Art as the justification of everything - By Eliza Veretilo

Art as the justification of everything

To write about art philosophically is to me, to match two seemingly different worlds that treat seemingly different things. But they are not so different; both art and philosophy exist to fulfil the same desire, the human desire for meaning. Art has been a major part of human history and development, art has been our way of saying ‘we existed’. Thus art has walked hand in hand with humans throughout our millennia of experience. No one can tell you more than a philosopher that truth doesn’t come naked, it comes in disguise. Humans have since forever tried to undress it and the only way to make sense or explain the unexplainable is art. The history of art is the history of symbols and the history of symbols is the history of human life itself.

For a while I thought that Western rationalisation of thought had killed philosophy as such. Western reductionism limits that scope in which we can speculate about human life, as if nothing could be a possibility unless it logically made sense and fitted under a microscope. Logic to an extent cuts the wings of human inquiry. At a public level, this seems fitting and very rational, but at a personal level, we believe in profound realities and that’s were art and other numinous aspects come in. Art fills in the infinite pain that we have, because of our lack of understanding, because of our helplessness in the universe. Art heals our burns like cool water, we look, hear and feel symbols that reach deep into our collective human conscious and unconscious and whatever experience. Art that touches your pain is incomparable. Art reminds us that we do understand, only that we understand with different eyes.

The reason why I think art is so important is because it keeps its status of enigmatic, even in our times dominated by science and technology. Artist are treated different, as carriers of the truth but not important enough to be fed. The job of art is to transform our experiences, sensations, feelings and thoughts into symbols, into music and into something that can last in the memory of humans. In Richard Dawkins words, we don’t just leave behind genetic material, but we also leave MEMEs, little bits of our creative self, in the shape of art, like things you don’t think are art, like the way you like to fold your tissue. Art goes beyond the objective, beyond the times, as if its symbols gave us a little more access to eternity. It is not a coincidence that Religions are charged with art, art is symbolic and symbols are signs and expressions of our millennia of accumulated human experience, the pain is no new, the doubt is not new, art is not new.

Feelings and sensitivity are given to us just by being born, same as reason. Artists use them and transmute these into symbols, colours, sounds, words. The job of an artist is continuous, like experience. We are constantly receiving something from the external world and that has to be transmitted. Everyone should do art, constantly, any type of art. It’s better than psychotherapy, it’s the coat of varnish that will truly help you visualise the mess that you have been turning your head into. Expressive, representative, free of worries, creative, personal, impossible, based on reality, that doesn’t need to make sense but ends up making more sense, neutral, angry, happy, passionate make art.

By Eliza Veretilo

Philosophy Tales – Life is an artist - By Ellese Elliott

                                       Philosophy Tales – Life is an artist

   'Silence!';  blasted from the quivering chords and through the aged, pursed lips of a learned man causing the chit chat and bustling of the year-eight class of Ginningberg school to fade to a few brave murmurs. 

  'Today, you will be trying to produce a work of Art!' Mr Klein stated. 'Now, what is Art you may ask and you do ask.'

   He began in the same manner with the same speech every Tuesday afternoon, putting this question into the mouths of students who never had even fathomed it, let alone asked it.

  'Yes Art!' Some of the attentive pupils sarcastically mouthed along. 

  'Not Mathematics, not Science and not English, but Art!' he said; in an authoritative voice with a lingering Germanic accent.  Mr Klein passionately continued pacing around the classroom, 'Art is the creation from a manifold of impressions, gathered together by the tools of the mind, than reframed by the powers of the imaginative...'

   'What is he on about?' Sel whispered to his unsuspecting crush.

   'Art obviously.' she giggled.

   'Art is the bla bla of the bla bla, de bladdy bla.' he humoured boyishly.

Mr Klein was still executing his inordinate speech; “....and transported to a blank canvas. Take control, take control of life!”

   'Art is life force.' Sel joked, holding his finger above his top lip to mimic Mr Klein’s rather scruffy moustache, but he suddenly stopped as he saw a flash of disdain from those haggard, coffee'd up eyes; they daren’t speak again.

  Summing up with some pompous words Mr Klein placed some quite peculiar, gothic looking objects in the centre of each table, returned to his bureau and slumped in his chair.

  'Begin!' he shouted, throwing his nimble hands into the air then through his white untamed hair. And the class began.

   Paint was squeezed into pallets; brushes were whirling around like the drum of a washing machine meshing colours into concoctions.  Blank canvases were tarnished -some more delicately than others- and the year eight pupils painted the peculiar objects as My Klein  occasionally jolted and mumbled some inaudible gibberish in the background.

  In the centre of Sel’s table was a globular gargantuan thing, he knew not what it was, but he proceeded to paint to the best of his ability, hoping to impress, as did the rest of the class.

  'Life is an artist and you are its masterpiece, but take heed as you too can cast your impressions.' 

  A few eyebrows raised and the corners of mouths irked into smiles as glances were exchanged among children in the quiet shared knowledge of not understanding anything Mr Klein uttered.  Approximately twenty minutes had passed, mostly filled with rumour and showing off, not much producing a work of Art.

  'Enough!!!' and the class dropped their apparatus and stood, unable to predict their teachers next moves.  “Let me ask you a question?” Mr Klein said as he analysed their portraits. 'Is a mirror an Artist?'

   There was silence.

   'Well, is it?' There was a clear lack of enthusiasm to answer this question. 

   'No.' Sel thought his crush brave for answering.

