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writing the history of the present

Thursday, November 02, 2006

robert wyatt is a beautiful man



The Stop Smiling Interview with Robert Wyatt

www.stopsmilingonline.com/features_detail.html?id1=593

From Issue 26: The U.K. Issue

By Anthony Reynolds

I arrive around five. Being England in January it’s dark and raining. The house is fronted by black railings to which bicycles are chained. There are two gates. I ring the bell and Robert Wyatt appears. We shake hands and he leads me into the warm, low-lit front room that has the feeling of a well-heeled bedsit. It’s tidy but lived in, with a hotplate beside a baby grand piano. There is a basic recording setup in the corner: a microphone, small mixing desk, a keyboard and various percussion instruments. On the wall is a Basquiat and smaller framed portraits are around the room.

Robert offers tea, but I pull two bottles of Bordeaux from my bag. He tells me to take a seat in the dining room while he finishes his business in the music room. Alone, I scan the bookshelves: Picasso, Beuys, Hockney.

Wyatt’s wife, Alfreda Benge, joins me. “Alfie” is also Wyatt’s professional collaborator, providing occasional lyrics and record art. She has just written lyrics for four tracks of Parisian DJ Bertrand Burgalat’s most recent album, Portrait Robot. It’s her first writing gig for someone other than her husband. As Alfie disappears into the back of the house, I am joined by Robert, who decides to take up smoking again. (He had given up three days previously.)

Wyatt was a founding member of the Soft Machine, (named after the William S. Burroughs book, although he no longer recalls why). Along with Pink Floyd, the group transformed the late ’60s psychedelic scene of the U.K. into a new and valid form of musical expression. They soon evolved into a jazz-rock fusion group, punctuated by Wyatt’s passionate, disciplined drumming and unique vocals. A substantial cult following bloomed across Europe. After countless sessions, extensive touring (including a 1971 trip to the States with the Jimi Hendrix Experience), Wyatt was sacked. He immediately assembled the improv fusion combo Matching Mole. (The name was a pun on machine mole, which is Soft Machine in French). They released two critically acclaimed LPs before splitting in 1972.

In 1973, after consuming considerable amounts of alcohol at a party in London, Wyatt fell from a third floor window, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. After recuperating in the hospital for a year, Wyatt married Alfie and embarked on a solo career. He emerged as a vocalist with a singing style that was both refined and haunting. (Ryuichi Sakamoto has called Wyatt’s voice “the saddest sound in the world.”)

In 1997, a new audience was introduced to Wyatt with the release of a long-awaited album, titled Shleep. Though self-produced, Wyatt benefited from the participation of friends like Brian Eno, Paul Weller, Evan Parker and Phil Manzanera. Another critically acclaimed album, Cuckooland, was released in late 2003, preceding a collaboration with Björk on Medulla in 2004. Wyatt is presently recording his next solo album.

Stop Smiling: Tell me about getting older.

Robert Wyatt: Getting older gives you a long time to think. If you’re a slow thinker, you need that time. I was lucky with music. It’s a humble aspiration to find a way to make a living. When I was a child my parents used to get me to sing along with Christmas carols and I thought, I can hear the difference between this note and that note. It was a thrilling moment. Like when you learn to ride a bicycle. To me, that’s what all music is. I thank God for it, because it gave me a living. When people would say, “What motivates you? Did you want to be a rock star, a pop star, an artist?” I said, “I want to earn a fucking living.”

I can’t read music. I know the names of the notes. I know the wrong note from a right note, even on a fast bebop solo. I know music aurally, not orally. Listening to music is instinctive, enjoying it is instinctive. But as a writer I approach it as craftsmanship. I might have a drum part on tape for 10 years before I hear a bassline that will go with it. I don’t like to force tunes into existence before they are ready to come alive. They come out right if you wait for the tune. You can’t say, “I want a baby a month from now.” It takes time. But even then, the only reason I’m creative publicly is because we need the money. If I didn’t have to earn a living I would sit around listening to jazz records and never write a tune in my life. There are a lot of things the world is short of — for instance, enough fresh water for everyone to drink. But it’s not short of songs. I’m embarrassed about that, in a way. I could spend the rest of my life listening to music that already exists.

As far as I’m concerned about music, the last thing that really mattered to me, that could save my life, ended when John Coltrane died in 1967. But when I started, I was so bloody lucky the beat scene came along. The standards were so low that even someone who had no idea what they were doing could actually earn a living.

SS: Some would say, with your voice, that you’re gifted.

RW: I don’t know. When I open my mouth, I do the best I can. That’s all I can tell you. But compared to the people that inspire me, I know fuck all. And that’s not a choice. That’s why I wonder about the idea of free will.

I think it’s particularly hard for people brought up in the Western individualist tradition to accept the fact that ecstasy comes from losing yourself within something else. The simplest way you can do this is through sex — when you lose yourself in someone else. That contradicts the intellectual tradition of finding yourself. Instead, you surrender yourself and become a voice in the choir, where the choir is going on and you can’t even tell which voice is your voice and which voice is that of the person next to you. That to me is ecstasy. This isn’t something that’s available only to artists, although they may articulate it more expressly. But it’s the same thing that makes advertisers realize why they should do these kitsch little dreamscapes of some kind of pinky, bluey dreamy landscape that adverts are full of. To me it’s the only possible explanation as to why people yearn for the utter idiocy of religion, for example. It’s so tiring to carry the physical weight of your body.

