Friends, romans, people of Manor House,

I'm just not really a blogging kind of guy. Sorry. Noone checks this blog out anyway (at least not anymore after a 4 month silence). News for myself in case i forget: I've moved to Manor House in north London (hasn't everyone moved to london now?), im learning samba. I'm playing in a pub in Hammersmith on saturday with Lizzie Parle. I'm playing at Fransesc Marco's musical soiree a week on saturday. I'm 'unemployed seeking employment'. I'm running out of time in this crummy internet cafe. Love yourself, protect yourself, believe in the tooth fairy, read Faceometer's blog, wait for your girlfriend because she's worth it, condition your hair, moisturise your face, better to extend the interest free overdraft than go on the dole. Life is a big fat sloppy kiss so just get on with it and stick your tongue in.

x

Ok, here's a new idea for a song. There's currently no tune but i think these lyrics are a promising start:

The world’s is dripping away,

But its future generations who’ll pay.

And it’s such a high price for some lousy old ice

That’s no-one’s got nothing to say.

So come join me in toasting the thaw,

As the flood water rises and batters the door,

You’ll be swimming to work in an open-necked shirt

Which is twenty-five miles from shore.

Perhaps it’s the heat that binds our hands,

And blinds our eyes to making new plans,

So lest we forget that getting a little wet,

Is better than drowning in shifting sands.

But often the rains no longer come,

And the wells of hope run dry in the sun

So get on your knees and pray for a freeze,

That the pace of change be a walk not a run.

And what of the babe soon to be born,

Who stumbles on into this terrible dawn?

With gas mask on, he’ll say we were wrong

And point to the world that’s dead and gone.

You can still see it all if you look around,

They gathered up all the remains they found,

Of a vision before this new world war,

Beneath the water now over the ground.

Ok, so i know that i havn't updated this blog in months and months and months but i promise its nothing personal. I guess the problem with blogs is that if you don't update frequently then noone comes back and ever checks it. It'd be like if the BBC website didn't update the news in a month, people would just find alternate sources of news and never again check the BBC. I'm aware therefore, that those of you who ever checked this site will probably have gone elsewhere for Blog love, perchance to Faceometer.tk, a more than fine repository of images, ideas and very very fine songs. I am pleased to report that i expect to be attending the launch party of Face's new EP, on the 8th June. Anyone anywhere should go as it sounds molto exciting, check out the new sounds at www.faceometer.tk if you can't make it down on the night.

So, i'm a little at a loss. Where to start? What to say? When you havn't seen someone for ages, suddenly its as if you never knew them, the awkwardness of not-knowing sets in. So, er, how've you been? Been busy?

(conversation continues but subjects voice is inaudible and muffled as if smoothered by a thousand years of indifference, we hear therefore, only Magic Lantern)

- yeah yeah me too

- strange weather eh?

- well, i wouldn't quite put it like that, i think Exeter a fine place to go to university whatever the weather.

- that depends on your point of view.

- i think that's a little unfair actually, the red hair's genetic

- (laugh), actually that is pretty funny

- any plans for the summer?

- cool cool, yeah Germans are lovely people, great with their hands. I hear the Sudetenland's a blast in July.

- Now come on, that was more than fifty years ago...

-sure, sure

- what do you mean you're going prepared?

- well, i wouldn't tell them that at the airport if i was you

- Ok, well don't say i didn't warn you.

- So, you excited about this new Faceometer EP?

- Yeah, something about camping,

- yeah sounds great, sort of like confessions of a window cleaner but in Soho or Clapham Common

- yeah it is brave isn't it. Well, he's always been one to push the frontiers of what the anti-folk genre can reliably hold.

(at this point there's a cheap  explosion, like an effect from the hit TV show, Crossroads, enter Visagealator)

To be continued...............

-

Folks, it's FaceOmeter here. You know, I check this Blog every day, and every day I try not to post an update for the Lantern... but after an entire calendar month with no updates I feel justified in telling you, the fans, what's been going on in the world of Skip.

I last saw the demon himself in Exeter on the first of last month. Oh, it was such a blast. He played me some new material including a song with lots of harmonics in that was very nice, so, folks, I can tell you that he's still writing! A little while later, I conversed with him on the telephone to discover whether or not he was in Birmingham. Though I was disappointed in this, he did mention he'd been playing a lot with the El Pato boys, so he's still gigging like a firey animal - fear not! Then all was silent once more until I telephoned Maximum "The Jones" Jones just yesterday; in London, in the background - some whistling. Whistling WITH GUITAR? Could this also have been the mysterious Lantern??! Who knows! But rest assured, at some point in the next year or so he will almost certainly update this blog and tell you for yourselves!