   'And why not, Loiussssssse?' Mr Klein hissed edging closer and closer, but she could not elaborate.

  'Because it has no creativity, Sir, Mr, eh.' Sel swooped in heroically, like Tarzan to save Jane from a giant ungroomed baboon.  Mr Klein’s moustache snarled up until some of his hairs entered his nostrils.

  'And would you say creativity is a requirement to be an artist?' Mr Klein pushed.

  'Er, well, um.' Sel stammered uncontrollably, not sure whether he said something wrong or right, despite the fact it seemed as though there was no right or wrongs in Art; but this was Mr Klein we were talking to.

  'Creativity is ‘the’ requirement!' his German accent aggressively protruded through his eloquent English. 'A mirror merely replicates its surroundings and what have you done? What are these portraitures? They are replica; mass production! Are you mirrors? Passive! Pointless! Merely representing representations which may in turn be representing something further still? I am in no need of murkier waters. Now paint!'

  The class continued to paint; some of their nerves had caused their wrists to vibrate giving some kind of blurred affect to their pictures. No one knew what Mr Klein wanted; no one knew what to do. His language was cryptic. Most had just grasped that they shouldn’t be mirrors, whatever that meant.  Many questioned if their portraitures were like reflections, they did not think their painting that good. And it wasn’t. Alas, none questioned Mr Klein’s authority; he had a degree.

  'Life, a great Artiste, will beat you black and blue, green with envy, or rouge with embarrassment. Let life be the artist and I its master piece.' Mr Klein’s voice gradually elevated louder and louder. 'That is what you class are, Art; determinants of its great interpretation.  But develop, develop into Artists and paint life. Decide what is beautiful or hateful, good or useful and realise that Art is more than impressions; it is interpretation, judgement, choice. Become. Interpret the world. Thrive and make life your masterpiece!'

  Something had happened inside Sel’s head, something magical triggered by Mr Klein’s grandiose speech and he painted like he had never painted before. It was like although something had possessed him. Sel frantically painted, jolting and twitching.  His eyes had glazed over as Mr Klein’s words went around and around.

  'Finished!' Sel’s hands automatically flung into the air; exposing his stomach. You could see the air pumping in and out of his fragile frame and a creepy, disconcerting smile had seized his countenance.   The children gathered around and awed at his creation, ‘ewing’ and ‘arrring’.

  Mr Klein slowly approached and the children stood to the side allowing this great man to inspect this creation.  He scanned his eyes over the piece, examining every particle of paint before he turned to Sel who was in a frenzied state. Mr Klein’s lips parted, his tongue hit the back of his exposed teeth

  'Terrible!' he said spraying his saliva all over the class.

“BRRRIIIINNNNNGGGGGGG” The school bell rang; time for RE.

  

By Ellese Elliott

Philoshop - By Ed Hobson

Philoshop

 I need to go to prison. For I, Edward Michael Hobson, stole Photoshop. Instead of turning to such disreputable activities as prostitution, dealing crack on the turnpike, or collateralised debt speculation to raise the requisite 350 Dollars American, I was forced

to go a-piratin’. It works, I’m glad it’s there; it reminds me of my 6th form college days doing graphic design on Wednesdays. I’ve made some artwork with it and plastered it on Facebook like a child sticking finger paintings onto the fridge. I’m sure many other people have acquired Photoshop in this way and used it for touching up photos and drawing genitalia on foreheads alike. But if you can just pluck Photoshop from the internet like grabbing an apple off a market stall and shoving it into your pocket, can anyone be a good artist? The ready availability of cameras, image manipulation programs, and a great canvas to paint one’s vision on, has, in the mind of many, stripped the elitism of artistry, putting mere mortals on the same level as the masters of the arts.

We’re all agreed that democracy is a good thing, and that democratisation of healthcare, education, and the political process are as beneficial to the common good as a cold drink on a hot day, but what about the tools to make art? Surely giving everyone the tools is possible, being simply a matter of empirically improving the technology and the access to it, but making everyone an artist is impossible, as that is a matter of personal ability and talent. On the internet, anyone can post anything and say anything all simultaneously, which has made critics of us all. Anyone who watches Question Time will be aware of the bbcqt hashtag which allows people to comment with a likeminded community of individuals on the proceedings playing out on screen. Although this has the side effect of transforming Theresa May, Home Secretary into Theresa May, Space Dentist.

So, the answer to the question should be no. But this brings to the fore the nature of talent. Is it naturally occurring or developed from a position of rudimentary knowledge to one of greater knowledge? I never liked using Photoshop at college until my lecturer told me that I was good at it. So from my experience, the ready availability of the technology is a good thing, and proves to people who have no idea what Photoshop is that they can be good at it. But somehow, I don’t feel that way. The aforementioned Theresa May can be scrutinised through the rigorous analysis of her policies and positions, or she can be scrutinised by the Space Dentist people. The public sphere is, regrettably, a poor place for measured, considerate discussion, wherein the most extreme; controversial; or even just the most laughable opinions gravitate to the surface at the expense of prescience or insight. Forgive me for not having much confidence in the wisdom of crowds. For example, these crowds never stop whining about the Underground when many cities in Britain don’t have one, and are bafflingly happy to live in a monarchy. Not everyone can be an artist for the same reason not everyone can bring themselves to care about philosophy, or comment on the news, (despite the existence of countless “Have Your Says”) because many people go through life without any thought about artistry, philosophy, or politics.