This will probably be the last interview I’ll do as a 60 year old. I suppose I’m now entering the land of Old Man. It disappoints and frightens me that a lot of the things we thought we’d do never happened — I mean, you never expected to win the war. But we thought we’d win a few little battles along the way. Against racism, for instance. And we haven’t really because it just gets transferred to Arabs or immigrants, Gypsies or something or other. I mean, I understand it. I don’t expect a great deal from humans. The only thing I’m prepared to stand by are the actual lyrics and tunes of my songs. The only times I think, I’m going to hang this on the hook and leave it to dry, are when I actually write a song and put it on the washing line. I would defend any song I’ve written. If someone says, “Well, that’s an anachronism,” I think, “Good, because any song I’ve sung that is no longer necessary means there’s a battle that has in some way been won.” I’ve written songs about Nelson Mandela being in prison, which is where I assumed he’d spend his life. But I was wrong about that. I’m happy that song is an anachronism. Another song is “Born Again Cretin” [from the Nothing Can Stop Us album] which is about the blatantly idiotic Christian movement in North America. Which now, in fact, runs America. I was writing about the mindset that somehow means that if you’re attracted to Christianity, the people who represent it are basically arseholes. You think, “Well, if Jesus was such a nice man, did he need this kind of help?” [Laughs]

SS: Did you have a university education?

RW: No. People are quite shocked when they find out about the number of people I haven’t heard of — people who are terribly important to know about. There are a few people I’ve read who really helped me when I’ve felt I was getting intellectual claustrophobia. These people tend not to be artists at all. People like Noam Chomsky. I’m not very good at repertoire. It takes me ages to think through what anybody says, which is why I wouldn’t stick by anything that is said in a conversation of this nature. I react quickly, and I’m just as stupid as everybody else. I’ve found this magical area where if I’ve written 20 or 30 songs. Those songs, from the last 30 years or so, will certainly stand up. I’ll defend them. But I won’t defend all the bullshit I’ve talked in the middle.

SS: As an American voice, I suppose Chomsky is unique.

RW: Oh yes. There was a wonderful period, from the American Civil War, or even before that, from the war with the British Empire. That’s an interesting one because it’s the one that seems to be dead and buried. It’s neither dead nor buried, to the extent that Americans retain an extraordinary envy not of Britain as a democracy, but as an empire. They are more intrigued by our imperialist past than by our democratic modern era. Whenever they make films about the European past they always romanticize royalty over the mob.

Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, for example. Even when they romanticize the upper classes as evil, they are still considered much more interesting than the people they were oppressing. Even American intellectuals are quite unable, it seems to me, to transcend this crazy lust for imperial status, which you get from being Greek or Roman or British. People say, “Robert, everything you do is based on what happened on the American continent.” I don’t accept that there’s such a thing as the American people.

Speaking about this is so hard. I do it much better in songs. I get embarrassed by the differences between English culture and American culture when I’m trying to communicate with American intellectuals. The problem I have with intellectuals is that they start from a level of expectation so unutterably precious that it reminds me of the old French aristocracy. So, while seeming pluralistic, American culture has so far presented toward us a fake conflict between the squirearchy and the mob. They play this delightful game among themselves and it’s none of my business. They’ve got a democracy, they can vote for whom the hell they like and they can buy the books they like. But what I don’t like is when they apply this to everybody else.

There’s one great thing about me being as old as I am: I remember a wonderful thing that happened with the 20th century avant-garde. It blew the century off course, and I hope future centuries will be grateful. I sort of depend on the idea, intellectually, that they will be grateful, because something happened to European art when it transferred itself to America. It mixed with the rest of the world, particularly Africa. Constantin Brancusi was a sculptor from Eastern Europe. He was one of the late 19th century sculptors who set up the possibilities in his studios for the entire 20th century European art movement. He set up giant quasi-African sculptures and he turned the perception of the third world as a source of cheap materials, like oil and cotton, into a continent of peoples who had great imaginations. In the process of discovering and using these people, we have destroyed their imaginations. This gave me my political angle. And maybe it’s a given now, but the first person to whom this change of awareness occurred, so far as I know, was Brancusi. He started looking at these little artifacts that grave robbers and gold diggers had brought back from Africa.

The history of European art in relation to the third world is basically scalp-hunting. “Look at this nice pretty curved shape we have here. Turn it upside down and you have a little bowl.” What is it? Someone’s head. The history of scalping is that in fact, the Europeans in America basically used it. American soldiers were rewarded and praised for their conquest against the indigenous inhabitants. That is the origin of scalping. And then the American Indian picked up on that.

The most important thing in my life is the inspiration of black music in America. I was saying that this black music, which is dismissed as a kind of black underground, it’s the survival in the only way it knows how to survive, of the black culture which gave you the only valuable thing your civilization has come up with. So you can sit and snigger if you like but say thank you once in a while. I also have to like the tune. A piece of music can’t just be a bit of polemic for me. I can’t just make a speech and put music to it — that’s bollocks. I hate that. That’s why I don’t really like a lot of stuff that’s called folk music, just speeches set to music. Boring. I like music. Songs. Tunes.

Whenever critics put something down it’s because they don’t understand it. The only thing I would want to be noted for are the things I praised and loved and take no notice of things I hate — because they’re just things I don’t understand. And I’m burying myself here because I’m almost immediately discrediting everything I’ve just said. But I don’t care. I don’t have hubris. I stumble across occasional bits of beauty and truth. So if I describe myself as the quintessential anti-American, then I have to qualify that by saying, “Ah, but Chomsky, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk!” But then again, I don’t know the half of it. Like a lot of revolutionaries, I’m conservative in a hopeless way. I think that all the things I fought for have already been killed. So, I live in a strange twilight world. A ghostland.

SS: You sound quite alive on your records.

