on the vulgarity of “identity”

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I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mysterious even to ourselves; and furthermore that what we are is only part of us, because identity, unlike “identity”, must include what we do.

And I think that to find oneself and every aspect of this complexity reduced in the public mind to one property that apparently subsumes all the rest (“gay”, “black”, “Muslim”, whatever) is to be the victim of a piece of extraordinary intellectual vulgarity. Literally vulgar: from vulgus. It’s crowd-thought.

— Philip Pullman

kurt cobain interview (seattle, 1993)

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Kurt in 1993, very lucidly, on a bunch of stuff including misanthropy, sexism, advocacy, collecting, and his fascination with anatomy. Living in South Africa, I never saw any interviews with him back then and, watching this today, it struck me that I hadn’t expected him to be this honestly unaffected and humble. This interview happened only a little over half a year before his suicide in April 1994.

lena khalaf tuffaha – running orders

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They call us now.
Before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think “Do I know any Davids in Gaza?”
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of war time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.

1677 map of bohemia as a rose

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1677 rose map of bohemia

A map that shows Bohemia as a stylised Hapsburg rose. The stem firmly connects the flowering Bohemian rose to the fertile soil of Vienna, the Habsburg’s political centre. The Latin text at the bottom explains:

There grew a graceful Rose in the Bohemian woods, and an armoured lion standing guard next to her. That Rose had grown out of the blood of Mars, not of Venus. […] Do not fear, lovely Rose! There comes the Austrian. […] The Rose of Bohemia, bloody for all the centuries, where more than 80 battles were waged. She has been now drawn in this form for the first time.

Read more about this strange propaganda map HERE.

 

ayn rand, rand paul and paul ryan walk into a bar

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lizza ayn paul rand

Lizza Littlewort, 2014. Watercolour on 100% cotton paper.

This picture was made in appreciation of that really great joke that went around recently: Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan walk into a bar. The barman serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die.

sviatoslav richter plays liszt’s transcendental études

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A selection of my favourites from Liszt’s Transcendental  series, recorded in Prague on June 10, 1956 and broadcast on Czech Radio.

Tracklisting with times:
00:00 – Étude No. 1 (Preludio)
00:58 – Étude No. 2 (untitled – Molto vivace)
02:52 – Étude No. 3 (Paysage)
08:29 – Étude No. 5 (Feux Follets)
12:03 – Étude No. 11 (Harmonies du Soir)

Heartbreaker Franz Liszt circa 1860 (Franz Hanfstaengl/Wikimedia)

Heartbreaker Franz Liszt circa 1860 (Franz Hanfstaengl/Wikimedia)

“On a snowy day in Berlin, two days after Christmas 1841, Franz Liszt strode out onto the stage at the Berliner Singakademie concert hall. He sat at his grand piano in profile, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. He was 30 years old, at the height of his ability, and he was about to unleash a mania—a mania not in the sense of “Beatlemania”, or any of the other relatively mild musical obsessions, but a mania viewed as a truly contagious, dangerous medical condition that would affect women in Germany, Italy, France, Austria, and elsewhere.

“Using his whole body—his undulating eyebrows, his wild arms, even his swaying hips—Liszt dove into Händel’s “Fugue in E minor” with vigor and unfettered confidence, keeping perfect tempo and playing entirely from memory. It was the start of the phenomenon later called “Lisztomania,” and the women in the audience went mad.”

Read THIS ARTICLE on the romantic power of music like Liszt’s…

fela kuti & egypt 80 – beasts of no nation

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This post goes out to FIFA president Sepp Blatter and all the people aligning themselves with various national football teams in the bizarre competitive spectacle that is the FIFA World Cup.

Happening this time round in Brazil, FIFA bleeds yet another host country’s economy dry, with the willing help of its own government – systematic violence, neo-colonial parasitism. Last time it was South Africa’s turn, and the effects are still being felt here.

BeastsOfNoNation

kola boof

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This Ohio bookseller refuses to carry African writer Kola Boof's novels because of nudity.

This Ohio bookseller refuses to carry African writer Kola Boof’s novels because of nudity.

“I don’t agree that I am controversial. What I feel is that most people are not critical thinkers.  The society tells them what to believe, what to think…and their knee jerk reactions are guided completely by that conditioning.  They usually realize later on that what I’m saying is not controversial… when they take time and think in depth.  Even if they don’t agree with me… they understand what I’m saying without all the claims of being shocked by controversy.  I’m not a controversial person if you’re a critical thinker.”

Check out Kola Boof’s website, where you can also read more of this interview.

writing wrongs

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my wrists ache
wrest them
look out
a deck of shards
sick notes
cutting in
cutting up
cutting down
cutting out
cutting off
the pulse
wound up wound
wind up wind
wound up wind
wound down wind
wind down wound
wind up wounded
binds unbound

an unstruck sound
this name means nothing to me
rolling off my glossed tongue
the missing ink
the beads of spittle in the pink
the drown flying in my drink
sink for yourself
sink or blink

outside carries on
the whorl of a banshee
howling at the pane

open your eyes
close your mouth
close your eyes
open your mouth
open your close
eye your mouth
mouth your silence
silence your eyes
make the whirl go away

stories we tell

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Go and see this at the Encounters Documentary Festival, on right now in Cape Town and Jo’burg: the brilliant Sarah Polley‘s genre-defying examination of the workings of memory and narrative related to her own family’s secrets. It’s a gentle yet unflinching interrogation of how truth is shaped by the stories we tell ourselves when making sense of the things that happen in our lives. Humorous, poignant, profound… highly recommended.