This isn’t a pejorative; those people live in “the real world” and are quite proud that they don’t clog the day to day running of their mind with such extraneous blah as “What is Beauty?” or “Is This Art?” Let’s be a little frank here, if art, or for the sake of argument, philosophy, were widely discussed and commented on by the world and his dog, we’d have lots of new people to talk to, but maybe they’d cease to be special, and they’d lose much of their appeal. I know that I’d have nothing to talk about at parties for a start. To deploy a rusty old maxim that a lecturer often quoted to me, you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. It’s possible that we are the elitists by nature, if only due to the normative values ascribed to the arts and the humanities in general, as opposed to the nobler, materialistic, economically quantifiable mathematics and sciences. So, thinking realistically, not everyone is going to “get it”, but is attempting to strip the elitism from the arts and the humanities itself elitist? Is it not prescriptive of what we think the people should be thinking about? If you’ve ever been on the Moscow Metro, (which, for full disclosure, I have never had the pleasure) then you may think it is. The major stations are adorned with works depicting the ideals of the communist state; renaissance- type statues of hardworking proletarians; mosaics of young fresh faced paratroopers descending from the heavens like angels, these works of art are created by an elite to prescribe the people to think in a certain way. If rhetoric is an art, then art is surely rhetorical.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and get measured for convict stripes. Responses on a postcard to Pentonville please.

By Ed Hobson

A brief exposition on the nature of art

Inadequate, but not inane; that is the best way to describe art. It describes, or tries to recreate, an instance of phenomenological being, or witnessing; to describe an experiencing. Even Surrealism is the recreation of an initial evocation of a feeling or an emotion. Art is merely a striving to produce, in an objective existence, what one feels in the sub...jective. Thus, art is the trying to posit something lasting, from something essentially transitory; it is an objectively perceivable memory. It is the artist's, albeit crudely, objectifying of his most inner being; "I am here; I am alive, and I am experiencing". It is understandable then, the frustration most of us feel when the image envisaged in our minds does not correspond to that created upon canvass; it does not provide an adequate copy of this rememberance or feeling, and even more so, for us who are unskilled at such things. If anything, art is demonstrative of an artist's narcissism to be remembered, to have one's meaning validated by a sense of futurity and permanence, when otherwise, there would be none. Thus, it is harrowing for the artist, to try and recreate an instance of being over a period of time; it ends as a conglomeration of instances, of merely a trying to remember that one, initial, instigating one. Thus it becomes distorted and unrecognisable from the original, though this, I'd hasten to add, is too remembered in mind, and not felt. Thus, we create a copy, of a copy, of a copy. Therefore, one cannot pre-ordain the form and content of art, it simply is. One may have an idea of what one wishes to paint on canvass, or strike into marble, but the finished piece is truly original; it sprouts only into existence once the tired artist's hands are finished. It is only definable afterwards, the same as in life. We, and art, are merely consecutive instances, but that is going more into the nature of our own phenomenology, than into the nature of art itself.

Perry Smith

Notes on Art, Capitalism, Imperialism and Socialism Or Art about Art - By Martin Prior

Notes on Art, Capitalism, Imperialism and Socialism

Or

Art about Art

When texting the good editor of this publication yesterday, I was hoping to submit an article on whether or not there can be a ‘good capitalism’ and discuss further my recent blog, where I argued that there cannot be a good capitalism if it has imperialism or neo-colonialism as its highest stage.

But I am afraid that now I must think up an article on art at just over 24 hours’ notice.   :,[

So instead I shall make some brief notes, discussing the role of culture in an exploitative society, for example a capitalist society such as ours, with neo-colonialism as its highest stage.

This picture, which originated as a kind of doodle, says that in an exploitative society, there are two cultures, that of the exploiters and that of the exploited.  These are represented respectively by the inner maroon-coloured diamond and the outer maroon-coloured frame.  The coloured items in between are less important, but the grey represents the fear and mis-information directed at the exploited classes to make them feel ‘as well as can be expected’: for many Rupert Murdoch’s Sun (and now the ‘Sun on Sunday’) plays that role within our own society.

The culture of the exploited is all about survival, and that of the exploiting classes is all about how you conform.  For the exploiting classes to survive, the exploited classes must also survive, so the former are in fact dependent indirectly on the culture of the latter.

Marxists, such as Gramsci, attach great importance to culture and the economic system: to my mind there is a critical path of exploitation.  City workers and LSE professors are closer to that critical path, whereas perhaps school teachers are less so.  If you hold down a job in the City, and in some way you do not conform, people will raise their eyebrows and ask if you are pulling your weight in the survival of the exploitative class, though they wouldn’t put it quite that way.

So now homing in to the more specific, if by art we mean the ‘fine arts’, how do we judge a picture?  By what the critics say about its technique (eg. ‘vertical symmetry’)?   Its function (in my case a picture about pictures)?   Or purely and simply, is any analysis of art relevant, except for how much can you auction it off for? 

Additional note... the blue on the picture stands for the greedy economic liberals and the like making full [ab]use of their superior power and the pink the technology and skills underpinning this... art and music alike celebrate both power and technology ...

