see nerd) blog
2009b
futurism
The art is forgotten because the politics was rotten. Yet Wagner was antisemitic; him, his music, were used by the Nazis to promote their belief: his politics were rotten, his art is not forgotten. Which tradition is correct? Music? Poetry? To me, condemning art for the politics is condemning art for non-artistic reasons. I find abhorrent Wagner’s world view, I dislike, say, religion’s world view, but I hear Wagner, I read Hopkins, their works are great. Fascism is wrong, nationalism is wrong, the two as one are thrice wrong. I detest the politics of the Italian futurists, I appreciate their poetry. My politics embeds itself in my poetry, but I hope future readers (presuming) grasp the politics feeds my art, it’s not the art itself, nor reason to reject. To ignore futurism because the artists were politically immature is itself immature. One can and should condemn the fascist corruption: so is the art content free? Why reconsider futurism? Well, from the introduction to Willard Bohn’s book “Italian Futurism”, “the Futurists found modern technology particularly inspiring. They quickly realised that recent inventions would completely revolutionise society.” “Futurist experiments were not restricted to literature and art … they extended into every conceivable domain”. The futurists took ground epoetry wants to occupy today. Technological change is fast, but real change comes in challenging times, when creativity permits survival. We are entering stark economic times, when innovation is a rare way to thrive. If people no longer buy a slightly brighter version of what they’ve got, perhaps they’ll buy a lighter thing that takes away the cost of what they’ve got to do. Innovate or die. New technologies can change the way we live. This will happen, faster, faster, faster. The futurists were there. We know their mistakes, their political mistakes. Lets reconsider their achievements, their artistic achievements. The futurists mistakenly presumed only one politics could be right, blind to the strength of difference, a politics proven wrong. But that’s no reason to ignore their art, an art for us to steal. Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to avoid tribalism; like jealousy, it’s a nasty part of the human condition. If we ignore history, we repeat it. I don’t want to repeat that tribalism, that nationalism, the 1930s, the 1940s. Let us learn from history, let us mitigate tribalism’s hatred. The futurists, their mistakes, their art, are relevant to our now. 31.3.9 |
PN09
But I am very very grateful for my introduction to some excellent and fascinating new poets. I hope, beyond reason really, that any possible Wurmfest can do as well. When the mainstream is good, it can be very very good. 30.3.9 |
ruined reputation
I’ve always enjoyed good beer; I’ve never kept that quiet. So I’ve grown something of a reputation of something of a drinker. I’ve played up to this. The irony is the times I played this the most are the times I drank the least. Once I’d escaped college, I lived in villages, socialised in towns, commuting by car, so had to drive to and from the pub. I kept my drinking to a couple of pints, or the next day was hassle. This lasted from my early 20s to my late 40s. Things changed when I returned to city living, and kept changed when I departed Britain’s new dourism. Now, last Friday, myself and a colleague left the company. We had a jolly good leaving bash; lunch in The Winding Stair, an excellent Dublin restaurant; the evening in the Porterhouse, a pub with very good beers. So here was I, with a reputation for enjoying my drink, in a pub I’d chosen, for my leaving bash. I was drinking with good people, my ex-colleagues, male and female, all younger than me. I was, of course, expected to be on the booze the whole night. And the bastards, without exception, all of them, beefy guys and petite girls, all the between, all of them, dammit, drank me under the table. The workplace was wrong for me. But I enjoyed the company of the people there, and will miss them. Thank you, guys and gals, enjoy yourselves. 29.3.9 |
skiffy
I bought a batch of books (hoho) a few days ago, and have been struggling with them. Let’s take one specific example, “Seeds of Earth” by Michael Cobley. It’s got a flash on the front by Iain M. Banks, a guy who’s books I devour: that publisher’s trick worked. My trouble with the Cobley book is it feels it was written thirty years ago. It feels it needs mauling by a quality editor. It feels it’s the novel before the first novel, the practice before the published. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to show Cobley’s got potential. Scenes have real people facing real problems. The overall plot has real merit, the tension potential is juicy. The guy knows his political means. But some scenes of super-duper futuristic hyper-wondrous technology are scenes of 1970s technology, with 1970s technology downfalls. Some souper-douper futuristic people are 1930s people making silly 1930s presumptions so the sooper-dooper futuristic 1970s technology can give them a shock. So much, so many scenes, didn’t carry me. The novel’s fear is 1970s fear of 1970s new technology. I’d be interested in different fears from different times if I felt it was done intentionally. But I really don’t get that impression. The detail is dreadful: behaviour, things, all cliché and old hat. If no attention’s paid there, if only the dull tired is used, why should I believe the whole created is different, that this dull tired is fresh? Ok, this could be me the poet being over-fussy … but do strange beings from stranger worlds, different biology, different homes, really tremble and sweat when scared? Or was that just one of so many carelessly thrown sentences? This book desperately needed intensive red ink. And this leads me on to what really worries me. Much of the music industry is failing because their publishers, the labels, have failed to grasp the internet, its power. They wish it away. Today, anyone can, and does, put music out, and it’s a very very mixed quality (declaration of interest). Some music is superb, some is drivel, much is dull. The big labels used to identify the stuff to appeal to the average listener, edit it, make it work, bring it forward. They’re failing, dying, now. Their editing contribution is disappearing. They didn’t adapt to the now. They’re effectively blaming their customers for listening to adverts. This is not a sensible approach. I was never an average listener of music, so the loss of the labels’ critical skills won’t really affect me. But I am an average reader of skiffy. I like what the publishers put out, generally. If I want literary literature, I read poetry. I read skiffy for the fun of it. The internet is starting to bite the book trade. Literature is a long long way from music: until it’s as easy to rip your books as it is to rip your records (ho ho), until there’s an iPod for books, the traditional industry will survive. Ripping isn’t there, but the iPod equivalent nearly is. Are the publishers already failing, failing at editing, rather than readying their trade for the forthcoming now? I really don’t know, I’m not connected, I’m just a consumer, a consumer missing the absent editing. It can’t be Publishing On Demand (POD). I really can’t believe POD will impact the mass publisher. POD is a long tail product, where the traditional publisher has no presence. Or have I missed something? Iain Banks’s last couple of books needed the sharp red pen, especially The Algebraist. This book from Cobley does. Where are the editors? I half suspect Cobley will turn out to be a big name author putting an early centime-dreadful out under another name. Cowardice would be a good excuse for the absent editing … or maybe weariness. I hope authors won’t need to do what I’m doing as a poet, paying someone to edit my work; that balance of power is wrong, the editor subservient is the editor sheathed. Publishers, editors, we need your nasty red pens, keep them sharp, keep them used. 22.3.9 |
time to punt the CV again
The C++ market (my software engineering niche) hasn’t declined as much as I’d been expecting. I’m getting occasional contacts from across Europe following previous job hunts; there’s still an active market. But one has to be cautious. Every agent is seeking someone exactly matching a skillset, and that exact match was rare. Now there’s more people chasing somewhat fewer jobs, that match is more likely. Clients will hold out for it. That means a contract is going to be more difficult to find. That’s why I expect a break before one turns up. Still, I don’t think my market is as badly hit now as following the dot com bust. Then, everything dried up. The average client has always applied some tough tests to ensure people have the skills they claim, but such tests seem to be getting more common. This suggests to me more people are … erm … being overly inventive? … on their CVs. This in turn suggests that other areas of the industry are suffering more than mine. Whether that’s significant, or simply the C++ market taking its time to decline, I’ve no idea. I don’t lie on my CV, which probably costs me some interviews, but I’m not sure such interviews would be worthwhile. Either the client will be competent, in which case I’d be found out, or they’d be incompetent, in which case they’ll likely be a nasty place to work. Still, I can see why the lie; if you’re the property of your possessions, you’ll be desperate to maintain them. There’s interesting news across the software industry. According to the IEEE, the energy industry is starting to need serious software. Some jobs are actually in greater demand now than last year. The ACM is more gloomy, but still reporting a much smaller decline than the headlines would suggest. I’ll see. 18.3.9 |
