glass.

He is substantial, satisfying
like the smooth bulged surface of a conker.
He is duvet, pillow, mattress,
still warm from waking.

Close,
(the weighted luxury of a fur coat)

and I am heavy with it.

He is sinew.
Sprawled,
knees turned out,
with the self-assured grandeur of a lion.

I am sometimes reminded
Of his teacher-like sensibilities

though he is like a child
wild and eager.

Cape, crown, mask.
He is decadent,
ridiculous.

He is face paint.

I am honey
Illuminating and overflowing.

I am smoke.

I hate the seven seas of earth, for I sailed an Eighth Sea long ago

2010-02-09T14:02:00.000Z

I hate the seven seas of earth, for I sailed an Eighth Sea long ago

My father always wishes me to sail with him
He tries to convince me to climb aboard his yacht, to follw salt wind o'er the dank gulf
Watch the white sails fill with cool breeze
Listed as thick waves die upon our flanks
Slide across the rippling mirror of the Earth-bound ocean

Coastlines fade, and change, move ever from the world of soil
Beyond the realms where men shout and their steel engines roam
Beyond the land grass blows and rain patters on rocks of grey
Beyond the land where poets lie with soft free women, dreaming of prophesy and agape

Out her the sun blazes, a fury unshielded
All the waters, of all mans years run as one, indifferent to the pssage of the fallen ages
If a galleon or trireme swanned past now then sciene I witness would not be changed, since last such things were common
No erosion changes the blue deep, time has not wearied this liquid eternity
Sea birds cry over head, speaking of us, not with us

And, if I feel a haunting pain, I plead an alien empathy of you men
That, haunting pain, makes ever moment upon the endless deep a moment of far rembrance
The winnowing of my soul repeated
For once, in a time without time, before my fsthers ancienstors crawled from the Azure depths of Earthen Sea
I sailed myself, alone, upon waters foreign to any human navigator
The oceans of another younger, older world than this

Aye, I remember another globe which spun young and fresh beneath a hot blue sun in a cool green sky
Few were the emerald isles scattering that turquoise main
Rare the Fisher People who ventured slowly in canoes stretched of their own immortal skin
I rode the virgin world, yea, tamed the oceans beneath my god carved rudder
Repaired that first vessel in ports where men could not venture
Carved masts, wove rigging, brewed tree sap's tar
Other sailors came in time, to play, inspired by the example of the first to run on waves

Endless tome rendered that world old, old as ages, older than oceans are meant to be
The sun hung red and huge, in the purpling sky
Land spread cancerously across the se, dried by the energies of heat strewn heavens
New dark insidious kelps choked the channels of the Fisher People
Our civilisation crumbled slowly, ended fast
Fiery end as the godhead, goddead of the star smashed down
That first world gone forever
I am as one who's soul is slain, my first world gone, the only one I can call my own, lost to another aeon

Opened my eyes, born again
Upon this earth, this world of water and rock
Mourning for the boundless World Ocean that knew no continents, the Ocean I reckoned, I named
Never again wishing venture far from land, whatever this father of mine wills
Not to raise the memories of the day when I sailed upon and Eighth Sea
For how can you tell a man whose heart consists of winds and speeds, that you fear his joy, for it was once yours?
That you tamed a world, alone
That you were the Fisher-King of a Fisher People, and ruled the sea foam from a wooden silk sailed throne
I can never sail here, on the ocean made for men, when it compares so brutishly to those strange meridians I once knew.

- Written in the winter of '04 for a performance in the BacBar

The Manifesto of the Closed Narrative

2010-02-09T13:43:00.000Z

The manifesto

Tuesday, 02 October 2007 at 03:11 | Edit note | Delete

The Manifesto of the Closed Narrative

I am Sam Grenville Bennetts.

While I have lived the earth has orbited the sun twenty times. I remember enough of history in enough detail that some days I feel as if I have lived millennia.

