[ssf] dda iii) and iv)

[adam]

   iii) caroline 452


   i have a lady friend

   recently, she said to me

     'you ought to tell her you know
       she can't keep having you
        running around after her
         all day long like this
          tell her
           you've got your own life'

    i left my friend in the kitchen
    and stepped into the smallest back yard
    i've ever seen, holding a once only
    barbecue set, i put it
    on a waist high wall
    well, waist high for me
    and shuck mi head at it ...


     i mean, on one level of abstraction
     i have *my own life* obviously
     -- i type therefore i am --
     but at another level
     i've been given some serious thought
     to wittgenstein's horse chestnut
     -- language is a game --
     metaphor, and sorta get it
     in a 'yeah, and we are but
     actors upon it', kinda way
     but fig me, sometimes
     *language*, seems so much more
     like fucking hard work, i was little weary
     at that point, du versteh ya
     ich war müde, ya
     und ich bin switched
     to auto-pilot:


       'hold on a minute ...'
        -- sez i, to the lady --
       '...last time a checked
        i didn't'


           'dint what '
            -- sez she --


       'dint have a life o'mi own
        do ya know what, a can't remember
        the last time i did, in fact
        i can't remember
        the last time i checked ...'



    that got me off the hook
    for a little bit, because
    someone else's laugh distracted
    and i thought, well,
     i thought lots

     i started
     by assuming coincidence

    music was playing, radio 1, westwoood
    in the background, big dog stating:


         'no, i shoot blanks bro
          but i take your point
          they're your children man
          of course you wanna be there for them man
          both in the park, and in your art'

    and i thought 'that's nice'
    and then the artist replied --

             'yeah, i'd die for my children
              and i'd kill for them ...'


    ... and it bugged me, i mean
    dunt get mi wrong, no doubt
    i'd enjoyed what i'd remembered of the music
    that's why i'd not tuned out
    but isn't it the primary role
    of a parent, to live for their kids
    i mean, 'to die for'
    what parent has not
    at one time or another
    subconsciously wished
    to take upon themselves
    the suffering of their child
    to the fullest extent of their child's pain
    and in any case, what is birth
    in the main, for mothers
    if not more agony, than most men
    have ever endured
    with a risk of death thrown in
    to the bargain ...


       'have had a check
        -- sez i finally
           to the lady --
        and nayow, a don't
        a dunt have a life o'mi own'


          'well tha wants to get one then'
           -- barked mi lady friend --



    ... well, back in my head again
    the phrase 'it could be you'
    occurred to me a little later, like
    having my own life, was somehow
    tantamount
    to winning the lottery
    of camelot

    i don't play though
    the odds suck, and i believe
    the whole thing's a cynically set up
    in order to exploit the poor
    for the benefit of, well whom ...


    back in mi head again
    i imagine a conversation:


               'i say old chap
                look at all the tremendous projects
                that have been built
                with lottery funding'


      'yeah aknow
       have seen a few'


               'oh, well
                don't be like that
                there's some very good work
                that has been accomplished with the lottery
                of course, there's a few bad apples'


      'sure,
       but where's this money coming from'


               'how do you mean
                the money comes from
                the lottery obviously'


      'yeah aknow,
       but where do they get it from'


               'well, the people who play'


      'yeah, a.k.a. the population
       it's a tax really, init'


               'no, no one has to play you know'


       'yeah aknow ...'



   i do wonder though sometimes,
   if our modern day rulers
   don't treat our economies
   in a way that machiavelli
   advised the princes to treat war

   that is, always be making it
   and thinking about, how you're going to be
   warring next, i mean
   consider again
   the lottery funded schemes:

    if these projects, really do need building
    how was it thought *efficient*
    to invent yet another corporate body
    to collect by yet another different method
    contributions from the general public
    when at the end of the day
    that body's members
    get to keep loads of it
    for themselves

     how do you score a life like that
     do tell me,
     say you somehow, get to a position
     where you no longer, needed to worry
     about your day to day subsistence
     one could easily contemplate
      what makes you so different from
      the vast populous, and you may pin it
      on *education* or *hard work*
      or what ever else, get's you *through the night*
      but you just could be confused
      all along, it may have been nothing more
       than not only 'it could be you'
        but it actually 'was you'
         that was willing
          to role out and maintain
           an exploitative scheme
            that best fitted the purpose
             not of any larger economy
              but of yourselves
               and the diversionary politics
                of the powers that be


         'but, but, but, i say old chap
          consider the work generated
          by the lottery, surely
          you can't be suggesting
          in this time of economic downturn
          that we should be scrapping
          yet more jobs ...'


    *work* and *jobs*
    are held up so often
    by the politicians
    to be the be-all, and end-all
     the holy grail, not to be messed with
       no matter what that work produces
        or for that matter
         what these jobs entail

         for instance, globally
         the four biggest markets
         as i recall, are weapons
         drugs, sex and food
         in that world order

         i mean, i'm not sure
         where the oil is, but
         i know that some of the politicians
         like to play word association football
         with the weapons industry
         they call it *defence*
         or *security*, and tell us
         all kinds of stories
         about the dangerous characters
         they have helped invent

         some made it sound
         like *stingray*:

          'anything could happen
           in the next half hour'

         well, forty five minutes
         to save the world
         an old doctoral thesis
         found on the interweb
         plagiarised, sexed up
         and served with relish
         by a very small
         yet very effective
         group of fear mongers

         bollocks,
         and known to be bollocks information

         do you know, there's a petition
         knocking around at the mo
         at number ten
         to get rid of the present occupant

         i don't know, maybe i'm living in the past
         but i'd like to get the last one back
         at least for a little while
         and ask him who, other than himself
         he thought he was serving, when he lied
         to start a war

         i don't know whether
         this can be done in the house though any more
         i watch some of the older folk
         chairing the committees
         cross examining the bankers
          but the old
           are very conservative
            no matter what party
         and they just can't do it
         it's like, they stop
         and shake their heads
         at the suited seated opposite
         but they just can't say it
         it being:

