Virgin to the flame

This post may roll some eyes, I'm sure. To some it was inevitable given the amount of virtual banging-on I've been doing in the last month or so. However, I must share with you my excitement for this set of recordings, 'The House of Balloons' by The Weeknd.

What do I know of it all? Not a great deal. Young chap from Toronto, 21 years old, made it all in his bedroom. Oh that old chestnut eh? Only later do we find out that 2011's answer to Trevor Horn was producing. I know, I know, we've heard it all before.

Regardless...smooth androgynous vocals, heavily treated with a vocoder on many of the tracks, as he sings, stroke, raps his way through them, all to a backing track of electronic beats and wait for it...sped-up looped samples of...only my favourite band of last year...yes that's right...Beach House. What an incredibly heady concoction: dreamy choruses from Victoria Legrand punctuating this urban style croon of obscenities. And thank god it's not just one track, but multiple.

'The Morning' is certainly the standout track on 'House of Balloons', sounding in vibe but not content, like a number 1 hit record from the 1990s. However, this on repeat lasts just a few weeks. After you've lived with these glorious productions for a while, it's like looking into a magic eye painting, suddenly all the context leaps out at you in 3 dimensions. The motive behind the name becomes so ridiculously axiomatic, you feel silly you ever wondered about it.

What becomes clear is that the whole 9 tracks are the charting of a very long weekend indeed. One that is full to the brim with copious amounts of drugs, booze, lust, sex that doesn't happen, sex that does happen, what-is-she-doing-with-him, blow jobs, youthful arrogance, dancers, the list can go on, and does. In short, the ruminations of a teenage boy. Or the graffiti on the path to hell.

But my god, how the loins can stir when put so eloquently. Every party you ever went to, you wish they turned into this. For your mediocre memories, you'd take the mightiest come-down the world could conspire for just that one long evening of a hedonism only imagined in songs like these.

This is so on the mark of the moment it is quite unbelievable. And you may wonder, what this, *clears throat*, curmudgeonly old luddite who's apparently always harking back to days never endured, is doing listening to something so unashamedly decadent and on the pulse.

I tell you, when there is no hope, there is only oblivion. With the choice of jumping or being pushed, The Weeknd compels me to jump head first, like a virgin to the flame.

Download 'The House of Balloons' legally and for free from The Weeknd's site.

Listen to 'The Morning' below.

The Merits of Travel

Like an indefatigable leviathan, the issue of travel keeps coming up in conversations at the moment. Everyone I talk to is vehement that we must be doing it, like some blinkered religion no one stops to question. But the relevance of it, I can't get over the question of whether there is any or not.

We're taught in Britain that it's our birthright. To be able to move freely through the world, to seek employment, adventure, or relaxation, all just as equally essential. We are all middle class now and the world is our playground. We have overcome our capitalist oppressors, *chortle*, and we can now enjoy such luxuries as the experiences that only other countries can offer. Just like the rich once had exclusive access to. Our health, wealth, and life expectancy in comparison with our ancestors and the current slaving masses in the "developing" world, are testament to this.

But does anyone stop to question its relevance? Sure, we can argue that the experience one gains from travelling the world gives us perspective, which helps us make better decisions, enriches us as individuals and in turn our families and communities. That is hard to dismiss.

But to what degree must we travel in order to gain perspective? Must we see every golden cupola the world has to offer? Witness every "primitive" tribe in all the darkest deepest rainforests? Must we all drink from fish bowls of hallucinogenic drugs with bronzed Swedes on Thai beaches? Eat Argentinean steaks on the Pampas they came from?

Surely the benefit of literature is that we do not have to experience these things first hand. That we can be enlightened via proxy. This must be good enough for most of our experiences, our thinking, and the concoction of our world view.

Perhaps it is the same kind of misguided individualism that inspires half the world to be indelibly inked with "unique" tattoos. Is it the effect of the awareness of feeling so insignificant in the world that we must strike out in some way, to be appear original, at all costs? I'm sure these confused ramblings are something along those lines too.

