Apparently we have a writership of mums and dads
with two and half kids, a mortgage and a Citroen which lives counter to the
counter culture; that is, which stands for conformity, for being ‘inside’ in
its content …
… [A literature that should be] on principle,
refusing to use trigger warnings, knowing that offence-giving is vital medicine
to vaccinate the population from the censorious tyranny of umbrage taking. A literature to which the notion of a ‘safe place’ would be
repugnant if it weren't so hilarious. There should be no safety to, or from,
writing. That's why though not of my politick, I was always going to love our
own James K. Baxters and our irreverent, drunk, Sam Hunts ...
It
is unsurprising I don’t have a big readership – freedom is passé nowadays, a
busy-body bossy command state the accepted model for society (again): my most read post against Big
Brother’s tax surveillance operations and the barbaric fallacy of the common
good used to justify the tax take, has just over 22,000 reads, and my literary
posts normally score around the 2,000 mark. Literary Ramble IV has been the
top literature post at (currently) 3,264 page visits, albeit with continuing reads of about twenty to thirty per day – significantly, mainly out of
the US. With that post weighing in over 18,000 words, I’m chuffed with that.
What
I’m not so chuffed about is that every day the disappointing premise of
Literary Ramble IV is borne out: today I find its correctness at a surprisingly
mundane level.
State funding of the arts is leading to the
stultification of western literature under the reactionary establishment of
Left-Liberalism, also called Progressivism, which has largely captured the
means of production via the agents and publishers, and quietly indoctrinates
the authors toward a homogenised literature via creative writing courses in
progressive saturated tertiary institutions. Ours is no literature that will seed Le Guin's resistance and change,
or that can be ‘disturbed by power’, as Solzhenitsyn feared, because it’s a
literature which embraces the ethic of that power, the supremacy of the state
over the individual, and incredibly for the arts, a collectivism over
individualism, with at its base, the tax take which funds a complacent
publishing channel, while eviscerating our private lives, our digital innards
disemboweled and served up in the offices of government officials.
A
dead and dying literature, supplicant to the tax surveillance state for its
victuals, no fight left in it.
From
this premise, it will further not surprise that I am a writerly romantic. A lover of the rebel. I lov(ed) the rock and
roll counter culture of Rolling Stones drunkenly wrecking hotel rooms, and Keith
Moon throwing a tantrum over his drum set, then throwing his drum set at his
audience. I couldn't listen to their dreadful
noise anymore, but I lov(ed) the punks of the 70s and 80s - my era - the
glorious Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joan Jett, Blondie, and let’s not forget
those anarchic lads, Sid Vicious/Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols, The Clash,
The Damned, Dead Kennedys and Ramones. Go to one of those concerts and get all jazz
hands and you’d rightly be thought retarded - and if you want some potent
symbolism of the death of counter culture look at pop culture today: tailored,
clean living boy bands, rap pap, and pop princesses.
Flowing
from this and extending my literary manifesto of Ramble IV, I view literature
as a necessary counter culture, also,
produced by the outsiders and outcasts who are able to look in, quite possibly
intoxicated, high or tripping – perhaps because of it - and then report back,
steadfastly on principle refusing to use trigger warnings, knowing that offence-giving
is vital medicine to vaccinate the population from the censorious tyranny of
umbrage taking. A literature to which the notion of a ‘safe place’ would be
repugnant if it weren't so hilarious. There should be no safety to, or from,
writing. That's why though not of my politick, I was always going to love our
own James K. Baxters and our irreverent, drunk, Sam Hunts.
This
is literature and art as the outside. The other. A literature questioning and
poking and prodding its quills into everything that is received culture, every
assumption, and all, ALL authority. Literature that is important. Literature
that has purpose. Literature that can’t write when its freedom is
bounded
and won’t accept boundaries. Literature that won't accept censorship. A
literature with its progeny traceable directly to the Enlightenment and the rational,
individualistic ethos arising from that rebellion against the ancient regimes.
A literature that knows collectivism means controlled lives lived inside the
prison of each other's minds, which is the Gulag.
This
when the Gulags of the twentieth century are still visible on the arms of
living humans, not just in the history books, thus there was no excuse for this
crumbling of resolve.
