Alex Jones or Andre Breton?
by Sean McGahey
Apparently we live in a world of dirty tricks (although history is nothing but a chain of lies and dirty tricks, all this spurting from the lips of a new-wave revolutionary hippy student friend of mine.) We’ve got conspiracy theories about theories and cover ups on cover ups, so you get the idea- the government apparently tell a lie then a group of half assed students and geeks read something into it and blow it out of proportion – pretty much like those geeks that thought the “X-Files” was based on real events.
IT’S ONLY PRETEND!!!
In my somewhat humble opinion and 6 pints later with a group of philosophy students I felt at times we live in a world where we’re being delivered ultimatums with recourse. This feeling popped up again shortly after watching a DVD called “Waking Life” at first I thought it was one of those art house student films spouting pretentious bullshit, until Alex Jones boomed out of the speakers:
“Resistance is not futile, we’re gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, we’re not a bunch of under-achievers! We’re gonna stand up and we’re gonna be human beings. We’re going to get fired up about the real things, the things that matter! Creativity and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit!”
I wanted more!! Who is this super angry red faced guy and why do I find myself agreeing with him?
For those who’ve not heard or been on the receiving end of Jones he’s the infamous journalist with a US cable access show, a nationally syndicated radio show and a website that is seriously conspiracy tainted containing amongst other things strong opposition to socialism, communism and the ever growing New World Order (personally I’d also include Richard & Judy’s Book Club, for the recommendations of meaningless crap literature, the equivalent of made for TV films….) Jones has a cult like legion of fans where they see him as the leading light of truth and a walking nuclear explosion.
Fantastic! This guy kicks arse, but I’m confused – I found an old essay I knocked up whilst at art college, at the time I was a hardened Surrealist – pretentious student or what? - (which kind of goes against Alex Jones – or does it?)
ESSAY 1
“Nothing could be more obvious. We are not free, you are not free, and no one is free.”
“The imagination is revolutionary or it is nothing. The revolutionary will be surrealist or will not be at all”
From the Surrealist manifesto – “Death to miserabalism”
(Recommended read: “What is surrealism?” selected writings of Andre Breton – pathfinder press 1974)
Breton believed that the springs of personal freedom and social liberation lay in the unconscious mind. So is it a coincidence Breton also found examples from the works of Hieronymus, Bosch, James Ensor, Baudelaire and Rimbaud. (Was he part of a group of arty intellectuals who painted odd pictures and were most of the time wasted on drugs and alcohol?)
For many Surrealists, this orientation toward transcending everyday Reality toward one that incorporates the imaginative and the unconscious has manifested itself in the intent to bring about personal, cultural, political and social revolution, sometimes conceived or described as a complete transformation of life by freedom, poetry, love, and sexuality. In the words of André Breton, generally regarded as the founder of surrealism:
“Beauty will be convulsive or not at all.”
At various times individual surrealists aligned themselves with communism and anarchism to advance radical political and social change, arguing that only transformed institutions of work, the family, and education could make possible a general participation to the surreal. More recently some surrealists have participated in feminist and radical environmentalist activities for similar reasons.
Dictionary: Surrealism, n. pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
Encyclopedia: Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.”
So is it Alex Jones (strong opposition to socialism, communism and the ever growing New World Order) or Andre Breton (communism and anarchism to advance radical political and social change) – in the style of big brother (oh the irony) – YOU DECIDE!
June 28th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Going off the subject a tad but I read that a london based litzine won’t accept any beat poetry!! maybe they should look at reading:
Beat Writers at Work - Paris Review
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Edited by George Plimpton, and with an introduction by Rick Moody, this collection of interviews with the Beat Writers grants writers of prose, poetry, and literary critics an in-depth look into one of the most famous literary tribes of the century. The Beats, with their mix of talent, bravado, and insight into the social and political climes of their generation, continue to influence students, writers, and critics today.
“Mr. Plimpton and his able cohorts at The Paris Review have cannily chosen this historical moment for the retrieval of this archive, viz., the fortieth anniversary of Kerouac’s masterpiece, and also the recent departures of Ginsberg and Burroughs to celestial addresses, and thus we have a real warts-and-all retrospective, ex post facto, Kerouac in the late sixties, Ginsberg (in one of two pieces here) in the late seventies, Bowles in the eighties, Snyder in the nineties, so that the high period of Beat style is well past at the time of these conversations; Plimpton’s wisdom here amounts to permitting the language and form of these interviews to persist over the years and thereby accrue historical context, in which we are enabled to see how the Beat praxis (or Black Mountain praxis) is reactive when faced with such forces as Vietnam, hippie culture, eighties consumerism, neglect by literary history, and so forth.”
–from the Introduction by Rick Moody
*William Burroughs (1965)
*Allen Ginsberg (1966)
*Robert Creely (1968)
*Jack Kerouac (1968)
*Charles Olson (1970)
*Voznesensky, Ginsberg, Orlovsky (1980)
*Paul Bowles (1981)
*Ken Kesey (1994)
*A Semester with Allen Ginsberg (1995)
*Gary Snyder (1996)
*Barney Rosset (1997)
*Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1998)
and much more!
Price: $19.00
Granted we should do more to push forward UK writers but lets not forget our roots.
June 30th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Whilst on a rant - apparently we’ve got a new wave of “off-beat” - “offbeat” writers - which makes me laugh - these people jump on any going bandwagons
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