Peace,

FaceO xxx

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

I'm a little hamster holding its breath in a goldfish bowl watching sand flow through an hour glass and thinking, 'perchance this is it, there was so much i didn't do...' before my little hamster lungs give out and Ronda, the fish who shares the bowl grimaces at the prospect of sharing her usually fastidiously tidy abode with a dead hamster.

This is my dream about how time is running out and i can see it running before my eyes and it said it was only going to get some milk but it lied becuase it never came back and the tea's gone all cold now and then i wake up and i'm sweating and shivering and trying to tell myself that i'm not a hamster, i'm not, and what does this all mean, and gees i wish time would come back cos there's so much i wanted to do.

Then i roll over and see the tree that occupies my window and i think that it doesn't seem to matter about the passing of all this time because its happy with its lot, it knows that everything will pass and it won't stay the tree outside my window forever either becuase it'll fall down or break, or the house will fall down and break, or i'll break after falling down and have to move house, either way, sometimes i wish i had a little more patience like that tree.

And we're growing old and someone asked me the other day if there was anything i wish i had done with my youth and said, 'what, are you kidding, i'm only twenty' and then he said that yes, he knew i was twenty but where he came from people only live until they were 23 and that made me very old in his terms and in that case, was there anything i would have done differently? I told him that i wish i could close my eyes and see the tree outside my window and never grow old, he looked a little confused, said i was mad and wished me a happy retirement. I broke down and the wet tears on my cheeks reminded me of a dream i used to have about being stuck inside a goldfish bowl staring at sand flow inevitably through an hourglass and how i never did have that cup of tea.

Yes, the title says it all. I, the Lantern, am taking it all back home this coming tuesday the 7th of feb at the Thekla. Playing aroun 10 just before the fantastic Joe Folk of Gonga fame. Should be a most exciting evening with many other bands playing, Tom Berry spinning some dub on the decks etc. Come down and check it out. Support you Lantern!!

p.s. my debut EP, 'B sides better than the A sides' a 6 track disc of old four track recordings, will, i hope, be ready in a few weeks for you ears. These are mostly tracks i recorded but don't play live, including some older material inspired in the madness of 57. Consider this a taster session, an apperitif for the maincourse to come.

J x

So,

After being inundated with exciting feedback and comment from my essay on postmodernism, i guess that the tone of that last post was probably a little dull, if not pretentious. In this vein, let these words like a needle, act to dscharge any little grievances i may have with the world at the moment. I begin:

Why is it that there are so many fucking young conservatives at Bristol Uni? I swear they hang in packs and you can spot them a mile off. Moreover, they are so far up their own arses (a notoriously warm place to be) that any heat seeking devices released anywhere in the vicinity of Clifton would surely wipe out swathes of an otherwise beautiful city. I was dressed as a banana today handing out flyers for a film on south african music today called Amandla! Revolution in Four Part Harmony, and on more than one occasion was told 'no thanks i don't want one, its about revolution isn't it?' or simply 'fuck off hippie' or variations on a theme. Arguably the banana costume made it hard to take me seriosly but what happened to not judging books by their cover etc... Wankers. These people would have their food chewed for them if they could or if they weren't so racist as to eat anything touched by anyone who doesn't look and sound like them. (I.e. pashmina, Polo and/or new mini, sounds like a prick etc..)

Secondly, people who talk loudly on mobile phones in libraries and computer rooms as if their time, voice, and plans are somehow of interest to everyone else who have no choice but to overhear such scintillating conversations.

Thirdly, people who hate on everything. Now i know this might sound a little hypocritical given what im saying but any regular reader will know that i effusive about a great many things and am in all normal respects a lover of life, however i really dislike those people who manage to find fault in almost everything apart from things that you don't know and so can't pass judgement on. Chill out!

Finally, if that wasn't enough bile for you then come and hear some bile live at the THEKLA next TUESDAY 7TH FEBURARY. Also come and support the lovely AMELIA TUCKER and her great new band at the FOLK HOUSE this FRIDAY 3RD FEBURARY.

