"Every Man a God": Burroughs' Western Lands

The End of Words...

Every Man A God

Burroughs is the big enchilada of language reinvention. His final novel, "The Western Lands" is IMHO the greatest 20th C. American novel. If you see Kafka in the East and the Bill in the West then you see a broken bridge of word genius. You can't cross it but if you're lucky you can fall through the gap to unlanguage and beyond.

For me the most beautiful closing passage of any book belongs to the slow fade of "The Western Lands", the skill and brilliance of which is breathtaking. How does Burroughs conjure life and death in a few paragraphs? The poignancy of the denouement is almost unbearable. This is the attainment of a master as great as the literary heroes Burroughs admired:

I want to reach the Western Lands - right in front of you, across the bubbling brook. It's a frozen sewer. It's known as the Duad, remember? All the filth and horror, fear, hate, disease and death of human history flows bewteen you and the Western Lands. Let it flow! My cat Fletch stretches behind me on the bed. A tree like black lace against a gray sky. A flash of joy.

How long does it take for a man to learn that he does not, cannot want what he "wants"?

You have to be in Hell to see Heaven. Glimpses from the Land of the Dead, flashes of serene, timeless joy, a joy as old as suffering and despair.

The old writer couldn't write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the end of what can be done with words. And then? "British we are, British we stay." How long can one hang on in Gibraltar, with the tapestries where mustached riders with scimitars hunt tigers, the ivory balls one inside the other, bare seams showing, the long tearoom with mirrors on both sides and the tired fuschia and rubber plants, the shops selling English marmalade and Fortnum and Mason's tea...clinging to their Rock like the apes, clinging always to less and less.

In Tangier the Parade Bar is closed. Shadows are falling on the Mountain.

"Hurry up, please. It's time."

Datawhore in 2008

Ten years ago, in the shadow of a humble and now comical Olivetti DX-486 PC, Datawhore was born. In the years since there has been a steady stream of online releases, lately four albums on iTunes. At the ass end of this year work resumed, the basis of it two poems by Canadian misfit michael dent. In 2008 there will be a new album, Div Joyvision, that will comprise loose material of former times not yet compiled, plus some all-new noise. Datawhore's motto remains "Let others suffer for your art".

Death II - The Sequel

Knight, Death and the Devil (1513)

Death is one of my favourite subjects. If you're alive, it's bound to be of interest, right? What happened to me after an episode of The Street about a guy who is 60 and his life tanks and he attempts suicide is that I was like, f**k, I'll be that old in TEN years..!
And then I thought...WHO GIVES A F**K?, which always does the trick.
I'm lucky in that I am already close enough to death to not be too bugged about it. Death is the same as life, only you're dead. Paradise is subjective: for me it would have to be watching all of the Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes on an eternal loop. What worries me is that God may lack imagination. I know the universe is crammed with uniqueness and wonder but on the other hand Jackie Collins has been a bestselling author. What if death isn't just unpleasant but also dull? I'll level with you: I don't trust God. The big love deficit aside - Hello, Auschwitz!?! - He put the coolest animals so deep underwater that you can barely find them, much less see them. Having said which, I stopped believing in God a few years ago, since which time I feel much closer to Him.

Exactly...life is a dream. As the wise ones have said. And when the dream ends, we die, which I said. It is a dream that is real. Well, it's a real dream, I suppose. What is an unreal dream? Is that what death is? I think death is the same as life, only you're dead. So for me it would all have to be a dream. The idea that one might wake up creates the idea of "enlightenment", which is very seductive. It's really a harmless concept, like God. But when the ego seizes it, it is another story. It's as easy as looking at all the things you can't see. Slaves want freedom, hence all this musing. At least we are free slaves!

The moment you stop believing in God, He respects you, and no mistaking. You've gotta be able to look God in the face and say, "You think you're real, Bub?" And then spit. But, hey, this was supposed to be about death! But, hey, WHO GIVES A F**K?

