John Chris Jones wrote

<<> I like to think that we are all 'parts of the cyberepic' now that the
> individuality of modernism (and of print?) has been overtaken by our
> collective electric presence.>>

He is of course welcome to *believe* that. Were it true to any extent,
then indeed the _sorrow_ we have witnessed would be _neither false nor an
artefact of manipulation by the media_ just as he claims it isn't...

nor would the _sorrow_ be true, or a miraculously-created thing. It would
be data in the system and, like any data, it's significance would be
determined only by an operator outside of that system... Which leads me to
point out that, smoothing away the technophilia till we get to the idea
underneath, you have something like  idealised Christendom or Communism or
Mussolini's Fascist state...  

I do not understand what JCJ means by _true feeling_ in that
context. Or in any context for that matter. Is this the same _true_ as in
_true love_?

The list he quotes is familiar but interesting still for the inclusion of
John Smith. I never did get that one. Quite who started it and why? On its
own terms though the list lacks Stalin and Lenin as well as R Valentino and
Winston Churchill. They all brought people out on to the streets.

They all lived a virtual life of action for us. And I could add names to
it, but the list would become steadily less utile for its purpose.

No one has mentioned the extraordinary response there was to Nelson Mandela
when he came to UK. Of course he hasnt died yet, but he will. I cannot
imagine that degree of commitment... I have been involved in a bit of
struggle over the last few years and lost my job as a result because those
I helped protect wouldn't defend me, preferring to believe what they were
told by those attacking them; but I always told people never to trust me,
wch those few in a position to do so showed every intention of doing,
because I might let them down - I always knew they wouldn't defend me when
push came to shove. Actually, I never did let anyone down, but I have
little doubt that I wld be there, with Winston Smith yelling _Do it to
Julia_ if they got out the sharp sticks.

I am sure that Mandela will be greatly mourned. I shall mourn him. A bit. I
shall be less upset in one way than say when Mingus kicked it - when a fine
musician or painter or poet dies then there will be no more of something
unique in a way that, for me,  government is not unique. Mandela works with
knowledge and acceptance of his own mortality and prepares the way for
others. Nyerere stood aside. How many have done that? A pity Tito didn't.
Then we might still have peace in what was Jugoslavia. Charisma stops
people thinking.

John Chris Jones speaks of _the_ earth goddess... 

This is a real earth goddess then, at least in our consciousness, to which
we slip back consciously and unconsciously.

Why does no one ever become a renewal of the dung beetle which first rolled
up the world into a ball?

I find _modern life (its masculine-abstraction and denial of feelings and
of things earthly as divine)_ TOO SIMPLISTIC, TOO EASY, TOO WRONG... _it
was the devil's fault_ or _it's original sin_...

and it's plain sexist.

<<poetry, the first or only artform so far to accept and to transcend a
mechanical medium
>>

pardon?

"The worlds are breaking in my head / Blown by the breaking wind" David
Gascoyne



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