johannes k.

what love does (and doesn't)

some people tell me they never watch the news or read the newspaper because what goes on in the world troubles them too much. my position on this is unclear to me at the time of writing but the first thing i do everyday over coffee is read the times online, the guardian, de volkskrant and several other dutch newspapers. (i would love to include the age in the list as i used to when i lived in australia but this once venerable serious newspaper has become a joke, at least online.)

not now

You might say the idea of cataloguing all the stupid things human beings have done and said would be a fool's errand worthy in itself of being included in the catalogue and Matthijs van Boxsel, author of the Encyclopedia of Stupidity, would probably agree. He is currently up to the second volume and one expects there is an infinite number of volumes still to come. It rather reminds me of Borges's Limited Catalogue of Endless Things mentioned in his story The Aleph.

One of the people included in the Encyclopedia is a bloke called Jan Gerardszoon from Gorp en Beek (1519-1572) who changed his name to Johannes Goropius Becanus. He was a lecturer at Leuven University who believed that the language spoken in Paradise was Dutch — or Flemish/Brabants — and that Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and so on were all Dutch, or rather Brabanders. His views were not uncontroversial even to his contemporaries.

cooking for people who enjoy eating what you've made is really fun! go here for recipe

exquisitely tender

this is from july 2016 just after arriving in europe. i may have posted it before at some point but today i made a small but crucial edit in the final para — and i am still looking for the right dutch word for 'gentle'. someone suggested zachtmoedig.

laurie anderson and lou reed rules to live by (it's good to have a few catchwords to fall back on when there's not enough time to think.)

The first one is don't be afraid of anyone. And second is get a really good bullshit detector and learn how to use it.  And third is be really really tender.

yes but 1. how? 2. where do i get this bullshit detector? 3. yes yes yes – but why am i uncomfortable with the word ‘tender’ in this context? because it’s used for meat? :p or because it’s used for sensitivity to pain? do the americans use ‘tender’ in a different way?

my book was originally called ‘exquisitely tender’ which was what a doctor wrote in the file notes about how a patient presented on admission.

i changed the title to ‘i am here’ because i thought it was more direct. such a simple straight forward statement. but i do still wonder sometimes if ‘exquisitely tender’ would not have been a more evocative title?

so i think the association with of pain and fragility is the problem with the word ‘tender’ for me. tender in the sense of the opposite of tough. 'delicate' does some of the same work but ‘susceptible to injury’ is not what springs to my mind when i hear delicate. tender can also be used in the context of age to mean immature.

gentle, caring, compassionate, affectionate, fond, warm, loving, as well as delicate that's what laurie and lou mean i think – and i would add ‘respectful’ to that because there is no love without respect...

Godfried Bomans op Rottumerplaat:

Omdat ik voortdurend als een stip in een onafzienbare vlakte zit, groeit de behoefte aan houvast en denk ik vaak: heeft dit allemaal een bedoeling? In een soort horror vacui zoek je een spil, waar die onbegrijpelijke wereld om draait en ik begrijp nu opeens waarom vele zeelui godsdienstig zijn. De gedachte dat heel deze wilde barbarij alleen maar zichzelf betekent is voor mij even raadselachtig als het aannemen van een super-intellect. Ik zit in een soort oer-verbazing gevangen. De zee schuimt tot aan de horizon. De tent siddert en brult, maar houdt het nog steeds. Midden in dat geweld zit een meneer aan een tafeltje, die schrijft.

human beings have a problem : they have a relationship with what is not. one might say, they exist in relation to what is not.

of course they exist in relation to what is as well but this relation is less complex, less troubling, and often less compelling.

and one might say, their relation to what is not is more important in terms of what they are and how they are able to be, than their relation to what is — and it is more complex because what is not is infinite.

you can imagine what is not you can desire what is not you can (try to) predict what will be you can mourn what was, regret what was not, never was, will never be — can not be.

ha ha ... what a predicament!

so now what?!

dear arnon

even if i did believe in god or gods it would be quite difficult to believe in the materialisation of a god such as is proposed by the christians, but the part of the story i am most incredulous about is that a god would materialize as a man.

surely if you were a god and you could came down to earth in any material form whatsoever you would do so as a woman, possibly one that looked like kristen stewart — or, say, as a melancholy thistle, tall and upright and topped with gouts of pewter down that blow freely in the lightest breeze.*

what form would you choose if you were a god (not that i am, by saying that, implying that you're not) if you appeared on earth in a material form?

anyway i do my best to ignore the festive season except that if you have a mother who is still alive and kicking and who loves chanel no.5 products, it is impossible to do so completely.

love johannes

* apologies to melissa harrison of the times nature notes.

she is a massive, luminous globule of plasma only just being held together by gravity which, once it reaches a sufficient density of matter, will begin to collapse under its own gravitational force.

the problem is not lunatics taking over the asylum — they're usually too preoccupied with being crazy — it's that organisations and institutions set up by well-meaning people end up being run by those who believe that systems are more important than people (and animals and trees and rivers and stones) that is bureaucrats, beancounters and people with degrees in organisational management.

Levinas :

The 'small goodness' from one person to another is lost and deformed as soon as it seeks organization and universality and system, as soon as it opts for doctrine, a treatise of politics and theology, a party, a state, and even a church. Yet it remains the sole refuge of the good in being. Unbeaten, it undergoes the violence of evil, which, as small goodness, it can neither vanquish nor drive out.

last night tried to watch dirk de wachter give a talk at radboud university which wasn't easy because the technology was not cooperating. it's a rather weird little grab bag of bits and pieces, 'funny' personal stories and artworks the relevance of which were more than a little far fetched but nevertheless there were quite number of good things and if you understand dutch (or rather flemish) it's worth watching. for a start he looks like an uncanny cross between nick cave and charles aznavour.

more here ...

it should be a law of physics that any organisation or institution which claims to have the capacity to reveal some kind of truth, inevitably becomes corrupt.

ok so maybe it can be a law of metaphysics. 🙂

nothing changes — only your relation to things changes.