more open office bugs
I suspect Word Perfect will soon get more of my money, dammit. So why am I avoiding the St. Patrick’s day parade? Well, to be honest, the tradition requires you to be young and drunk, and I’m neither. 17.3.9 |
the complement pompous
I’ve just been called pompous, again. I was called pompous many times when younger, generally when talking, usually enthusiastically, about something that interested me, something about which I knew, that required listeners to know themselves, or to do work to understand. Most people took what I said as I meant: I’d put effort in, I was interested, I had an understanding, I was enthusiastic. But some resent that others can rattle on excitedly. Perhaps they lack ability to understand, perhaps they won’t do the work. Whatever, instead of fixing their failure, they resort to insult, they admit their failure, their stupidity, their laziness, their ignorance. I’ve been called pompous many times when rattling on enthusiastically about modernist music. Complex music takes work to appreciate; the reward is worth the work. I’ve done this, I enjoy the music, I find it utterly rewarding. When I challenge the insulters, I find they don’t know it, they’ve not done the work. They’re lazy. Yet they insult me. By calling me pompous, they acknowledge my effort, they admit they’ve made none, they resent the situation, they resent their own laziness. They’re not insulting me, they’re insulting themselves, and they’re too thick to realise it. They’re also being naïf: music is personal taste. When I was young, programming was a rare profession, seen as the stuff of whizz kids and geniuses. This was nonsense, of course; we know now anyone with a fascination and enthusiasm for computers can gain an understanding. I knew then I was no special whizz kid, it was an ordinary profession; I’d got into computing because I liked it, I was fascinated, I’d had the luck to find it. We interested were called extraordinary by the sillier media. On the ground, people called me pompous. Without exception, the accusers didn’t understand computing, resented my enthusiasm. Without realising it, they admitted themselves too lazy, or too thick, to understand. They resented their own failure. By calling me pompous, they insulted themselves. Of course, the dictionary definition has an implication of false pomp, of windbag, like glamour sans amour. That’s the meaning the insulters attempt to invoke. They see no substance. They don’t look, they won’t look. They don’t see, they won’t see, the substance. They don’t see, they won’t see, the pleasure of modernist music. They didn’t see, they wouldn’t see, the simplicity of programming. They insult those who do, who can. They’re lazy or stupid. Of course, pomp itself is spectacle, is trance, is a bright pride in dull weather. It has something, a culture, a history. To be accused pompous is accused of wanting association with that culture, that history. It’s to be accused of cultural taste. To be called pompous is to be called more intelligent, more productive, or better in another way, than the person making the accusation, a person of resentment. It’s a complement. 27.2.9 |
dear eircom
I’m struggling to get my music and my poetry heard out there, and you’re now deliberately blocking general access to the most effective distribution channels. How are people supposed to hear my music and poetry, to want to come to my web site and buy stuff, if they’re blocked from downloading it in the first place? Yours irritatedly, Dylan Harris 23.2.9 |
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Italian futurism was a poetic movement closely associated with Italian nationalism and fascism, thriving from the early 1900s to the defeat of Italian fascism in 1944. It has been ignored in English literature in consequence.
I was only able to attend a couple of performances at Poetry Now this year, due to 
I’ve always enjoyed different foods and drink, finding the good, condemning the bad, never quiet about it. This is personal taste, of course, different people like different things. I’m always happy, perhaps too happy, to discuss this, because that’s a very good way of finding new good things, although this is ruined by my annoying habit of forgetting the recommended names.
I can’t decide whether contemporary skiffy (sci-fi, science fiction, whatever) is degrading, or whether I’ve got fussier.
It’s the time to punt the CV again. I spent today polishing it.
Whilst the semi-traditional St. Patrick’s day parade trundles half a mile down the road, I’m meeting more bugs in Open Office. How about this one: select quite a lot of text, hit delete, and it won’t? It’ll delete small bits of text, but not a big chunk! Gawd, this software’s so badly designed! Still, I can’t really complain, it’s free.
I’m cancelling this account forthwith.