Radio Free Djenovici February 2012

So that was some snow we had, eh? As I carved an escapade through the metre-high footbruk, I thought that this month’s mix would be something to suit the wintery fingers that grip the city (and the wintery thumb, without which the wintery grip wouldn’t be possible). That was thoughtcrime, and giving you the reasons why it was thoughtcrime would be thoughtcrime as well. So instead I dredged up this mix from the disco-dip bargain bin, which looks like it might sag a bit in the middle but comes good in the end. I’ve just noticed that I repeated a track from last month’s mixtape – “Harpsong” by Scarf Face – but who cares about repetition when the quality is that high? Easy nuh star!

Tracklist

Колаж, fydhws, Fikcii
To find our Freedom, Peacespeakers, Message from Planet Earth
Soundbwoys Shot (Right in the face mix), Dub One!, Blow Dubs EP
2-02-007-06 (Piece of Shh mix), Ultra Red, Blok70:Translations
Slippershell, Kristen Hersh, Speedbath
Plastic Lullaby, Lux Lisbon, Your Heart Is A Weapon The Size Of Your Fist
Bliss, Slow, Father EP
Little Coloured Lights, Rob Gillbank, Little Green Lights EP
Harpsong, Scarf Face, Let Them Eat Cake
Bebot, Up Until Now, Gresham’s Disco

February 19, 2012  Leave a comment

The Slums of London

1849

“THE EDITUR OF THE TIMES PAPER

“Sur, — May we beg and beseech your proteckshion and power. We are Sur, as it may be, livin in a Wilderniss, so far as the rest of London knows anything of us, or as the rich and great people care about. We live in muck and filth. We aint got no priviz, no dust bins, no drains, no water-splies, and no drain or suer in the hole place. The Suer Company, in Greek St., Soho Square, all great, rich and powerfool men, take no notice watsomdever of our complaints. The Stenche of a Gully-hole is disgustin. We all of us suffer, and numbers are ill, and if the Colera comes Lord help us.

“Some gentlemans comed yesterday, and we thought they was comishioners from the Suer Company, but they was complaining of the noosance and stenche our lanes and corts was to them in New Oxforde Strect. They was much surprized to see the seller in No. 12, Carrier St., in our lane, where a child was dyin from fever, and would not believe that Sixty persons sleep in it every night. This here seller you couldent swing a cat in, and the rent is five shillings a week; but theare are greate many sich deare sellars. Sur, we hope you will let us have our complaints put into your hinfluenshall paper, and make these landlords of our houses and these comishioners (the friends we spose of the landlords) make our houses decent for Christions to live in. Preaye Sir com and see us, for we are living like piggs, and it aint faire we shoulde be so ill treted.

“We are your respeckfull servents in Church Lane, Carrier St., and the other corts. Teusday, Juley 3, 1849.”

- a letter to the Times, 5 July 1849 [quoted in Blount, pp. 342-3, via The Victorian Web]

2012

“London Fire Brigade is calling for a spotlight to be shone on the growing problem of the capital’s fire trap “hidden housing.” The Brigade says there is emerging evidence of a growth in ad-hoc “back garden developments” which see sheds and other unsuitable buildings being used as accommodation… Rita Dexter, Deputy Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, said: “Beds in sheds, garages being used as housing, industrial units being used as sleeping accommodation – these are all potentially lethal fire traps. It’s inevitable that people living in these shoddy developments rely on far riskier ways of heating, cooking and lighting their home. They are also being exploited by unscrupulous landlords who are happy to take their money without any regard for their safety.” In November fire safety inspectors in Brent swooped to close a number of commercial buildings being used as living accommodation by around 150 people after uncovering some of the worst fire safety risks they had ever seen. The Brigade was alerted to the problem following a fire in an office block where firefighters rescued six people. A subsequent inspection of the building revealed a seventeen rooms with over 50 people living in them. Fire safety officers found virtually no fire safety features inside and believe a more fire serious fire could easily have ripped through the entire building and residents would have struggled to escape.”