According to Tomonobu Imamichi, Heidegger's concept of Dasein was inspired — although Heidegger remained silent on this — by Okakura Kakuzo's concept of das-in-der-Welt-sein (being-in-the-worldness, worldliness) expressed in The Book of Tea to describe Zhuangzi's Taoist philosophy, which Imamichi's teacher had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having followed lessons with him the year before. link

ha! mind = 💥

ah buddhism. you can sell anything to alienated isolated humans in the west if you claim that what you're selling has something to do with it — from beauty products, to spiritual care, to cheap concrete fountains for your garden — or you can charge people serious sums of money to have your clitoris stroked in public. in the amerika god no longer loves, the latest cult to have been exposed is om or orgasmic meditation. their practice, which supposedly has origins in buddhist ritual, involves one person stroking the “upper left quadrant” of someone else's clitoris for precisely 15 minutes. om, or “ohming” as its adherents call it, is a technique propagated by onetaste, a sexual wellness company founded in 2004 in san francisco. a typically breathless times article describes its “messianic leader, nicole daedone” as “a charismatic art gallerist who claims she saw the light at a party when a buddhist monk persuaded her to try om on the spot.”

i guess parties in san francisco are a little ... different.

the bbc has all the guff in a ten part podcast.

last night :

so much is said and written every day but so much more is and remains unsaid.

this is the shadow of everything that is said : all the things you would like to say but feel unable to and everything you don't want to say — about what you did and didn't do and think and feel and hoped for but were disappointed and are now ashamed of allowing yourself to think.

how do i make it possible for you to tell me? why would you tell me? because i have magic powers?

because i can forgive you, i can give you absolution.

this does not come from an authority or a supposed supernatural being but it has come about (is ontstaan) in the course of living and seeing and listening — by knowing and speaking and being present — and by responding, by loving, and somehow, mysteriously, acquiring the capacity to love without expecting or demanding anything in return ...

i love the world and life and its mystery … het mysterieuze iets …

for more on this and many other things, listen to my conversation with claartje kruijff.
it will help if you understand dutch.

there are many, one might say too many, different kinds of Tea-rex dinosaur mugs.

i like to read the times obituaries over coffee in the early morning. it's useful for being-towards-death. in today's obituary of the model isa stoppi, i learn that she had “two lakes in place of her eyes.” “aquamarine portals”, the times calls them, “allied to a glacial but regal elegance.”

and now she's dead. so it goes.

link | archive

What did Bill Murray whisper into Scarlett Johansson’s ear at the end of Lost in Translation? We'll never know. That is, we'll never know what Bob Harris whispered into Charlotte's ear. Bill Murray knows, and Scarlett Johansson — and of course Sofia Coppola knows, but she apparently said that at the time she was 'kind of stuck' on how to convey 'the epicness' of the moment.

“I didn’t intend for it to be silent and then in the editing we were, like, ‘Oh it’s better if it’s just between them and the audience puts in their own interpretation.’”

Ah serendipity.

i slept quite well but there was some acid reflux during the night. it might have been the red spicy sauce he put on my falafels. he did ask but it was lost in translation. i thought he was asking if i wanted a bag. and i did. and then he starts ladling the evil looking red spicy sauce onto my falafels and i am like, what are you doing?! and he said, i made it myself! it's good! and i felt sad for him, the palestinian man in the falafel shop, who, when he asks, with a slight grin, if you want spicy sauce, is so misunderstood.

watching a far right political party self destruct in slow motion is great entertainment. woa. comparing himself with johan cruijff, and the fvd with ajax! that will cost him several thousand votes.

i'll give him this though : he does a damn good impression of tommy cooper, no deep fakes needed. check this out :

when i first arrived back in europe in 2016 i knew about two people there and one of them hated me so i decided that, for one year, i'd be saying yes to any and all invitations — and i'd try to be nice.

i ended up in some mind-numbingly boring situations but i'd console my-so-called-self with the thought 'this is the Year of Saying Yes!'. these days i am very reluctant to say yes to things. the default is 'no sorry too busy or too tired' and, as of next week i will be adding : 'no, i've joined a monastery so i don't go out much' to my repertoire.

also, as most people who can be bothered reading this know, i am not much of a party dude anymore. never was really but 20 years ago, if you put enough booze and/or mind-altering substances into me (or i put them into myself), i was up for anything. but alas at my rapidly advancing age i have to use my ever diminishing reserves of energy sparingly.

so today the first order of the day is to decide whether, and how, to respond to a birthday party invitation.

als je niet mijn moeder bent bel me dan niet om acht uur dertig en zelfs al ben je mijn moeder.

en ook niet om negen uur dertig of tien uur — okee wel ná tienen als je me absoluut moet bellen bel dan maar, ik bedoel 's morgens.

en bel me alsjeblieft 's avonds helemaal niet tenzij je aan het doodgaan bent en je nog even gauw met iemand iets moet bespreken.

We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task.

Henry James — The Middle Years

all your computers are belong to us

i used to love computers and now i hate them — and they make me sad. here is why. (work in progress ...)

ik sta in de krant vandaag. [ ...previously ]

and, since someone asked, i'll tell the story about the violators one more time, but that's it...

ok so finally, after a couple of false starts, the verdict is in : de geeeeeekste falafel in eindhoven is from falafel masters!

an unimposing looking establishment it may be and in corona times the selection is not exactly vast but what do you want from a falafel place? you want the falafel to be freshly made in from of your very eyes? you want to eat houmos and when you close those eyes imagine yourself in palestine? you want a yummy little warm pita bread with it? you want everything to be vegetarian and most things to be vegan and no meat anywhere in the shop? you got it! you want vegetarian kebbe? oops sorry! you have to wait til monday. in fact you're probably better off not looking at the online menu because nearly everything pictured there they don't have, at least not today.

falafel masters is a few minutes walk from strijp-s. on the weekend they may have specials. check their facebook page. if you read dutch, the inimitable mooncake who is from eindhoven, waxes lyrical about the place here.