By Martin Prior

Notes and links:

Own blog:

Can there be a good capitalism?

http://martinse.livejournal.com/3122.html

Gramsci (wiki)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci

Surrealism and Philosophy - Part II

In part I of these articles I suggested that there were several problems in understanding the links between surrealism and philosophy, certainly one problem is that of terminology. I made the claim that to an extent surrealism’s philosophical basis was Hegelian; this seems to need to be clarified, but also modified. Many surrealists, and especially André Breton, were interested in the notion of dialectics. Here is another of those problems as dialectics seems to be either widely misunderstood or very differently understood by different people. Hegel does not help as his writing style is often fantastically obscure, sometimes to the point where one could doubt if the text one is reading had actually been translated into English!

The process of dialectics is often explained rather diagrammatically thus: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Basically this means that every idea, proposition or thesis contained within it a contradiction, the antithesis. One worked at resolving this contradiction until a synthesis was achieved. However, this is not as Hegel himself explained it, and indeed he condemned this sort of formula. For him the dialectic had to move from abstraction towards becoming concrete. He certainly did think that arguments tended to contain a contradiction and unless this was resolved they would be one-sided and false. However, they would not necessarily be entirely false, the lie would contain a moment of truth, and hence it was necessary to look at the precise terms in which the argument was couched. Hegel is somewhat out of favour at present, his ideas are disputed by most postmodernists, not surprisingly in some ways, he saw a logic of history in which fundamental ideas would reach a point of synthesis at which history would end. All of human existence after that point would no longer be “history”! Clearly this is a very specific notion of what constitutes history that many would disagree with.

So, getting back to surrealism and the idea of convulsive beauty, the images of convulsive beauty (exploding-fixed, erotic-veiled, magic-circumstantial) are effectively those of a deliberately posed contradiction that cannot be resolved logically. There are many sources for this, but one immediate predecessor needs to be mentioned, Lautréamont. Lautréamont was the author of the phrase “as beautiful as the chance meeting upon an operating table between a sewing machine and an umbrella”. For Breton this was effectively the first real example of “convulsive beauty”, two objects that have no apparent relationship upon a surface that is foreign to both of them. This is difficult, if not impossible to describe entirely rationally, but clearly the idea is that there is a level of shock at seeing this juxtaposition, a sort of estrangement of sensibility. I would suggest that, rather than there being a simple lack of relationship between such objects there is something like an unfinished dialectic going on in which the different terms/objects/etc, in this case the umbrella and sewing machine will neither cancel each other out nor resolve themselves into a logical system, they create a sort of mental friction that refuses to be resolved.

Let’s go back to the passage from the Second Manifesto of Surrealism I quoted in the first part of this series: “Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions. Now, search as one may one will never find any other motivating force in the activities of the Surrealists than the hope of finding and fixing this point.”

So this seems to indicate that Breton wants surrealism to, not abandon logic, but to surpass it in some way so that the rational and irrational can be seen as two elements in a kind of “surrationalism” and even if, as some people claim, he did not properly understand Hegel, he made a very creative use of his dialectics, possibly undoing the process that Hegel envisaged! This overcoming of contradictions is to be in every part of our experience, not just within logic. The convulsive image is an embodiment of the overcoming of contradiction in one sense, but at the same time embodies the contradiction itself.

If we look at Victor Brauner’s Wolf-Table for instance, Brauner has created something that is both wolf and table, but is neither. It partakes of both natures, but they are locked into an endlessly antagonistic relationship. One aspect seems about to cancel the other out, they confront each other, struggle, but neither can win. This leads to the question: how can there possibly be a resolution to this battle? The answer is in human consciousness, in the realm of imagination. But it is important to understand that by imagination the surrealists do not mean unreality, for as Breton wrote, the imagination is that which tends to become real.

The next part will start to examine the surrealist imagination in more detail, just as soon as I write it!

Stuart Inman

Art as an Anti-Environment - By Mark Dawson

Art as an Anti-Environment

'Art as an anti-environment is an indispensable means of perception,... for environments, as such, are imperceptible.'

-Marshall McLuhan

When asked to discuss the subject of art I am instantly drawn to what I have found a difficult concept to grasp, that of art as an anti-environment. What does anti-environment even mean?

First we need to understand what an environment is - Our environment, or its limited perception, is based around our technology (technology being an extension of ourselves e.g. microscope/telescope extends the eye, microphone extends the ear, speaker/amplifier extends the voice). It thus follow that an anti-environment falls outside of technology. This is art; a form of originality that is archetypal, yet the repetitive reproduction of art to such extents become subsumed in to technology as cliche.

In this way an artist lives in a world without environmental boundaries, but their forms of art are not restricted to the assumed centers of art (painting, music, photography, film etc), but are in fact that of anti-social activity. Rarely is the artist well adjusted to their environment and the artist has an air of amateurism in the creation of artistic discourse. There is no form of professionalism in great works of art only the ability to see beyond what is acceptable. Art is then as previous mentioned outside of the assumed centers, it raises the unconscious anti-environment to conscious perception.

The criminal and the small child are the greatest of artists for they do not or will not understand the rules that limit what is acceptable. These modes of communication within art ask us the greatest questions that in the environment we inhabit do not come to the fore. To observe art is a moment of contemplation, of awe and extendible discourse beyond this. Anti-environmental art will only last for as long as it fails to be subsumed, but once it has it will be come part of technology and technique.

Technique is the distraction of contemplation; it give us an understanding in it analysis - no moment of contemplation only thought and analysis. Beyond structural analysis is where our perception is sharpened and we cannot do that with cliched technique. McLuhan say that ‘Poets and artists live on frontiers. They have no feedback, only feed forward. They have no identities. They are probes.’ This is what artists do, they are probes in to the unknown and they deliver us in to what is missing with our estimation of reality. They do not show us what has previously been missing but what is now. Art then becomes the precursor to our future endeavours as a race, preceding life and determining its trajectory.