Concomitant
with this – free living is a package deal; stay with me … - on the intimate,
mundane details of traipsing through a life, I love booze. I love wine. I love
martinis. I love whiskey, brandy and gin. I love these things also because
nanny state would control them by admonition, rationing or prohibition, along
with sugar, with salt, and with fat - all, of course, for my own good. Noting
that to say I love booze is not to say I’m some type of raving
alcoholic, I most certainly am not - well perhaps raving - but I have to make
that qualification, because along with the ascendency of that gender and
racially divisive politics and segregation known as identity politics, spawned
by progressive collectivism, has come the busy-body, judgemental age of the
wowser
(and worse, the censoring social justice saint – Jesus Christ, Allah or George
save me from the good intentions of the earnest eyeing my money). Thus my
attacks on Labour MP Iain Wowser-Galloway when he had his wowser blood
alcohol limit
passed this last twelve months: I wrote then this would only punish the
responsible, while those that drink to excess and drive would be oblivious to
it, meaning the road toll wouldn’t be changed. And I was right; the road toll
has gone up, dramatically, as rural hospitality and community are being destroyed – (don’t panic, this comes back to literature soon enough):
Guess the wowser blood alcohol limit
was a waste of time - as I said it would be @IainLG Only punished responsible. http://t.co/BrPRUqhFtL
—
Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May
27, 2015
I
thought this tweet the end of that. I’d made my point, knowing the clock would
never tick tock back toward freedom: it only does that after revolution. However,
needless to say - getting back to first premises - I wasn’t expecting this:
@MarkHubbard33
@IainLG RTC
deaths are only small part overall societal cost of alcohol - misses morbidity,
violence and crime
— Going West Festival (@GoingWestFest)
May
27, 2015
@GoingWestFest
But the wowser blood alcohol level is only about road deaths. Hence, my point.
As 4 the rest, so you would have prohibition?
— Mark Hubbard
(@MarkHubbard33) May
27, 2015
@GoingWestFest
And why is a literary festival account taking up a wowser argument against
alcohol??
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May
27, 2015
Told
you I’d get this back to literature.
The
@GoingWestFest Twitter account is the account of an annual literary festival,
namely, quote: Going West Books &
Writers Festival is an annual literary festival that takes place each September
in West Auckland. And in case you just missed it, this literary festival
account just admonished, nay, lectured me about the harmful effects of alcohol.
If I have to explain my point, even to the post punk generation, then you, dear
reader, are beyond the point, certainly of hope.
Move
along, there's no counter culture to be found here. I would know our literature was in better shape if the Going West Festival had tweeted me this: Charles Bukowski drinking on the set of French television program Apostrophes - those were the days (hattip Steve Braunias - Twitter) ...
I had not fully understood, even in my Literary Ramble IV, the extent of the fail of our twenty first century progressive-centric-big-brother-state-wowser literature. Apparently we have a writership of mums and dads with two and half kids, a mortgage and a Citroen which lives counter to the counter culture anymore; that is, which stands for conformity, for being inside in its content, and I have no doubt backs the
Twenty
first century literature has crumbled in all its strait-laced sobriety to this:
the gutter of normalcy (and it ain’t looking up at the stars. It’s not dreaming
at all, and is the last three-bedroom-toilet-and-en-suite you’ll find freedom
loving peeps having a good time
expressing themselves in.)
There
remains only to end on an ill-founded request I know will be ignored: will the boring-bound-prohibitionist-bureaucrat
running the West Literary Festival Twitter account please put it carefully down. Take a step back from it. Another
step. Now fuck off to Nanny and turn in early with your milk hot chocolate and
butter short bread. You shouldn’t be anywhere near such a noble, important art,
as this art of rebellion to authority, and today’s unprecedented abuse of the
state’s authority with its regulation upon regulation, law upon law, snoops,
spies, officials and IRD auditors inveigled into every intimate sphere of our
private lives, where even language is being determined for us by those social
justice thugs as between what is acceptable and what is not. Yes, we live in a
near total surveillance State and our writing community, incredibly, is on the
side of It, worshipping at the altar of redistribution and taking the rich pricks down, along with the right of each one of us to be left alone - I know
that; but please, I don’t need your haughty lecturing on the harms of a ruddy
drink reminding me of it.
The.
End.
Of.
Everything.
Welcome
to the Soberdome.
Excuse
me if I excuse myself for one of these ...