Every night I dream a different future, I dream futures of such clarity and such blinding possibility that they remove the novelty of life by laying it passé before prescient equivalences.

I have now in my twentieth summer (which is passing into my twentieth autumn as I write) entered into that absurd state of anti-enlightment in which I realise I have learnt so much that truly I know nothing. Though I have studied aeons of literature, politics, theology and philosophy I am come no further than Socrates and his realisation that to be truly wise a human must realise they know nothing.

I suspect further that this moment in a human’s intellectual development is one of the most fundamental milestones they can pass within the boundaries of human existence- that is those which have thus far been mapped. What is a twenty first birthday, a marriage, a child, a retirement compared with the moment you realise the inability of the human mind to attach meaning to anything? When you realise the likely meaningless of all?

I remember talking with a friend a bare few years ago (though it seems an eternity separates me from the man I was then) about the difference between humans and animals. We came then to the conclusion that if were to take the scientific theories of evolution and neurobiology as our gospel the moment when a human could be considered a “Proper Human” – in the sense of a human who is fully what it means to be a human – is when they seeks to attach meaning and value and purpose to their own existence.

Aye, there are sociopaths and sycophants and ignoramuses who never seek knowledge or wisdom for themselves but such people remain forever childlike. Though they may walk and talk and pass for humans among the multitude they are not truly a representation of what it is to be a human.

However it strikes me that one of the things that art and wisdom has sundered upon a fair few times across the chronicles of the dreams and fears of men and women is the terrible existential angst of the world. It is the state entered into by those few in any age who have walked far enough down the road of knowledge to have conclusively returned in certainty back to the ignorance from which they came.

Is this not a second boundary? A second transition from condition to condition?

To go from the animal-in-the-shape-of-a-h

uman to a “Proper Human” is one thing – all one must do is seek to establish and find for oneself a meaning and purpose and explanation. Until you begin that work you cannot truly call yourself a human. But to go further than that? To complete that work? That is what all the prophets and philosophers and lamas have ever sought.

Most of course become weary upon the road, for it is a long one and one that few are equipped for it. Indeed mankind has made scant progress at walking it this last hundred thousand years. When a man falls it is usually because he is tired of searching and in his desire for answers grasps at anything he is offered, religion, wine, scientific humanism, relativism, drugs, nirvana…

Perhaps though mankind has merely not recognised the few before who have achieved the supposedly impossible and reached the end of the path. Perhaps the reason that they have not recognised those who have reached the end is because the path is a circle.

Did not Socrates know? That the true wisdom is that man cannot know anything.

Did not Nietzsche know? That all values must be re-evaluated – that man must move beyond the false values of humanity.

Did not Sartre know? That man must create meaning for himself.

Furthermore is this not the centre of the great myth of Western Civilisation? That man once existed in a state of grace, Eden, but sought to steal from the tree of knowledge and was brought low…damned to live alone and graceless in the horror of the material world, ever searching for spiritual redemption. Yet at the end of the Christian myth we are told that the “elect of god” can return to paradise and return to the perfect innocence and ignorance of beasts.

I stand now alone, in this post-modern hyper-real age and I find that the bread and circuses I am provided with hold no succour for me. I intended to devote my entire life to the search for meaning, I thought that science could give me meaning but all it gave me was explanation.

I desired ever harder for meaning and in my desperation almost fell upon the path of Christianity because I loved and admired one of the people who walked that path.

In one of the rare moments of wisdom of my life I turned my face from her and all the works of that false religion. I know that there is likely to be no god, but I am wise enough to know that only a fool can have faith. To be wise you know that you know nothing.

To be free from the burden of seeking, to be free from desiring knowledge you must return to the condition of the animals and live for the sake of living, eat because you are hungry, fear because you are scared and love because you love.

There is no why and wherefore for we are alone beneath the stars.

I am satisfied, I think, with the beauty of that idea alone.

