An average Portuguese fish market

and some sun...

Endorsement right there!

/// GLASTONBURY ///

Wow, so that was that, Glasto 2010. One of the most chilled and beautiful few days of my entire life. We arrived late Wednesday evening to surprisingly little traffic, and got under way with lugging the tents, bags and crates to the gate, then on to find a suitable camping spot. Everyone had seemed to pack light and brought equally manageable tents to put up, except for me - I'd brought a mansion of a tent with two wings, and was hammering away well past sunset whilst the others cracked into the ciders. 

Thursday morning we woke in an unbearably hot tent at about 8am. This was the norm by Sunday as the festival was blessed with weather more akin to Rio than Somerset, but there were precious few hours of sleep and by Sunday it was taking its toll on everyone. With little musical offering on the Thursday, we took a chance to soak up the atmosphere. Green found the cider bus and duly remained there for the entire weekend. He'd somehow gravitate towards it and if ever anyone was lost, that made the perfect, if messy meeting point. Also found out on Thurs that Herbal E's and flares are two things that simply don't work.

Friday and the tunes kicked off. We saw the legendary 80 year old Rolf Harris open the weekend with some classic aussie sing alongs, but kept stopping to explain each and every line and also invited ooo's and aww's from the crowd, more cringe panto than glasto. Went over to the BBC introducing stage to catch a couple of teasers from Mumford & Sons, then over to the Stranglers at West Holts. After getting lost in the Shangri-La and Block 9 we set up camp at the Pyramid to see, to everyones amazement, Snoop Dogg giving one of the most memorable Glasto performances ever. Having polished off the mini Pimms and Soco cans, Dizzee came and left, and we quickly tired of Gorillaz' languid performance and met the rest of the guys at the Acoustic stage for the Bootleg Beatles, the biggest Beatles tribute band who topped of Friday's antics perfectly. 

By Saturday I was smashing everyone on the tanning front (not surprising) and Bailey not only managed the classic t shirt tan mark, but also a rather distinct forehead tanline where his little fringe flopped over. The heat soared, and we saw Lightning Seeds open the day, yet 'Three 'Lions' seemed unconvincing. Jackson Browne was a class act not to be missed, but the highlight of my day was Dead Weather, Jack White's latest side project who've already notched a couple of hits in two years. They closed their set with 'Will There Be Enough Water?', an apt one for the conditions, which was probably the loudest and piercing thing I'd ever heard in my life, and, sounding nothing life the album version or any live version previous to this one, a real nugget of musical history in the making. Regrettable, or so I thought, I missed The Cribs and Steve Harley & the Cockney Rebel because they both clashed with Shakira. As Gabby had sat through plenty of artists she'd never heard of, it was only fair I watch something she actually wanted to. It was an impressive sight though, the entire crowd facing the Pyramid stage (except me and Bailey!) trying to shake the ol hips. It was surprisingly easy to find everyone when we'd gone our separate ways. By the final days phone batteries were dead and buried - although there was the Orange chill and charge tent, which acted as a microcosm of city life, an unwelcome reminder of our reliance on phones, facebook and technology. After witnessing two women fight over an Iphone charger, I was bored and we soon found that 'the bit by the pyramid stage by the hill', which sounds painfully vague, was a successful meet up point, as was the cider bus, rendering phones redundant. After stocking up with beers and Sainsburys own brand dry cider from the tent, we got a bit of Jamie T at the John Peel Stage and went onwards, to the cider bus, getting a giant yorkshire filled with mash and gravy on the way.