By Mark Dawson

The goodness of bad art - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

The goodness of bad art

    We might say that for art to be good, it requires time and effort on the behalf of the artist. We might also say that the artist must have succeeded at expressing an intended emotion, or an attitude, or a reaction, in order for us to call her a successful artist.

   I would argue that nothing could be further from the truth! The success of an art can be down to the skill of the artist, but let us also give random chance its due.

    Generally speaking, I should think that most people know what they are getting into when they visit a certain art gallery, or movie theatre, or watch a video on the internet. The observer of an art has an intentionality; they want to experience a certain feeling and that is why they choose to observe an art. This intentionality is understandable; when you are feeling down you will want to experience something that uplifts you, or something that allows you to wallow in self-pity; the end goal of your intentionality may vary, but ultimately you are seeking out 'X' art to feel 'Y' emotion.

    With this intentionality in mind, we risk being disappointed: You have had a terrible day at work and you go to watch 'Action Battle hero XVIII: Slaughter of the Two Dimensional Badguys - Reloaded'. The purpose of watching Action Battle Hero XVIII is to relieve yourself of stress and to put yourself in the shoes of Jack Skullblaster, the insanely masculine, gun-toting hero. There is now a risk of being disappointed by the flat dialogue, the appalling acting and the ludicrous survivability of Mr.Skullblaster. In effect, the art is bad, it has failed to fulfil its intended function, and you the observer are grossly let down by it.

   Yet this is a negative attitude to take. To only be satisfied by the intended function of an art is to miss out on a whole different world; the realm of failed art. We would live in a hellish world indeed if every piece of art crafted by our creatives fell short of the mark, but fortunately this will never be the case; there will always be good art. When we do encounter bad art, rather than be disappointed, we should learn to appreciate it for reasons different to its intended function. If we do this, Action Battle Hero XVIII becomes an out-and-out comedy rather than an action film.

   The intention of the artists creativity can easily be missed by the varying nature of human tastes: you may have created a painting to express your sadness, but someone observing it can bring their own intention to the piece; they may not be of a mood to appreciate your work. We appreciate (or fail to appreciate) art only as much as we have adjusted our own lenses to do so – if we widen our focus, we can learn to appreciate everything, regardless of what the artist intended (although sometimes, we will want to submit to the artists intentions, especially if she is a capable craftswoman.)

    

    Finally, bad art has another advantage; lack of polish. Terrible poetry is often more truthful than a well constructed poem, if only because the true meaning of it isn't contained in the actual poem, but in the fact that the weak writer was trying to create a work of art (bless them!). The real message of a bad piece of art is the pathos, the sheer tragedy of the artists failure, which resounds as strong as the emotions exhibited by the best art. Again, the outcome of the art is not what the artist intended, but that does not mean we cannot appreciate badness on a level that suits us evil-types who find the terrible terribly amusing. And perhaps the creator of bad art should embrace the fact that they have failed to meet their intention on this occasion and develop themselves beyond where they presently are.

  The goodness of bad art lies in its ability to accidentally amuse, entertain or inform, with its raw lack of polish. It is for this reason that we should avoid saying that art requires the observer appreciating the artists actual intentions in order to contain some 'goodness'.

By Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Philosophy Tales – The nature of Love - by Ellese Elliott - Dedicated to Perry Smith

The Philosophy Tales – The nature of Love

Once upon a time, on a wasted beach that had returned wild, a young boy looked upon the sea, solemnly. As the sun appeared to immerse itself in the velvety waters the cold chill of the evening breeze swept the mementos of an inhabited place along the sands and blew his long dark hair across an expression of sadness on his pretty juvenile face.  

The beach seemed to be mostly comprised of bits of plastic, stray trolleys and odd parts of clothing; however you could tell that once it was beautiful.Navigating his way around the remnants of the past he felt a sense of triviality about life and of things, of himself.       Flying scavengers swarmed around him anticipating to eat, ‘and why not’ he thought.

Casting his hand into the debris the boy grasped a handful of history: glass, pebbles, etc.  He threw the pieces into the sea aimlessly, repeating this action a couple of times.  It had become a kind of game. Further and further the formations flew, some skimmed several times before finally going under. But after the third or fourth handful he hesitated to throw one of the objects.  In his hand, cut and grazed by tin and other fragments, he held a smooth large grey rock. 

For some unknown reason he did not want to throw this rock. It was not particularly beautiful, nor did the rock bear any significant characteristics that obviously distinguished it from the other rocks, but the boy took a shine to this rock.  Quite bemused at this unexpected feeling he clutched the rock to his chest, his knees dropped in the sand and he felt joy as he saw the last light of the sun fade. 

‘O rock! I adore you!’ his cheeks rouged.  ‘I cannot explain how and I cannot explain why, but now you are near I feel there is meaning to my life.’  The boy’s heart pulsed deeply in love and his eyes widened as he experienced a paroxysm of ecstasy. He fell in love with the rock; unquestionably in love. 

Placing the rock carefully in his right pocket (as the left bore holes) he walked beyond the beach berm and clambered up onto the street, hungry.  Reality above was chaotic. People bustled past barging carelessly into each other; occupied on their mobiles, distracted by their schedules. Noise polluted the air as much as the gases secreted from the trams and buses while dazzling signs reinforced their endless quests.   Entranced and running in circles, their vessels appeared empty. 

