"cheepstuff" indeed.
Roger
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:37 PM, David Bircumshaw
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Yeah, the 60s was a continuation of what went before, I know that.
> Unfortunately the space that the 60s demolished for renewal happens to
> be the one where most people live.
>
> 2008/6/10 Roger Day <[log in to unmask]>:
>> 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
>>
>
>
>
> --
> 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
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