The remaining copies of this book are being recalled from the stockists and I've been working towards the next thing. It was a process entirely for myself to mark through the book and I enjoyed doing it, early this morning, sometimes with stand out impressions, and sometimes with pretty blunt appraisals that weren't meant to be read by other people. But it then struck me that I could share the whole book with these notes for free online in photographic form, and I will probably do this, like a reprint or annotated version. I've taken photos of every marked page and some notes in the back covers and will post them all up here or somewhere else they could be best laid out (could anyone tell me where best to post this so the pages could be presented as though they were being turned?). The one marked copy is also available to buy. The book itself, printed for the Brighton Festival in 2010 is now out of circulation and the last few can only be bought online.

(with Jessika Strataki http://www.jessikastrataki.blogspot.com/) 

I wrote the poem after listening to Chopin, and then i looked into the pineal gland. As a poet I pick terms like a magpie to cover areas i feel i can understand but may not have a scientifically rigorous knowledge of. medulla. pineal. synapse, these kinds of impressions or colours to paint with are all over poetry. poetry can get away with imaginative usage in the in-between land it inhabits to work as poetry, but only so far, and i always check that the reference can hold water for better informed souls than me (though usually after the event of writing to be honest).

It has been thought that the pineal gland in humans is a remnant of an obselete system (once connected perhaps to a real 'third eye'). The Sphenedon or TuaTara is a 200 million year old reptile that still has an actual third 'parietal' eye visible and connected to a pineal gland. Mysticism has ascribed it soulful and magical power in humans, but then we always were and have been prone to delusions of grandeur.  "Bataille uses the concept of a 'pineal-eye' as a reference to a blind-spot in Western rationality, and an organ of excess and delirium". Many other writers and thinkers have spent much time fascinated by this gland (it is smaller than a grain of rice). The 'third eye' is central to much meditative practice. It is linked in both Eastern and Western schools of thought with ideas of direct perception, intuition, imagination, visualisation, concentration, self-mastery, extra sensory perception. of these the idea of 'extra sensory perception' seems most likely to me, in as much as it alerts us to arenas of thought and response that are not picked up by our relatively crude eyes and ears, rather than any (in my opinion) narcissistic ideas of clairvoyance. it certainly creates the sleep related hormone melatonin and as such can be seen to still link to cycles of light and darkness. as a 'light seeker' it is thought to aid reptiles work out directions with sun as the guide, tuned in to ultraviolet light.

i like to think of it as a still transmitting nub that reminds us we come from something that we can't understand, but we can still be reminded of in moments like Chopin's prelude; the 'donnie darko' moments of third eye projection banged by a left hand on a piano that could be a tribal drum or a harp string.


Chopin's Prelude : Raindrop

left hand, bass end, pulse
it was all there
there the place below and behind
my right eye. it emits,

the music either enters
or draws back there
or is some sense of equilibrium
that finds expression
like an unknown dimension.

the left hand plays
direct to pineal gland
down central spinal column
of bass vibration
and that spot behind the eye
glows within its light-less world
as a frequency of meaning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anolis_carolinensis_parietal_eye.JPG 

TS ELIOT 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1922) - He uses the hugest 'modern' concepts in 1922 of Europe, tradition, knowledge, science, to place the modern poet in context. Nearly a hundred years later, perhaps the cranium of this thinking has shattered again, there is no 'Europe', now there is 'Globe', there is no one 'tradition' or knowledge, now there is a morass of traditions all of equal 'value' where 'Europe' or 'Plutarch' cannot be separated from 'Africa' or 'Dreamtime'; and there is no science in storage and classification, now there is 'frontier shifting' and ultimately a slow killing of a strongly established sense of 'self'. The artist though is the same entity that Eliot identifies, the artist as personality is not of any import whatsoever, the individual talent dies and reforms with every single piece of work. 

From Eliot : 

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone...He must be aware that the mind of Europe—the mind of his own country—a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind—is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development which abandons nothing en route, which does not superannuate either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the Magdalenian draughtsmen.

But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show.

What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.

The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.

  The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a “personality” to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.

The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done.