RW: It’s that Dylan Thomas thing: Go out whimpering or raging. I will go out fucking angry. All that beauty, all those different ways of living. Turning it into some kitsch shit, a cola-and-hamburger culture. How dare you? How fucking dare you!

SS: Yet you’ve covered many songs by American songwriters. Why?

RW: Many great Americans were anti-capitalist or involved with the left, like the lyricist of “Autumn Leaves,” Joseph Kosma. Or Yip Harburg, who wrote “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” and “Over the Rainbow.” Or Abel Meeropol, who wrote the lyrics to “Strange Fruit.” Many of them had sympathy with the left. It’s amazing how many of the young American Jewish and Italian radicals in the ’30s were against capitalism. During the Depression, it looked like capitalism had failed. Communism was a legitimate alternative until it was wiped out in the ’50s by Joseph McCarthy.

This is a good moment to ask, “Am I grateful that America exists at all?” I think if it weren’t for jazz, I would say it would have been better if America had not existed at all. But because jazz existed, personally I’m grateful for it. Because I don’t see how the rest of us would have quite broken through to that level of intense beauty without the existence of jazz. I think what the best people do is lose themselves in the greatness of everything else. It’s a pluralistic thing and it’s not a Western thing. The Western thing is the individual dominating the landscape. The greater thing is to lose yourself within the greater incomprehensible vastness, a collective majesty.

SS: You started as a drummer. Miles Davis said all white drummers play slightly behind the beat.

RW: I conquered my fear of what jazz fans would compare white drummers with by watching Keith Moon, who didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t sitting there thinking, “Am I reaching some standard set by somebody else?” Keith freed me from trying to think about standards set by someone else. Moon sustained a kind of momentum on the kit, plus a kind of human uncertainty about what was going to happen next. Which is what I wanted to do with my drumming. So, while I got my inspiration from black drummers, I got my confidence from Keith Moon. As for my own music, there’s nothing I’ve really done since the mid-’70s that I haven’t done because I needed to make a living. Saying that, I’m thrilled and amazed that there were other things yet to come out of my head after the mid-’70s. Creatively, I felt a terrific sense of relief about that because, since the mid-’70s, I’ve felt a weird resignation, a feeling of depression that relates to the political climate and the state of the world. And the triviality and silliness of being a musician or even an artist in that world. Politically, I’m one of the last survivors of a lost war.

SS: You recently worked with Björk on her Medulla album. How was that collaboration?

RW: Björk came here in the spring of 2004. It was a surprise visit for a night or two. She was working on a vocal album and she asked if she could come and stick my voice on a couple tunes. She sent me a few tunes she hadn’t completed. I had a listen and thought that I’d like to do as much as I could on all of them, but in particular the first track, “Submarine.” So I threw everything I could at it on a demo and played it to her over the phone. And she said, “Yeah, we’ll have a go with that.” So she came along with her engineer and I was so shy of her hearing me trying to stumble through doing a vocal that I sent her away. I made her go for a walk. When she came back I still hadn’t finished, so I sent her out again. The poor woman had to spend several hours walking around. I sang every note I knew. We sampled them all so she could play them through a keyboard. I threw everything at the track on the assumption they would pick out two or three bleating notes to go with hers. The engineer kept everything I did on it, to my great embarrassment. I myself would have cut most of it out. She ended up sampling my voice on another track too, “Oceania,” which ended up being the tune that opened the Olympics. My voice is just in there at the beginning. That was my little anonymous moment, opening the 2004 Olympics. But we spent an evening here as we have, drinking wine and playing records and talking. I thought she was charming, funny and intelligent. She came and went. It was an absolute fizzing buzz to have her around. I was honored that she wanted to come here. She’s one of the greats. I’d put her up there with Nina Simone.

SS: Did you and Björk sing together while she was here? You know, a few bottles of wine and then around the piano for a singsong?

RW: That would never occur to me. A singsong? Blimey! You’re kidding, son. I’m not a singer.

SS: Did you go to many gigs when you lived in London?

RW: Alfie and I used to frequent Ronnie Scott’s a lot in the ’60s. It was a place you’d go to after you’d done a rock gig and wanted to hear some decent music after all the rubbish you’d been playing. One night, someone was complaining because Spike Milligan [of “The Goon Show”] decided to stand on his head on a table. Some fat old Tory was moaning and Ronnie told him: “Shut up. You come for music, Spike comes to stand on his head.”

That night, Bill Evans was playing the piano with his head. You know when you’re having a meal with someone and they’re eating a bowl of soup and their hair is actually in the soup? When they are totally out of it? Bill Evans sat at the piano like a man dead drunk. He played piano with his hands way above his head because his face was dipped in a bowl of piano. I don’t know how he lived as long as he did.

Ronnie’s place was like the London equivalent of the Village Vanguard. Ronnie was a great host. He was so out of it, he blew so many rules. I loved Ronnie. I cried for Ronnie’s death. And I still do sometimes. I’ve got a photo of him propped up on my piano at the moment. He’s one of my reasons to live. Even though it was rumored that his death — at 70 — was suicide, he didn’t want to be a bad saxophonist. He realized that once he’d got his false teeth in, which they were about to fix for him, he wouldn’t be quite a good saxophonist because his mouth wouldn’t be as sensitive anymore. He didn’t want to be a second rate saxophonist. And so many of my heroes have done this. Roland Kirk, who was always a regular at Ronnie’s, he’d had a stroke. He could play with only one arm, which is quite hard on a saxophone. He was told, “Stop playing or you’ll die.” He said, “What will I do if I stop playing?” He just laughed it off. And he played and he died.

*****

SS: I’d like to ask you about a few specific songs.

