Friday, May 16, 2014

Going Down The Hill Down Under


1790 (aka 1980)
Revolution
The rest is history or will be for those who come to write it after us. I doubt they will be kind, and why would they? They will see our sins and forget out graces.

‘Every society needs that moment of outrage, that not welcomed Birthday moment ;-)’
There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read Cold River (sic) 
~~~~ Charles Caleb Colton

I now believe enlightenment is a simple state: it is the ability to suffer what there is to suffer; it is the ability to enjoy what there is to enjoy. ~ Richard Morais,Buddhaland Brooklyn 


Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention.
~ Brother George Orwell not Pell ... 

We seek the immortality of fame around the same time our bodies begin to seek the sweet peace of oblivion. Such is the contradiction of being human. – Jonathan Grimwood, The Last Banquet
There must be a million readers out there who crave boredom! Who love the dangling participle! Who wallow in truisms and fatuous theorisings! … Slap in your popular aphorisms, buddy, but don’t make ‘em think!
When I was a kid in the seventies we used to telljokes about Skodas: What do you call a Skoda with a sun roof? A skip. Skoda’s answer? It made better cars. In 2010 it was voted best manufacturer in the 2010 What Car? Readers Awards, with Porsche second and Daihatsu third. That didn’t happen overnight nor can we expect self-publishing to stop being a joke overnight. It will take time. A bad reputation doesn’t go away overnight but people’s memories are short. They do forget unless we keep reminding them...

We learned your words and songs and stories, and never knew you didn’t want to hear ours  Strange Hollywood became Villawood... [sold as is]

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living.

These four great motives are: Sheer egoismAesthetic enthusiasmHistorical impulse and Political purpose. He defines the first as:

Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen—in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.


The history of political blogging might usefully be divided into the periods pre- and post-Huffington. Before the millionaire socialite Arianna Huffington decided to get in on the act, bloggers operated in a spirit of underdog solidarity. They hated the mainstream media - and the feeling was mutual.

Bloggers saw themselves as gadflies, pricking the arrogance of established elites from their home computers, in their pyjamas, late into the night. So when, in 2005, Huffington decided to mobilise her fortune and media connections to create, from scratch, a flagship liberal blog she was roundly derided. Who, spluttered the original bloggerati, did she think she was? 


As Is

This is a
used poem.
It is in
good condition,
is complete and
undamaged.

No words are missing and
though they have
all been read before
the previous owner
was careful not to
read too much into them.

The poem will make sense
but it must
be said it doesn't
quite mean what it used to
and it may require
some reader attention.

What you see
is what you
get but what
you end up with
is completely
up to you.
7 ~ 7 ~ 1980  Forever Double Two ~  22 ~ XXGetting Real