Whole essay : http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html 

YOU'VE GOT TO KEEP DOING WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN AND WHAT IS RIGHT RATHER THAN IMMEDIATELY GRATIFYING. EVERY COMPROMISE WILL RETURN DOWN THE LINE. YOU MAY LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE LOVED ONES. YOU MAY BE MISUNDERSTOOD AND EVEN VICTIMISED. TRUST YOURSELF TO MAKE THE TRUE CALL AND SAY 'I MADE A MISTAKE' IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE. FOLLOW WHAT YOU LOVE BUT BE READY TO LOOK AT WHAT YOU LOVE WITH NEW EYES. THE PATH TO GOD IS NOT THE SAME PATH YOU TAKE AWAY FROM GOD AND WILL NOT BE FOLLOWED AGAIN. GOD IS WHATEVER GOD IS. EVERY MAN AND WOMAN ALIVE HAS A STORY PLAYING OUT AND AN ESSENCE WITHIN. EVERY MAN AND WOMAN ALIVE IS TO SOME DEGREE SEPARATED FROM THEIR TRUENESS. THIS IS THE CASE WITH WISE PEOPLE AND WITH FOOLS. THE STORIES WE ARE TOLD DEFINE US. THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES TAKE OVER FROM THERE. OUR SIGNIFICANCE DOES NOT BEAR FURTHER THAN OUR ABILITY TO REPRODUCE. THE REST IS STORYTELLING. REPRODUCTION IS PROBABLY ONLY STORYTELLING TOO. ECONOMICS EXISTS AT ALL TO ENABLE CERTAIN MEN TO PROSPER AND MAKE OTHER MEN LESS VOLATILE. LOVE IS ONLY LOVE WHEN IT IS NOT RELATED AT ALL TO THIS AND THE OTHER SCIENCES OF SOCIETY. GIVING AND RECEIVING LOVE OBSESSES US AND IS OFTEN ONLY ACHIEVED IN BREAKDOWN. SOME OF THIS IS NOT TRUE. ONCE YOU START TO TYPE IN MANIFESTOS OF CAPITALS YOU REALISE HOW EASY IT IS TO SLIP JUST ONCE IN THE LINE OF WHAT YOU WRITE AND THEN CASCADE BECOMES ANOTHER STREAM AND COUNTERCLAIM AND CLAIM MEET THAT DIFFICULT ARENA OF DIALOGUE. SO MUCH WRITTEN AND SAID AND CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FOR THE SAKE OF REACHING A CONCLUSION. THIS CONCLUSION PASSED ON TO COLOUR THE NEXT SUCH EVENT AND BEFORE LONG THE CAPITAL STREAM HAS BECOME ANOTHER CASCADE MIRRORING THE FIRST BUT HAPPENING ELSEWHERE OR CONTEMPORANEOUSLY. LAW EDICT PATENT LOGIC ETHIC REASON STRUCTURE PATTERN PREMISE. PREMISE. PREMISE. PRECEDENT. NETWORK INPUT REASON JUDICIARY AND LATINATE. MEDICAL AND DOCTORATE AND INCHOATE PLATELETS STEMS RESEARCH AND BRACELET. DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE AND THE WORLD OF THE PREMIER LEAGUE KIND OF HANDSHAKE AND THE SECRET CLUB. ILLUMINATI OR OTHER LESS CONVINCING SPECTRES LIKE PLC CONNECTIONS. AND US IN THIS THE LETTERS AND THE CAPITALS CASCADE INTO GROUPS RESEMBLING BUT FABLING OR ENABLING AND GROUPS OF CONSONANTS BECOMING LESS FAMILIAR CROSS BORDERS, DISSEMBLING LIKE TEUR RIALTS ARE YOUWE PREGORDINS AND OOR FADARET CRILSTER SCREA. AUFHEIH EIHDHSIH SNBF S9HOAN BECOMING LIS AKH PAHHDH LKSDN SLKNAI KJOOS OOSJPASOI RVRKINECE NSSNS STILL WE LOOK FOR THE MOMENTS WE RECOGNISE IN THIS OF GHF HEUW FFNFIUE 2ODJD AND NUMBERS FOR SOME LSNFJ XNIW VQIIVH KFFNFNF IEYHF KSNF KSIFHSI KAIS FNCCMAL RAIN AIS OFEWE FWOEF9 RKWWP[C KS SK INTO SENSE IWHFE INIERW CDMOW JSPA CKCIA IFHV E9CCNC WE KNOW THAT BINARY WILL MEAN SOMETHING 0IOF0ICNHW KSN0AI 0IHJ0FH THAT COMPUTER CALLS US OUT F H VIDH V IDHI VDNI O-S -XXW-=M -OJM=,OJVRINV UBRINVR VO WATCHES OUR BACK -101010101010 1010 101010 0101010100 010101 01010 101101 01 0101 01 101 10101 10 101 011011 011 10100101 01 10101 01 10 101 01 0101 010 10 1 010 01010111 010 101 01 010 1001 010 101 001 01 10 0 001 01 100 10 1 01 10 1 0010 10 101 10 1 10 101 01 STILL THE GAPS ARE SOOTHERS AND THE CAPS STAY ON 