RW: Sure. Go ahead.

SS: Where did you get the balls to sing “Strange Fruit”?

RW: Alfie asked me that same thing. But, you know, why not? I first heard it as a teenager in the ’50s. The words were written by a young Jewish radical, a white guy, Lewis Alan. And I did feel tentative about singing it but at the time black music was the Three Degrees and glitzy showbiz stuff. I thought, Hang on, white kids think they’ve invented the protest song. Disco was part of the mainstream then. I wanted to point out that protest music wasn’t just saying fuck on a record — there’s a long history of this stuff, way back before World War II. There’s some advanced protest poetry coming out of America long before the folk movement of the ’60s kicked in. An example of this was “Strange Fruit.” I was representing a piece of black and communist history to a generation that didn’t associate black culture with protest music anymore. And although the lyrics were written by a white guy [Abel Meeropol] it was written specifically for Billie Holiday, who wrote the actual music. She didn’t have to sing it. But she sang it a lot, especially during her old age — and a few people picked up on it, like Nina Simone. Musically, it’s extraordinary. If you write music to words that aren’t really written for music, you have to make strange music to fit the words, because the words are untidy rhythmically. “Strange Fruit” is an odd piece of music; there’s this interlude before the piece begins and then there’s this tune that doesn’t really repeat itself. It’s such a unique, odd shape. There’s no real repetition, it’s one thread that starts and carries onto the end.

SS: John Lennon’s “Love” (From an Uncut magazine Lennon Tribute album, 2003)

RW: I was asked to sing a John Lennon song, and I thought the one that I could sing was that. I didn’t know afterward that it was one of his own favorite songs. I just tried to sing it as faithfully as I could, according to what I felt it meant to be. I thought the Beatles were okay. I would never have bought their records. As white musicians go, I found some of them the least embarrassing. I did buy Lennon’s Imagine album at the time.

SS: “Soup Song” (From Ruth is Stranger than Richard, 1975)

RW: I was singing about being some bacon in that song. What I’m complaining about is the way bacon was used as mere wobbly bits in other meals. It was also used in quiches, which I thought, What the fuck was that all about? If you’re going to eat a slice of pig, then eat a slice of pig. Don’t piss me about with your little wibbly, wobbly bits of bacon.

SS: “Memories of You” (B-side of Shipbuilding, 1982)

RW: This is a song by Eubie Blake, an American pianist born around the beginning of the 20th century. He died at 102. He invented a lot of the stuff before jazz, like the Charleston. He wrote this tune and I wanted to do it but didn’t really understand the chords. So we got the sheet music and Alfie played them to me. I couldn’t have got my head around it if Alfie wasn’t able to read the sheet music.

SS: “At Last I Am Free” (From Nothing Can Stop Us, 1982)

RW: Around that time there was something happening, historically, that was quite wrong. There was a pattern forming where young white singers were singing serious stuff — political stuff, punk. Black people were assigned the role of popular entertainers who just did disco music. This was not my experience when I was a youth. It was the other way around. The whole idea of music — of opposition, of music, of seriousness — that rock inherited, actually came from black music. So the idea that the historical consciousness of the history of popular music was so short that young white punks could claim seriousness as their own. Any white group who grew their hair long and wore jeans when they could actually afford corduroy is acting poor. Whereas black people at that time weren’t doing that because young black people weren’t hoping, like young whites, to drop out of the system. They were people from working class origins aspiring to belong. So the idea was to get away from the raggedy ass stuff of the blues and to present a more sophisticated veneer. So they would wear shiny suits, ties, nice haircut, smart stuff. Chic. It was an aspiration toward what 19th century white people aspired toward. A kind of chic European, end-of-empire poshness. This was completely against the grain of what white kids were going through, which was to ostentatiously behave in a vulgar fashion that didn’t glorify their parents’ postwar aspirations toward suburban respectability. So the great white thing was: Fuck our great suburban ancestors, we’re going to grow our hair, not bathe, we’re going to say swear words in public, we’re going to try and look like the Rolling Stones and all that kind of stuff.

So this absurd Alice in Wonderland contradiction had arrived in pop music whereby black pop musicians as epitomized by say Michael Jackson were respected bourgeoisie. They were respectable people to be laughed at by the rebels, who were the white long-haired people. This is a complete reversal of the historical truth of their music. I didn’t want to lose my grip on the fact that the only reason America is any more significant culturally than New Zealand and Tasmania is thanks to the black American contribution. I wanted to say even in the degrading position of having to be circus performers in Las Vegas, they come out with better tunes than you lot. Here’s one. [“At Last I Am Free”] It was filler track on one of Chic’s LPs. A throwaway. I thought, What a lovely phrase. I was a kind of hangover from a Martin Luther King-era consciousness transmuted into a smooth love ballad. It’s something that only a black person of that time would have written that time and in that way. So you have that chorus: “At last I am free / I can hardly see in front of me.” That struck me as one of the most moving couplets I’d ever heard. It’s like a fantastic blues couplet, and it doesn’t sound like much unless for years you’ve been in some kind of struggle where for ages you’ve longed to be free. Then suddenly you were and you think, “What the fuck do I do now?” It had been constructed from various mindsets that had been going on in the battle for the brains of young Americans at the time. I’m not saying that this is what they intended, but this is what it meant to me. Their version was so clean and neat — it wasn’t presented in a rebellious way. It was presented in a kind of way that aspiring pop wannabes presented themselves in — and still do — which is, “We don’t want to be drop-outs, we want to be allowed to drop in.” It was a completely different mindset than punk. I wanted to take a thread out of that.