Edisonstraat 131-133 5621 HM Eindhoven 040 84 23 406 info@falafelmasters.com

and beware : on fridays falafel masters is closed until 14.30! and don't leave your glasses on the train.

den dolder. sauzenhart van nederland.

but it's ok. i'm just passing through.

trauerarbeit

Interesting interview in the NRC with Jacob Jolij, cognitief psycholoog en afdelingshoofd van het DataLab Sociale Wetenschappen aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Hij schreef een boek, Wat is bewustzijn nou eigenlijk? Hij interesseert zich voor parapsychologie en voor kwantummechanica – en voor de vraag of je daar iets aan hebt voor het begrijpen van bewustzijn. „Wie de woorden ‘kwantum’ en ‘bewustzijn’ in één zin noemt wordt meteen al met pek en veren het gebouw uitgejaagd”, lacht hij.

despite having a notebooks and general stationery fetish, i always studiously avoided filofax which seem to be ridiculously overpriced products associated with people who want to create an impression that they are busy, important and well organised. they carry around this fat leather-bound thing, or they used to. now it's been replaced by the latest model oversized iphone and/or ipad and i can't imagine filofax being a thriving business in 2020.

in an effort perhaps to be less filofaxy they made a thing called 'clipbook' which is like a more interesting budget-friendlier version of a filofax. what it's for even they don't seem to know. 'make of me what you fill' is the slogan the intern came up with.

i never buy anything white (except a white cotton shirt once when i went to cambodia at the height of summer there) but i was confronted with a sparkling white version of a clipbook in a moment of weakness in a bookshop on my first day in a new city, my life having crumpled and crumbled behind me for the umpteenth time, and i was like YES. i want to make a MARK on that pristine surface. it will be like an amulet, an object with special powers to protect me and to enable me to have the strength to face the time to come.

madness really but this is how it is : i now find myself in the filofax universe, cringing at their overpriced refills online. but behold! the six holes in the clipbook paper are not custom sized filofax holes. and there is a manufacturer here in nederland that makes reasonably priced paper refills for it.

an auspicious and propitious beginning.

those two words mean more or less the same thing but i only recently learned the second and i wanted to use it.

woke up this morning to a message from my friends at google :

As you may know, our Community Guidelines describe which content we allow – and don’t allow – on YouTube. Your video letter to will johnson (2002) was flagged to us for review. Upon review, we’ve determined that it may not be suitable for all viewers and it has been placed behind an age restriction.

ha ha ha well it is certainly not suitable for all viewers and it is quite possible that it is not suitable for any viewers at all, but i don't think their age has got much to do with it.

but perhaps i made this video before you were born, when i was at the height of my powers (such as they were) as an artist, eighteen long years ago, and you want to see it? well you can, on vimeo!

i wondered briefly why etc and then i moved on. but it did amuse me to see the bio i made for my vimeo account, probably when i was drunk, again.

i just had my 'de avond is ongemak' dwarsligger signed by marieke lucas rijneveld in a bookstore. she is developing an impressive 'authorly' look and she put a nice cow stamp into the book, at first i thought perhaps in lieu of a signature but no, i got a signature as well. asked if she had any advice for me on how to finish my second book she said 'doorschrijven!' which was slightly disappointing. the writing itself is not the problem for me. the problem is how to make it into a book with a beginning, middle and end, which is readable and publishable. maybe she doesn't know either. maybe she just poops out gold and when she has enough gold for a book she sends it to her publisher. some writers are just like that.

The overdose that killed Ronnie Scott in 1996 followed a long period of anguish caused by dental treatment that ruined his embouchure and left him unable to play the saxophone.

vogelbekdier (lit. bird-mouth-animal) platypus #teachyourselfdutch

we planned an antifascist evening. the evening came — it was not antifascist.

— tonnus oosterhoff

via 'als ze het over marokkanen hebben' by arnon grunberg (2020)

a lover is fragile, therefore being a lover (by which i mean a special case of a loving subject, a subject being loved, in a relation to an other which involves desire) requires vigilance.

for many years i puzzled over that idea of roland barthes that what is required, for a human, are three things : fragility, wisdom and vigilance, i endlessly photographed the semi-transparent green rubbish bags with VIGILANCE printed on them in black letters that are everywhere in paris.

and then today i found this.

(this is for you L. x)

leeds, 1974.

thankfuly not living in yorkshire it doesn't apply

not now

easy peasy cheesy oven baked pasta

ha ha this is the most forgiving dish in the world. you can't go wrong. even a fool like me can do it and afterwards you'll have four or five happy people with a belly full of carbs and if you want you can drink wine and not get sick because your guts are lined with grease and the wine will help break this down and not irritate your stomach lining :)

450g penne cooked al dente and rinsed with cold water 250ml kookroom (20% fat cream) and some milk 250g or more of grated cheese (what australians refer to as 'tasty cheese' ha ha) mustard the kind of mustard depends on the people you're cooking for. if one of them is a thirteen year old girl don't use a hot one. in any case the mustard needs to be just present in the the flavour spectrum, rather like the garlic in houmos.

cover the bottom of a good size ovenproof dish with kookroom and mix well with a couple of generous teaspoons of mustard (can thin with some milk) put in a layer of penne. cover with cheese. put in another layer of penne and top with cheese. add some freshly ground black pepper on top.