The Disappointment of Death

I don't know about you, but for me the prospect of death fills me with...ennui. No dread, no fear. Boredom. Existential, I know. But check it: You die, right? No sooner have you stopped blinking in the stupid white light and made it past all those well-meaning relatives who have preceded you and whom you hoped never to see again, than you are faced with a myriad faces. Some guy or gal walks up to you and says, "So what you been doing since I died?" You reply, "Uh, not much...," and ask, "What you been doing while I been alive?" "Not much, either..." Nod-sequitur city. You look around. Over there is the Green Room, the VIP Lounge. You got no pass. There's Stalin and Hitler playing poker! You're dead, but there's nobody interesting to talk to and nothing to do. Then somebody starts talking to you about whatever killed them and won't shut up and you wish you were...dead.

As my friend Two-Headed Boy points out, the worst thing about death is that there is the possibility that the life you wanted to end will then be transfered over to Eternity. Yeah, Boy: Look what happened to Jesus!

The Long Riders by Walter Hill

The Long Riders

My love affair with Walter Hill's "The Long Riders" goes back many years to when I worked in The Screen On The Green in Islington, before it became evocative of The People's Chelsea. In those halcyon days there were great flicks week in and out, including cult classics such as this. Three pairs of brothers play three pairs of brothers. Simple but effective!

"Heaven's Gate" or "How The West Was Weird"

Heaven's Gate

Cimino's masterpiece took down UA in the Seventies. Three hours of impenetrable frontier weirdness, including a plethora of heavily-accented neo-Americans, this awe-inspiring and incredibly beautiful epic makes lesser efforts look like celluloid oatmeal.

The Power of Not-Prayer

Time was when I would pray my guts out, I was religious, spiritual, a mystic. Hobbies that kill. Attempts to get close to "God" can be hazardous to your health. Whatever; I tried to pray, or I flexed the old muscle and nothing happened. The hardest thing to accept is that any putative God, if He exists, doesn't need or want to be prayed to. You have to lose God to find Him. I mean, dispense with the illusion. It doesn't matter if there is a God or not. The Truth won't set you free, but you are stuck with it.

Paul Westerberg Live on Leno

About 5 years ago now Paul Westerberg did a Lazarus on an unsuspecting world and released "Stereo/Mono", two superb solo albums. Here he is performing a song from one of them, "Let The Bad Times Roll", live on Leno. Note the adapted chorus to mark the passing of yet another Ramone...

Good Day - Paul Westerberg

From the sainted day I 1st laid hands on "Don't Tell A Soul", The Replacements' penultimate album, I have been obsessed with the songwriting and singing of the Mage of Minneapolis, Paul Westerberg. "Good Day", from his second solo album, "Eventually", is Westerberg's song for Bob Stinson, his boyhood friend who was with him in The Replacements and then had to be ejected for alcoholism and addiction, which then killed him in a semi-suicidal downward spiral. My favourite song about the not-so-accidental death of a loved one with its simple refrain, "A good day is any day that you're alive," this is The (ballad) 'Berg at his killer-diller diamond best.

Good day doesn't have to be a Friday
Doesn't need to be your birthday
The next one then you won't survive
Sing along hold my life
A good day is any day that you're alive
Yes a good day is any day that you're alive

Asked me mmmm, you had to ask me
In the dreams you tell me
Tell them only you were tired
Sing along hold my life
A good day is any day that you're alive
Yeah, a good day is any day that you're alive

A bad day comes every once in awhile your body says
Fourteen hundred shooting stars and (every time?)
A bad day comes every once in your body life
Goodbye

Hold my life one last time
A good day is any day that you're alive
Yes a good day is any day that you're alive
Yes a good day is any day that you're alive
These are the days

My two-parter on Paul.

The Marbles - Red Lights

I stumbled on this again flicking through my MP3's. A classic ORK (Television, et al.) single that epitomises vintage power pop and also has some rather snide lyrics concealed amongst the harmonic splendour. Marbles had it all, from fantastic trebly guitars to Merseybeat vocal chops. Heaven.

Marbles - Red Lights

"It's the nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms..."

Astronomy by Blue Oyster Cult

I got into the Blue Oyster Cult when "Tyranny and Mutation" appeared in 1972 and ripped my head in half, but it wasn't until "Secret Treaties" came out that I heard my all-time favourite lyric and all-time favourite line...

Clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Like acid and oil on a madman's face
His reason tends to fly away
Like lesser birds on the four winds
Like silver scrapes in may
And now the sands become a crust
Most of you have gone away

Come Susie dear, lets take a walk
Just out there upon the beach
I know you'll soon be married
And you'll want to know where winds come from
Well its never said at all
On the map that Carrie reads
Behind the clock back there you know
At the four winds bar

Hey! hey! hey! hey!

Four winds at the four winds bar
Two doors locked and windows barred
One door to let to take you in
The other one just mirrors it

Hey! hey! hey! hey!

Hellish glare and inference
The other ones a duplicate
The queenly flux, eternal light
Or the light that never warms
Yes the light that never, never warms
Or the light that never
Never warms
Never warms
Never warms

The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Miss Carrie nurse and Susie dear
Would find themselves at four winds bar

It's the nexus of the crisis
And the origin of storms
Just the place to hopelessly
Encounter time and then came me

Hey! hey! hey! hey!

Call me Desdinova
Eternal light
These gravely digs of mine
Will surely prove a sight
And don't forget my dog
Fixed and consequent

Astronomy...a star

Surf Serfs: Record Mirror Jazz 1980

This is a find, an article on the ol' 'cudas c. 1980. And this is mad as f**k, too, from Japan.

Triumph of the Wills

For many years I played in The Barracudas with Robin Wills. A brilliant songwriter and guitarist, he wrote 'em all, from "Summer Fun" to many other songs involving summer and fun, and others involving drugs and death. I wrote some with him, too, but mine combined summer and death...actually so did his. Anyways, he has a great power pop blog you can visit to learn of the arcana of glam and other rock. The attack is totally obsessive and microscopic, so if extraneous information on the underbelly of the platformed heels is your thing, click the pic and power pop on over!

Internuts

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

You gotta love these bloggers, namechecking my humble hackery...Who are they? Who cares???

"Come with me to the casbah.

"Well, that's another year gone. Didn't do too much yesterday, Liz is croaking and I'm not much better. A bit, but not much. Spent some birthday cash online, and got one of the mothers ordered today, see above for details. Good service, Amazon! Also ordered another copy of "Necrotrivia vs. SKULL" and finally got around to getting a copy of "God is love, get it in writing". Liz also got her copy of "Blue Hawaii", which, amazingly to me, stars Angela Lansbury. Why that amazes me, I don't know."

Doppelglucker

Zombies, guitarists and aliens, oh my!

Like many of us I am many. Here I am, alive and well in Wichita, Kansas, working in a games store.

"The video game companies have posted ratings on their games. "It keeps parents from buying a game that maybe way too violent for little kids they don't want playing," says Hasting's Assistant Manager Jeremy Gluck. There are ratings for every game scenario - suitable for everyone, mature, violence, language, and even sexual content.

"Gluck says he answers parent's questions with his own. "'Do you want your kid playing that?'", he asks. "Because I play a lot of these games myself so I know what's over the top violence. And I'll check it and say, Hey, this is got that going on. Are you sure you want to get that?'" And, even then, sometimes the ratings aren't enough. "It's the parents that don't understand them," says Gluck. You know, the parents, they just hear, Oh my kids wants this' and they go out and get it for them without even looking at them, you know, the violence or even the words that they use."

In Defense Of My Performance

"Speaking of YouTube, there's a weird clip of the Barracudas playing their great song "Summer Fun" on Top Of The Pops in 1980. Singer Jeremy Gluck goes a few zillion miles out of his way to make it abundantly clear that he's lip-synching. It comes off really well, like some kind of smart-ass kid plot to comment on the lameness of the show while retaining the credibility to plead innocent if confronted. Talk about having your cake and eating it too."

Thank you, today's young people!

Gothic Erotica Mon Amour

By virtue of the fact that I co-wrote "Burning Skulls Rise", covered later by Rowland S Howard and Lydia Lunch, I am now included on a number of Goth compilations, including this racey little number, "Gothic Erotica". Truly has it been said that if you live long enough you get to do a lot of weird shit.