- London Fire Brigade, News Release 23 January 2012

2175

- Trafalgar Square Shanty, Robert Graves and Didier Madoc, Postcards from the Future

February 12, 2012  Leave a comment

Death to Polar Memes

Pre-21st century political history seems to have been defined by an interlocking series of oppositions – what we might call Polar Memes. Left/right was the most obvious of these but not the most durable – the prize for longest-running political meme looks like authoritarian/libertarian, which is so deeply rooted in our philosophy that its demise seems unthinkable. Sometimes it’s necessary to think the unthinkable, though; the time has definitely come to question the Polar Memes.

If you turn over that authoritarian/libertarian meme, it turns out there’s another meme hiding underneath it, possibly the Ur-meme: the tension between the individual and the collective. Although you trace this one right back to ancient Greece (just like pretty much 95% of philosophical concerns), it became really important in the post-Medieval period, reached full flower during the Enlightement, and hasn’t stopped dancing yet. DISCO INTERLUDE.

Yet Polar Memes can die – they just take a loooooooong time. Left/right is no longer common sense – not (just) because of the persistent decline of American political discourse, but because of the convergent politics that Europe excels at, where left- and right-wing parties now hover around the centre of the political buffet like vultures.¹ While the concepts of left- and right-wing might still have some utility, the tension between them has slackened like dad’s belt at Christmas.

In individualist polities (which are generally post-Enlightenment), there’s a palpable fear of the collective: it’s what turned anti-communism from a statement of personal preference into a declaration of Cold War. In communalist polities, meanwhile, there’s a distinct unease about the role of the individual, creating a tension that can resolve in amusing ways (a discussion for another time). Let’s focus on what happens after this particular Polar meme dies off – because dying it is.

The truth is that these Polar memes mask a spectrum of opinions and preferences, and are only presented as dichotomies when somebody is trying to sell you something. Nobody lives a completely individual or completely communal life: people just aren’t built that way. Instead, the two are always jostling up against each other, waxing and waning, life’s rich tapestry, etc, etc. So why do I think this Polar Meme in particular is such a problem?

It’s a problem because politics as it is currently structured relies almost entirely on the individual and the collective as the primary concepts. This doesn’t just put individuals in a difficult position, it’s an accident waiting to happen on a grand scale. Political parties form around blocks of opinions, but those opinion blocks can cut individuals off from their communities, which is why party politics isn’t good for communities or individuals; the alienated individual can derail communal interests through petulance, fraudulence or something else ending in -nce.

The creative tension between individual and communal served us well for a long time, especially while our modern polities were forming, but it may be time to leave them behind as the foundation myths of those polities. Instead we should be looking at the network as a replacement for both of them, although if you asked me right now to describe what that would look like, all I’d be able to do would be to sip my tea and look uncomfortable. All I know is this: the network seems to offer the only way of reconciling the two and forging a new type of polity. See also: Carne Ross.

1. Don’t ask me what US political parties hover around, but it’s definitely not the centre, unless by “centre” you mean “abject fucking stupidity”. [↩]

February 6, 2012  Leave a comment

Speaking of magic

1.

“If someone asked you to describe the psychological aspects of personhood, what would you say? Chances are, you’d describe things like thought, memory, problem-solving, reasoning, maybe emotion. In other words, you probably list the major headings of a cognitive psychology text-book. In cognitive psychology, we seem to take it for granted that these are, objectively, the primary components of “the mind” (even if you reject a mind/body dualism, you probably accept some notion that there are psychological processes similar to the ones listed above)… In fact, this conception of the mind is heavily influenced by a particular (Western) cultural background… To the extent that you agree that the modern conception of “cognition” is strongly related to the Western, English-speaking view of “the mind”, it is worth asking what cognitive psychology would look like if it had developed in Japan or Russia. Would text-books have chapter headings on the ability to connect with other people (kokoro) or feelings or morality (dusa) instead of on decision-making and memory? This possibility highlights the potential arbitrariness of how we’ve carved up the psychological realm – what we take for objective reality is revealed to be shaped by culture and language.”