It began to rain. The boy ran across the street blocked up with vehicles. Beeeep, Beeepp, eepppp.  “Get out the way!” a driver yelled. He slipped through a small back road and took refuge under a railway bridge.  It was cold, but at least it was not wet.

Finally they were alone again; just he and his beloved, but then street thugs approached.  Sensing danger he hurriedly got up and tried to walk in the opposite direction.  “Come back here!” one of the street thugs commanded pushing him against the wall. The boy had not seen them coming from both sides.

  'What you got for us rat?'

  'Yeah empty your pockets. Quickly don’t waste time.' the street thugs ordered. 

  'I haven’t got anything.' the boy replied.
  'Don’t back talk!'

Smack! The thugs hit the boy knocking him to the ground.

  'Get back up!'  They frisked him only to find odd bits of metal and his love, the rock. 
  'Hey give me that back. Stop! That is my beloved.' the boy whined.
  'What’s he on about? It’s a rock!' the thugs laughed tossing the rock between them, 

relishing in creating the conditions affecting the boy with misery.
  'How can you love a rock?'

  'Yeah how can you love a rock rat?' the thugs chuckled.

  'I don’t know how, and I don’t know why I just know I do.' he replied.

  The thugs stopped throwing his love. 'But the rock doesn’t love you.  The rock doesn’t love anything. It’s a rock mate. How can you love something that doesn’t love?'

  A philosophical debate had broken out under the most unexpected of circumstances; among the mist of degradation, debauchery and dirt.

  'How do you know the rock does not love me?' the boy argued, 'one cannot know whether one is loved or not.  The rock is no different in that respect to any other. For instance: how do you know your mother loves you?” he elaborated.

  'Hey my mother’s dead you rat. Don’t talk about my-'

  'Calm down Bull.' the other thug interrupted; saving the boy from yet another blow, as he was intrigued by the discussion.

  'What I mean is this: How do you know whether anything loves you?'  the boy asked. 

  'Because they tell you.'

  'Yeah they tell you. The rock can’t chat.' the street thugs chorused illiterately.

  'But people can lie and deceive and be fooled and tricked. Could they not be deceiving you, for their own gain, to please you or to please themselves?' the boy questioned.

  'Well they act like they love you, dumb arse.' the ring leader answered enticed into this debate. 

  'Those who deceive you with their words can also deceive you with their actions,'  the boy’s wit had become faster. 'Words and actions can give us some insight into how one feels, but just because one does not speak or act does not mean we can judge they do not feel .“

  'Huh?  Are you saying this rock could have feelings? You’re mad!' they accused.

  'I am not mad I am in love. Quite simply we can never know if we are loved.  Thus, it cannot be we only love on the basis that we think we are loved or else love would never arise.  It must then follow that love is truly selfless.'

  'You’re wrong!'

  'Yeah!' the thugs argued,

  'And I’m going to prove it!” stated the ring leader. 

So the thugs ran away with the rock and the boy gave chase.

Dodging the people and the vehicles, leaping over barriers and ducking under signs the thugs ran toward the wild beach keyed up and lively. 

The seas had become rough and the winds were strong and the thugs held up the rock and threw it into the watery abyss.

  'Nooooooooo!!!!!' the boy screamed, jumping in after the rock. Splash!

The tides were vicious and the weather was harsh. The street thugs looked on in anticipation, but drew scared as the boys head did not come back above water.  Approximately five minutes had elapsed and he did not surface.

Death by drowning.

  'See boys! I proved it! You can tell if someone loves you. I was right.' the ring leader gloated, laughing off the events passed, 'You can tell the rat loved the rock because he jumped!'

  'What did you prove? One of the thugs argued. 'You have not proved the boy loved the rock and you have not proved that the rock did not have feelings, you have not proved anything! At best you have perhaps strengthened my belief that the boy was mad and now I think you are too for your lack of remorse.'
  'You mean the boy was off his rocker?' the ring leader joked and said, 'It was just a rock and the boy was just a boy.'

The end was just as sombre as the beginning with only a glimpse of elation in-between. Is this the nature of love? 

 The End!

by Ellese Elliott - Dedicated to Perry Smith

Love as memory - By Lloyd Duddridge

Love as memory

“He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”- Milan Kundera

I am no expert when it comes to love. Who is? There are those that claim that love is ‘nothing more’ than a chemical reaction that can be explained away. However if this were the case, then some bright individual would have thought to bottle it by now. I would hazard a guess that it would be a big seller. As far as we know love potions exist solely in the imagination.

Then what is this love that baffles and confuses us? First of all I would say that it is rarer then we like to admit. Not everybody finds love. Just like anything we value it is rare and hard to come by. It is above all a process, it takes time. This is because love is the art of getting to know somebody. This is not to be confused with other things that are similar. This is not a spying exercise. The line between loving and spying is very thin, however there is a difference. The difference is this: When you spy, you are spying with another end apart from simply knowing that person. When you love, knowing that person is an end it itself. This is why the greatest loves are based on understanding. Understanding is the building blocks of a shared history. Love and history are very much related. It is when both your personal historical narratives merge that we call it love. For history is the art of remembering, or of making memories, as is love. That is why love really starts when you have things that remind you of the one you love. That is why we find love and music so interrelated, it is because music often evokes memories of those we love. It is a simple truism, that those that we forget, we can never love. Thus the strongest love, I would argue, is based around the strongest set of collective memories. That is why it is so important for a couple to do things together.