And there the story of mankind finishes, as it began. Let the story begin again.

demonstration for petley

2009-11-06T13:08:00.001Z

hello in library with dan

Welcome to META-AGORA

2009-11-03T06:28:00.000Z

META-AGORA is an open ended journal for creative practitioner, academics, graduates, artists, autodidacts, engineers and politicians working in the south west of England. It is based in the South West of England and emerged from the work of staff involved in the Plymouth Prophet, Promethean Institute and Alternative Students Guide.

META-AGORA is published as thrice yearly journal with the first edition expected in the shops in early spring 2010 – its purpose is to create an autonomous thought space for discussion an exchange of ideas between disciplines and workplaces. In the same way that the Agora of ancient Athens was a physical meeting place for everyone from potters and philosophers to mathematicians and soldiers META-AGORA attempts to replicate that process and experience with the context of virtuality and simulation of today’s society.

Though the journal will be sold in bookshops, galleries, community centres and libraries each edition will be launched with a day SyntheticSymposium conference of speeches, discussions and workshops concluding with an evening meal.

This is to be linked together with a central website and discussion forum, blog, twitter page and periodic events and trips to create a space for thought, networking and discussion to occur in both cyberspace and the real world with an aim towards creating strong interdisciplinary partnerships for people working in all fields.

Anybody is invited to submit work be they a naval engineer, a teacher who feels they aren’t using there PhD, a fresh graduate who misses writing essays or an artist who wishes to discuss the conceptual framework of their work. Academic qualifications and other such pieces of paper are not a requirement – a thought, an idea, a plan is all that is required.

The articles are submitted in the same manner as academic paper and peer reviewed by other contributing writers and experts in the field. Thus the workshops and lectures of each launch SyntheticSymposium serve as presentations of these papers.

The final submission date for the edition of META-AGORA currently in production for SyntheticSymposium Spring 2010 is the 21^st of December 2009.

A design for a man

2005-12-27T02:16:00.002Z

When one does not possess something one desires which one can create without disproportional hardship it is logical that one create things. I feel like becoming logical and the dice agree. I do not possess a stable personality - I am a ever changing individual. This is something which seems likely to kill me before I have a chance to experience creation fully. Thus I will design myself a personality.

Religious Beliefs: Atheist with leanings towards Voltarian Deism
Epistemology: Reason
Political Beliefs: Libertarian Capitalism with Enviromental Concerns
Metaphysical Beliefs: Objective Reality with value given to additional concepts in proportional to their conceptual value.
Ethics: Decalogic - the decalogue is given below.

I) No man shall ask for what he has not earned nor that he cannot yet earn, nor shall any other man give such unto him.
II) No man shall impede the possible accession or transcendence of human race into another form.
IIV) No man shall take action likely to endanger the continued existence of the human race.
IV) No man shall destroy knowledge, be it by slaying its soul possessor, book-murder, destruction of tools of interpretation or disruption of data.
V) The basis of stable society is the social contract, the laws of the land shall be respected and stablity maintained.
VI) Respect shall be given to ancestors, tribal boundaries, blood, the soil of your land and the harvest of that soil - as it is due.
VII) Gratitude will be shown for this existence which is a gift and this glorious world - even though it had no giver.
VII) A man shall be strong and unbending in his will, he will not destory himself, he will fight for what is his and what he may believe - in war he shall be like a hawk of steel who does not fear the weapons of his enemies.
IIX) You will not enslave your mind to the conceptions of other cultures, good, evil, karma... You will do only what is natural and know that nothing is unnatural that emerges from a natural world. Thus all the world is natural and the divisions of moral dualism are a nonsense.
IX) You will educate yourself in literature and legend, in sport and song, in war and lovemaking, in experience and science. Know thy world, know thy self. Wisdom is a duty not a luxury.
X) You will die more that you had any potential or right to become.