cover with aluminium foil or lid and cook for half an hour in a pre-warmed oven at 200 then remove lid or foil (can sprinkle on some breadcrumbs) then another 10 minutes or long enough to let it brown a bit on top.

i'd like to make this for my vegan friends so i'll have to experiment with nut milk (i fear coconut milk might make the flavour too coconutty) and non-diary cheese which is so-so but it's nice not feeling guilty about the exploitation of cows.

if however you feel guilty about serving a meal without any vegetables you can just as easily make a version of this with vegetables in it ha ha. some you can even put in raw, like spinach, mushrooms, capsicum or zucchini (which they call courgettes here) but pumpkin, potato or carrot etc you have to parboil.

or you can serve vegetable soup as a first course, for example, say if someone brought you a very large pumpkin from their garden as mieke did (she also brought a refugee without papers needing a place to stay but that's another story for a different time), my world renowned vegan pumpkin soup which a tasmanian shaman taught me to make in a forest there in 1985 ❤️ and about which almost everyone says the first time they eat it : this is a very thick soup! but they eat it anyway and then they say : this is really good! as if they're surprised. it's super easy to make. drop me a line if you want me to post the recipe.

Levinas :

The 'small goodness' from one person to another is lost and deformed as soon as it seeks organization and universality and system, as soon as it opts for doctrine, a treatise of politics and theology, a party, a state, and even a church. Yet it remains the sole refuge of the good in being. Unbeaten, it undergoes the violence of evil, which, as small goodness, it can neither vanquish nor drive out.

i like de wachter's idea about the human longing to be held which he links to the earliest part of our lives in utero and something about that rings true, feels true.

also included is an observation apparently from later heidegger along the lines that waiting is the most authentic form of being. it ends rather poignantly with levinas's idea of small goodness. the above quote is not exactly the one de wachter was referring to but you get the general idea, to which i would add the problem of professionalization and the exchange of money.

there was a point where de wachter disagrees with sarte's idea that hell is other people and he takes himself to the cimetiere montparnasse in paris to tell him so. “no,” de wachter says to sartre in his grave, “i think hell is having no connection with other people.”

for me one of the (many) things that makes the human condition problematic is that both are true.

to party or not to party

so today the first order of the day is to decide whether, and how, to respond to a birthday party invitation. that is, arnon grunberg's 50th birthday party invitation. as you might imagine the invitation is more than a little idiosyncratic.

oh did i mention i've been invited to arnon grunberg's birthday party? or rather, i've been invited to complete a questionnaire which reads more like an application to attend arnon grunberg's birthday party. there is a date but no address. it doesn't even tell you which city it's in except that it will be somewhere in europe and that there will be overnight accommodation.

the thing is this : some people might think that arnon grunberg being so fabulously famous and successful and all could not possibly be 'a nice person' but he is! or he is a person trying to be nice which is also fine with me and i am sure he would not invite anyone who is a dick or an arsehole (or trying to be a dick or an arsehole) to his birthday party.

so the invite consists of a list of questions with multiple choice answers but it's quite possible that some of these could be trick questions. for example i was thrilled to find that one of the possible answers to question G : Do you have certain desires for the festivities? is 'talking about Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit with likeminded people' but what if i am the only person who ticks 'talking about Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit with likeminded people'? who wants a guy at their birthday party who is looking for someone with whom to talk about heidegger? so i'll also tick the box that says 'i'd like to cuddle with animals'.

another option is 'looking for a significant other'. in principle i am open to any and all possibilities becoming unconcealed (even if i do now say no more often than yes) but i am not 'looking for' and i'd delete 'All other things are secondary.' that would be a tragic. who wants someone at their birthday party for whom everything other than looking for a significant other is secondary?

it is also possible that arnon has assembled a team of sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists to analyse the answers as they come in. it's always possible that someone else has also ticked cuddling animals, discussing Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and who is open to the possibility of a significant other becoming unconcealed.

yes. this is what can happen when you send an email to someone about a typo on their website.

the butterfly effect is real. just sayin'. so yep. ok. i'll come. what else do you need to know? if i am prepared to share a room? sure — with someone who likes to cuddle with animals and discuss Sein und Zeit possibly at the same time ... why not?

violators

almost everyone wants to hear my story about how in 1977, when i was 19, i was in a punk band in london called the violators and when we played support for siouxsie and the banshees at the roxy on 23rd of march, which was actually the last night of the original roxy, steve their guitarist had to borrow my guitar because there was something wrong with his. there was something wrong with mine too but he didn't find that out until it was too late. it was a cheap les paul copy that wouldn't stay in tune. but no one cared about whether you were in tune. what was important was that you made a lot of noise and that you were young and had attitude. we were scared as chickens but being from a rough part of town we'd learned to hide it well.

the slits were in the audience and shane from the nipple erectors who would later became shane from the pogues. he lost half his ear like vincent van gogh but in his case it was bitten off by a pogoing punk who jumped on him at the roxy. i was in love with viv but it was ari up who went into the roxy toilet and ripped out one of the seats, climbed on the stage and hung it around my neck halfway through our set.

that was andrew's last night. the roxy was handed over to new management the next day. all the punks stopped going there and no one would play there. they offered us a headlining gig. there was hardly anyone there, only some posers who didn't know the roxy was not cool anymore. we only had ten songs and when walked off stage after half an hour, not covered in gob at all unlike the first time we played there, we were told to go back on and just do the set again. they were paying us fifty pounds so we had to do it.

ok so now if anyone asks i will just tell them to fuck off ... i am sorry refer them to this web page because i cannot spend the rest of my life telling this same story over and over again. there are better stories, more relevant and urgent, about now.

except no one wants to know about now. they want to know about the good old days, except they weren't good. they were shit. punk started because life as a young person was shit and everyone was bored.

to be continued

here are norm's recollections on the punk77 site | archive

and there are a few pics here that capture the atmosphere in the roxy club in its hayday and some of the people that played there quite well.

https://medium.com/cuepoint/punk-london-1977-thrilling-photos-of-a-subversive-era-2fa2728d9df6

this is the text of an email interview i did in 2006.