They may be a simple test for love, and in many ways it is similar to Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche posited the thought experiment that if an demon was to come to you and say you would have to live your life in its entirety over and over for eternity,how would you handle it? Nietzsche said those that could embrace the demons challenge had lived the ideal life. Now to my test for love. Imagine you are on your deathbed, and you want to continue living. An angel comes to your bedside, and whispers in your ear, that he can make you young and healthy again. Now it is at this point that love is tested. For I argue that it is only love is you turn to that angel and say “ On one condition. That I get to live this new life with my love also” That is the test, that however strong a pull life may be, it is not as strong as that shared bond. That is because you have shared so many memories with that person, that you hardly consider life being understandable without them. That is why the real love goes beyond passion, beyond beauty. Love can last, because the great love becomes life itself. For those couples that last, life and love can become interchangeable terms. That is why the man or woman that does not want to know your favourite film, or colour or restaurant, or will not come to the supermarket just to spend time with you, or go to the dentists just to hold your hand is not worth it. You live but once, if you lived hundred times you have time to experiment. Grab that person that wants to become history with you. Grab that person that wants to know what is both good at bad about you. Grab the person that is there for you without even having to say thanks. The one that knows what every look on your face means. Grab the one you understand, and the one that wants to understand you.

By Lloyd Duddridge

Philosophical Tangents - week one

The Philosophical Orgasm

“All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.”

- Jorge Luis Borges

Philosophy is difficult. You can read the same piece over and over, making little progress each time, losing faith and on the verge of giving up and then... something happens. The fog clears, everything slots into place, the philosophy offers itself up to you, the tension subsides and your whole being is filled with warmth and understanding; new clarity dawns. This moment is something many of you will be familiar with. It comes on quickly, and strong. And it changes the way you understand forever. You’ve taken it, conquered it, made it yours. Borges sums it up perfectly; in that moment of clarity we become part of something larger than ourselves - we access that shared knowledge (shared, that is, by all those who have gone before, who have walked the same path) and can speak the words as our own.

Some people call this the ‘Eureka!’ moment, but I am inclined to say there is even more to it than that. The Ancient Greek εὕρηκα translates roughly as ‘I have found it!’, hence its association with scientific discovery. We can all recall the story of Archimedes jumping out of his bath and running naked through the street exclaiming ‘eureka!’ upon his discovery that the volume of water displaced in his bath was equal to the volume of the part of his body that was submerged. In the case of philosophical understanding, something more personal is going on. It is not merely a case of seeing how concepts operate within arguments - the understanding goes deeper than that, is internalised, changes you. It’s like an orgasm in your mind, that permeates your whole being. The more difficult the philosophy you are trying to grasp, the more intense the orgasm. It isn’t about finding a solution to a problem, it’s about augmenting your ideas in preparation for the next exploration. On each subsequent journey, you’ll take those new ideas along with you.

Philosophy doesn’t translate as ‘love of wisdom’ for nothing...

Saffron Bowles

The Phenomenology of Love - By Sean Ash

The Phenomenology of Love

When I think of the word love, and when I think of how best to write an article based on such a thing, I'm left here just staring at my keyboard in a state of melancholy. I begin to reminisce on many painful memories and events that have, hitherto, taken place within my experience of twenty-first century love and life. I no longer feel the immediate joy of what 'love' may have meant to me ten years ago, but instead I now relate to an entire new meaning of what the word love actually both means and implies.

We often see a pretty painted house from the outside and assume that only beautiful things can exist within. Often do we also see two people in-love emerging from the beautiful house; pecking one another on the cheek as they make their way to work. As they do so, we may even think to ourselves that they must share a happy matrimonial home. Unfortunately, we have no real access to formally declare such a thing as truth, even though we frequently display the tendency to do so we are often mistaken as inside the house exists a reality of its own.

As a divorcee that was once married for four years, as well as someone who has experienced the feeling of being "in-love" throughout numerous relationships, I have come to realise that love is not what it says it is or what it first presents itself to be. Love can be all the bad in the world, the same way that it can be all the good in the world. I guess, to understand why I have chosen to begin this article by placing love in such a negative light, is because I ask the reader to question, why not? Why must we always hold an immediate denotation for such a word that is painted out to be so beautiful when it also has the potential of producing negative connotations. It is this denotation that strangely asks of us to immediately believe that love can only exist within its very own extreme.

We are presented with the fallacy that love is a garden abundant with beautiful insects and flowers; where all people are at one with each other and that this is the absolute truth of what love actually is, however. When you are enabled to not only read a word but can also become the word, it is only then can you grasp the meaning of such concept; a concept that was at first observed as a mere object but has soon-after become even more-so tangible.

Is it possible that love, just as with anything else, has a secret method of working that we fail to see due to the fact that we are always happy to accept the first appearance? The more I look back at all of my experiences as well as all the pain I have experienced, in the name of love, the more it draws me closer to the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who posited that things worked dialectically, and opposing forces were essential to reaching the absolute (synthesis). It reminds me of when my son entered the world for the very first time. The moment I first encountered a visual of my son, I loved him very much and pretty much more than words could describe. However, what reason could be applied to such an instant and on the spot love? What I loved of my son I'm not so sure of, as I knew nothing more of the baby I held in my arms than I knew how to explain what it was about him that I loved. In fact, nearly six years on, I still have not reached a full understanding of this love! Although, we sometimes arrive at discord with one another, the love only seems to grow harmonious from this and the word love then becomes enabled to be defined to a greater extent.

