“The proper position of women in the movement is prone”

There are moments when those who most puff themselves up as warriors against empire suddenly seem its most plausible — not to say effective — secret hirelings.

decline of the western

rough notes on oaters, watched when tired and in need of semi-brainless distraction while re-decorating my flat, and written up at speed without checking except dates and such in phil hardy’s big book o cowboys…

i have a bunch more recorded, to be watched and written up at some point — and some vague thoughts about what had been strong and became less so (and why) which i may also write up at some point (don’t hold breath)

gooncounters of the blurred kind

“No men with names that sound like Aglooka or Toolooa leap from the [crew lists of the Erebus and Terror] in the manner of ‘Ill-kern’/Pilkington or ‘Oolizhen’/Allison. However, it should be remembered that [Vilhjalmur] Stefansson found that even after repeated coaching the Inuit pronounced ‘Jim’ as ‘Perk’ or ‘Zerk’ and that to them ‘Rae’ sounded just like ‘Nerk’.”
—Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, by David C. Woodman, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1st pb edn 1992, p.197

our morals and theirs

His politics is what he does. What he says — his “line” — is merely how he gets his hand on someone’s wallet, or up someone’s skirt. Ideologues and intellectuals — left, right, centre, other — are often (actually not so) strangely boneheaded about this. They’ve invested so much in mastering specific verbal arguments, big technical shibboleth words and metrics, that they can’t bear to cede how very much easier they are to play as a result.

i’ve seen lots of pretty girls

All the talking heads in the Peter Green documentary were male heads, I believe; and — for all they’ve achieved a kind of artless wondering openness towards the discussion of what must have been very tricky passages of their long-ago past — none seemed especially wise heads. Green himself, hearteningly enough, has emerged as a cheerfully plump balding hobbit of a man, a long long way from the ethereal and curly-headed yearning elf-poet of yore: he has — for someone who’s been through the extended labyrinthine haze of mental breakdown, medication and ECT and long stays on wards — a strikingly exact memory of moments, artistic or chemical or inspirational, on the cusp of his breakdown. He’s vague enough about what he wanted, what drove him — a thing that wasn’t yet there, in his music and his playing — but he’s funny and practical about everything else. Continue reading “i’ve seen lots of pretty girls”

how to sustain an intellectual conversation (in your head)

one thread of the scott/amundsen post refers (without saying so) all the way back to something kogan wrote in why music sucks in 1989 or so: which i have been puzzling away at ever since — explanation in the FT footnotes when i get round to em (i hope and plan)