Indeed, R2, 68 was singular, even through those who lived through it at the
age of thirteen. It was my year of Grand Rebellion, I demonstrated by being
expelled from two grammar schools in succession. My crime was playing
truant - I used to spend hours in the Central Library reading Icelandic
sagas instead of going to school.
Best
Dave
PS when Princess Diana died I was writing a poem that had absolutely nothing
to do with the event but instead was about the A1.
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 5:54 PM
Subject: Re: A pome ...
"
I was 12 in '68 which gives me the respectable age of 45 now.
"
Anny, if you were 12 in sixtie-eight, it doesn't count. Like dave, you were
too young.
I was nineteen going on twenty.
There are things burned into your head -- mibee not the same things, as Arni
remembers more about Kent State than I do.
But that's not a year you forget.
What were you thinking when Kennedy died? The Cuba Missile Crisis? Diana
wasted in the underpass?
68, for those of us who lived through it was ... singular.
A date you revisit, carefully, with trepidation.
Robin
At the time I had lived in Italy for 2 years, enough to paint my world with
the conception of sin and suffering and stinking medieval supersticious
stuff. Up until ten I loved life and people (-not that easy, but problems
were different), I was in the Village in New York, and the beats were
everywhere and those were the ones I liked.
I don't deal with politics, the common ignorance in those years in Italy
when compared with the States kept me detached from many groups, ignorance
hidden behind a Red flag. So that you could not distinguish any more who was
who, who real who not.
I follow my way, which is hard enough for me, I have this Specter of
greediness cemented in front of me, and every day it is there. Good books
have always helped me out. I have to be happy I've been able to survive.
Take care, Robin,
Anny
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 1:58 PM
Subject: Re: A pome ...
Actually, Anny, nobody seems to do 68.
The line on Guy Debord was he topped himself, simple as that.
But it turns on what you have hard-wired into your skull from then.
For all of me, it was the moment they blew away Rudi D with a shotgun.
Worse things happened, but that was Exit The Lost Leader.
Robin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anny Ballardini" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2002 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: A pome ...
if that is the truth he deserves it,
what i meant in my previous message is that they killed him, don't ask me
who they are,
to this i added some remarks of my personal history with reference to a
wound i am not able to heal
that's about it, Robin, i am dealing with a concentrate of ammonia for the
very first balcony i've ever had in my life and the sun is shining, i can't
describe the sense of happiness this little outward protraction in the air
gives me in this moment, which i already "see" full of flowers, rosemary,
sage and all the best perfumed herbs,
"drawers (would say Dalì)" full of imagination on sale... nice sunday, anny
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
I don't think the Conspiracy Theory runs that he was pushed, either
literally or metaphorically, Anny.
Mostly the blah floating around the Situationist lists is that it was a
joke, and he's sitting around somewhere in Provence drinking chardonnay and
giggling quietly to himself.
Robin.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anny Ballardini" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 4:02 PM
Subject: Re: A pome ...
I can't but trust my intuition and it says, No.
On the other side
I would also like to add that my friend, a doctor in medicine, who commited
suicide, did not do it willingly but was pushed to do it, again Antonin
Artaud was excellent in his book: "Van Gogh, a suicide of society", and can
explain much better than me what I mean.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 4:02 PM
Subject: Re: A pome ...
"La societé du spectacle" read in my twenties, there was this little
book-shop down town Florence that had it, very few knew and know of the
Situationists,
anny
Few enough even now.
But (no one seems to pick up on this) +did+ Guy Debord commit suicide?
Honest, I don't go a total bundle on conspiracy theory, but surely this was
just a little bit too manifestation pat?
Hm???
Robin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
...
... I thought at least when I ran detox, that I'd get out of the shadow of
The Ghost of Guy Debord. but what was the second thing that
Jim-the-Self-Mutilator said to me? (after we'd finished trying to
reconstruct the beginning of "The Mask of Anarchy" from memory) -- _The
Society of the Spectacle_.
Gee uz a break, mate.
Robin
(Incidentally, what's the call on Guy just now -- did he commit suicide or
didn't he?)
"The Revolution will come when the last bourgeois is hung from the guts of
the last beaurocrat" -- and I didn't even know that was a Situationist
slogan when I was publishing in NiK (sic) in Glasgow in the sixties.
Makes you ponder, but ...
R2.
---- Original Message -----
From: "Árni Ibsen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 2:11 AM
Subject: Re: A pome ...
The principissa Di did occur to me, sorry, Robin, but then I whisked her
image away. Then I enjoyed it. A fine poem. 'Give us words' is the demand
made of writers today, and because of 'today' incapable of utterance.
Best
Árni
--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19,
220 Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland
tel.: +354-555-3991
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/
on 11/28/02 1:32 PM, Robin Hamilton at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> LOOKING BACKWARDS: 30 YEARS
>
> (For Diana, who was 4)
>
> The workers demand their voice - give us
> Words, they exclaim - cry utter speak say.
>
> Instead we created a slogan - "You are not
> Living your lives, we are": This is a Sit-
> uationist statement. Please hand in your
>
> Party cards at the exits. Door Zero: this is
> Ideology - the children play manifestation,
> Startle the gendarmes. Broken heads and blood
> On the cobbles - epicentre of the phenomenon.
>
> The circles spread and spread and it was usually
> Posture. Nothing much happened, after all -
> Cambridge was fun, but trivial.
>
> Then the wave crossed the Atlantic, and
> There were four dead children at Kent State U.
>
> Robin Hamilton ...... 9/9/98
>
>
> The date it was written has to be part of it.
>
> Robin
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