Bad Jeremy

"The Barracudas skirted with UK chart fame with 'Summer Fun', even appearing on TOTP. I finally saw this TV action a few years ago and was astonished how bad Jeremy Gluck was. He must have took a few too many lines of speed in the 'Green' room or something that evening?"

- Renaissance Fair

Just to put the record straight I wasn't high, except maybe on life. The 'net eats its own...

Send In The Clones: Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go'

Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go' is the last book I read that riveted and touched me. His longer, earlier novel 'The Unconsoled' recalled Kafka, with its convolutions and ambiguities and underlying mortal sadness. This one, about the life and fate of clones in a present-as-future England, is remarkably crafted, all but avoiding scientific matters in favour of simple, searing insight into what it is - what we think it is - to be human.

Praise for Kazuo Ishiguro:
"His books are Zen gardens with no flowery metaphors, no wild, untamed weeds threatening — or allowed — to overrun the plot."
—The Globe and Mail

"A writer of Ishiguro’s intelligence, sensitivity and stylistic brilliance obviously offers rewards."
—The Gazette (Montreal)

"Kazuo Ishiguro distinguishes himself as one of our most eloquent poets of loss."
—Joyce Carol Oates, TLS

"Ishiguro is a stylist like no other, a writer who knows that the truth is often unspoken."
—Maclean’s

"One of the finest prose stylists of our time."
—Michael Ondaatje

"Ishiguro shows immense tenderness for his characters, however absurd or deluded they may be."
—The Guardian

"[Ishiguro is] an original and remarkable genius."
—The New York Times Book Review

Beloved Kafka

I've always adored Kafka. If required I would have to cite him as my favorite author. It wasn't until I read an excellent biography of him by an Italian academic that I realised how very much his work is metaphysical and religious (I resist using the word "spiritual": it is so devalued now as to be meaningless). He was a very Jewish, very European writer, much like Primo Levi, whose experience in the death camps Kafka foresaw with "In The Penal Colony" and other of his works. The word "genius" demeans Kafka: he is not really liable to the claims of this world; only - if it exists - the next.

It's About Time

This extraordinarily silly sitcom has all but disappeared from memory.

God is Love - Get it in Writing

God is Love - Get It In Writing was my sequel to Necrotrivia vs. Skull. I wasn't as satisfied with it; although the story was fine, the execution was too self-conscious and I used way too many adverbs ;) My next novel, The Love Gun, was by far my best. I took three years to write it, nobody wanted it - the recession, see? - and it disappeared in a house fire never to be seen again. I did start another novel, much looser and crazier, but lost momentum and then the manuscript...and then one fateful day I got a computer and the Internet and life changed.

From Publishers Weekly
Clarke's ( Necrotrivia vs. Skull ) irresistible satire of religious hypocrisy blends wit with twisted fantasy. At the end of the millennium, sleazy entrepreneur Dales Jr. creates the money-making World Religions Incorporated (WRI). Through the nationwide TV show Let's Make a Deity , Dales Jr. finds the ideal messiah for the viewing audience: cloned pop star Cecil Clean, who becomes Seth Early. The meteoric rise in popularity and ratings of the Seth Early Love Club is boosted by the staged healings of odious charlatan Wurm Drench and his alien assistant Norma. But the sudden appearance of the real Jesus poses an immediate threat to them and all other powers on earth, including the mob, the Pentagon and the pope. When Jesus is arrested in Greenwich Village for disturbing the peace, Dales Jr.'s assistant Skip Trace puts up bail. Caught in the clutches of the WRI, Jesus displaces Seth in the ratings, causing the imitation savior to break off from Dales Jr., discover his individuality and experience a spiritual reawakening. Propelled by Clarke's savvy vernacular, this wacky, entertaining story is rounded out by a gunshot assassination of Jesus that fails to alter anyone's conscience in a futuristic world of corruption and guile.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Marketable Messiah by Eric Lindh
There's all this Millennium stuff going on, with people hunkering down in defendable bunker spaces and everyone waiting for the computer-driven world to suddenly just stop. But what's a Millennium without the return of Himself? The Messiah will come again, and the common belief is He'll roll in with the new thousand years. What if some smart corporation got proactive and did a little Immanentizing the Eschaton on its own?

