Category: David Tubthump

 

Goodbye to the Normals
Do you know what the problem with television is? There’s too much of
it. There are no limits. Too many possibilities. So what happens?
All the resources already dedicated to quantity, few – or at least not
enough – are dedicated to quality. This is not to eulogise a heyday of
four – three – or even two national channels when the competition
between ‘venue’ brought the very best out of the pioneers. But who
would deny that most TV these days is awful?

The best paintings/stills are simple: portrait, stil life, landcape.
The best music obeys the strictest of accepted forms: concerto, symphony, song, 12bar….. even jingle.
All the very best in literature – the art of the written word – is in carefully crafted poetic form: the haiku, the sonnet.

The moving image combined with music and the spoken word has given us
some of the greatest works of history: the shamanic dance; the
transubstantiation mass; jacobean tragedy. That its launch onto the
celluloid stage has struggled at times with form, born as it has been in
a time of play with form, is perhaps not to be wondered at, in such
early days.

The very best in film, right now, is the short : sometimes driven by a
commercial intent that funds it, yet from which constraints its
liberating parameters are born, the advert is the haiku of film; at its
very best mimicking the style but with something different to sell…..

Here’s an example of the best……..

It is sad thing, but I have a geek need – I am an early adopter and I
want my iPhone now. I wanted it on Friday, when they shipped in the UK.
But Orange have me locked into a contract – an 18month contract – that
does not expire until February. Therefore they will not release my
number – which i have had since 1999 – until then. Without an new
18month contract I cannot get an iPhone from 02. So I have to wait.
When I really don’t want to. And resigned though i may be, it makes me
hate Orange, who I have been with since 1999.

Well it passes a quiet hour at home at the end of a long week. Here is my favourite poem. Indeed, this is my favourite poem, by my favourite

poet – the young boyfriend of Paul Verlaine, another mid19th century
French poet. They were both hounded by French society of the time, once
their relationship became very public through some rather more baudy
poems than this one.

I ran away in 1985, at the age of 21, and arrived in Boulogne with 34p
in my pocket, and spent 5 months begging and hitching around Europe,
with one book in my rucksack – the poems of Arthur Rimbaud.

The full text is here.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/719774_poem5.html

The video of me reciting it is Genie by Arthur Rimbaud.

Continue reading “Authentication”

 

Here’s (sadly only a trailer for) Ken Kesey\’s Magic Bus
a very interesting 1hr 20min video on the story of LSD in the 50s and
60s, with such characters as Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, and others
talking about the drug, and the time. Back in the day, between 1982 and
1984, aged 19-21, I read Leary’s book “The Psychedelic Experience” and
“Be Here Now” by one his colleagues who took the name Baba Ram Dass, and
experimented with the drug myself on a handful of occasions. This
programme does a good job of exploring all the issues, including giving
airtime to Roger Scruton – contemporary and detractor of Leary’s. I
certainly don’t regret my experiments, and I would say gained a good
deal from them. The consensus of Hofman – who first synthesised the
drug – and others, that the mystical qualities of the experience are
best (indeed perhaps only) brought to the fore under controlled
conditions, is something with which I would concur. ‘Sacred teacher
plants’ and other substances and activities (like starvation) used by
priests, shamans, and spiritual seekers the world over are always used
under controlled conditions and with the oversight of trusted elders who
can be relied upon to ensure the experience does not end in tears.
It’s a good documentary!