Also, check out my favorite Bristol Band, the unsupassable BABEL at www.babelmusic.co.uk

SOCRATES:  Stop there, and let me ask you what you would say in this case:
Let us suppose that we are all together as we are now; there are several of
us, and we have a large common store of meats and drinks, and there are all
sorts of persons in our company having various degrees of strength and
weakness, and one of us, being a physician, is wiser in the matter of food
than all the rest, and he is probably stronger than some and not so strong
as others of us--will he not, being wiser, be also better than we are, and
our superior in this matter of food?

I thought i'd enlighten you all with a draft of a postmodernism essay i'm handing in tomorrow. Critical comments, though welcome are not appreciated, and anyway, i won't be checking the site before its due tomorrow. For those of you who maintain a blogging silence i can only hope that you enjoy my wit and clear headedness. This at least, will have to suffice for my monthly update (see Will, you not the only intellectual with a blog!!). Read and dig:

Can there be a postmodern politics? Discuss the implications for political action if subjects are decentred and knowledge is deconstructed.

Jamie Doe

'Try and think of language as a form of violence.'

-Jacques Derrida

Derrida's provocative statement sits uneasily with our intuitive understanding of the role played by language. We commonly look on language as neutral and objective, and often invoke a 'tool' metaphor to explain the way we use language to describe the 'reality' of the world around us. Derrida and other philosophers, intellectuals, artists and architects belonging to the broad church of postmodernism, deny the referential relationship between language and the external world that we conventionally assume. Postmodernism attempts to undermine the idea that language can be neutral and objective and insist, on the contrary, that meaning in language is fluid and subjective. There is therefore no implicit meaning in the world, no foundational truths and no absolutes. Postmodernism asserts that the 'reality' in which we live is socially constructed in language, and therefore, that the power to set and influence meaning is inherently political, as underlying the linguistic surface of texts are important power relations. To subvert the old adage that 'knowledge is power', on a postmodern view, language and its meaning, is power. The pen, insofar as the wielder can set the meaning of the words it writes, is indeed, mightier than the sword.

Viewing the world this way has huge implications for politics. If we remove the foundational anchor fixing the meaning of our words, then we risk the stormy waters of relativism and would seem to surrender to a might is right relationship between meaning and language. What a postmodern view highlights is the highly political practice of setting boundary lines, for example, the decision to label one armed group 'freedom fighters' and another 'terrorists', makes all the difference in terms of how each group is dealt with. If we accept the postmodern contention that there is no objective way of saying what the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is, we begin to see that real political power lies not in tanks, smart bombs or oil, but in the power to name things and to set these boundary lines. In this essay I will argue that there can be a postmodern politics, indeed, 'analysing postmodernism is itself a political activity, a struggle for power as well as comprehension' (Gibbons and Reimar 1999, p.7).

In a postmodern politics, reality is political as we accept the role of language in constructing the many different realities in which live. I will argue that exposing the power relations inherent in language and embracing fluidity in meaning creates conceptual space in which individuals are free to construct their own identities. I will start by questioning what politics is, identifying different discourses each having placed the boundary line in a different place. I will then go onto consider the implications a postmodern view of politics has on our understanding of contemporary political events such as the 'War on Terror©'.

 Part one: The End Of Politics?

'In the political game, people also discuss and decide what may legitimately be discussed and decided in politics' (Schedler 1997, p.4). Definitions are powerful and contested. Labelling what something is also delineates what it is not, and it is at these 'boundary lines' that power relations are expressed. What Schedler makes clear in the above quote is the nakedly political action of defining 'politics'. For example, the extensive debate between classical liberalism which sees the extent of the political sphere as minimally confined to that of 'night watchman' and classical Marxism and modern Feminism which sees the person as political, every human interaction defined by a relationship of exchange. Where 'politics' ends and 'economics' begins, the separation between the 'public' and the 'private' spheres, the difference between the 'regional', the 'national' and the 'international', these are the battle grounds of postmodernism. The apparent neutrality of these words hides the huge impact their meaning has on our everyday lives. Take for example, the recent ban on smoking in public places in Ireland. The Irish government conceives that their political remit extends to banning their citizens from engaging in a lawful activity anywhere other than in private place. That is, the political sphere extends up to every puffing paddy's front door but not beyond, after which they are free to pose a health risk to anyone else who might live there. However, a similar public/private distinction is (thankfully) not drawn for another health risk, i.e. domestic abuse. There are many more examples where the meaning of words and concepts are selectively used for political purposes showing that meaning is relative and contingent upon the sphere and context it is invoked. This will be apparent when we consider the use of language in the context of the current, 'War on Terror'.