Behold the secular, corporate Messiah. Jeremy Clarke's topsy turvy God Is Love (Get It In Writing) (Fourth Estate, London 1990) takes the idea of the marketable Messiah and runs with it. The gonzo marketing aspects of religion are in the hands of the small timers (turn on Gospel TV if you need proof), so it's not such a giant leap to a visionary 21st century corporation getting into the God Game. Clarke lays out the creation of the first corporate Christ. Defined by focus groups and polling, World Religion Inc. (WRI) produces a Messiah by consensus by spoonfeeding new popular religion to (what else) a blank slate clone singer in a mass market bubble gum band. The concept is simple. You can buy shares in the Saviour; the more you own, the more God loves you. You have a stake in your beliefs that you can read on a balance sheet.

And then the real Jesus shows up.

And no white bread, Ken 'n Barbie Christ, but a post-modern Jesus, who does the talk show circuit and packages His message in sound bites and commercial hoakum. He is clearly a Man for His times, and the Saviour the world deserves. WRI has to come up with a strategy, so they buy in. The story comes around as the Cycle repeats itself, from a Crucifixion at the hands of hired corporate thugs and a Resurrrection witnessed by a burned-out adman.

God Is Love is part of a loose story arc including the previous Necrotrivia vs, Skull, Inc.. The backstory involves thinly metaphorical corporate wars, acidly satirical in a heavy-handed kind of way. The punning is merciless (the highest or the lowest form of humor? You decide!) and the wordsmithery gets out of hand on occasion. Tracking Clarke's allusions is fun (he has a character named Sandy Silence; Travis McGee fans may chortle) and the story has the inevitable flow of a fable retold. We all know the story, and there's only one way it can go. Business as the metaphorical battle of good and evil is nothing new, but the book works as narrative. Clarke has a sharply pointed and appropriately jaundiced view of the in-corporation of modern society, the branding of Life and the commoditizing of every aspect of existence. The idea of a corporate religion is not a far-fetched device. What is a sect but a branding of a different flavor of a basic product? And modern institutional religion is not shy about diving into the pool of money that washes tidally on our societal shores. The convergence of fundamentalism with politics and the concurrent totalitarianism of belief is deeply tied to vast quantities of money, be it Middle Eastern oil or political soft money.

Why not a secular corporate Messiah? The fundamentalist groups believe that they have the only True belief, so why shouldn't a secular, investment model be as appropriate? The Calvinist anti-greed strain of much (but by no means all) of Christian thought, the demonizing of the money lenders, is as out of step as the bizarre dietary rules and sexual dictates which lost-in-the-mythical-past religions still practice. Fundamentalism, as scary as it is, is doomed to be cast aside as people's education and economic position improve, and the day will come when the archaic prescriptions of two thousand year old books will be seen as the useless trivia that they are. The confusion of the internal messages of religions with the obsolete practices fixed in time in the Holy Scriptures will end when a more modern and equipped world will look for a Saviour in its own image. Thus it has always been and always will be.

The corporate spinning of the Messiah's Return touches on the pop-Millennialism that has always surrounded the Date. The arrogance of one religion making a Huge Deal of a highly questionable anniversary (see the diatribe in this issue, What Millennium?) is intellectually silly, a spritual imperialism that goes unremarked. It is not a Millennium alone in its meaning, but an artificial point that we have created and which there is every indication we will make a self fulfilling prophecy (witness Y2K). Maybe we deserve an off-the-shelf God.

Necrotrivia vs. Skull, the novel from which this blog takes its name, and my first of two published. My novels for 4th Estate were written under the name Jeremy Clarke.

