Hi keston,

good to turn these arguments inverse-wise and then jig with the paste again.
Ephermality is relative, some things take longer to arrive and to pass,
certainly in respect of conscious registration of moments of arrival and
registration. The torn piece of yellow paper that catches my eye, I'm
standing waiting at a bus stop, spurring a verbal note into my dictatphone
"sweeps this distraction home" might be considered as a momentary monument.
What of a mayfly?

What is ephemeral does not vanish. Values require continual re-evaluation
and re-subscription. Feminism for example yes. Of course there are values
with differing scales. I'm not suggesting that a preference for herbal tea
is the same as standing on the street selling Socialist Worker or shopping
at Nettos instead of Sainsburys or reading The Sun for its syntactical
acumen or turning up Busta Rimes.

Suzie (no, not Creamcheese Pete), who drives my local bus, has a double
first in mathematics. I don't know what she listens to, haven't asked her.
Let's say she's into Coil and Ferneyhough and Oumou Sangare and
Stravinsky's 'Les Noces' and plays Arvo Part sometimes. She's also got a
good radio hooked up into her stereo, listens to John Peel in the evenings,
sometimes warms up for clubbing with Judge Jools on a Saturday evening. She
shifts from one mode of listening and participating in music to another,
sometimes the shifts might be considered a fierce mix.

She's got a Playstation and she uses it. It's the Lara thang. Watches a lot
of videos, last one she recommended was 'Cyclo' which turned me on. That
running blue-paint-headed press-gang, a live goldfish flapping between his
drunken lips! Almost couldn't believe it was there in the Kirkley video in
Lowestoft.

Suzie doesn't read books much, although i lent her Sadie Plant's 'Zeros and
Ones'. I got it back with "some good stuff in there, thanks". Haven't had
the chance to take it further. I've been away and i drive much of the time.

She's part of my audience - readership, part of the audience-readership
i've got and part of an audeience-readership i want. As much a part as
those who write and who lurk here. Part 'career if you like and i won't
deny that ambition - namely to be able to do what i do and live by that -
part 'social' (manufacture and maintenance of networks for personal play).

Sometimes, disadvantages - socio-politically shuffling thin-lipped and
tight-arsed around in their vested interests, their bitter, twisted and
viciously inhumane legislations and patronising flushed instincts - are
involved, sometimes not. There are more buckles in societal fabrics than we
might altogether gander. Of course Suzie is a fabrication. She is though
based on a composite of likely proportions. 'Ignorance' is often a question
of market control and distribution agreed, runs throughout academia also.
But then Scary Spice lists Kathy Acker's 'Pussy, King of the Pirates" as
one of her travelling essentials.

A beachhead into the book market offers a key to longevity, we get our
cures for Baldness tipped in, absolutely free!

Which would you rather be, the musty volume that gathers power and
influence over centuries to come (if they ever do come and the whole
planet's not been ditched for trash - in which scenario Pot Noodle is the
'perfect' meteor storm food, offering a model of human complexity awash in
primordial broth mit shlime), that person who is garlanded as having been a
chip off the old monolithic block / or . . .? As the son of an antique
delaer i spent my youth in collections, at auctions, vetting sessions in
dockside warehouses, cabinet makers workshops and so on - places at which
'value' is officiated and heritage decisions are inscribed. One thing i do
remember is a carpenter called Stanley Lnghorn who boasted of having made
from scratch a major escritoire ascribed to Chippendale being paraded as a
recent acquisition at the V & A (this was 30 years back Elizabeth). So what
is 'preserved' tells engaging stories about the human desire for longevity.
Of course I'm curious about those stories. Would not want them suppressed
or destroyed. I do though wonder about the pervasive extent of museological
practices into our everyday lives and wish to heat that pot somewhat
towards boiling.

I tend towards wanting to be able to interact as influence, if any,
develops. Not to 'live to see it' but to further enliven that living.

JHP with a colour cover, now that's what i call longevity - reserve me two.

love and love
cris










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