Sunday, and everyone had pretty much ran out of money and beers and energy, except from Clarke, whose beer fags and tits diet kept him polishing off a wine box at 9am ready for another session. He is our representative of the Keith Richards gene. The footie was an unwelcome distraction in the heat. The football field was a field, with no shade, and the tiniest of screens. After seeing Germany smash 3 goals past a sorry looking England, we got back to business with Ray Davies. Dedicating his set to Peter Quaife, his former Kinks bandmate and friend who'd only passed away a few days earlier, it was a poignant moment. Playing Sunny Afternoon, the track that was number 1 when England won the world cup in 1966, blunted any bad feeling from the match as we all just chilled, soaking it all up. Jack Johnson seemed the perfect follow up, as the sun beat down on the bank overlooking the pyramid stage. With the weekend drawing to a close we headed to the West Holts stage to see one of the acts I'd been looking forward to for days, Toots and the Maytalls. Clarke ordered in a goat curry while we skanked into the sunset. At this point, I had to test out the long drop. As we were camped relatively close to the pedestrian gate, we'd managed all weekend to go for team shits at the veritable shrines that were the portaloos on the way to the car park. Miles away from our favoured loos here, I bit the bullet and thought of England. 

Then to Stevie. Words cannot really describe the motown god...Crowds stretched back as far as they eye could see for his debut Glasto appearance. Some amazing moments when he did my favourite cover of all time, The Beatles' 'We Can Work it Out' from a 'Motown does The Beatles' album i came across years ago, and when he launched into Superstition, with people launching flares as if it was the Milan derby. 

A truly amazing weekend. No sure if it was the banter, the drink, the sun, the friends or the music, but everything clicked to make it one of the most memorable occasions of my lifetime - and I'm sure it's the same for everyone else who attended. It's amazing this quaint somerset farm 40 minutes down the road turns into an epic city for everyone once a year. 

 

Photos - Josh Moore

As I sit here writing this, I have approximately 10 days until the 'expiry' date on my student card. Does this mean, in 10 days time, my tenure as a student will have expired. Come this magical date will I have a salaried job in the real world ready and waiting, which I'm expected to assume and start the rehabilitation into responsible, tax paying citizen submitting to the higher powers of authority and capitalism? I'm not saying life as a student is debauched lawless mayhem, by second year most will realise that there are deadlines, rules and expectations to meet as in the real world - the caveat for this of course is proceeding from first to second year, which amazingly some still fail.

But what is there to do when University is finished? The industrious and organised will have sorted one of those elusive and deceptive 'graduate placements' or  'jobs' where the salary is given to reflect the employee's academic achievements rather than difficulties of the job - but still, it shows your more important than the average numskull who didn't do a degree right? Or maybe student life doesn't finish, and provided you can find the financial aid, a postgrad course waits in the wings. With my degree being in English Literature (a fairly classic degree i might add) the chances of me getting a job anywhere (a job exclusively for Eng Lit students that is) is zilch. Partly because of the lack of jobs in the real world where my academic prowess would translate into anything useful - Primary/ Secondary school teacher, or journalist are the only two that come to mind.

This leads me onto my next point, Internships. The way to 'get a foot in the door' and show how passionate you are about that certain field. Let's say in this instance it is journalism. Most publishers, magazines and newspapers would expect the average applicant to have a degree, but also a hefty portfolio of written work stacked with various internship experience, a week here at a local newspaper, two weeks there at a magazine etc etc. Now this sounds reasonable right? The rise and rise of people going into higher education means a higher output of those applying for higher level jobs, so one has to sort the wheat from the chaff. This would be fine if the whole idea wasn't centred on this one principle - doing a job someone else doesn't want to do for free. I've no problem with working for free, getting myself out there, showing my enthusiasm and all that bullshit, but logistically it might not even be possible. In that 'break' between second and third year I should've been applying myself better apparently, yet I was working, like I had been throughout my second year, to pay for the basics - rent, for example, a considerably more demanding feat in London - which my parents haven't the luxury to pay on my behalf. How then would I be able to take an unpaid position once I graduate? How can I afford not to have a full time job doing something I hate to earn the basic rights to shelter and food? It does seem still that those with privileged backgrounds get first dibs at those media circle jobs, and I'd imagine it's the same with finance.