07.01.12 The Dianne Abbott furore is another example of self protection as a racist society's first port of call ('racism' as a disproportionately evocative label is discussed below too). Again the lack of direct words with which to have a real discussion is in evidence, blocked out by cartoon politicking. In a pompous (debate practiced?) way perhaps and through the strange twitter context she has flagged enduringly relevant truths for this stage in history on this island; the people shouting the loudest for her sacking and worse are the people for whom these truths most strongly bring pyschological discomfort, or are just deep in the opportunistic games of politics and self preservation and looking for a comeback, especially in the afternmath of the SL case. A lot of people feel exposed and upset at any insinuation of racism - a self preservation instinct is very very strong with this issue, almost above all others. This is a good article http://33revolutionsperminute.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/racism-vs-racism-why-d...

03.01.12 I am not racist, but the institution is' is a huge cop out. Openness is needed not more classification.

Rowan Williams, ‘The fragility of our pictures of ourselves as a liberal, tolerant and settled society’. These words themselves explain the lie. LIBERAL, TOLERANT, these words themselves even suggest a power balance where one kind (empowered) speaks for another (subjugated or at least represented). They are outmoded, and arguably arrogant throwbacks to the era Dianne Abbott had to pretend she was talking about to say what she meant.

Killing ‘every black cunt, every Paki, every copper’ (said the gang member). This case is important too for the words. The worst possible words come out, they have been the thing most hidden. The words have been coming out in the youtube videos of racist diatribes lately too. Their hatred is extinguished when they enter the wider world, because they are nonsensical. The real danger is the people that do not express their uninvestigated fears. And what is really being expressed in all racism if it is not fear?

Institutionally racist is the phrase of the moment. This needs to be used carefully because it is another distancing mechanism that says ‘I am not racist, the institution is’. Metropolitan Black Police Association Chairman Bevan Powell said ‘There is still work to be done. It is still institutionally racist, but that doesn’t mean that individual officers are racist’. Self protection first, everywhere.

Dr Stone identified stop and search tactics which disproportionately target young black men. This is a fact. Sentencing also disproportionately punishes black men.‘Institutional racism’ was defined as ‘the collective failure to provide proper policing to people because of their colour, culture and ethnic origin.’ Discrimination seen through ‘unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping.'

Also known as the inability of society to say ‘I don’t know’, ask questions or be open about the fact that other races and new communities can shake a sense of identifiable ‘self’ and evoke a self protective response? The relationship between what it means to be a citizen in a sovereign state and the base level of living standard worldwide must be recognised in this argument. We can't pretend everything is solvable in our own little state, tensions fester because of an incongruity between what happens at home, and our relation to other human beings around the planet.

For real wholescale change to happen, the ‘who and what’ we are (NATION STATE, INDIVIDUAL, RELATIVE POWER HOLDER, ECONOMIC CELL) will all have to change. Revolution is the only word for it.[Is this true or can the revolution happen entirely from an individual without any changes in the superstructure in which the individual lives?]

The DAILY MAIL editor Paul Dacre (link to mail website) woke up in 1997 ‘drenched in sweat’ convinced his career was over when publishing a famous front page. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081736/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-verdict-Paul-Dacre-Daily-Mail-editor-shares-views.html

LOTS OF PEOPLE JUMPING ON THIS BANDWAGON ALREADY, artists, journos, money makers. Dangers of new cartoon versions of the issues replacing the last cartoon versions of the issues.

Doreen Lawrence, ‘Racism still exists but it is not so overt’. This is not progress.

Racism, Economics, Equilibrium, Liberalism

And who's the one we talk about still? Orwell. Eton educated Orwell, saw it from the top, didn't like his family, felt affronted enough by the private world to address the public one.

My gut reaction after initial shock was one of compassion for the racist in the example of a mother ranting wildly at a train full of people (link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNs-bGPlvSo. This was my honest reaction. She was lost, her child wasn’t even phased by her behaviour, in among the vitriolic nonsense was the odd truth ‘whos black and whos white (anyway)’ she slurred.

