I was going to start this blog with a question where are our protest songs? but then with the most cursory of googles I realized the answer was just not on television. Here is one:
I'm not sure if Dan Bern is any good yet because he seems like a knock off version of Bob Dylan but I suppose thats better than a knock off version of Ke$ha and besides I like bob dylan. He wrote some really good songs and I've listened to him since i was but a little scamp and haven't got bored of him yet, which is high praise indeed. Infact most of my musical exploration has been looking for someone better but nothing sticks which is annoying another thing that is annoying is there is no bob dylan on youtube so now I have to buy all his songs and I don't like him that much! really artist should pay the audiance because after all a song thats not being listened to is just a bit of noise and a photo nobodies looking at is (this would be a great oppertunity to insert a catty remark about somebodies work by saying something like a photograph nobodies looking at is probalby by -insert name here- however I don't want to say anything like that because I am really nice guy and I wouldn't want to insult anyone in my class because they are really nice aswell and insulting someone on the internet is very backhanded and cowardly and if I was going to insult someones work I would want to be there to watch them cry because that is always fun maybe I could take a picture of it and put it on my blog because I don't think I have enough examples of my own work on here at the moment.) just a piece of paper on a wall
I suppose I do like him because he is quite funny however this sort of music always strikes me as a little masterbatory in that it dosn't challenge or even inform your beliefs, all it does is pander to them and make you feel smug in your obvious rightness I mean how do those stupid right-wing pigs not get it? haha they are just so stoopid.
but maybe this comes from the fact that I can't let myself just like things because of a childhood of being shot down by my older brother that helped foster my healthy self sketisim that pushes me forward trying to reach an imaginary point where I actually believe what I am doing is good and so instilled into me a burning need for exteral validation so please comment and say how wonderful I am because seriously I am a really nice guy.
Anyway what I was going to talk about is protest because I was gonna make some seriously political art that will break down the walls that the man has built and finally deliever the fundemental freedoms that us poor art students have been stripped of in this totalitralen reigm concontected by the blue blooded cold hearted nazi vampires stooped over their caulderens filled with austerity measures in the dark castles of London town.
London by William Blake
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
If William Blake did folkrock I am sure he would be just as good as Dylan If only they had Myspace or even vinyl in those days but alas no the words are stuck in boring poetry form. Wait didn't The Verve sing this in one of their songs. I can't remember. I am not a big fan of The Verve they are ok to have on in the background but I wouldn't chose to listen to them.
This poem is very present in my thoughts at the moment because after all its about the complex connections between patterns of ownership and the ruling ideology, the way all human relations are inescapably bound together within a single destructive society. These ideas are as present in our times as they were in Blakes. although we now have a wellfare state and we are much richer and the streets are probaly cleaner and we have a better sweage system and we have a more democratic society and we are more tolerate and we have the NHS and other nice things like that.
This is a snarling angry poem that decries the charter'd london own by the few and suffered by the many. It generally states privatation is a bad thing. That all it does is make people feel powerless. The world depicted in the poem is one in which everone is chained by mind forged manacles. If only we could cast off these terrible oppressive manacles. Wouldn't that make for a brighter future? Let us burn the money which has become our false idol and cast out the laws that castigate our natural and pure desires.
Freedom
a peom by an idiot
Freedom is great!
Freedom is walking down the street without the fear of abuse!
freedom is the right to an education!
freedom is the right to have children, as many as you want!
freedom is the right to voice your opinion without the fear of reprisals!
freedom is the right to marry who or what you want!
freedom is the right to believe in any sort of god you want or even none at all!
freedom is the right to your own home!
freedom is the right to not let certain people into your home! (vampires,gypse, ect)
freedom is the right to move freely across boarders!
freedom is the right to choose your own career!
freedom is the right to wear whatever sort of clothes you like!
freedom is the right to put into your body whatever you like!
freedom is the right to have sex with whoever you want when and where you want!
freedom is the right to walk naked down the streets without fear of abuse!
freedom is the right to show children videos of there parents having sex!
freedom is the right to kick old people down the stair!
freedom is the right to suck off other peoples dogs!
freedom is the right to burn down someone house while they are sleeping!
freedom is the right to own your own gun!
freedom is the right to lick all the fruit in the supermarket and then put it back!
freedom is the right to break into someone elses house to use the bathroom!
freedom is the right to abandon your child!
freedom is the right to abandon your child!
freedom is the right to hyjack a bus and drive it off a bridge!
freedom is the right to put poisonous water snakes into crowded swimming pools!
freedom is the right to free and fair elections!
freedom is the right to bomb airports and set yourself on fire!
freedom is fucking brilliant!
William Blake wrote London at a time of political unrest and reveloution in france. A movement Blake signaled his support for by donning a beret. Has the beret always been a symbol of revloution it seems to appear alot on the heads of reloutionarys like che gu...whatever his name is.
We now live in a time of reveloution how do we show our support to them, a no flyzone. Is this just a symbol of support? Do we have a right to intervien? We haven't a great track record. Can we morally stand by and do nothing? These are some complex and troubling issues which I am going to run away from.
