Untitled (So They Call Upon The Author To Explain)

Fig. 1. Rudolf Schwarzkogler - Action, 1965

We Call Upon The Author

What we once thought we had, we didn’t
And what we have now will never be that way again
So we call upon the author to explain

Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets
We’ve shunned them from the greasy-grind
The poor little things they look so sad and old
As they mount us from behind
I ask them to desist and to refrain!
Then we call upon the author to explain

Well, rosary clutched in his hand
He died with tubes up his nose
And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals
Chanted his name in code
We shook our fists at the punishing rain
And we called upon the author to explain

He said, everything is messed up round here
Everything is banal and jejune
There’s a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me
In this idiot constituency of the moon
Well, he knew exactly who to blame!
And we call upon the author to explain

Prolix! Prolix!
Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix

Well, I go guruing down the street
And young people gather round my feet
And they ask me things - but I don’t know where to start
They ignite the powder-trail straight to my father’s heart
And, yeah, once again
I call upon the author to explain

Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing
That mediocres my every thought?
I feel like a vacuum cleaner - a complete sucker!
It’s fucked up and he is a fucker
But what an enormous and encyclopedic brain!
I call upon the author to explain

Rampant discrimination
Mass poverty, third world debt
Infectious disease, global inequality
And deepening socio-economic divisions
Well, it does in your brain
We call upon the author to explain

Now hang on
My friend Doug is tapping on the window!
Hey Doug, how you been? (hey Doug)
Well, he brings me a book on holocaust poetry - complete with pictures
And then he tells me to get ready for the rain
And we call upon the author to explain

Prolix! Prolix!
Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix

Bukowski was a jerk!
Berryman was best!
He wrote like wet paper maché
But he went the Heming-way
Weirdly on wings and with maximum pain
We call upon the author to explain

Down in my bolthole I see they’ve published
Another volume of unreconstructed rubbish
“The waves, the waves were soldiers moving”
Well, thank you - thank you!
Thank you and again
I call upon the author to explain

Prolix! Prolix!
Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix

Nick Cave

A Pictorial Peccadillo From The Cannibal's Cookbook

Fig. 1. James Ensor - The Banquet of the Starved, 1915


'We need ... to grasp both sides of the paradox of the image: that is it alive - but also dead; powerful - but also weak; meaningful - but also meaningless.'

W. J. T. Mitchell

One More Verse From The Ballad Of Jack The Dripper

Fig. 1. Jackson Pollock - Lavender Mist, No. 1, 1950


'Once the secondary elaboration of style has covered the wild form-play of art, never again can the human eye see its full effects, neither this generation, nor future generations.'

Anton Ehrenzweig

A Bridge Of Flesh Between The Mind And Its Others

Fig. 1. Hannes Schüpbach - Toccata (video still), 2002


'The artist ... has never lost his original function and establishes the unity of the ultimate by reducing all phenomena to the terms of the sensual. For sensuality is the one basic human quality necessary for the appreciation of all truth.'

Marl Rothko

It's Hard To Be Lean Without Also Being A Little Mean

Fig. 1. Alberto Giacometti - Le Chat, 1951


'Things would have been fine if my body and I had got on well together. But the fact is that we were an odd couple. When the child is unhappy, he doesn't asks himself questions. If he suffers bodily as a result of needs and sickness, his unjustifiable state justifies his existence. His right to live is based on hunger, on the constant danger of death. As for me, I was neither rich enough to think I was predestined nor poor enough to feel my desires as demands … Breathing, digesting, defecating unconcernedly, I lived because I had begun to live. I was unaware of the violence and savage demands of that gorged companion, my body, which made itself known by a series of mild disturbances, much in demand among grown-ups ...'

Jean-Paul Sartre

It Takes Longer To Fully Unravel Than It Does To Live

Fig. 1. Liza Lou - Continuous Mile, 2007–2008


'There is an optimism that consists in saying, "In any case, it couldn't be any better." My optimism would consist in saying, "So many things can be changed, being as fragile as they are, tied more to contingencies than to necessities, more to what is arbitrary than to what is rationally established, more to complex but transitory historical contingencies than to inevitable anthropological constants."'

Michel Foucault

The Sunday Six: It Ain't No Carnival For The Animals

Fig. 1. Sue Coe - Elephant Slaughter in Sudan, 2007

Fig. 2. Scott Robert Hudson - Bison, 2005-2007

Fig. 3. Xavier Veilhan - Shark, 2008

Fig. 4. Steve McQueen - Running Thunder, 2007 (film still)

Fig. 5. Bill Hammond - Jingle Jangle Morning, 2006

Fig. 6. Damien Hirst - Tranquility from the “Butterfly” series (2002-)

The Janjuweed (Death on Horseback) using high powered rifles slaughter 100 elephants in one afternoon to sell the ivory to China. The money buys more weapons for the war in Darfur.