Date: 4 May 2006 7:13 AM Topic: roxy recollections

Had you already been to the Roxy as punters and how did you find out about the place??

yep we saw eater and the second ever performance by wire there

If so what were the bands you saw and what were your recollections of them, the place, people, clothes, atmosphere? Before the Roxy gigs were supports in pubs or venues on the pub rock circuit. Did you think at last a punk club for punks?

the drummer from eater threw a pigs head into the audience and the audience threw it back at him

Everyone seems to say they didn’t notice the girls but I can’t believe that. Some nice punkettes and what’s a club for other than sex and music or was the Roxy different?

there was a lot more blokes than girls i remember that

When you went there was the club cliquey at all?

it didn’t seem that way to me but i only went there four times in all

What was the average age of the band at the time?

17?

How did you come to get a gig there? What was said to you? Did you get any money for the gig? Soundcheck?

norm sent a tape. yeah we did a sound check but they always used to make the support band sound a little bit worse than the headlining act

i can remember only once when we played the rock garden with xtc doing a “proper” sound check and the sound guys taking some time to make it sound good

You supported Siouxsie. Did you have any contact with them and if so how did you find them? Snotty or friendly?

siouxie was distant but polite – john had broken his guitar and used my les paul copy for the night

The gig. How did the Violators go down? Reaction, any memorable incidents? You mentioned Ari Up doing something. What was the story there and any others?

see below

Did you stay and watch Siouxsie? Any recollections? The night was being recorded by Don Letts. Were you filmed at all?

we sure did – john had my guitar! they were shit but they looked great of course – siouxie had some serious stage presence. you were scared of her but you wanted to fuck her

Quite a momentous night as it was the night the owners including Andy C were evicted afterwards. Siouxsie made a few announcements from the stage about it urging people not to come back? Do you remember anything about this? Did you know Andy etc were being evicted?

i remember that we felt pretty honoured to be there on the last night and now that you mention it the siouxie announcements but not much else

Did the atmosphere seem any different that night?

it was fucking packed i remember that

The club gave bands like yourself the chance to play there? How important do you think the Roxy was to punk?

absolutely – it was the essence of punk as it was in its most original and authentic form

How come it took you so long to play there again and how did you get the gig?

mate we live in fucking thamesmead – we had to take our gear to the railway station in a fucking shopping trolley and then carry it on the train – playing in the city was a major logistical nightmare not to mention a financial one – anyway it was only a month or so later i think i can’t remember the dates

How had it changed in terms of atmosphere and people? Had punk changed by then? How had the Violators changed?

we were “headlining” we had to do two sets there wasn’t a dog there we ran out of songs and had to start again from the beginning

What were the new owners like? Did you get paid?

we got paid. was it a hundred pounds? norm might remember

Any memorable incidents stand out from either gig you played there?

spitting was big – but you accepted it as a compliment or something. at the siouxie gig i remember waves of spit as we were playing. we were that nervous. having ari up go into the womens toilets rip out one of the toilet seat and walk up on stage and put it around my neck towards the end of the set was something i will never forget – that toilet seat was rank but who cared?

what i did after that

i found this. it's from something i wrote in 2002 for ... something or other when i was an artist/teacher living and working wagga wagga new south wales

i learned to love noise being involved in the london punk scene in 1977 as guitarist in a band called the violators playing the roxy club as support for such luminaries as xtc ; siouxie and the banshees; alternative tv and squeeze (somewhere someone has footage of ari up of the slits being so moved by one of our performances that she went to the toilet ripped out a toilet seat jumped on stage and hung it around my neck as i was playing)  

i celebrated thatcher's election by catching a plane to sydney in 1980 and i have divided my time between europe and australia ever since  

i became interested in working with computers in the late 80s because i was (and am) excited by the idea of a machine that could generate random elements and make decisions – i also enjoy letting the (limitations of the) machine influence the aesthetic of the work and thus a piece of superseded technology is often more interesting to me than a new one – besides it is only when a better newer product becomes available and desirable that something can begin to reveal its true aura  

although my work principally consists of digitally collaged and manipulated sound – some recorded in situ some from secondary sources – i think of what i do more as computourism (1) than as digital art – apart from anything else i like to work as simply as possible and thus avoid midi and software like protools and cubase which make things too complicated  

in an exhibition/installation situation the sounds are played in random order by noise engines (software customized to play random sounds looped a random number of times at random volumes) – in a live performance the sounds are played by noise engines and myself (and if i feel the need i might plug in my telecaster and hit it a few times)  

i see the role of linear media like radio and audio cd as affording a snapshot of a dynamic work which continues to shift and change and so it is with returning v2.1 which will be heard in a very different context as an installation running off several vintage computers at the wagga wagga regional art gallery as part of my solo exhibition there at the end of this year  

the cd version is designed to be dj friendly in that the first and last 30 or so seconds can be easily mixed with other sound sources or faded out if the news is approaching  

minus eleven error is a member of the wagga space program a collective of sound/visual artists writers and performers based in wagga wagga which has been active since the late 90s – members include : dot matrix ; sleepville ; and the inimitable doug snug – space program have released several cds and organized numerous concerts and performances around wagga wagga including the yearly “unsound” event which has brought to wagga metropolitan performers who don't usually venture into the regions like oren ambachi.

all your computers are belong to us

i used to love #computers and now i hate them — and they make me sad. here is why. (a work in progress ...) because of all the hoo-hah about the latest version of the macintosh operating system making it impossible to run any software unless it is able to contact the internet overlords to check if it's ok by them or not to do what you want with your computer, i decided to have a closer look at what the o/s i use (mojave) is doing behind the scenes ...