SS: “Raining In My Heart” (From Cuckooland, 2003)

RW: I did try and sing this but it wasn’t good enough. The reason I put it out as an instrumental was because — say you did a tribute to the Mona Lisa, and you couldn’t paint it, you couldn't pull it off. Well then, maybe do a reproduction of the frame it was in and left it blank just to say, “I remember that painting.” Plus, the piano I used was from an old ship from the ’30s and it was designed to play background music. I tried to imagine the two people who wrote it. She was a lift operator and he was a jazz violinist. I was trying to imagine the early rock and roll atmosphere from when they wrote that song, when they would have met. They would have been horrified by rock and roll — all that sex and nastiness. But they were deeply conservative, weird and children of immigrants, respectable working class provincials. But they wrote nice little tunes that you’d play in a Victorian parlor. In fact they were covered by people like Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers. So I wanted to go before that to this little couple from almost pre-rock and roll American history. The kind of people you might see in the background in a film with Katharine Hepburn. So I did it as an instrumental. But it’s my little piece in the middle of my record. My little thought about my roots. I have a reputation of being knowledgeable about Bartok and Stravinsky and Charlie Parker and all that, I wanted to point out that it wasn’t the roots of my music. My roots are simple, popular, pre-rock and roll rebel songs. But there’s nothing perverse or ironic about it. I’m not like that.

SS: “Heaps Of Sheeps” (From Schleep, 1998)

RW: Alfie wrote the words to that one.

Alfie Benge: “I realized my fists were clenched / I stretched my fingers to relax / Still not sleeping / I tried counting sheep.” I’m not an insomniac. It was written one morning in Spain after I’d spent the night trying to get to sleep, and I tried counting sheep and the fuckers were just piling up in some terrible heap. I thought it was funny, so I wrote it down. It’s one of many poems I wrote in Spain. When Robert started getting word-starved as it were, he pinched my poetry book and started doing things to them. I thought it was so banal and trivial that it was beneath him to actually do that song. I always felt it was a bit vulgar.

RW: It’s my job as a songwriter to find things that will work.

AB: He’s the insomniac. And he hasn’t written about that.

RW: That piece took years because the actual piece of music was a piano exercise, which I had on bits and pieces of tapes for years and then I combined it with a drum exercise I’d had. A Bo Diddley thing. So, I took it from there. The only battle was with Alfie who is quite posh about which of her words get used for lyrics and that’s one of the two or three times when I’ve taken words she’s written from her notebooks.

AB: My notebooks only exist when I’m somewhere else. I don’t get a lot from home. When we’re away, in Spain and Italy, I take bits from my diaries, have a few brandies, and make a little poem. I had about 20 or 30 from Spain. And the fait accompli was that some of them got turned into songs. But he didn’t ask me. That was the beginning of it. I thought you’d hear it once, laugh, and then not want to hear it again.

RW: Yes, but when Brian Eno came into the studio and read your lyrics, he laughed and laughed and laughed. I thought, It’s nice to see Brian laughing. It was a happy moment for me. And he came in and got really stuck in. So, that’s a trio performance at the end.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

defaming the anti-defamation league

From this week's NY Review of Books, a much-needed corrective to the continual repression of liberties and, yes, our dear old American values, by the Israel lobby. Look into the NY Review's archives for a number of articles about and criticisms of the Israel lobby, surely one of the most perfidious and insidious forces in American politics today.

www.nybooks.com/articles/19550

THE CASE OF TONY JUDT: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ADL

By Mark Lilla, Richard Sennett

with over one hundred signatures

To the Editors:

The following letter was sent to Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, regarding the ADL's role in the cancellation of Professor Tony Judt's scheduled lecture at the Polish Consulate of New York in October. Given the attention this affair has received in the press, and the important principles at stake, we thought this document might be of interest to your readers.

After sending the letter we received a reply from Mr. Foxman, in which he proposed a private meeting to discuss the matter. We responded that, given the importance of the issues, and the fact that providing a public forum for discussing them was precisely the matter in dispute, we would be publishing the letter in The New York Review of Books and invited him to reply in your pages, should he wish to.

Shortly after receiving Mr. Foxman's reply we then received a letter from Patricia S. Huntington, of Network 20/20, the organization that originally issued the invitation to Professor Judt. She now informs us that she is requesting a retraction from The New York Sun and The Jewish Week, disavowing statements she apparently made to those papers about the ADL having exerted pressure on the Polish Consulate to cancel the talk.

However, we have in our possession earlier correspondence from her that states unequivocally that, in her words, "what I said is accurately quoted in the NY Sun article of October 4" (e-mail correspondence to Mark Lilla, October 6). On October 5 she then suggested that Professor Judt issue the following statement about what happened:

At 4:15 PM when the President received a telephone call canceling the event scheduled to take place within the hour, she [Ms. Huntington] was informed that ADL President Abe Foxman was on the other line to the Consul General. We can only imagine what kind of pressure was brought to bear to prevent me from speaking on such short notice. It was no surprise to me that I received a call from the New York Sun within 10 minutes of the news. The Sun must have been contacted by the ADL; who else would do so? [e-mail correspondence to Mark Lilla, October 5]
Why Ms. Huntington has now chosen to disavow her earlier remarks is a mystery to us, though another message from her may shed light on the matter. She wrote:

We are in a difficult position as a start-up non profit that has benefited greatly from the Polish Consulate's generosity. You saw the article in the NY Sun...the Consulate denies what I said which is not surprising. They have to. But our lawyers caution Network 20/20 from possibly fueling an unnecessary conflict with the Polish Consulate by repeating what is already clearly stated in the NY Sun. I was clear in that article and responded to them as I promised to Tony Judt [e-mail correspondence to Mark Lilla, October 6]
In any case, we stand by the letter below and look forward to Mr. Foxman's reply.