I will right poetry and become a bard. I will buy a motorbike and ride it. I will aspire to own a horse. I will own a coffee shop. I will do volunteer work as a magistrate. I will campaign politically. I will get more tattoos but none that are visible. I will get a clay pipe and a captains hat like my fathers. I will exercise frequently and become fit and healthy. I will learn to cook well and do so. One day I will run for election. I will write books. I will campaign for transhumanism. As I can afford it I will change my body and my brain.

I will become something else, I know not what but I know it will be something other than a man. I swear I will do this by the blood of Israel that flows in my veins, my the soil of Cornwall which bore me, by the Lines of Marc and David of which I am descended for all Jewes and all Cornishmen have the blood of Kings, I swear it as a Son of Adam and man of Logress, I swear it by poets soul and my philosophers mind, I swear it by every mote of dust and flicker of electrical fire which makes me who I am, I swear it that I might see myself from without and gaze into the abyss with other eyes. I do so because I wouldst know the mind of God.

Watch.

Body modification?

2005-12-17T14:35:00.000Z

The moment I blinded my left eye...

Manifesto Of Temporary Amusement

2005-12-17T13:40:00.001Z

AUTHORS APOLOGY/SELF CONGRATULATION FOR HIS WORK
I do not pretend for a moment that this manifesto represents a lasting subscription to any particular ideology or set of beliefs on my part. Indeed I am not entirely sure I completely believe it now, but then as you will come to understand upon reading further I do not consider belief a matter of any great importance.

The chief reason I have written this manifesto is that it is amusing me to at the moment, the reason I have chosen these particular concepts to articulate is because they amuse me. I do not consider it be much worth reading.

I have entitled it Manifesto Of Temporary Amusement because it is certainly a Manifesto and Temporary Amusement is what it is providing.

I would like to dedicate this text to Jacques De Molay, John Galt and the plank of wood that broke the spine of Julius Evola.

------------------------------------------------------

POINT ONE: It appears that almost anything can be proved or disproved with logic, statistics and science. This rather devalues all the proofs provided by these fields provide.

POINT TWO: Anthropology and observation of human behaviour seems to indicate that human beings will believe in (in the sense where belief means faith) in almost anything. This rather devalues the argument that we should just have faith in things.

Where is the difference between the man in odd clothes living Nevada who has faith that Elvis still lives and the man in odd clothes in Rome who has faith that Yeshua Ben Nazareth (a jewish carpenter and insurrectionist against the roman empire) still lives? If anything the idea of Elvis still living seems infinitely more likely...

POINT THREE: The creation of relativistic ethical systems where are all values are relative is the beginning of the end of all ethical systems. I have come to the conclusion that there is no such things as right and wrong, though it is amusing to occasional to claim subscription to various fundamentalist ethical systems.

Let us examine to of the great fathers of modern ethics, Yahweh God of Israel and the Moslem prophet Mohammed. Mohammed married and enjoyed sexual relations with a nine year old girl at point in his career and founded his religion by starting and army and killing everyone who disagreed with him. When he destroyed all the other statues of gods in the Kaabaa in Mecca leaving only Allah the 'one true god' it turned out that by an extraordinary co-incidence Allah was the god of the Quarish tribe -of which Mohammed was a member.

As for the God Yahweh at various points in his career as a deity he wipes out the entire human race bar one man named Noah who he forces to marry his sister, destroys two entire cities including all women and children because some of the men are homosexual and encourages various semitic tribes to commit genocide upon one another.

What wonderful role models.

It strikes me that ideas of right and wrong change throughout time, even peoples individual ideas of right and wrong change during their life (lo! the existence of words like repentence, apostate, regret, forgive etc). If right and wrong are such fluid concepts it seems to me most likely that they do not exist at all.

POINT FOUR: If there is some possible state of 'goodness' or even one of 'higher understanding' it would probably be wise to try and reach it. Some terrible (if there is such a thing as terrible) consequence could result from a simple action which anyone could unwittingly commit, and only the knowledge gained from transcending the human condition could enlighten us enough to save us.