I don't like to bring the environment into this, as horrific an effect our cumulative attempts at individuality are, these quests for a questionably richer fabric of personal history. But surely the same question would, and should arise. If there were no environmental degradation from millions of people taking pointless journeys, surely we must still question the point of those journeys.

Of course, many of them are not pointless. There is little we can do when the globalised world encourages us to fall in love with people from far flung reaches, or retire to overseas "paradises". All of which require us to travel to keep alive those essential connections with our loved ones. I would not begrudge anyone who feels that need, I have felt it myself, of course. The perpetuation of those close relationships is essential, possibly one of the very few rational reasons for journey.

But for all others, I can't get it. Surely our efforts should be devoted to our immediate surroundings. To enrich them, to make them beautiful and pleasant places that we would want to live, relax, love, and retire in, not an infinite squalor we continually want to escape from. Then we would have no need for the greener grass over yonder.

As the late poet Glyn Hughes said in a recent interview for the Dark Mountain II anthology, "We are sold aspiration...Earn enough money to get on a plane and fly somewhere else to lie on a beach. Why? You don't need it. Go round the corner and lie in a field instead."

Footage from The Lexington

Some footage of my solo show at The Lexington a few weeks ago below. It’s a playlist, so should load one video after the next, seamlessly. If you don’t want to listen to all though, links to individual songs are below it. New songs debuted, such as “We’ll Go Dancing” and “Old Friend”…Enjoy!

We’ll Go Dancing by Marmaduke Dando

Old Friend by Marmaduke Dando

If You Go Away sung by Marmaduke Dando

The Art of Decay by Marmaduke Dando

We Fucked It Up by Marmaduke Dando

And thanks to Andrew Clarke for filming and putting these together, much appreciated.

Infinite Squalor

Infinite squalor is ushered in,
Like the changing of the seasons,
A natural thing.
Aren't you the clever ones,
Now you have purchase,
To buy up medallions,
And hang them in earnest.

"But how can you blames us? What's to be done?!"
So easy to fuck, so hard to make come.

The lust for labour,
And conspicuous consumption,
Such curious behaviour,
This democratic serfdom.
If you've faith in the system,
Shore up the machine.
Await your end, in mid daydream.


"But how can you blames us? What's to be done?!"
So easy to fuck, so hard to make come.

All shut away now, and tripled locked
With your private libraries,
In your mortgaged box.
The final nail, in this coffin,
Has firmly come, from within.


"But how can you blames us? What's to be done?!"
So easy to fuck, so hard to make come.

Infinite squalor is ushered in,
Like the changing of the seasons,
A natural thing.

An Inhumanist Vision

In recent years, as this blog’s history will testify, I have undergone somewhat of an enlightenment. Discovering the threat of climate change to be irrefutable and learning of the certain realities that peak oil will bring to humanity, has severely altered not only the way I think, but also how I live my life. Peak oil, however, always seemed to me to be more stirring.

Perhaps I found it to be more tangible, the burning of finite resources to power real, touchable objects that surround me everyday of my life. Climate change on the other hand, whilst I can read the studies and draw the same conclusions as 3000 scientists, seems to require greater strength of the imagination. Because of the differences in the emotive effect the two issues have had on me, I’ve often wondered why climate change has received more attention, and yet peak oil is barely spoken about. Why climate change, that is arguably a more abstract concept to get across to the average man on the street, over peak oil, which directly threatens the lifestyles of the Western world?

I’ve finally gotten round to reading The Dark Mountain Project’s published debut, an anthology of poems, conversations, essays, stories and images, that aim to expose the myths of civilisation and attempt to create more honest counter narratives. The first essay in this collection is by John Michael Greer, entitled “The falling years: An Inhumanist vision”, which I believe may shed some light on the puzzling issue of the preferential treatment of some catastrophes over others in the media:

“Compare the recent and continuing furore over anthropogenic climate change to the more muted response to the rapid depletion of the world’s remaining petroleum reserves, and one such distortion stands out clearly. Both these problems are unquestionably real; both were predicted decades ago, both could quite readily force modern industrial civilisation to its knees, and both are already having measurable impacts around the world.