Mark Lilla
Richard Sennett

Dear Mr. Foxman:

As you know, on October 3, Professor Tony Judt of New York University was scheduled to give a lecture titled "The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy" before a public audience, at the invitation of Network 20/20, which sponsors many forums in New York City. The lecture, like many others presented by this organization, was to be held at the Polish Consulate of New York, which rented its facilities but in no way sponsored the event. Shortly before the lecture was scheduled to begin, however, it was abruptly cancelled by Consul General Krzysztof Kasprzyk, who later told a reporter, "I don't have to subscribe to the First Amendment."[1] Patricia Huntington, director of Network 20/20, informs us that when she received a telephone call canceling the event, scheduled to place within the hour, she was told that ADL President Abe Foxman was on the other line to the Consul General.

Ms. Huntington has now accused the Anti-Defamation League of having "forced," "threatened," and exerted "pressure" on the consulate to cancel the talk. Although the deputy counsel general has disputed this claim, he did tell the New York Sun that the consulate received calls from "a couple of Jewish groups" as well as "representatives of American diplomacy and intelligentsia" expressing "concerns" over the lecture. In the event, the lecture was cancelled, a move then welcomed by David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, who remarked, "Bravo to them for doing the right thing."[2]

These facts argue against the press release the ADL circulated on October 5, 2006, disclaiming any role in the cancellation of Professor Judt's lecture. The ADL has recently been very critical of those academics and intellectuals, like Professor Judt, who have raised questions about the Israel lobby and American foreign policy, an issue on which reasonable people have disagreed. This does not surprise us or disturb us. What does surprise and disturb us is that an organization dedicated to promoting civil rights and public education should threaten and exert pressure to cancel a lecture by an important scholar, as Ms. Huntington says happened.

In a democracy, there is only one appropriate response to a lecture, article, or book one does not agree with. It is to give another lecture, write another article, or publish another book. For much of its hundred-year history your organization worked side by side with other Americans who wanted to guarantee that freedom for all, and your mission statement still declares: "the goal remains the same: to stand up for the core values of America against those who seek to undermine them through word or deed."[3]

Though we, the undersigned, have many disagreements about political matters, foreign and domestic, we are united in believing that a climate of intimidation is inconsistent with fundamental principles of debate in a democracy. The Polish Consulate is not obliged to promote free speech. But the rules of the game in America oblige citizens to encourage rather than stifle public debate. We who have signed this letter are dismayed that the ADL did not choose to play a more constructive role in promoting liberty.

Mark Lilla, University of Chicago
Richard Sennett, London School of Economics and NYU

Bradley Adams, Columbia University
Hasan Ali Karasar, Bilkent University
Eric Alterman, City University of New York
Mark M. Anderson, Columbia University
Neven Andjelic, University of California, Berkeley
David Antin, UCSD
Lisa Appignanesi, PEN
Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Lisbon
Benjamin R. Barber, University of Maryland
Jiri Barta, Nadace Via
Peter Beinart, The New Republic
Nelly Bekus, writer
Thomas Bender, New York University
Seyla Benhabib, Yale University
Edward Berenson, New York University
Sheri Berman, Columbia University
Sara Bershtel, Metropolitan Books
Paul Boghossian, New York University
Ian Buruma, Bard College
Astrid von Busekist, Institut d'études politiques de Paris
Peter Carey, Hunter College, New York
Flora Cassen, New York University
Herrick Chapman, New York University
Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University
Jerome Eric Copulsky, Virginia Tech
Krzysztof Czyzewski, Borderland Foundation
Richard Danbury, writer
Alain Deletroz, International Crisis Group
Donald Francis Donovan, attorney
Constance Ellis, New York University
Cecile Fabre, London School of Economics
Franklin Foer, The New Republic
Christopher Fowler, novelist and journalist
Timothy Garton Ash, University of Oxford
Michael Gilsenan, New York University
Joseph Giovannini, writer and architect
Todd Gitlin, Columbia University
David J. Goldberg, The Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London
Barbara Goldsmith, PEN
Michael Greenberg, writer
Jan T. Gross, Princeton University
Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union
Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College
Pieter Hilhorst, writer
Eva Hoffman, Hunter College
Shpend Imeri, Association for Democratic Initiatives, Gostavar, Macedonia
Yves Andre Istel, Remarque Institute
Peter Jukes, author and screenwriter, London
Aleksander Kaczorowski, journalist
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
Chris Keulemans, writer and journalist
Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University
Charles D. Klein, private investor
Ivan Krastev, Center for Liberal Strategies, Sofia
Hartley Lachter, Muhlenberg College
Denis Lacorne, Institut d'études politiques de Paris
Jörg Lau, die Zeit, Berlin
Teresa Leger de Fernandez, Nordhaus Law Firm, Santa Fe
John Leone
Wendy Lesser, The Threepenny Review
Damon Linker, author
Steven Lukes, New York University
Philippe Manière, Institut Montaigne, Paris
Avishai Margalit, Institute for Advanced Study
Michael Massing, writer
Mark Mazower, Columbia University
Malini Mehra, Centre for Social Markets, Kolkata and London
Richard Mitten, Baruch College, City University of New York
Sid Mukherjee, Harvard Medical School
Estep Nagy, playwright
Susan Neiman, Einstein Forum, Potsdam
Shervin Nekuee, writer
Bernadette Nirmal-Kumar, University of Oslo
Mary Nolan, New York University
Edward Orloff, The Wylie Agency
Marcia Pally, New York University
Samantha Power, Harvard University
Eyal Press, The Nation
Anson Rabinach, Princeton University
Jacqueline Rose, Queen Mary University of London
Gideon Rose, Foreign Affairs
Nils Rosemann, Human Rights and Development Consultant
Peter Rosenbaum, Trinity College
Nancy Rosenblum, Harvard University
Elizabeth Rubin, Contributing Writer, The New York Times Magazine
Daniel Sabbagh, Institut d'études politiques de Paris
Renata Salecl, University of Llubljana and London School of Economics
Armando Salvatore, Humboldt University, Berlin
Domenico Scarpa, Universita degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"
Patricia Schramm
Lynne Segal, Birkbeck College, University of London
Adam Shatz, The Nation
Bashkim Shehu, writer
Laila Sheikh, Geneva
Elisabeth Sifton, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Martin M. Simecka, writer
Jim Sleeper, Yale University
Ruslan Stefanov, Center for the Study of Democracy, Sofia
Jean Stein, author
Constanze Stelzenmueller, Berlin
Tracey Stern, television writer and producer
Fritz Stern, Columbia University
Zeev Sternhell, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic
Moshik Temkin, Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall
Mustapha Tilli, New York University
Michael Tomasky, The American Prospect
Gesine Weinmiller, Weinmiller Architekten, Berlin
Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic
Alan Wolfe, Boston College
Richard Wolin, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Marilyn B. Young, New York University