Fourth Estate, London, 1989 (price: £4.95)
dedication: to Shell Scott - Clown Prince of the LCD Private Dicks

The blurb on the back:
It's late twentieth-century USA, and two marketing moghuls have the commercial life of the nation by the throat: Mr Rock of Necrotrivia, a psychotic blue-collar fascist, and SKULL supremo Sandy Silence, born-again Christian and Ivy League smoothie. Between them they are greedily exploiting Mr and Mrs America's insatiable appetite for junk.
Meanwhile an extra-terrestrial intelligence operative, lately a convict, has materialised in up-state New York. His knowledge of the ways of men comes entirely from a Dictionary of American Slang and TV transmissions which take ten years to reach his home planet. None of this has prepared him for the hotwire effect of nicotine, fast food and soda pop on his alien metabolism, and soon he is wanted for a series of mindless shootings, Only his ability to change his appearance at will saves him from arrest.
But he's an adaptable kind of guy, and after a couple of goggle-eyed trips to the local hypermart and a week spent holed up in the Siesta Motel watching TV game shows and gorging himself on Pop Tarts, he reckons he's got the measure of Planet Earth - hell, he's even getting to enjoy himself. He applies for a harmless copywriting job and winds up in the crazed corridors of Necrotrivia, where sedative gases seep through the air-conditioning. Soon he's Rock's pet employee, and he's handed the greatest marketing challenge of the century: SMACK, a revolutionary narcotic breakfast cereal. But SKULL is also after the SMACK account, and when Sandy Silence teams up with TV evangelist Dales Junior, it looks like the end of the line for Necrotrivia.
Written in the wise-cracking style of a pulp detective novel, Necrotrivia vs Skull is a deranged satire that gleefully derides the violence, greed and stupidity of the Western world.

Necrotrivia on Amazon.com

ONE OF THE GREAT FORGOTTEN BOOKS OF THIS CENTURY,

by A Customer of Amazon.com

This is basically a tragedy. A tragedy that this book is now out of print, a tragedy that I can't find any other books by this author ANYWHERE,a tragedy that my review is number 1 and not number 111, and a tragedy that the only reason I ever read it was by finding it for about 50p ($1) in a Bargain Book Store. It's also a tragedy that the only reason you'll probably even be reading this review is if you were looking for something else. But enough of that - I would just like to say that this book is a piece of biting satire on a par with 'Catch-22' and says more about the consumerist, mass-marketing 80's and 90's than 'American Psycho'. We see society through the eyes of a first time visitor (an alien) who's entire speech is formed from the sound-bites and advertising slogans that we are bombarded with day-in, day-out. What at first sounds like complete gibberish turns out to be incredibly apt and completely relevant in most of the bizarre situations that he finds himself,from joining the Marketing Company from hell,to promoting an addictive breakfast cereal, with a few dead bodies in between, all the time filling himself with an incredible array of junk food and e-numbers to keep his strength up. This is a hilarious (like all the best satire), thought-provoking and extremely well-written book that even has the confidence to parody itself towards the end, and the fact that it isn't currently a blockbuster film starring John Cusack, Christopher Walken, Harry Dean stanton and Steve Buscemi is, you've guessed it, a tragedy..

2008

2008 will be another year of activity musically. Having finished my (short) book, "Victim of Dreams", it's time to turn myself back to creating as Datawhore and working with collaborators such as Superczar. Although the scale at which I work is now smaller, it's important to me to remain creative and do as much as I can to turn out good work. Amongst the releases next year will be a 7" single on Perpetrator Records of New Zealand, with a beautiful cover by Welsh shutterbug Tyron Francis (below). There's two solo albums due, one a limited edition, and if I can arrange it several live Barracudas albums for iTunes. I foresee a half-dozen trax with Michael Dent that I can filter onto a new iTunes Datawhore album, too. There's more, like "King and Country", just knocked right out for The Beautiful Music. 2007 had some highlights; the inclusion of "His Last Summer" on EMI's power pop compilation "Burning Sounds" for example and the release on iTunes of four Datawhore albums was a long overdue coup. It's been good to make new contacts and friends on Myspace and latterly Facebook, renewed connections with Canada welcome and to be carried over into the new year. More possibilities are around, but details are not good magic before time. It's been a better year, for which I can thank luck, Kate and legal drugs. I'm not dead yet.

Barracudas

Back in the day, electric.

What I

Barracudas

Back in the day -1990 to be precise - as The Barracudas reunite to play in a cramped French record store ;)