“Yet the response to the two differs in instructive ways. Anthropogenic climate change has become a cause celebre, splashed across the mainstream media, researched by thousands of scientists funded by lavish government grants, and earnestly discussed by heads of state at summit meetings. Nothing is actually being done to stop it, to be sure, and most likely nothing will be done; not even the climate campaigners who urge such drastic action in the loudest voices and most extreme terms have shown much willingness to accept the drastic changes in their own lives that would cut carbon dioxide emissions soon enough to matter. Still, the narrative of climate change has found plenty of eager listeners around the world.

“None of this has happened with peak oil. The evidence backing the claim that the world has already passed the peak of petroleum production and faces a future of declining energy and economic contraction is every bit as solid as the evidence for anthropogenic climate change; the arguments opposing it are just as meretricious; its potential for economic and human costs is as great, solutions are as difficult to reach, and it can feed apocalyptic fantasies almost as extreme as those that have gathered around climate change. Still, no summit meetings are being called by heads of state to discuss the end of the age of oil; there has been no barrage of mainstream media attention concerning it and precious few government grants. Climate change is mediagenic; peak oil is not.

“A core difference between the two crises explains why. Climate change, as a cultural narrative, is a story about human power. We have become so almighty through technological progress, the climate change narrative argues, that we threaten the Earth itself. The only limits that can prevent catastrophe are those we place on ourselves, since nothing else can stop us; and even our own efforts might not be enough to stand in our way. It’s nearly a parody of the old atheist gibe: to prove our own omnipotence, we’ve made a crisis so big that not even we can lift it out of our way.

“Peak oil as a cultural narrative, on the other hand, is not a celebration of human power but a warning about human limits. At the core of the peak oil story is the recognition that the power we claimed was never really ours. We never conquered nature; we merely stole some of the Earth’s carbon and burnt our way through it in three short centuries. All the feverish dreams and accomplishments of that era were simply the results of wasting a vast amount of cheap fuel. Now that the easy pickings are running out, and we have to think about getting by without half a billion years of stored and concentrated solar energy to burn, our fantasies of power are proving unexpectedly fragile, and the future ahead of us involves more humility and less grandiosity than we want to think about.”

He wraps this idea up nicely with the following:

“While anthropogenic global warming is a real and serious problem, its consequences are subject to natural limits that current thinking, fixated on images of human triumphalism, is poorly equipped to grasp. Meanwhile, another real and serious problem – the depletion of the nonrenewable energy resources that prop up today’s industrial economy and keep seven billion people alive – gets next to no attention, because it conflicts with those same triumphalist obsessions. It’s no exaggeration to say that the modern world might solve the global warming crisis and then collapse anyway, because it only dealt with those of its problems that proved congenial to its self-image.”

There is certainly something in this. When explaining peak oil to people, one generally encounters a knee jerk dismissal of any looming disruption to our way of life. The comeback is always, “We will find a way to sustain our lifestyles, we always do, we are ingenious, look at what we’ve already created in the world, examples of how humanity innovates to overcome limits are everywhere”.

It’s the same self belief in humanity that Greer talks about, the collective shoring up of mankind’s staggering ego. What does it mean though, to admit that perhaps there are limits that we cannot overcome through ingenuity? Are there psychological issues at work here? The basis of one’s whole way of life, the premise of a belief system that allows one to operate in this modern world, shattered in their entirety.

The admission that there are limits to our species just as there are limits to every other species on the planet, would leave an individual in disarray. This is what peak oil confronts us with. Its limits challenge everything we believed was true about humanity. What individual would willingly accept to go through the process of admission, confusion, humility, and eventually the restructuring of a belief system? It would be much easier to continue along with old beliefs, ones that the majority of the world believe to be true, which no doubt gives a sense of comfort and ease that a rejection of anthropocentrism cannot give.

I find this refusal to engage in any other narrative to be extremely dangerous. To accept only the mainstream memes leaves one open to what could potentially be a significant fall. Entertaining counter narratives, after an initial internal meltdown, can only help make an individual stronger and more resilient to future catastrophes. If those catastrophes don’t materialise, what has the individual really lost? A little time maybe, not much else.