It is exactly the same should our relationships with one another dissolve, as we enter the experience of hurt and pain due to the fact we are experiencing loss and so we find ourselves confining ourselves quite frequently to our memories. We take a look back as we stand on the dark lonesome road and all we see is a corner; never knowing what is around the corner as most times we tend to dwell on our losses rather than make way for time so that it can take us around the corner and into happiness again.

Love cannot be a form of utopia or heaven, as I believe that love is an equal balance of both love and hate as it continues to move forward and grow just as we do. There is an equilibrium to where both love (Thesis) and hate (Anti-Thesis) clash together thus creating the absolute attachment (Synthesis). To try to imagine the perfect relationship between two people or between Nations as something being 'bliss' would be to ignore the truths that actually bind all together. It has taken many wars to show people how to love. For example, post-Second World War in the UK, minorities have faced racism and violence while here in this country. Even though this country fought against the likes of Hitler and fascism, we started off by (the thesis) a noble cause by standing up and fighting against such vile hatred. Soon after, when minorities first came to the UK to take up much lower paid work, we then alienated them (the anti-thesis). In 2012, we now embrace them as our own and are mostly proud to call them British, just as they are to identify themselves as British. It could also be argued on a supra-level that Hitler's 'hate' could have been the original thesis or the anti-thesis to a single human race. Maybe his movement worked for the good of humanity as many of us now, despite our differences, like to see one another as equals.

Therefore, the synthesis can only mean equality, and such equality can never be balanced without understanding both sides. Love was never meant to be easy as if it were easy, who would truly want it? As something that is earned produces more value than something that is simply given away for nothing. Love and hate are all to thank for the struggle towards equality on a national level right the way down to the relationship level between two people.

by Sean Ash

Heart on a chain - By Perry Smith

Heart on a chain
Flushed away
Limbo Messiahs
Change your desires
Broken and bruised
Change it for someone new
Who knows?
Who cares?
With so many, you can't lose
Don't place your bet
Life's not a gamble
Don't wait for that one diamond sandal
It doesn't exist
Not now
Not ever
Futile to persist
"My son, just go out and get pissed"


By Perry Smith

Love - By Eliza Veretilo

Love

Love...

So many human acts, crazy acts, unjust, just, random, even evil acts, are justified under the banner of love. What amazes me is how powerful it is, as a justification. Its power to heal and turn everything into something good and how it takes over all other human emotions. What keeps a mother forgiving an ungrateful child? Love. What keeps a working man in a 9 to 5 jobs he hates? Survival, yes, but also and even more importantly, love to his family. Ultimately, love is an affection which causes joy and attachment. We need it, we crave it. It is goodness and we are inclined to feel it for everyone. The problem? Our society has turned this powerful, almost universal human love that everyone needs, into a selfish kind of love, the only accepted ‘love’ is love between couples.

Let me explain myself better, I’m not saying that having one partner is being selfish, it’s not, you can only love one heart at the time, they claim. What I mean is that humanity is more inclined to love each other, to share with each other, but it is more convenient to our economy for people to group in pairs and spend all their love tokens on each other. This is not exactly something we are naturally inclined to do. Our ancestors lived in communities where they shared; they shared time, resources and attention. Altruism is saintly, not as a coincidence, but because it’s loving. Our current focus on the couple as the centre of ‘life’ actually has some damaging consequences on us. For example, people who don’t have a partner feel less adequate and people who have one feel forced to stay in that relationship even though maybe their real interest is elsewhere. Neither of this people has something wrong with them and I’m sure, everyone has the same amount of ‘love’ to give. They are just doing what is ‘acceptable’.

I would like to point out the example of teachers; teachers educate and look after children that are not theirs, for the most part of the kid’s awake day. The children form an attachment, without asking question about ‘blood relations’ and so do the teachers, they begin to care. Could there be anything more natural than the human inclination to educate and look after the young? But no, love nowadays is equated with sex. The human you have sex with is the human you must love. And thus love turns into a cheesy, caricaturized, caramelised version of it. A pre-packed set of dresses, chocolate boxes, flowers and lube. Love is more than that. Love is caring, love is appreciating, not impressing, love is open, not jealous, love is universal, not only lustful. Love is life giver, not an accessory. Love is what prompts people to do things for others, not a certain partner you need to show off, to prove your value, like all the other items you need to literally hang on yourself nowadays to be somebody.

If love was the pink and red bubble portrayed mainly on television, if love was a quest that women needed to wear make-up to embark on and men needed to fill their wallets to join, love would not be that blanket under which some of the biggest craziest acts in history have been sheltered under. Love, raw, real human love to ourselves, to others, to nature, to animals, to knowledge, to art, to music, to sport, to hope, to life cannot be compared to the petty image of lust that romcoms sell us on a daily basis. Could we claim and re-brand the word love? Could we escape the set of ‘must-haves’ that are expected of each individual in Western society (must have a partner, must have an office job, must have a fiat, corsa, whatever, must have this month’s it colour, most have office party... you know the rest). Could we take the cheese out of the most powerful of human emotions and reclaim it as a basis for action? For growth instead of drama? Could we? Could we rid ourselves from the illusion and destroy the false idol that has been built instead of love? There is a little love heart sitting next to me on my desk, its reads ‘my hero’. I still want to claim, yes, we can reclaim love.

By Eliza Veretilo