Still, rant over, I can now talk about what drove me to writing this. Sean Penn's 2007 film Into the Wild based on a true story and the book of the same title written by Jon Krakauer, starring the talented Emile Hirsch, follows the story of Christopher McCandless as he graduates Emory University and gives the 25000 dollars set aside by his parents for Law school to Oxfam as he begins a trek into the unknown and into the wild. After leaving his car by the sea, McCandless renames himself Alexander Supertramp, and there are immediate parallels with his story and Kerouac's wilderness driven Dharma Bums, and the anti capitalist epic poem Mexico City Blues. The bright young Supertramp's restlessness and abhorent distaste for the 21st century strike a chord with me, the Lit student who just finished University at the worst time possible (recession et al) and his selfish but brave journey is one I'd one day hope to experience. The arbitrary rules he faces for example when wanting to paddle down a river ( he meets a guard who says he needs a permit, for which there is a 12 year waiting list) are apparent in every facet of society, yet he ignores the more sensible advice and just goes, on his own whim. McCandless eventually died in Alaska, after being poisoned by the wild potato seed. This perhaps shows the undeniable superiority of nature, and indeed McCandless's naiveity, but the fact he died isn't the point. The search for truth (or dharma in Kerouac's case) is clear throughout the film, and I think there is a stage in every young man's life where the urge to explore and grow kicks in. When asked in the film where he is heading, he retorts 'No, man. Alaska, Alaska. I'm gonna be all the way out there, all the way fucking out there. Just on my own. You know, no fucking watch, no map, no axe, no nothing. No nothing. Just be out there. Just be out there in it. You know, big mountains, rivers, sky, game. Just be out there in it, you know? In the wild.'

There is something more to this than a simple yearning of man to be with nature, with the wild. It is to find himself, and find a higher sense of truth and purpose lost in modern society. The rat race of life, the complex rigamarole of how to get to somewhere thats comfortable first of all seems to be difficult enough, let alone filthy rich or famous or important. Life is difficult, and rightly so, but too many people have lost touch with what is important. It's not cars, credit cards, celebrities, clothes, TV's, the new I Phone, Starbucks, the West end club and the Belvedere on tap - It's not things, or looks or popular opinion. It's not the salary, the mortgage, the catchment area for the kid's schools - What it is though ladies and gentlemen, I don't know, but 'rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.'

Hirsch in the film poignantly remarks 'Mr. Franz I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one,' and maybe I don't either. If only I had your balls McCandless, to escape into the wild, and be free.

Wow, so I'm a graduate...well nearly, not really sure how it works. I've finished University put it that way, and now I face an agonising month long wait for my results. A lot has gone on in the past few weeks, we have a new government, new premiership champions, a new friday night headliner for Glasto...and the world cup is under two weeks away. All of these I'll find time to write about over the coming weeks.

For the moment, I've been busy carrying on with taking photos where I can, and starting to think about other creative projects now the post last exam buzz has died down. Getting some medium format (120mm) film ready for Glasto (was considering a cheapo super 8 camera and getting into that area for a little bit, but as I'm struggling to pay rent the plan is being put on hold for a couple of months - but keep checking back over the next few months, I aim to get some sort of film together by the end of summer)
Writing as I always have, and now pushing the music angle once again, now I'm a bit more of a free man.

Anyways, here's what I've been up to over the past few months. xx

In my last dissertation excerpt I discussed the importance of Kerouac's On The Road as image lead writing, the acerbic vitality of his prose that translates Robert Frank's iconic photographs into prose so effortlessly. This time I'm going to look at the spirituality of Beat writing (again, mainly Kerouac's). Much is said about the Buddhism, or rather phony Buddhism that Kerouac, Ginsberg and Snyder were into, yet it is all too easy to dismiss their spirituality lead work as grounded on weak understanding of religion and philosophy.

John Clellon Holmes asserts that what made the Beat generation different, ‘what made them beat’, was ‘Kerouac’s insistence that actually they were on a quest, and the specific object of their quest was spiritual.’ The Beat Generation, according to Kerouac, was essentially a ‘religious generation ’.