There is a plurality of political discourses each with an agenda focusing on establishing the primacy of that discourse and vying for the ability to set the meaning of contested political concepts in a competitive conceptual environment. In academia, increasing specialisation and the rise of the expert encourages a plurality of 'politics', for example, the politics of gender, sexuality, identity, development, energy, environment, economics, healthcare etc. A postmodern position seeks, therefore, to destabilise the primacy and dominance of any one political discourse by uncovering the power relations that underlie its attempt to fix the meaning of contested concepts. Furthermore, by exposing established orthodoxies as relative and contingent, and by reducing traditional conceptual debates to 'surfaces' to be examined for how and why they attempt to fix meaning, many of the 'issues' in contemporary 'politics' dissolve. This view has, however, been criticised as nihilistic and reductive, 'the world remains too ravaged by oppression, ignorance, and malnutrition…for privileged intellectuals to trade in seriousness for the sparkling interplay of language games' (McLennan quoted in Mcrobbie 1994, p.3). A postmodernist might reply, that a failure to appreciate the role of language in sustaining oppression demonstrates ignorance as to the essentially constructed nature of many of the worlds most serious 'political problems'. Social Constructivists such as Weldes and Laffey have done interesting work in this field, for example on the social construction of the 'Cuban Missile Crisis'

Part two: Can there be a postmodern politics without postmodern people?

'To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag…seems to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life'

-         Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest

We have already established that names, labels and definitions are important, something Oscar Wilde writes about, to great comedic effect in his play 'The Importance of Being Ernest'. Similarly, where we're from, who we are and what we know appear crucial to human action, hence Lady Bracknell's incredulity upon hearing of Jack's ignominious beginnings (see above). If we accept however, the postmodern contention that there are no foundations upon which to base meaning in language, then we must accept that there are no foundations upon which subjects can base their identities. Political action seems to assume, however, the stable subject. If the subjects of political action become fluid, unfixed and decentred then how can one fix to whom political action is directed? This raises the issue of identity construction. Identity construction is a political process as we desperately scrabble around to attach meaningful labels to ourselves, which can be conveyed to, and interpreted by, other people. Whether religion, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, profession, fashion, music preference or football team, the indefatigable 'I' seems to reduce to a number of repeated mannerisms and stated opinions which denote the discourses and meaning frames in which subjects place themselves. This introduces the postmodern notion of inter-subjective reality, that without external foundations to ground the reality in which we live, there are in fact, as many different realities as there are groups and communities with agreed meaning frames. The construction of identity therefore plays a role in externally placing the subject in an agreed frame of reference with a specific and contingent system of codes and signs particular to the sphere in question. There are many examples of this, for example, medical scientists can relate to other medical scientists on the reasonable belief that they have similar assumptions about scientific method, a certain language register etc, the same applies to me as I meet other Australians, I assume a familiarity with specific types of language, cultural references, even attitude. The postmodern subject is not, however, confined to one sphere, and may belong to a great many discreet language and sign systems, I am Australian but also an agnostic, I like Jazz and consider myself politically left wing, I have long hair and wear colourful clothes, I play in a band, I don't eat fish etc. 

On the one hand, the postmodern view of identity gives agency back to the individual, freeing them to choose who they want to be whilst on the other highlighting the fact that 'politics' and political actors, construct their own subjects. For example, the term the 'The War on Terror' carries with it a certain set of assumptions and political implications but few in the countries labelled 'The Axis of Evil' would have chosen to label themselves as such. Rather, in the U.S and the U.K, it become expedient for political reasons to construct new identities for countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria, to reinforce these identities using all the power available to them, such as the news media, and use these newly created identities as the legitimising device for political and military action. That is, those countries grouped denoted by the term 'The Axis of Evil', have very little to say in the matter with regard to political action premised using it. There is therefore a tension in the idea of a postmodern politics, as removing the foundations of individual identity makes subjects fluid and changing whilst the inherently political nature of meaning setting implies that those with political power, have the means to construct the subjects of their political action.

Conclusion: What might a postmodern politics look like?