one of the biggest fuckheads on the face of the planet


We all know what black people are like. But do we really know what black people are like? As a black person, Herman Cain, CEO and President of T.H.E. New Voice, Inc., and mouthpiece for the conservative/sociopathic Americas PAC, can honestly say, "Yes, I do." As part of the Vote Our Values campaign, Herman is bucking the norm, sending Hollywood Democrats into fits, disclosing the obvious: "We all know that African Americans are culturally conservative...But they have been pressured to vote against their values."

Pressured by hurricanes and other acts of God? By the increasing wealth gap and deterioration of urban school systems? By those trouble-making rappers? No, of course not. By "Hollywood Democrats."

It's weirdly gratifying that overt racism and racial essentialism have now become a major part of the Republican campaign strategy. One can only hope this is a sign of devolution passing the point of no return.

Please visit www.voteourvalues.com, read Herman's open letter to that conveniently singular racial grouping, and witness the tragicomic advertisements being played on radio stations across the country. Apparently, black people listen to conservative radio–something Hollywood Democrats don't want you to know.

A particularly horrifying distortion of recent history:

"Katrina"

Michael: Democrats call Hurricane Katrina a "Republican conspiracy" But that's what they always say when they mess up.

Barb: Floodwaters poured into New Orleans when the 17th Street Canal levee burst. But before that, everyone knew the city was at risk. They knew the levees could not withstand a major storm.

Michael: But instead of addressing the problem, Louisiana politicians committed $1.4 billion dollars to sports team instead...

Barb: The rains came, the buses flooded, and people died. Meanwhile, Louisiana's Democratic Governor delayed federal help by failing to issue a timely evacuation order.

Michael: Democrats call Hurricane Katrina a "Republican conspiracy" But that's what they always say when they mess up.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

la defense of zidane


If only all revolts against the stupid ivory tower rang so true as a well-aimed butt of the head...

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French intellectual, both blamed and forgave Zidane, for what he saw as an act of rebellion. He was quoted Tuesday in L’Equipe, the French sports daily, as saying that Zidane’s act was the “suicide of a demigod.” He called the butt an “interior revolt” against the “stupid ivory tower in which he had been placed in recent months.”

Sunday, July 09, 2006

the wedding of zizek and some really young girl



this is what happens when your dick and the iraq war occupy the same part of your brain. you achieve some sort of mystical hemispheric continuity with all the forces of good and the higher powers allow you to coast: life is at once focused and amplified; much time is spent swilling the choicest beer and vacationing on remote albanian beach towns; days are passed chewing on sausages the flavor of which can only be paralleled by the lecture you just delivered on the relationship between marilyn monroe as prototypical american object of desire and the necessity of closing guantanamo bay in order to maintain the psychological equilibrium achieved by admittedly relativist human rights accords, the secret purpose of which is to sublimate that same monroe desire and channel the sexual forces toward more appropriate (or appropriately slavic) objects. (refer to above picture).

Monday, June 26, 2006

revolución ad absurdum

what´s going on in bolivian politics recently, you ask? here are some parts of the puzzle i´ve been trying to sort out. the chronology might be off...

1. evo morales nationalizes gas (to an extent), promises to nationalize bolivia´s other resources in due time. bolivians generally psyched, rest of world slightly annoyed, argentina aggrevated, brazil fully pissed.

2. bush says he´s ¨worried about democracy¨ in bolivia, a statement which, inexplicably, carries some sort of symbolic weight.

3. earlier this month, evo announces the us government has in the past attempted to kill him and may continue such attempts until his perennial coca leaf necklace is riddled with bullets.

4. us government sternly denies this accusation.

5. ollantu loses the peruvian election, obrador´s lead in mexico diminishes. the chavez link is blamed, as both candidate´s opponents utilize negative campaigning suggesting that chavez might be coming to piss on your superpanchos and soil your reggaeton and, yeah, maybe build some schools and hospitals.

6. evo continues to campaign on behalf of MAS candidates for the constituent assembly election on july 1, appearing frequently with chavez and, to a lesser extent, castro. MAS campaign posters show the triumvirate superimposed in front of a giant visage of che guavera. evo visits the site of che´s death on the anniversary of his birth, the first bolivian president to do so.
responding to continued US remarks on the state of bolivian democracy and condoleeza rice´s confirmation that the US will do all it can to ¨support democracy¨ in the upcoming venezuelan elections, evo cites the vote as proof positive that bolivia is undergoing a democratic transformation and all you yankees can take your trade agreements and eat a dick. regarding the andean trade promotion and drug eradication act, which expires december 31, the us is in agreement.

