21.11.10

STUART ARGABRIGHT OF IKE YARD FAME HAS SET SOME OF MY 'WORK' TO MUSIC. IT IS READ BY JUDY NYLON OF JUDY NYLON FAME. IT IS AVAILABLE TO BUY ON I TUNES, JUNO, AMAZON AND ALL THOSE SORT OF PLACES. IT IS ABOUT 80p PER TRACK.
YOU CAN HEAR THE FIRST TRACK FOLLOWED BY AN INTERVIEW WITH ARGABRIGHT HERE

http://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/popkontext-outpost-13-reboot

 

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE MAYBE



http://www.junodownload.com/products/vandal-tribes/1660306-02/

 


THATS SOMETHING I WROTE WHEN I WAS 21. THE FULL TEXT IS AS FOLLOWS


There are innumerable answers to any one question. All are true. All are false.
I contracted a rare tropical disease. My face grew purple and my temperature soared. Later I swam in the canal to refresh my spirits. I drank blue champagne with Terry and threw stones at the stray cats. Terry found half a cigarette some dopey cunt had dropped. The lucky bastard! He didn't let me share it with him. I felt hurt and left yelling hysterical insults and struggling to hold back my tears.

I was running as fast as I could. I slipped and fell heavily to the ground. Small pieces of gravel had become lodged in my knee. I was bleeding from my knees and from my elbows. Blood mingled with dust. A group of glowering Cossacks approached me with their scimitars drawn. I was nervous but they were in fact very friendly. They had seen me trip and fall and as one of their party happened to be carrying sticking plasters and some antiseptic, had come over to help. It was the least they could do.
I was very grateful for their kindness.People can be kind. People are often surprised at their own kindness.
I, on the other hand, am no longer human.

brightly coloured beetles swarm over the rotten fallen trees. sunlight enters the forest, filtered through the yellow leaves.

In towers of our own design we plot the overthrow of tyrants. Delirious with conspiracy we pore over the plans of the palace.
We drink coffee and talk fervently until the early hours of the morning. I walk home as the sun is rising, through fields damp with dew.
'it is my job to empty the king's chamberpot' he announced with pride. we shall torture him.
apostates grow thin and desperate outside the city gates.a necklace of larks tongues.the sound of statues being dismantled. the reckless joy of destroying our own history.
owls with startled eyes look down on motorways from the power cables.
bullish seagulls.small birds gobbling crumbs on cafe tables.enormous kitchens in which thousands of uniformed chefs prepare whole herds of livestock in ovens as hot as furnaces.
gorse bush. yellow berries. horse bush. yellow berries.
manufacturing sonnets.new emancipations. insurrection burns in our hearts.
the cracks widen into fissures.institutionalised and bedridden.
COMBAT!zealots with fierce bayonets.ADVANCE!
reserved potters sit reading the paper next to the hot kilns.anarchists upsetting cups of tea and shouting defiant slogans in Percy Ingle.crocuses.
foxgloves. Formica.
solemn busts of roman emperors. wheezing church organs. cobblers. tailors. locksmiths. clockmakers.
'they move like a black tide inexorable and slow. we will have to cross the mountains, we have no other choice.'\
'pumpernickel, charles' he snorted derisively .'in fact once we have found the right combinations, there is no code we cannot crack.'
'com-bo-nay-shuns.' he emphasised each syllable and then licked his moustache with a wiry tongue.
this is the future. we will rearrange reality according to a strict and rational set of rules. Jerusalem!

Farrell was playing darts on the poop deck while Violet went downstairs to refill her glass. I jumped right out of my skin when I heard the fog horn! what a fright it gave me! ennuyees gaze blankly at the ships wake until the dinner bell shakes them from frigid reveries.mooga mooga mooga. three times I call your name and only a mocking echo answers me. MOOKA!
beating inside small cages of bone. beating. breathing. beating.
expand and contract. carnivals in which animals are torn apart by drunken revellers. hallelujah!
migrating mastodons with icy coats. farms of pelicans and nanny-goats.
glorious emperor, for whom no gift is too great. pomegranates and kettledrums. hay-fever and rheumatism.
masticated veal. science classrooms. oh! savage lament!
I know only what you have told me and I know you to be untrustworthy.
O fiendish dissembler,
I am left, frantically scrabbling to sort your truths from fabulations. Hesitantly I recite the questions from phrasebooks. I address myself to sunburnt peasants, standing there awkwardly, book in hand, squinting as I concentrate on each unfamiliar word. How ridiculous I must look!

We measure time by the opening of flowers and the falling of leaves and so conclude that time never passes.
All combinations must be exhausted.
hill mist and grey rain gauze.
An infinitly fine gradation of possibilty, radiating out in every direction.