‘Like pilgrims to Lourdes or Mecca, the beats were liminal figures who expressed their cultural marginality by living spontaneously, dressing like bums, sharing their property, celebrating nakedness and sexuality, seeking mystical awareness through drugs and meditation, acting like ‘Zen lunatics’ or holy fools, and perhaps above all stressing the chaotic sacrality of human interrelatedness or communitas over the pragmatic functionality of social structure. ’ - Stephen Prothero

Yet there is no Lourdes or Mecca for the Beats , no definite place to go to, suggesting that the act of travel is a permanent condition in itself, with no place of rest ever able to satisfy. Kerouac’s road, the American bop night, Times Square back alleys, the Chevy and the gas station are the Beats’ sacred shrines once they reject American established religious practises and spiritual norms.

Yet one religious tradition managed to attract and inspire the Beats: Buddhism, particularly Zen. Burroughs objected to Buddhism being used as ‘psychic junk’, or a ‘final fix’ in itself (preferring to search for a narcotic fix), but urged Ginsberg and Kerouac to ‘dig’ Tibetan Buddhism. This interest inspired many works, most notably Kerouac’s collection of Buddhist poems, Mexico City Blues and his novel, The Dharma Bums, whose protagonist is Japhy Ryder, a fictionalised version of Beat poet Gary Snyder. Kerouac promotes Snyder as the Beat movement’s spiritual guide. Snyder’s Zen values and way of life in the West Coast mountains set the tone for the hippie movement of the 1960s, and The Dharma Bums outlines these romanticised Zen Buddhist ideas.

‘I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures ,’ -Dharma Bums

Ryder, the narrator, here dreams of an American youth revolutionised by poetry and spirituality, not subscribing to ‘all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils, and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume,’ (p.83) in favour of something higher and more truthful. Aside from the drug-induced wild, sexual bohemian hedonism Cassady and On The Road became famous for, the search for truth, or Dharma, seems the Beat writers’ biggest preoccupation.

This perhaps derives from the religious eclecticism offered by the three major Beat writers: Jack Kerouac, a French-Canadian Catholic from Lowell, Massachusetts; Allen Ginsberg, a Russian-American Jew from New Jersey; William Burroughs, an Anglo-American Protestant from St. Louis . Their collective dissatisfaction with the orthodox religions they had grown up with leads to a yearning for an alternative, more relevant religious meaning.

Kerouac's epic poem Mexico City Blues, consisting of 242 choruses, approaches Buddhist ideas of Sunyata and Dharma with the familiar bop flow found in On The Road. He notes at the beginning of the poem: ‘I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses; my ideas vary and sometimes roll from chorus to chorus or from halfway through a chorus into the next. ’ Kerouac wanted his ideas to convey the ‘structure of his passing thoughts ’ with the Jazz based techniques he had evolved with his prose, whilst preaching a particular religious message.

The idea of sunyata, to realise enlightenment through emptiness and freedom from unsatisfactory attachment seems to be Kerouac’s primary religious doctrine. He notes in the 7th Chorus that the greatest is ‘He Who is Free From Arbitrary Conceptions of Being or Non-Being’ (p.7), and in the 183rd Chorus that to accept truth, one must ‘awake to Universal Mind, accept everything, see everything, it is empty’ (p.183). Kerouac’s understanding of Buddhism directly opposes the middle-class consumer values of 1950s America.

‘Love not of Loved Object

Cause no object exists,

Love of Objectlessness,

When nothing exists’ (p.157)

We see here a spiritualism founded on discarding objects and unnecessary things to achieve enlightenment or dharma through nothingness, deliberately set against the norms of American materialism. These principle beliefs flowered in the 1960s with the hippie movement discarding material objects and seeking a new path of freedom from societal constraints and restrictions. Yet Kerouac shows anxiety about his religious message being misunderstood – ‘How solid our ignorance – how empty our substance’ (p.128) He also questions the legitimacy of his own Catholic upbringing with an illuminating aside – ‘A sinner may go to Heaven by serving God as a sinner’ (p.236).