---

The Dark Mountain Project is shortly due to publish its second book. Should you wish to purchase the first book and help fund the second, visit their website at www.dark-mountain.net

John Michael Greer’s blog can be found at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

Criminal Waste of Time

I’ve just finished ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ by Robert Tressell, a novel about a group of painter and decorators in southern England in the early 20th century. It’s a long rambling text in favour of socialism, the overthrow of the capitalist system, by showing the contrast between the poverty stricken working class and the rich “sweaters” that have everything and do nothing. The title of the book comes from the idea that the working class are happy with the current system and are essentially philanthropists, pledging all their time and strength to make money for the good of others, not themselves. It’s deeply moving at times, and generally convincing…until one character starts talking about how to organise society, and then I get a little twitchy. The following paragraph resonated strongly with me:

“Nature has not provided ready-made all the things necessary for the life and happiness of mankind. In order to obtain these things we have to work. The only rational labour is that which is directed to the creation of those things. Any kind of work which does not help us to attain this object is a ridiculous, idiotic, criminal, imbecile, waste of time.”

I wonder about this in relation to the Current State of Things. Now that we have more rights to protect workers, we are paid much better, we work only 35 hours a week, we have paid holidays…in comparison with workers a hundred years ago, conditions for the masses are greatly improved. However, we are all still employed in irrational labour. We have outsourced food production and industry overseas, leaving us staring at screens and jabbering away on phones. The service industry, which contains no job that is necessary in order to sustain the life and happiness of mankind.

Have we been granted better working conditions in order to placate us and keep us driving the industrial machine? When the people are on the verge of revolt, make a few concessions and they’ll quiten down, and we can keep the system going for at least another century. With comfortably pointless existences, as most of us have now, what need does anyone have for protest? Especially when looking back at history and seeing how much better we have things now.

It’s curious that so many Labour politicians cite this book as an inspiration to them, the reason they got into politics etc. I wonder how many Labour MPs and their supporters really believe that the service industry is a Criminal Waste of Time. Surely there is still purchase in this idea of Rational Labour, but for the life of me I can’t think how anyone would be convinced.

We'll Go Dancing

Brain's been in a fug the last couple of days, but after the regular chores of an evening last night, I managed to set my mind to finishing off this song about dancing with one's beloved. Think Piaf talking in the verses, and then a dreamy 3/4 whisks you away on the chorus. Taking in the glory of spring that is upon us at present, and a stock misanthropic theme, I bring you..."We'll Go Dancing".

We'll Go Dancing

I search this ugly town, for things that do not spark a frown.
Up treeless avenues, down barren streets that hold no clues.
But round the corner in the park, I find the backdrop to my heart.
Take my hand if you please, beneath blossoming cherry trees...

And we'll go dancing, through the rush-hour malaise,
Desperately advancing, in their separate ways.
And you'll look enchanting, either making or breaking,
What would otherwise have been,
Yet another uniquely dreary, forgettable day.

The insipid urban sprawl, and the ideas behind it all,
Are enough to take your breath away, but never in the same way,
As you do my love, come closer my love.
Click hard your heels on the floor, smash all that The Others adore.
We have momentum and flow, like a petal of Spring snow...

We'll go dancing, through the rush-hour malaise,
Desperately advancing, in their separate ways.
And you'll look enchanting, either making or breaking,
What would otherwise have been,
Yet another uniquely dreary, forgettable day.

Despite the heaven that we hold, you are embarrassed by my bold,
Nature to declare, this is more than an affair.
I slow to savour every aspect, you grow impatient with my step.
And as the band are winding-up, you skip out leaving me hard-up.
I'm left alone now with my thoughts, on this imaginary waltz...

We'll go dancing, through the rush-hour malaise,
Desperately advancing, in their separate ways.
And you'll look enchanting, either making or breaking,
What would otherwise have been, and consequently was,
Yet another uniquely dreary, forgettable day.