- Sabrina Golonka, How Universal Is The Mind?

2.

“Three centuries earlier, the new discipline of physics could not proceed until Isaac Newton appropriated words that were ancient and vague—force, mass, motion, and even time – and gave them new meanings. Newton made these terms into quantities, suitable for use in mathematical formulas. Until then, motion (for example) had been just as soft and inclusive a term as information. For Aristotelians, motion covered a far-flung family of phenomena: a peach ripening, a stone falling, a child growing, a body decaying. That was too rich. Most varieties of motion had to be tossed out before Newton’s laws could apply and the Scientific Revolution could succeed. In the nineteenth century, energy began to undergo a similar transformation: natural philosophers adapted a word meaning vigor or intensity. They mathematicized it, giving energy its fundamental place in the physicists’ view of nature.”

- James Gleick, The Information

3.

“In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason. I do not see him in this light. I do not think that any one who has pored over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, though partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.”

- John Maynard Keynes, Newton, the Man

January 26, 2012  Leave a comment

Words per minute #27: Bradbury on Acting

Have I said anything I started out to say about being good? God, I don’t know. A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.

— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

January 10, 2012  Leave a comment

Radio Free Djenovici January 2012: To Isla Dorma

Another year, another bitcoin. Two years ago, my brother asked me to put together a mixtape to lull my newly-born nephew to sleep. I did so, and he was prompty lulled. Unfortunately he’s been lulled by the same mixtape for two solid years, which I’m pretty sure is going to turnbob his noggin. Last year, my brother asked me to put together another mixtape, this time for my newly-born niece, and so Radio Free Djenovici for January 2012 is that mixtape: ladies and gentleman, To Isla Dorma.

Tracklist

Nad Dynaem (excerpt), Dakha Brakha, Na Mezhi
Xo, Whim, Po & Emili, Painted
Silver Light (dot tape dot remix), [.que], calm down
Black Wolves, Brynn, The Flux Sound
Harpsong, Scarfface, Let Them Eat Cake
Shimmer, Dauwd, Could It Be / Shimmer (single)
Den Andra Handen, Henrik Jose, Photo Album (single)
Clamantis, M-Pex, iPhado EP
Ghost Transference, Learning Music, An End Like This
Time Has Told Me, Jason Parker Quartet, Five Leaves Left: A Tribute To Nick Drake
Dhun in Raga Mishra Khamaj by Fateh Ali Khan (New Delhi), Human Mirror, India Field Recordings
One More Song, Mayon, So High-So Low
Psychedeliental, Kisszanto, Relax Capsule Volume 1 (Various Artists)

January 9, 2012  2 Comments

Ace Kiss Epsilon

This is who the corporations are telling you is cool,
This is who the corporations are telling you to listen to:
Here’s our end-of-year best-of-lists;
Here’s our coolest journalists
Taking a trip to the coolest city in the world
With people who aren’t like you or me.
Or maybe they’re just like you and me -
How would you know?

This is who the corporations are telling you is cool.
This feature article is trying to tell you something:
This spontaneous photo opportunity just happened!
You could have been there, and you weren’t.

Are the corporations telling you I’m cool yet?
Are the corporations telling you to listen to me?
You should listen to me if they tell you,
You might learn something:
You might learn how to be cool.

Poor poor corporations whispering in your ear,
Like that kid at school that nobody liked,
Because deep down the corporations want to be cool.
That’s why they’re telling you who is cool
Because, if you finally believe them,
Then you’ll think they’re cool too.

So it’s karaoke blind dates in Tokyo with -
So it’s urban gardening in Buenos Aires with -
So it’s hacker protests in Tallin with -
So it’s organic microbreweries in Portland with -
So it’s hip-hop quotables in Nairobi with -
So it’s -

Whispering in your ear: am I cool yet?
Am I cool yet? Am I cool yet?
I’m linking your article,
I’m keeping my distance,
Trying to keep my cool.

Am I cool yet?

Postscript: the weirdest thing about this article is how fucking boring that trip sounds.

January 9, 2012  Leave a comment