What if there is a god who damns people who are not lustful enough to burn in hellfire? What if an alien superbeing has resolved to destroy the world if anybody ever attempts to sell a tea cosy at the goods market in Timbuktu? What if there is nothing to be gained from transcendence but the sheer novelty and joy of it all?

POINT FIVE: I imagine one can only transcend the human condition when one has actually lived the human condition itself. It seems obvious to me that anybody who becomes a devout buddhist and leads an ascetic celibate life on a mountaintop is unlikely to transcend humanity - after all they haven't even experienced being human. It would be like trying to run before you can walk, or more precisely like trying to pilot a supersonic airliner through difficult turbulence before you have left the cradle.

Thus it seems that attempts at self denial are going to do precisely that - deny the self. Thus the self would be denied those physical and intellectual pleasures, horrors, pains and experiences it needs to grow and develop in depth and strength. If one has not lived as a man how can one hope to survive as ubermensch?

POINT SIX: Now the arguments of sceptics, nihilists, logicians and sophists can prove or disprove almost anything then it seems as if the holding of opinions on anything is quite purposeless. Peoples opinions and beliefs are all held as matters of faith and argued out in a ritualised dance of arguments that all educated men have heard before; the turtle necked student socialist argues indignantly with the young conservative, the catholic priest seeks to convert the militant atheist, the LaVeyan Satanist patronizes the Hippy Pagan, the libertarian disputes the establishment of the collectivists who he despises....

In the 21st century it seems almost inevitable we will become agnostic, apolitical, amoral zombies dwelling in a sea of post-modern meaninglessness. Mankind has gathered so much knowledge that the arguments and counter-arguments in favour of almost all things are known - does this mean we have reached the end of our intellectual journey?

I think (at least sometimes I think) we can continue our journey best if we move beyond the idea of opinions and beliefs. Luke Rhineheart was one the right lines with his idea of destroying the ego not through meditation but by replacing his faculty of reason with a set of dice. Equally Julius Evola hit the nail upon the head when he said we must consider opinions tools for arguing things or achieving tasks.

POINT SEVEN: I have no real beliefs or opinions, but I have things I enjoy. I frequently subscribe to causes which it suits me to support, this afternoon as I write this; I support the destruction of the state of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian State, I sympathize with the republican cause in Ireland, I support ETA as well as their sworn enemy the Falange Party, I am a militant atheist who would abolish religion, I believe in the act of communing with Dionysus by drinking wine and I dislike winter.

These opinions can all change at any moment with no logical basis but my whims. We are all just our whims, it is is only through existential action we can seize control of our own capricious and dangerous natures.

POINT EIGHT: To go beyond the state of man is not enough - merely by trying to be more than man you achieve your end to some degree - nor is it enough to become inhuman. To have any measurable degree of success one must be able to settle into a stable new personality or non-personality construct.

- S G BENNETTS 2005

Happy hunting!

Greetings...

2005-12-17T13:18:00.001Z

Lords, ladies and gentlemen,
I beg you the honor of allowing me to introduce myself (though I admit I am uncertain whether I exist) my name is Sampson Grenville Bennetts I was born (though I do not believe in birth) on the 16th of July 1987 AD.

My home city is Plymouth on the border between the English County of Devonshire and the Duchy of Cornwall. I currently reside in Bristol where I am studying Law at the University of the West of England. This might seem like and unusual choice of subject but it will perhaps make sense if you understand I picked my university and course through clearing using a set of dice after reading Luke Rhineharts book the Dice Man following being fired from my previous position as a jeanswear salesman. I know I will not last long at this course.

Yours and mine,

S G Bennetts
Electric Shaman

Postus Scriptorum: I enclose an amusing photo of me and some friends - there is no reason for this. I am the fellow in a army suit with a bird cage on my head.

Love Is The Law Love Under Will

This is a test post.

2005-12-17T12:58:00.001Z

This is a test post. The above image is I.

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