Mexico City Blues however does end positively with the 239th Chorus introducing ‘Charlie Parker’, who is worshipped over three choruses. We see Kerouac embrace a new spiritual direction shaped by Buddhism over these 242 choruses, whilst ‘retaining the spiritual structure of the quest despite his questioning of traditional religious values ’ When he returns to his beloved Jazz we see a celebratory Kerouac, championing Parker as the chief influence on his writing. He states that Parker ‘Was as calm, beautiful, and profound/ As the image of the Buddha’, ‘A great musician and a great creator of forms’ (Chorus 239, p.241) and ‘Musically as important as Beethoven.’ (Chorus 240, p.242) There is a sense that whatever Kerouac’s ultimate religious or spiritual view was, he found it, or rather heard it, most clearly through Parker, the saxophonist and ‘perfect musician’ (Chorus 239, p.241). So Kerouac wasn’t a Buddhist preacher urging America to discard unimportant objects in favour of a higher understanding of being, he was a beatific devotee to 1950s America, to the road, the American bop-night and Parker, Cassady, sexual hedonism and ultimately, to freedom. In its essence, his teaching was ‘Be in love with yr life. ’

Unfortunately Kerouac was not able to love the life he’d so ardently documented throughout his literary career and grew increasingly perturbed by people’s perception of him and his literary vision. The angel headed hipster, champion of the Beat generation, showed a ‘critique of America and its values’, yet offered a resolution with his spontaneous bop prosody and poetics and yearning for dharma, a ‘romantic potential achieved in art. ’ His love for America and a particular way of life was clear, yet as a man he still struggled with the loss of his brother Gerard, and his newfound celebrity status, brought by On The Road. The footnote to his ninth novel Big Sur (1962) reveals his wish to reach old age and ‘die happy ’. However, Kerouac returned to his mother’s home in Lowell and died an alcoholic’s death of cirrhosis of the liver in 1969. Neal Cassady also met a premature end in 1968, collapsing on a railroad track after a party in Mexico. The fortunes of Kerouac and Cassady differ greatly to Ginsberg and Burroughs. The latter became critically revered for his later works such as the Cut-Up trilogy, and was hailed by J.G Ballard as ‘the most important writer in the English language…since the Second World War ’. Burroughs’ initial search for the ‘final fix’ may have been a wrong turn in his search for a higher truth, yet ironically Naked Lunch reveals its author growing with sanity, clarity and mastery over his work, where Kerouac by contrast grew mad with depression. Kerouac and the Beats were responsible for revolutionary advances in literature, spiritual and religious understanding and popular youth culture. ‘Like Thoreau, they insisted on the sanctity of everyday life and the sainthood of the non-conformist, ’ and their intelligent and committed recording of the 1950s not only deserves a canonical place in literature, but in religious study also.

Still not back up to speed in terms of photography and writing for my own pleasures...alas, hand in day is near and I'm at a very good place in terms of work finished > work to be finished. Not long now, and university will be a long and distant memory, sob. Something strange has happened, as you will all know thanks to the plethora of facebook status's devoted to Bbq/Park/Outdoor mania - the sun has shone, non stop for over a week. Unheard of in Britain before June i know, let's hope this carries on till my 21st celebrations next week. Took a bit of time out a couple of days ago to sit on Goldsmiths field and also my poor excuse for a garden. Saw a bird, topped up the tan a bit, heres the results. X

Of course, it's dissertation time. I'm delving deep into Beat literature, into Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Bob Dylan and everything beatific and 1950's. Most people have heard of Kerouac's famous On The Road, and whilst it's not (in my eyes at least) his most accomplished work, or even critically acclaimed, it remains there on the American literature radar as an unequivocal classic. Here are a few of my thoughts of it's resemblance to the photograph that I, in true Neal Cassady style, just ran with....