In a shrinking world where there is increasing 'time-space compression', communication technology blurs traditional boundary lines between 'home' and 'work', geographical distance becomes irrelevant and where the quantity of sign systems available to subjects has multiplied beyond simply the local, regional and national to encompass the international, politics too is changing. With increasing global inter-connectedness, language and the setting of meaning has become international. As more of our everyday relationships are defined by speed, only the most up to date knowledge and information is of value. Subjects exercise power primarily as consumers and in the global marketplace feel free to pick up and put down their different identities. As the internet becomes increasingly central to people's lives, the anonymity of internet communication allows individuals to create and re-create their online identities as they choose. In a world where someone may have hundreds of friends online but live alone and rarely see anyone in the flesh, politics has to embrace both the needs and the contradictions of these new patterns of living. By making transparent the power relations underlying attempts to fix and establish boundary lines between contested concepts, a postmodern politics might wear its conceptual commitments on its sleeve. However, with the increased agency of the individual to construct new and changing identities, the current political reality of powerful actors creating their own subjects regardless of the chosen constructions of the individual, seems to preface or at least lay bare the primacy of power in the political sphere. If knowledge becomes deconstructed and we surrender to relativism, we may be forced to accept that might is right, as we can no longer point to or argue from the objective moral, or factual or empirical high ground. Does a postmodern politics imply the death of civil society or encourage a plurality of versions of the 'good life'? Is this a victory for nihilism or does it create space for alternative identities and styles of living unbound by conservatism? If nothing is secure and knowledge, meaning, truth, identity and morality are up for grabs, we better hope the good guys win…. oh wait… who are the good guys again?

After days and weeks of recuperation from finding the golden fleece, i am back! And at last the creative juices (a horrible term) have started oozing again like the fat out of the long dead christmas turkey. For those of you who have stopped coming to the site as i up date too infrequently well all i can say is, great news that you stopped by this time as you're in for a treat. Yes, not inane ramblings this time but some new ideas, fresh hewn from the granite rock of my face!

Its not like in the old days (or at least that's what they say)

Its not like in the old days when woman had no vote, before the age of internet, we all believed the Pope. Back then you couldn't Google search the recipes for bombs, the photographs were black and white and so were rights and wrongs. Cos' its not like in the old days before we had T.V's, when cigarettes we'ren't bad for and noone had HIV, and each man knew his place in life, up top or right down low, cos the pace of social change back then was comfortingly slow.

Well at least that's how it seems, to you and me, cos' we're living on the right side of the line. And though the past is past, its meaning changes all the time, like a toy ship in a bath tub thats brimming with red wine, so you take a drink, the toy ship sinks and you forget you once were mine.

Its not like in the old days, or so the old men say. They say we killed the country side and paved it all away. Now the air's got too poluted for kids to safely play and the curse we put upon this earth was born right here today. So it's not like in the old days, when they thought they knew it all. Before the needs for GM seeds and corn thats 10ft tall. You could wander through the Leaves of Grass and hear the chain gangs call: "pehaps each generation has its pride before its fall".

Well at least that's how it seems, to you and me, cos' we're living on the right side of the line. And though the past is past, its meaning changes all the time, like a toy ship in a bath tub thats brimming with red wine, so you take a drink, the toy ship sinks and you forget you once were mine.

Cos' its not like in the old days, those days we'll never know. But the seeds we planted yesterday will slowly start to grow Into tongues that speak the language that the winds of change will blow, and it'll carry weary travellers where'er they want to go, and it'll carry weary travellers where'er they want to go...

Well at least thats how it seems, to you and me....

I am alive, friends of Magic Lantern!! This does not mean, however, that i am close to a computer at every hour of the day and night. I use this to excuse my painful failure to adhere to the blogging code of a post at least once a month. I would like to point out that i am not particularly effusive in winter and that therefore, consider the cold wind echoing through the dusty and underpopulated halls of my blog, the messanger of the hibernation the author is currently undergoing. I will soon reemerge like a butterfly with jet engines to noise pollute an area near you. Recent news is however forthcoming:

1) Saw Misty's Big Adventure for New Year's Eve, great!

2) Intend to launch my own brand of Eau de Lantern in the spring

3) Now have more than one pair of trousers

4) Enjoyed talking to long lost friends Leo and Frank

5) Am dreading the organisational nightmare to come with as the horizon of the Dissertation looms ever larger

6) Loved the new This Bad Blood Between Us material, lets hear them in London soon!!!

7) Think Lizzie Parle's version of 'Somebody Told Me' rocks my world!!

Next gig this saturday 7th Jan in the pub next to Cafe One in Birmingham!

Much Love

Magic Lantern x