7. PODEMOS, the main rival of MAS, goes from subtly pointing out the chavez connection to running ads blaring ¨hugo chavez is gonna get your momma!¨ granted, chavez has gotten your momma in the past, but i must say from experience that the pickings in bolivia in that category are fairly slim. anyway, PODEMOS, headed by ex-president jorge quiroga, who kindly fucked bolivia´s economy during his presidential term (2001-2) and helped hand over cochabamba´s water supply to bechtel, defending the decision even after citizens forcibly removed bechtel in 2002.
anyway, PODEMOS ups the ante last week by disclosing (in full-page newspaper ads, innumerable tv spots, and world cup voiceovers) the presence of venezuelan military personnel in bolivia, showing a video of evo campaigning in choppers borrowed from chavez, secured by guards handpicked by caracas. since the social movements who energized voters and helped elect morales are largely absent from this election--not enough signatures on their petitions--PODEMOS hopes to capitalize on middle class anxiety and nationalist indignation at venezuelan interference.

8. on a side note, ranchers in the conservative/liberal/white stronghold of santa cruz province are allegedly forming and training militias to defend their landholder rights, responding to evo´s promise to redistribute unused land to indigent (mainly aymara and quechua) peasants. santa cruz has sway with the military, so maybe the venezuelan security is warranted.

8. in an apparent, yet patently ridiculous, attempt to deflect the accusations of PODEMOS, evo alleges US troops disguised as students and tourists are infiltrating bolivia, though he offers no evidence or reason why this might be happening. he made these remarks on tuesday in front of thousands of supporters in cochabamba, citing US ambassador david greenlee´s request for a meeting:
"i don't know what he's looking to discuss. i'm not at all afraid of talking -- or perhaps he's angry. but i also have the right to complain because US soldiers disguised as students and tourists are entering the country."
another theory of evo´s, explicated in cochabamba--the ambassador might be upset because, while speaking to coca growers last sunday, "i shouted, 'qausachun coca (long live coca!), wanuchun yanquis (die yankees!).' if he complains, i, too, have the right to complain."
evo´s spokesman says he will at some point provide evidence to support these claims. certainly there are US special ops teams in latin america, but US officials won´t say whether there are any in bolivia. (there are). the defense department no longer needs the permission of a country´s ambassador to make such a deployment, so greenlee might ostensibly be kept ignorant.

9. the US categorically denies these accusations.

10. socialist propaganda blares from MAS offices nationwide. my favorite:¨

¨evo, evo--presidente
todo el pueblo se presente!¨

the flute solos are en fuego, the speakers are popping, the vibes are undeniably weird.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

you´ll probably find me chillin´ with the DEA

this is weird, because i´ve been disguising myself as a US soldier...

US soldiers 'disguising as tourists'
AP

La Paz: President Evo Morales accused the US government on Tuesday of sending "soldiers disguised as students and tourists" to Bolivia in remarks that come as his political opponents are denouncing Morales's coziness with Venezuela's military.

During a speech to thousands of peasants in Cochabamba state, his political stronghold, Morales said US Ambassador David Greenlee had sought a meeting with him.

"He asked for a meeting. I don't know what he's looking to discuss. I'm not at all afraid of talking or perhaps he's angry," said Morales.

"But I also have the right to complain because US soldiers disguised as students and tourists are entering the country," said Morales, an Aymara Indian elected in December with a strong mandate to lead a cultural and populist revolution.

The leftist Bolivian president offered no evidence to back up the claim. His spokesman, Alex Contreras, said on Tuesday night that Morales would be providing evidence though he did not say when.

On Sunday, during a meeting in the same region of coca growers, Morales had uttered a phrase in the native Quechua language that may have irritated the US ambassador.

Morales main political opponent, former president Jorge Quiroga, accused him this week of compromising Bolivia's sovereignty by inviting in so many Venezuelan soldiers.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

what does it mean to be a manigator in bolivia?



metaphysics of the savage, part two

a new series distributed exclusively to salmoncolored will explore the rise of genetic mutations among indigenous bolivians, and the prejudices these so-called manimals must face in conforming to the animist and totemic cultural beliefs of their own communities and gaining a foothold in mestizo society that views such mutants (cholos) with anxiety bordering on hysteria, at once denigrating their syncretic cultural-biological practices and resisting their attempts to assimilate. already in el alto, a sprawling slum that has emerged on the foothills just beyond la paz in the last fifteen years, what has become known as the 'manigator problem' has at times eclipsed the growing debate among mainly aymara and quechua leaders over the prospects for substantive change under evo morales. citizens speak in hushed voices of packs of amphibuous youngsters demanding representation in the constituent assembly, and of mothers flushing their mutated young ones into the city's sewers, which, unfortunately, do not exist. among santa cruz's white elite and the mario vargas llosa reading, ian mckellen worshipping kipling apologists, fear of an alien invasion and, with it, the usurping of their political and economic advantages, has spurred the development of a renegade group of 'maya men' intent on policing the lowlands should evo morales fail to do so. stay tuned for more on this exciting story.

all i know is that i don't know nothing



i survived the insurgency and all i got was this lousy militia.
i survived the taqfiris and all i got was this genocidal interior ministry
i survived fallujah and all i got were al-sadr's oakleys
i survived the apostates and all i got was this clubbing vest