to do so you can purchase little snitch as i did (or run a trial for 30 days) and it's great but then you do a minor update of your o/s (from 10.13 high sierra to 10.14 mojave) and it wants you to pony up for an upgrade which is ...

ok i appreciate that independent software developers need to make a living but i have a limited amount of money and when i buy something i need it to work for a good amount of time.

for example my main writing software scrivener. i still run version 2, which i bought at least five years ago, and it works perfectly. there is a version 3 which has all kinds of nifty new features which i do not need or want and the developer is not forcing me to upgrade which i appreciate very much. and when i request support, they don't say, we no longer support version 2, you should upgrade to version 3.

so goodbye little snitch and hello vallum! it's made in italy :)

vallum does exactly what little snitch does or used to do :( for a third of the price (USD15) and it allows you to decide if and when to hand over your money. basically how it works is that every time some process wants to connect to the internet it asks you if it's ok or not. you can approve it or block it, for a day, two minutes, or forever. at first this is pretty annoying because there are a lot of processes that want to connect to various servers far and wide.

ok enough already. vallum's default setting is allow all of apple's processes to connect to whatever they want whenever they want. after all it's your operating system and the operating system is your friend. right? hmmm not so fast! i used to think my operating system was my friend until it began telling me what i could and couldn't do. up until and including mojave you could override these settings in various more or less hidden ways. but then, as of catalina (10.15), some of these options disappeared and apps, installers and extensions must be notarised by apple to run. that's like every time i want to do something in my house i have to get permission from the landlord or the bank.

this. is. bullshit.

but that is not the only reason i didn't upgrade to catalina. the other reason is that only 64 bit applications can run on it. this would mean that much of the software i use no longer works and i would have to pay for upgrades for no reason. for example i would have to purchase a new version of microsoft word which i rarely use but sometimes have to because some people insist on using it. i still run the version the university i worked for purchased for me in the year of our lord 2011. ha ha ... how simple life still was ten years ago. every time i start up word it complains and gives an error and it tells me i should quit but i don't and it works fine :)

so not my friend anymore.

but what of these processes. yes.

7-12-20 : when i said i hate computers, i mean computers in general, and the computer industry — not the computers i use and maintain.

a few days ago the battery in zayed, a 2013 macbook air 11”, which is the machine i use every day, died. i quickly did a full backup (using superduper) and installed it on my #2 machine, z52, a 2012 macbook air 11”, but the problem is that the web browser i use, which is set up in a highly idiosyncratic way, loses all its extensions in this backup/restore process.

i wondered if, as a procrastination tool, i should document my web browser set up but why would you waste your precious time on earth, of which only a little remains, doing that?

so maybe i should document the process of replacing zayed's battery which is something the manufacturer doesn't recommend doing yourself ha ha and it voids the warranty but the only warranty a seven year old machine has is the one you provide yourself. fixing hardware is not my thing but now i live with a young nurd who builds his own computers (and is thus scathing about macs but nevertheless willing to help) i would also like to upgrade the hard drives, or rather the ssds, in one of my other machines but first things first : to order a replacement battery and get zayed fully useable again.

to be continued

not now

in the times today an obituary of the photographer chris killip who worked in an interesting way with the people he photographed. not sure if this is what he did with the punks at the station in gateshead in the early eighties but he produced some memorable images, like this one. the name of the band and the performer are unknown but the outfit is priceless.

love pseudonyms and delighted to discover that even maarten biesheuvel (RIP) used one, D.Blijn, possibly on only one occasion.

PRIVATE PRESS PUBLICATIONS — BLIJN, D. (ps. of M. Biesheuvel). Tussen mensen tussen dieren. Leiden, (Ter Lugt Pers), 1983. Photostat of the or. edition, on 3 leporello fold. and conjoined lvs. Sm-8°. Owrps.(!) embellished w. or. drawing by the author on front side.

Published on the occasion of Biesheuvel's 44th birthday in an edition of 44 copies, this seems to be a copy made for private use by the author. The cover is original, because it has the colophon printed on the inside of the back cover. In our catalogue 333 # 149 we offered a copy w. inscription to Ronald & Lizanne Breugelmans in which Biesheuvel explains the name Blijn: “Blijn komt van het Russische 'biliny', dat woord betekent heldenzangen uit Nova Zembla en Noord Rusland. Waar de 'D' vandaan komt weet ik niet, misschien vind ik Dirk een mooie voornaam. Maarten.”

yours for €150 (approx.) in the forthcoming auction of maarten's stuff. ga snel naar : https://b-n.nl/lot/352/375/2

if the english language only had one advantage over het nederlands dan zou het zijn dat je in het engels in de liefde kunt vallen (en er ook weer uitvallen) maar in het nederlands kun je alleen verliefd worden of zijn — of niet meer zijn.
it was pointed out to me that, in dutch, you can fall on someone (op iemand vallen) which made me laugh quite a bit.

Helen Garner :

This will have to be lived. It can’t be walked away from.

if my ego was any larger than a grain of sand...

John Cage : “I went into an anechoic chamber expecting to hear nothing and, instead, heard two sounds. I spoke to the engineer in charge, thinking he could correct the situation. I said, There are two sounds in that room. And he said, Describe them. And I did. And he said The high one was your nervous system in operation. And the low one was your blood circulating. That means that silence is a change of mind. And since other people were taking care of intention, I decided to devote my life to non-intention. So that I’ve changed my responsibilities from making choices to asking questions.”