A human being in pain was lashing out and not making sense at all, other than that she felt that at some level a social organisation that she had been sold as an ideal had been changed. Life within that social structure had got very much harder, she felt. A loosening of border and racial mix co-incided with this added feel of struggle. On a human level, the violence she expressed to fellow human beings is judgable in harsh terms, her choice of argument is hateful. In the wrong words she expresses something that is happening though. Our economic lies are unravelling. Sitting in a train carriage with people from 27 different countries is a representation of sorts of the unravelling of a power balance that 'we' have taken as fact for a long time. Racism exists precisely and because it has served in the past to keep the division clean between positions in the economic power balance. Those that have 'defeated' the racist premise have traditionally done so by playing the powerful at their own game, being more white than the white man. 

So we exist in a power balance, all of us. Can we treat every next man as our brother and get on in the world, the way the world is currently set up?

First posted August 8th 2011

Note: This has not been designed as a response to rioting; the response of many people to footage on mainstream news will absolutely be relevant to this though.

I've just spoken to a friend who is witnessing rioting in Clapton as it is happening tonight and he reminded me of an essay I started concerning race and urged me to finish it; I think it would take a lot of work to link what I had written to the wider context of life within our social system and wider contexts still (which the subject demands and deserves) or to attempt to align it with the incredible events of the last couple of days in London, but I think he is right that the issues are boiling just now in a way they haven't before. What follows is an 'abstract' of sorts. Any comment would be most welcome as ever.

Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:52:39 +0000

Storekeepers of their own self image. Shopfronts of their own image. I am not racist is the wrong response to 'there is racism'. 'Why and how is there racism' is the right response. Examine your own attitudes directly. If you jump to say 'I am not racist because...' I suggest it is because sub consciously you recognise that you are or have been racist, or at the very least have been soaked in racist premise and taken on some small part of the atmosphere, even if that has evoked strong countering activity. The very word itself lacks precise definition (the same as multiculturalism in fact) and can evoke counterclaim that ranges wildly as a protestation of innocence from a multitude of subdivisions, and from national front activist to charity development worker. It doesn't necessarily follow that you are at the 'bad' end of a moral spectrum but it does follow that you may not be the person you tell yourself you are, however earnestly. This is a barrier that people find extremely uncomfortable. Examining your own attitudes is very difficult, admitting that they have been subtly engrained is painful and requires breakdown to address. I also suggest that almost all people are or have been racist in as much as they have pre judged an image of 'other' in a person, real or imagined (and also derogatory or adoring), based on that person's otherness of skin colour, language or other such marker and this is the important part, this sense of 'other' is informed in potentially very complex ways around the very notion of a history of 'racism'; an implied order of things based on control and systems of abstract world ordering or entitlement. Even while the systems break, the attitudes continue, and the worst kind of force is the one that denies this uncomfortable state. I suggest that we have all denied this uncomfortable state at some level and with some section of local or global society.
 
Breaking down the psychologies is always complex, as people are so quick to point out in the face of classifications. Being labelled 'racist' is probably the most ethically damaging thing that can be levelled at a person, along with certain other social obsessions that are treated in equally cartoon ways. With racism the value judgement is absolute. Racist is evil, and evil is conscious. 'Race guilt' can be as simplified as a barely recognised feeling of discomfort that at some level sends the brain to that place, 'I must defend myself from this value judgement being made against me', even where there is none. My own realisation came in several waves. First, an empathy level, transferring my own experiences of being denied real identity - not fitting in with family class profile because of a private education and not fitting with peers because of the same fundamentally working class backgroud. Being prejudged by all members of society in other words (the society i had experience of). This allowed me an insight, but not an understanding. I transferred my own experience onto other people, prisoners were one, racially subjugated another. This was enough to suggest to me that i had 'transcended' racism. It set me on a path to learn as much as i could about how things really were, in every sphere of life, and never to accept a story without investigating it myself. How could someone with this attitude ever be labelled racist? Why then, when I started a fundraising job, was I scared initially to approach black men? Why did I assume a woman in a burkha would not give to charity? These feelings of discomfort were manifested racism. 
 
