My Earliest Precursor...
too anarchist for the anarchists
The Bucket is my first ever attempt to monetise written words.
If you don’t count the time in the late 80s when
25-ish year old me
rented a table at the Anarchist Book Fair in Holborn
and sold cut-out paragraphs and lines at 20p for three.
...
Which is certainly unusual
and now seems to me like Conceptual Art
though at the time it seemed the
obvious
next
artistic
writing step
...
It was a long crazy day in Conway Hall
in a roomfull of stalls
selling Bakunin, Debord, Vaneigem, Marx, Blake
Class War and more
plus me
…
I had a box full of a couple hundred pieces
typed with a stone-age Underwood typewriter
the kind that features in Moulin Rouge and other movies
where the “o” would punch a hole through photocopy paper
where pieces were one-line, five lines
three words, fifty words
...
I talked my face off for seven hours straight
in unceasing and
ever-improving
self-justification
and aesthetic theory
...
And had to keep restraining myself from interjecting
“that bit’s not good enough”
...
While making myself a decent fifteen quid
enough for a night in the boozer for me and Carole
...
Yet the Anarchists
rather unanarchistically
all thought me a “nutter”
and treated me like an idiot.
...
...
So, at the age of 63, with The Bucket
here i go again
selling
a
bunch
of
ideas
separated
from
each
other
…
The Bucket
766 or so digital pieces
where there is no set order
where each comes by pure chance after the last
randomised by Nick Fox-Gieg’s special-sauce code
...
So its yet another lost virginity
when its quite late to be losing any virginities
...
...
There were of course
some very nice and open folk i met that day
yet it all rather put me off anarchists
who i’d thought would be my natural home
yet seemed somewhere between
an establishment
and a tribe
...
...
While the idea of cutting up the bits
of being anti-book
anti-narrative
anti-completion
was an aesthetic step very much inspired by anarchism
and surrealism
...
And i went away feeling “too anarchist for the anarchists”
...
Thinking about the prison-house of language
...
And certain that, as one of the pieces in The Bucket says
“freedom is a language yet to be invented”
that the limits of our language limit and inhibit our freedoms and thinking
that a revolution would necessitate a revolution in language
and that without that revolution in language
true freedom
and a revolution
would not be and is not possible
...
...
While a true revolution in language is much easier said than done
and quite what it would involve has been
and is
a deep subject somehow always
eluding me
...
...
Yet it is rather a shame
to be making such a first venture
monetising
now
in an age when so very very many people
are monetising EVERYTHING
podcasts
websites
youtube channels
go-fund-mes
all of it
...
There are even folk monetising their hobbies
while i’m rather late to the game
and am now monetising over four decades of hard thought and writing
yet am just one in the swelling mob
yelling “me me me ...”
...
Where my yells of
“its unique
“wholly digital, wholly random
“no-one ever did this before
“it could be a new literary form...
“look at me, me, me... “
are rather lost in the white noise of a million yells
...
“me, me, me...”
just one drop of human pixel
in the expanding ocean of ...
...
...
...
...
In other news
bizarre six a.m. conversation with Stephen
Portsmouth / mid-Wales, 61
talking about 70s music
because, very strangely
he can quote one long convoluted verse of
“Plastic Bag” by X-Ray Spex
which i thought was a never-noticed and long-forgotten album track
yet he can quote one verse
and i can quote another
...
Which is a pretty random coming together
at 6.05 a m in the Andaman jungle
...
I remember a verse as
“my mind is like a plastic bag
with crossed and tangled lines
contented with confusion
that is plugged into my head
i don’t know what’s going on
its the operator’s job
not mine, i said”
...
As a teenager
i found that album lyrically amazing
and the most-interesting of those years
...
...
...
...
in other news
...
a nice routine is evolving for the days
...
a long swim out to the coral at high tide
whenever that is
to float with goggles
and to marvel
...
a long walk out at low tide
whenever that is
six hours after high tide
and almost an hour later than yesterday
to pick my way and watch
and marvel
...
at 6 a m
or half an hour after whenever i wake up
a table outside the unopen restaurant ten minutes away
because they have internet
...
at 7.30 a m
parotha at the Grumpy Dhaba in the village
as soon as Parotha arrives on the menu
...
...
“freedom is a language yet to be invented”
May this not elude you much longer - we surely need this!
LOVE this Jem!