          'we're fucked
           i mean, it's you-lot
           that have fucked the economy
           big time, and make no mistake about that
           but i can still hear, in how you talk
           that you don't really have any remorse
           in how your financial experimentation
           has panned out, and why the fuck should you
           when all that, you've been picking up
           from this house at least
           for quite a while now
            is how you need to act,
             how you should appear,
              in order to walk away
               with a big stash
            rather than
             what you would be doing
              if your job
               was really to serve
                not just yourselves
                 and your corporate mates
                  but your vast clientele
                   a.k.a. the general public'



    business is business
    buyer beware
    take drugs for example:
      have read it in books
      and have heard it said
      that wars are financed
      in various parts
      by the surpluses reapable
      in the narcotics trade

    now, it would be nice
    to get out of that habit, wunt it
    take afghanistan for example:
      how do you get out of that one, ern
      get out of that one, ern
      without moving ...


       shush eric, stop messing
       we've got important guests ...


    it's all wrong you know this
    i think i'm talking to kids
    but i'm not in the main am i
      and with kids i play to loose
      it's how one learns them
      or at least, it's what i tend to do


      but given that,
       the pretend economy has collapsed
        and time is clearly of the essence
         even if the apparel worn
          by the criss-crossing heads
           of the politico-corporate-media players
            is branded 'business as usual'
      i wonder if, as an adult
       one should not question
        what really, can this land produce
         for trade and commonwealth

      oh ...
      now i don't know if bbc3 is propagandising
      but i was listening to a programme on the box
      just the other night
      called from *farm to pharmacy*
      and the narrators
      made comment, that during number 2
      that whilst the germans tested food-rationing
      and additives on their concentration camp captives
      and the americans did the same
      to the inmates of their asylums
      the british scientists carried out
      the experimentation upon themselves:

        the telly showed an whole group of them
          restricting their portions
            adding their vitamins
              putting chalk in the bread
                 and biking-it all the way from london
                    to the lake district
                      up hills, down dales
                         very gaunt looking though
                           and serious, but then
                              the pictures were
                                 black and white
                                   it was a long time ago
                                      rationing ...



     iv) we were promised jetpacks


     growing up in the seventies
     over here, we had *tomorrow's world*
     on the tv, showing little snapits
     of how, us futures might look
     based on some prototype exhibited
     by an often bespectacled inventor
     and we had *burke special* too

        and back in the seventies
        i got the idea
        that there are indeed some folk
        who create things
        for the common good
        and i suspect
         from the stories they told
        what had really motivated them
        to make their inventions
        had very little to do
         with being able
          to go back to some palatial pad
           at the end of it all
            with more fucking money
             than one could
              shake rattle and rool


       and sometimes, it was just a *part*
       of tomorrow's world, that had been produced
       or some *concept* of how that part
       might be used, in some distant
       but touching future, that was depicted
       in the pictures, and the comic books


         the two thousands
         and the two thousand and ones
         both odyssey and major tom
         sailors, rhyming on the dance floor


          'and therefore
           by two thousand and ten
           most of us should be able
           to spend our days
           relaxing on a beach somewhere

            we can plant flags in our navels
            and blow the pendants, for our amusement
             whist robots do the rest'


      funny ideas
      in hindsight
      of how the world
      might some forty year hence appear

      but, very few scientists
      considered back then
      the environment, or
      the flutterby effect
      for that matter

      some would say
      they never do, inventors
      the united states was invented too
      they've not always *been there*,
      the *states*, some folk dreamt them up
      about two hundred years ago,
      made bits, and fitted it together
      it's in the history books
      *israel* is the same, more recent
      i mean israel the state
      not israel the people
      for that's a different and
      older story, shechina, etc

      and luxemburg said
       'as a women
        i have no nation'
      well, why would you want one

      can you imagine
      the responsibility, you know
      i think i take these things too much to heart sometimes
      for example, a lady from the antipodes
      asked me recently, where i thought the world
      was going next, again economically
      and i started explaining
      with a self-perspective
      of how we'd got ourselves
      in to this fine mess
      in the first place


      i must have been using, *the royal we*
      because mi welsh mate, who's gaff we were at
      at the time, interrupted me, at one point
      and said --

         what do you mean *we*
         i certainly have not
         participated in the things
         that you have been describing

     yeah aknow -- sez i --
     neither have i
     but this ladies from abroad int she
     and i'm trying to paint
     a general picture:
      *we british*, so to speak


         i'm welsh
         and i resist this culture ...



     and the welsh do, and to my knowledge
     have done so, for many generations

     but i find myself, wearing my heart
     on ma manche sometimes
     like with this young french chap
     who asked me a similar question

       my reply, again i starts
        with an islands based
         self-perspective
          talking with the royal pronoun


     i think this french lad liked it at first
     especially when i took responsibility
     for the war, and told him
     how i'd kinda, egged
     the states in to it
     how france and much of europe
     had, at that time, quite rightly
     chosen a different path

     but then i said:
       yet really, as much as i could take responsibility
        for the states, he, has *france*
          had to take some responsibility
           for them too

           politically
            we must consider the states to be
             a hybrid of me and you


     i think he was taken quite aback
     but then again
     he was quite a young chap ...