Whales swim through the wide green oceans consuming vast quantities of plankton.it's all so obvious!
Crustaceans dress in dinner suits and ball-gowns to dance demurely on beaches of red sand.
copperplates and cutlery.the iron age!
I dress in the garb of a 12th century monk and lure passers-by into heated debates over Aquinas and Aristotle.EITHER/OR!
we will invent machines to lie to us and woo us to sleep with lullabies. Tell stories...
makeshift sheds on muddy allotments conceal shrines to wild gods.
 at night the light from sacramental candles can be seen, seeping through the cracks in driftwood walls. the runner-beans grow unusually fast.
Fields of ghostly mushrooms in the frost grass.
grace.
we pursued our goal with the fervour of saints.
Yet, just as the absolute seemed certain to engulf us,
we were confronted with an awful paradox.
'if it weren't for disillusionment I doubt I'd still be alive.'
the familiar consolations of failure. the renewal of all possibilities. insane hope.
moors. bleak tundra. black mamba.fascinating.
'you, are an idiot, Leopald.'
jumble sale. tonight, the imps have promised to reveal their secrets.we will explain all human behaviour MATHEMATICALLY!
'come on! your dinner's going cold.'
folly! yes, it is our mistakes which make us human. our fallibility, o! our imperfectibility!we love them, o! we love them!wisdom is for fools.
'come on!'
O, frivolous world! arbitrary and entirely frivolous, flinging handfuls of colourful confetti... OK, I'm on my way

Move aside! I'm thinking important thoughts!


ACTUALLY THATS NOT THE END OF IT. I SEEM TO HAVE MISPLACED A STANZA OR TWO.

HERE IS SOME OTHER THINGS ON THE EP. ONE OF THEM IS FROM AN ABORTED STORY BOOK.
Vandal tribes
pattern breakers and pattern builders,
move and counter move.

Part 4 / Chapter 4

Fracture of the fibula. Black holes inhaling nebulae.
Blacksmiths making souvenir horseshoes in a mock 17th century village. 
Earth sucked into a black hole of its own making!
Dawn time.
tiny birdlike figures, deformed by leaking toxins, grow vegetables on the refuse islands, snare seabirds, recycle electronics, plunder circuit boards for gold....
whole populations support themselves in this way, on offcuts, waste, detritus.
squabbling with gulls and rats.
the refuse islands are enormous. the boats come in. those that live on the islands were stowaways, or the descendants of stowaways.
the islands are manmade. mountainous. studded with hovels. villages smoke in the shadow of garbage mountains. energy extracted from the heat of rotting waste. there are landslides, whole settlements enveloped as a hillside shears off.
toxins leech into the skin. contaminated food. dangerous work. fires flare up without warning. 
. rooting through the rubbish. fellaheen. snaring seabirds. fishing in the shallows.
Houses rise from the rubble, the hummus of organic waste, plastic bags..... jerrybuilt
painted with the images of popular heroes and homespun gods or with the images of meadows, forests, beaches with sun setting over golden sand....
driftwood frames, improvised concrete embedded with shells, plastic action figures, coins, the bones of fish and seabirds, charms and amulets...
streets of trampled down rubbish
stench of sulphurous hell
mansions of mob bosses on top of rubbish heaps, rat skulls on lengths of sharpened wood, guarded by teenagers with bloodshot eyes
knife fights in the night streets....
wildfire cults spread messages of mania, dancing till collapse, apocalyptic creeds tied to political ends, harnessing the god fervour
small fishing craft bobbing off the refuse islands, flinging out nets
fires spew toxic smoke, thick and black, swallow houses, whole streets eaten by fire
diseases mutate, swarm through the narrow streets, bubonic plagues and cholera, TB, smallpox.... the old devils run amok
and on the mainland too, in the squatter camps, in the old factories huddled together on concrete floors, in tents under leaking roofs
in housing estates long abandoned. walls are broken down, warrens formed, new architectures
Cracked ashaplt in which dandelions, thistles and nettles grow. Sycamore trees. Pigeons. Rats. Fires in steel drums. Buildings. Old office and retail space. Solid grey concrete. Rain streaked. Or metal hangers. Functional and drab. And in between, around and built onto these, shanty structures of corrugated iron, driftwood and shipping containers. And inside too. In shopping malls and retail hangers. Tent cities. Firelight. Pigeons in the rafters. Disrepair. On walls amateurish murals fade. Paintings of masked, armed men clenching fists aloft in victory. Memoirs of more idealistic times. When people hoped for more than just survival. Or had the energy to pretend to do so.
PERHAPS YOU WILL LIKE IT PERHAPS NOT.

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