How to Get Started (1989)

Y.M.C.A. is one of the most aggravating ear worms in the entire history of music. all that is required for me is to see those four capital letters (i don't think lower case would have the same effect and perhaps the dots are needed too?) and that's it. it will be spooking around in my head and ears for days that it's fun to go to the Y.M.C.A. hey and that you can have a good meal and whatever else it is young men do there. i'll wake up with it and i'll fall asleep with it. this has been the case for forty years and i have managed to live with it. but unfortunately now there is an additional problem : it is also accompanied by the grotesque image of the alleged human who will surely soon be the ex-president of United States of Amerika dancing whilst wearing his trademark self satisfied expression which is forever engrained in my retina.

when i was learning dutch (i.e. when i was learning to talk and learning to understand what it meant when people said things to me :) there were a lot of yiddish words (and jokes) that i hardly ever hear now. when i encounter a yiddish word in an english (or more usually american) context, unless it is schlemiel, i have no clue what it means because the dutch way of rendering yiddish words is so different — example : mishegas = mesjogge. #teachyourselfdutch

dear arnon...

last night i was in some weird parallel universe in which george's father is played by someone who is not jerry stiller.

but i've seen this episode before! how could i have not noticed that!?

turns out this was the first time frank costanza appears and he was initially played by another actor but it didn't work so they cast jerry stiller who proposed a different way to play the character :

The scene started and Estelle began screaming at me, “You’re the one who ruined his life! You’re the one who wasn’t a good role model! You’re a lousy father!” Only this time I shot back, “You’re the one who made him sandwiches in bed! You’re the one who coddled him and treated him like a baby!”

larry david insisted the earlier scenes be redone with jerry. the dvd has both versions of this episode.

regelneef = fixer #teachyourselfdutch

coming around a corner there was a big grey heron, which is known as a blue heron (reiger) here. we each stood looking at the other for a full minute and then she flew off letting out a big squawk on the way. this sound is described on the english wikipedia as a loud croaking “fraaank” where the dutch version calls it a diep, rauw “schraatsj” (or “grrèngk”). #teachyourselfdutch

ok so i learned from this story on the bbc that the british royal family employs a bloke whose SOLE responsibility is to make sure all the clocks in their palaces show the correct time EXCEPT the ones in the kitchen which are always 5 minutes fast to ensure the meals are served on time — as if the people working in the kitchen wouldn't have watches of their own and/or know this?

the journalist didn't use a recorder. she recorded everything i said over two hours the old fashioned way, in a classic reporters notebook. i said, do you use steno and she said no, but it's only legible for 24 hours, as if she was using magic ink.

maar ... is daar überhaupt wel draagvlak voor, gijs?*

dit ben ik

i don't consider identity an interesting topic but then i've never been that interested in what other people think of me, except for saskia glazenburg when i was 14. she is on facebook and yes, it's her omg and she is a grandmother now, of course.

saskia was one of the holy trinity of girls i fell in love with, each in turn, well before i was fully formed. the others were irene groen and bernadette sterk. i worshipped the very ground they walked upon.

the most beautiful of the three was irene, who had a slightly mean streak. i still can't walk on the vismarkt without seeing myself desperately trying to impress her and the way her hair was lit by the particular light of the sun. it must have been late autumn. in my mind's eye the shadows were long. she agreed, albeit reluctantly, to let me buy her an ice cream and ate it quickly and greedily. no doubt she wanted the ordeal of being in the presence of her persistent young admirer to be over as soon as possible.

anyway today the NRC is coming to interview me today for a regular featurette they have called 'dit ben ik'.

continue reading here ←

what is not said is as telling as what is.

the series 'grote vragen' is made by the vpro — which is not what it was but hey, nothing is and none of us are — and it is presented by a really annoying man, a dutch uncle type but one who is unable to understand something and wants to tell you about it anyway. if you can ignore him, which is not easy, the rewards afforded by the episode about miranda cheng are significant.

she says many interesting things not the least of which is about silence but the thing about miranda cheng is that she can access other dimensions — and not just one or two either but 196,883 — through language, that language being mathematics, which, for her, is not complicated she says. but then she considers herself a mutant.

in 196,883 dimensions, miranda cheng encountered a beautiful object with 10 to the power of 54 symmetries.

the reviewer in the nrc writes :

Ergens moet er een niveau te bereiken zijn waarop we zien hoe alles met alles samenhangt – al moeten we honderdduizenden dimensies scheppen om het uit te dokteren.

yes well 'we' won't be able to reach it OR see it, but maybe miranda cheng can and she could tell us about it.

ok so i have the blood pressure of a um ... young god (which is about the only part of me which is still like a young god but oki'll take it) but what is considered 'high' blood pressure? this is a nice article from the NYT which explains quite clearly how it works and why it is important, at least for the statistics beloved by government central planning departments. it also contains the following mind boggling factoid : in the 1960s medical schools taught that blood pressure should rise with age to assure an adequate blood supply to the brain.

so maybe my blood pressure is insufficient in my old age to deliver an adequate blood supply to the brain and that's why i am now so stupid!

oef! that's confusing...

oef (tussenwerpsel) 1 uitroep van opluchting 2 uitroep van benauwdheid

god

zoals gezegd ben ik vrij huiverig over het woord 'god'. vroeger rende ik schreeuwend de kamer uit als iemand 'god' zei maar toen ik theologie studeerde bij de vrije universiteit (het is een lang verhaal) bleek dat niet erg praktisch. ik was dan wel een soort punk theoloog maar dat zou net iets te ver gegaan zijn.

on free speech

but for whom is free speech, free? is it only for the individual to say whatever it is they want to say, whenever they feel like it?

what about the listener? are they free not to listen? but what if you are yelling so loudly that no matter how hard they try, they cannot help hearing what you are saying even though they don't want to hear it for whatever reasons, eg they cannot bear it, it offends them, it hurts them, it triggers past trauma?

does the listener also have the right to be free of your speech?

continue reading here → free speech

yesterday someone tried to sell me something. because of the kind of product it is, it's important to do this subtly, without making it appear as if you're trying to sell something.

first of all you have to insert into the situation the idea that it is not possible to buy this product elsewhere, in a shop or online. to get it you have to Know someone. it is like inviting you to say, so if i want one of these i could ask you?

did they deliberately pause to give me the opportunity to say that? of course i didn't.

they did mention — i am sure this is not in the manual, it just sort of seemed to slip out when they said €400 and i said ouch — that if you someone buys one on your recommendation you get a cut, so that reduces the price you yourself have to pay.

i said : that sounds like a pyramid selling scheme. — oh no. it really isn't. it's just a way of making it a little less expensive for you.

to be continued

A.L.Snijders leest in het dagboek van Jules Renard. Op 22 september 1895 schreef hij:

‘Er bestaat geen Paradijs, maar je moet proberen te verdienen dat er wel een is.’