Blake was able to talk forcfully about the state of the world in an affecting way and importantly in a way which did not seem prechy or egoistic. How did he managge that? I could argue that he achieved this through first hand experiance, The book he published it in was called "Songs of Experiance" after all and this was London he was talking about, his home.. Of course he had strong informed opions about it. The poem had the same kind of experiance, integraty and anger that I heard in the poetry of the Afghan people on the BBC world service.
To have a true resonance I think you have to have that first hand experance the TV dosen't cut it and even visiting places can't summon up the same truth. As Jarvis Cocker sang in a 90s pop song:
You will never understand
how it feels to live your life
with no meaning or control
and with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
and they burn so bright
whilst you can only wonder why
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'cause when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
if you called your dad he could stop it all
yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
how it feels to live your life
with no meaning or control
and with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
and they burn so bright
whilst you can only wonder why
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'cause when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
if you called your dad he could stop it all
yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
Is it true that the only life you can truly talk about is your own? How can this be the case when their are more than just biographies in the art world? I would say that we can talk about things other than our lives but we always look at them from the perspective of our lives. This seems relly obvious now that I have said it, so its probably true. Part of the joy of art is being able to look through someone else perspective whether it be strange and alien or reassuringly similar to your own. (I wonder which of the two people really prefere?) In the end art is packaged empathy. Or maybe not.
Well back to Protest Songs
One thing I have a problem with protest songs and other art is that they don't offer any soloutions. "London" is an angry indightment but it gives us no insight for how to escape the cycle that begins with privatisation of the land and then leads to the selling of bodies and souls. Even the way humanity rejovinates itself has been corrupted. Where is the path out of the woods?
Mayby its better for it to be this way. Perhaps artist purpose is to try and accuratly depict the society that we live in and leave the change for someone else to deal with, someone smarter and better informed. where can we find these people they must be around here somewhere?
At the moment we live in what seems like the craziest time for a long time and the world has been consistanly crazy for a long time. Several revolutions, the maddness of the ivory coast which is thankfully coming to an end about 1500 corpses too late, the still unfolding disaster in japan and the sinster arrests in china of writers, human rights lawyers, artists, bloggers and other dissidents. The world is a scary place Never in my life have I been so glad I live in britian. I must have been a particularly charitable dung beetle in my past life.
what right do I have to complain? My life is brilliant
This is confusing for me and I am sure it is just as confusing for everyone else. Because we are angry about what is going on around the world. We are angry about a great many things. People want to do something but they feel impotent.
This is a clip from the film Network a film from 1976 I talked earlier about the poem "London" which was from 1794 and I have talked about things going on right now. The world has always been crazy, things it seems are always worse than ever and even when things are going well we convince ourself the world is as bad as its been, the fear of crime gose up while crimes go down. In the end its not the world thats crazy, its people that are crazy, the world ends everyday for somebody and we are always at the end of history.
The world isn't crazy at worst its indifferent and people go crazy trying to find meaning in it, or just trying to live off it, sometimes trying to rule it. I don't think we've got to get mad we are already quite mad enough.
I was thinking I might organise some protests or events that I can relate to my life about occurenses that I have experianced, and so have a right to talk about perhaps a remeberance of all the times I just missed the bus and had to wait literally minites for the next one or maybe I could light a candle in memory of each time I stubbed my toe. I could do reveloutionary action like I don't know having lunch at a different time or mixing orange squash and rhbenna to make a new ungodly taste explosion.
I have been invloved with only one protests, I have signed a few petions yes but that hardly counts. The only march I have been in was the march against the war in Iraq which was on the whole ignored, the only prootest I can remember succending in this country since then is the one agaist the selling of british forests or was it just english forests. I feel we need to obviously treasure our freedom to protest and I beilieve we have duty to be informed about the world. We need to keep writing songs that satirise the people we think are wrong. I watch a documentary today called "My Brother the Islamist" and It was very strange at some points the group of islamist were just a bunch of regular blokes laughing and joking around but then suddenly they switch and start coming out with the most hatfull rhetoric. People are people and I won't ever understand them anyway I found it incredabily strange these people protesting against their right really to protest. Protesting for less freedom that seems perverse espechally with all the people fighting and dieing for freedom at the moment. When I read what I have written I am ashamed we always want to sound intelligent and witty but instead I feel I sound naive and sloppy. Everyone has to face up to what the sound like on the page, it always sounds better in your head. When you try to talk about the big things you think its not my place and maybe it isn't but I suppose that dosen't mean you can't try. I hope its the trying that counts and in the end thats what protest is about, trying.
I don't think what I have writen is very interesting or concise and I know the spelling and grammer is awful and it dosn't seem to cover any point sufficiently and it dosen't inform or entertain and might seem even tasteless and flippent but look on the bright side at least I have the freedom in this country to write this rubbish.
Well thats done. I hope I didn't sound to self importan't or ignorant or many other terrible things I tend to think of students and the like that try and write this sort of thing anyway I'm done with writting this blog
I'm going outside to play.
Good.
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