JG Ballard was talking about writing "2 minutes into the future."
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I watched JG Ballard being interviewed and when he started, he was
> caught in society stuck in the past, as we still are: " cultural
> constipation" as Cornwell calls it. As I walk around the UK it feels
> like a heritage museum run by the Daily Mail, caught in aspic trying
> to fight the memories of the past. In a sense, a lot of the 60s is
> about clearing a space so that renewal may take place.
>
> The 'huitards may take the blame but I think the current cultural
> state - as much as it fits into your fantasy - has little to do with
> the 60s. Computers started in the 40s. The west started crumbling way
> before that. The sixties ended with OPEC upping oil-prices to
> reasonable levels. All the rest is a desperate effort to shore-up
> crumbling empires, and that's most of the 80s, 90s and so on and so
> forth. Even today, as we square up into super-blocs, the old west is
> desperately trying to keep it's power. I read an analysis a long time
> ago that Callaghan, if he had remained in power, would have enacted
> roughly the same policies as Thatcher.
>
> We haven't been rich for a long time, and when the rich lose money,
> they fire the servants then sell the furniture.
>
> Roger
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:36 PM, David Bircumshaw
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Me, Andrew, I'm having a series of interesting conversations with
>> ghosts about relative values. There's a considerable family of those.
>> And listening to what jokes people tell, learning recognise the
>> territorial marks gangs leave on lamposts, what a language of trees,
>> looking at graffiti, listening to how males identify selfhood in rap,
>> hearing the tap-tap signs from the bottom of edifices like churches
>> and so forth and so forth. I know there were a lot of positives paths
>> etc from the Sixties, but quick fix transcendence buys its supplies
>> off a dark dealer. The Sixties wanted to throw away the burden of the
>> past, well if you dump memory you piss on the future.
>> Of course there was an element of play on my part, but one has to
>> continually plot the present. The Sixties went for Liberation Now, an
>> instant abandonment of restrictions, and in doing so they liberated
>> the Beast itself. They liberated Mammon from restraint. The point of
>> culture is to cultivate this garden that feeds us all, not turn it
>> into a dope-factory. The hippies all used to go to Afghanistan didn't
>> they? I wonder what's going on there now.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> 2008/6/10 andrew burke <[log in to unmask]>:
>>> Let's see what you are doing with the present, David. I'm of the Sixties
>>> myself and hope your tone is playful in part: otherwise, I can only say you
>>> have limited knowledge of the many positive paths started in the sixties. I
>>> believe 'money money' already had too much power before the Sixties and it
>>> swamped many of the good seeds sown. Not all the dreams came true, granted,
>>> but the Sixties hardly started capitalism or the imperial aggression of
>>> Western nations; it lost the battle against them but some stratas of society
>>> since know that there are alternatives to these platforms. I'm no scholar of
>>> the period, but I would think that the a/g in art and music certainly
>>> changed things, and the influence of the Beats/San Francisco
>>> Renaissance/Black Mt was powerful.
>>>
>>> Time for dinner now (and it's not macrobiotic), so I shall close.
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2008/6/10 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
>>>
>>>> Yeah, the Sixties, its avant-garde are the Elders of today. And did
>>>> they fuck-it up for those coming after, man. effectively the
>>>> liberation of the Sixties opened the door for the Far Right. The drug
>>>> trade, the art market, the arms trade, I don't want to think about the
>>>> rest right now. They wanted the ultimate short-cut to transcendent
>>>> salvation, so we have Facebook, gang-culture, money money. Stephen
>>>> Hawking looking for the Ultimate in his machine blah blah.
>>>> The tossers, they had a real chance and they blew it for their own
>>>> gratification. We're in the future they threw away now.
>>>>
>>>> 2008/6/10 Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>:
>>>> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nathan Hondros" <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> > Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 12:20 AM
>>>> > Subject: Re: Conference on Poetry of the Seventies
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >> I wonder whether the sixties and seventies even existed.
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > They did, they did!!! I got laid more than linoleum.
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> David Bircumshaw
>>>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>>>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
>>>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>>>> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andrew
>>> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
>>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/aburke/
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Bircumshaw
>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>>
>
>
>
> --
> My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
> "She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
> She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
> The Go-Betweens
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
The Go-Betweens
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