Dit begrijp ik niet, schrijft Snijders. Hoe kun je iets verdienen wat er niet is?

That's exactly it. It is not dissimilar to Camus's take on Sisyphus. It's a particular relation to the impossible.

vote mcgovern!

the idea that his number may be up and that some kind of relative sanity will come back into the politics of the so-called civilised world, that the day of reckoning is nigh for this crazy uncle, weirdly — or perhaps not — made me a little weepy this morning. the moment came as i read jennifer rubin's blistering column in the washington post where she puts it all into perspective following his latest TV appearance.

continue reading here → vote mcgovern!

i updated the index page. (not that it made it any more useful. but for what it's worth it does now contain some fun facts about one of the works i made for the art school graduating exhibition thirty years ago which someone was asking me about.)

A.L.Snijders afgelopen zondag over zijn varkens in de vorige eeuw die van eikels hielden “en ook van fruit en kruiden en groenten die met reusachtige vliegtuigen werden aangevoerd uit landen met exotische namen en veel armoede.”

How to be. Climb inside a dot and shut the door. Leave yourself outside. — Ivor Cutler

en nu begint het dus echt. maar eerst : piet de weerman.

Maarten Biesheuvel and Karel van het Reve sailing on the 'Marius', Oct. 11th 1981. (detail) Photograph by Gerard in 't Veld.

the original photograph could be yours for €200 (estimate) in the auction of stuff from his house. biesheuvel's old olivetti typewriter has an estimate of €50. i am tempted to bid.

here is biesheuvel's contribution to hollands dagboek from that same year.

de volkskrant has the guff on EMDR. if you hit a paywall click here

meanwhile in australia, the football is better when your team is hated than when it is loved. this is a nice piece in the age by jake niall about my favourite footy team. if you hit a paywall click here

Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder.

three day intensive, rotterdam, october 2020.

in de tussentijd, in australië pakken ze covid zó aan. mijn voormalige schoonmoeder moest door een militair aan de tand gevoeld worden (ik bedoel dit figuurlijk) voor zij naar de tandarts mocht.

lacan said a letter always arrives at its destination. i've been thinking about this for a long time — especially in the years when i was an artist. in australia in the late eighties i sent many letters to dead early modernists in europe at their last known addresses in paris (tzara, breton), hanover (schwitters), zurich (arp) etc. some of the letters came back to me with impressive stamps and markings and some of them didn't. unsurprisingly the germans and the swiss were most likely to return the letters but none ever came back from paris.

continue reading here → dead letters

for L. — even though we won't be talking about writing today, the text is always present, and i think the same idea could be just as usefully applied to therapy/analysis.

When has a piece of writing – yours – or anyone else’s – “succeeded?”

Brian Massumi : When it has succeeded in saying something that could not have been said before it was written, and when it enriches its readers’ attention in a way that enables them to perceive things in the world around them that would otherwise have passed unremarked. The new thoughts and perceptions are gifts that are also invitations. They are not obligations. If they forced particular allegiances, or prescribed particular actions, they would be tools or weapons, not gifts. Rather than obligating, they invite. They invite the receiver, through a creative activity of his or her own, in his or her own way, to ‘succeed’ another gift for others still.

link

in the work, the ebb and flow and the interaction and intra-action of transference and countertransference and their entanglements are endlessly fascinating and complex.

i'd be seriously worried if i was spending 70% of my time in therapy talking about my relationship with the therapist though.

the key to the time to come

so much is said and written every day but so much more is and remains unsaid. it boggles the mind. this is the shadow of everything that is said : all the things you would like to say but feel unable to and everything you don't want to say — about what you did and didn't do and think and feel and hoped for but were disappointed and are now ashamed that you allowed yourself to think. how do i make it possible for you to tell me? why would you tell me? because i have magic powers? because i have the power to forgive, to give you absolution. this power does not come from an authority or a supposed supernatural being but it has come about (dutch : is ontstaan) in the course of living and seeing and listening — by knowing and speaking and being present — and by responding, by loving, and somehow, mysteriously, acquiring the capacity to love without expecting or demanding anything in return.

every man that ever was entered the world through a woman. salaai (not alaaf!) from lampegat

the news that ronald rump, editor-in-chief of the truth of the world, has been infected with corona reached this office in the early hours of the morning. i am looking desperately for my compassion. if anyone has seen it, please get in touch.

if i had a megaphone

leeds, 1974.

not now

if my ego was any larger than a grain of sand, it would have been destroyed. i would be completely humiliated. i would not exist.

the bigger the ego, the greater the lengths you have to go to to protect it. i just let people walk all over me, insult me all you like, humiliate me, go right ahead. i suffer and i feel the pain but my relation to the suffering is very different to how it would be if the ego was the size of a house.

k. used to say, i feel as if i don't exist.

it took me thirty years to work out what that meant and now she's dead so i can't even ring her up and say : hey, i get it now! sorry it took half a lifetime! oh and also, i think i may have found a way out of the abyss.

too late. ah well. so it goes.