The psychologies can be like those of anger and guilt passed down by a bully and the person bullied. A strong reaction against either of these emotions is just as much referential to those emotions as overt and more pernicious forms of racism. Perhaps this could be characterised at the risk of over simplification as the liberal white effect, where white is more the attitude than the skin colour. The argument falters in the face of such people who say 'I am not racist and we are making the world non racist'. Wrong message. Wrong outcome. I understand and recognise a human trait that includes guilt and anger and other classifications that are not actually directly useful to a modern condition is the right answer. Recognising these things widely and openly eventually will debunk their power as storytellers. As soon as people can lose their fear of labels then the real humanity may develop unhindered. And here's the difficult part. Many racist people are filled with the deepest levels of humanity, it is possible to be in both camps. Very few are brought up without a polarisation of some sort about something. Everyone is born with the ability to disassemble and rebuild though.

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, aquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.

James K. Baxter (1926 - 1972)

First Posted : August 25th 2010 The Akan Drum exhibit.

The enslaved workers on plantations were banned from using drums, for fear of coded message and revolt

So developed patting juba, clapping, slapping hands and bodies, and the 'call and response' type of drumming common to West Africa was developed into vocal 'calls and responses'. Tap dancing stemmed from this too. (Clowning and Krumping too) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSq09Z7TBt0&feature=related

These rythyms featured in ring shouts too, dressed up as 'gospel' or 'spiritual' in the face of imposed Christianity, the shuffling circles and rythyms were entirely African ceremonial. Recordings of this music in its real form are rare or non existent, because it was a music of the people. Imitations appear in the earliest recordings, but they sound contrived or polished in the main. (Like this for example, can anyone find proper congregational recordings?)

'Spiritual' and 'Gospel' music, such as standards like 'Amazing Grace' were sung but inhabited by an entirely new spirit a million miles removed from the church hymn, more a praise song tradition.

Call and response, and african riffs and slide notes created the Blues. Improvisation, synchopations, and mixing rythyms all stem from African drumming, and create Jazz. R+B and Rock and Roll are this tradition, and Hip-Hop and on... (check this, recorded in 1934, its Buddy Holly rock and roll twenty years earlier)

And so the greatest swathe of popular musics were formed, co-opted in the main, mimicked and reframed. (TRIVIA : THE BUDDY HOLLY RECORDING WAS MADE WITH A CARDBOARD BOX FOR THE DRUM PART, LISTEN TO THE FLAT BEAT)

Also on the wall was 'Limbo' by Edward Kamau Braithwaite, which has all of those rythyms and traditions tied up in it.

And limbo stick is the silence in front of me
limbo
limbo
limbo like me
limbo
limbo like me
long dark night is the silence in front of me
limbo
limbo like me
stick hit sound
and the ship like it ready
stick hit sound
and the dark still steady
limbo
limbo like me
long dark deck and the water surrounding me
long dark deck and the silence is over me
limbo
limbo like me
stick is the whip
and the dark deck is slavery
stick is the whip
and the dark deck is slavery
limbo
limbo like me
drum stick knock
and the darkness is over me
knees spread wide
and the water is hiding
limbo
limbo like me
knees spread wide
and the dark ground is under me
down
down
down
and the drummer is calling me
limbo
limbo like me
sun coming up
and the drummers are praising me
out of the dark
and the dumb god are raising me
up
up
up
and the music is saving me
hot
slow
step
on the burning ground.

this Leadbelly has what i would imagine to be fairly unfiltered representation of the music as it would have existed 'pre-recording'.

Posted: August 31st 2010

[work in progress]

if these footsteps were buried feelings;
feelpads,
a bass drum bucking underneath
the lowest bass.

in a city of walkers
they seem to make no sound,
these heel-to-toe driven springs
but fade out somewhere at the mixing desk
beneath the squeals and weasles,
overlaid by mind.

Alternatively mixed
london bridge
her segment sheets
paving would
thump of feet

bipedal skeletal
 bone pulse shuffle
shuffles when it dances
and dances when it walks.

Footsteps as buried feelings
watch how they dance
during a public conversation on a mobile phone
pirhouette around the street corner
from the underground steps outside the launderette
tickling concrete vignettes while the mind
forgets its context and concentrates on barking
something meant into a handheld transmission set.
once they've pressed the red button
that next moment is gem,
straighten out a skirt, or light a cigarette
or set to straight away to marching on
unaware of the cascading whirl of footprints they just left.

Its as if these footprints were buried feelings
our deepest self, to trek, lets settled sense
of self effect, lets joggers in their plastic
headsets and matching vests undo the vex,
daily releases from the minuets
and headnods to the bass of beat they set.
quicker steps than heartbeats, freedom sensed.
no more a prisoner, battle dressed.