Vigour and energy is crucial to On The Road, and moreover the Beat generation, keeping alive the wider spiritual quests and rendering the movement as a meaningful positive protest for rather than a mere revolt against something. The best example of this rush of energy comes in Chapter 9 of On The Road, when Dean drives a Cadillac with Sal from through Nebraska.

‘We had come from Denver to Chicago via Ed Wall’s ranch, 1180 miles, in exactly seventeen hours, not counting the two hours in the ditch and three at the ranch and two with the police in Newton, Iowa, for a mean average of seventy miles per hour across the land, with one. Which is a kind of crazy record.’ (On The Road, p.137)

Kerouac manages to convey the America he loves through an archaic and sweeping sprint on the open road, the cause of some concern for Sal – ‘”Dean, don’t drive so fast in the daytime.” “Don’t worry, man, I know what I’m doing.”’ (p.233). There is a constant restless ache within Sal and Dean to constantly keep moving at whatever pace, and indeed the archetypal exploration of America is perhaps Kerouac’s great theme.

On The Road is image led writing, and the main aim of Kerouac’s prose is to create a ‘narrative that derives from image and always leads to image.’ (C Blinder, A Kind of Patriotism) The veritable slideshow of the American open road showed throughout the novel clearly indicates Kerouac’s love affair with image and photography. The photograph to him possessed everything he wanted his writing to and his aim with On The Road is to write text akin to a photograph, that ‘transcends symbolically, in the torn flags and neon signs, and in the individual’s actual experience of that culture. In this lies an impossible desire; the desire to eliminate the dichotomy between actual and lived experience.’ (Blinder)

Kerouac’s clear and devoted love for a particular America he saw through his eyes, and in Robert Frank’s photographs (to whose collection The Americans (1959) Kerouac wrote the introduction) is clear in all of his writing, not just On The Road.
‘Because he [Kerouac] really did love America in a very simple and direct way, and in a quiet way.’ (Robert Frank, 1988)
Kerouac’s love for a particular America, his America, makes On The Road so visual, precise and acerbic with American imagery that belongs to the restless youth, to the Beat generation. Kerouac renders the physical landscape as godly, like Whitman and Cassady, with the sacred either becoming an actual image, or interpreted in text.

‘Drain your basins in old Ohio and the Indian and the Illinois Plains, bring your big Muddy rivers thru Kansas and the mudlands, Yellowstone in the frozen North, punch lake holes in Florida and L.A. Raise your cities in the white plain…bedight the west with brave hedgerow cliffs rising in Promethean heights and fame…America –we’re going home, going home .’ (Jack Kerouac, Introduction to The Americans, Robert Frank, 1959)

This particular passage, full of Whitman-esque indexing and semblance of spiritual grandeur could be taken directly from On The Road:

‘It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.’ (On The Road, pp.169-170)

Kerouac adopts a ‘photographic stance ’ with his novel, and in creating a visual text, in mapping the America that he sees, he creates a certain type of America, an America of the Beat generation.

A brief sojourn to the Thames yesterday, and I managed to capture the doom and gloom of London in February in all its splendour.

The trick i reckon with B&W is heavy on the contrast and on the over exposure, bigs up that grimey feel. 

The recent (mis?)use of section 44 by police officers (which allows them to stop and search anyone in. or in this case taking photos of, a specific area without having caused an offence) made me feel slightly perturbed as I ambled along the river bank fiddling with my camera snapping buildings with apparent fanatic enthusiasm. The possibility of being stopped and made to justify a mere artistic endeavor isn't something that should be accepted in the 21st century, end of. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/warning-do-not-take-this-picture-1833127.html

 - Photos: Josh Moore -

I was lucky enough to be gifted another toy last week, a Nikon SB24 flashgun. As big, brash and wonderful as it looks poised on top of my camera, making me feel like a proper little professional, it's pretty old school and doesn't enjoy the idea of syncing with the camera itself...meaning that after gauging a competent grasp over the SLR's manual controls, I had to deal with the many intricate little settings the flash had separately - none of which I understand at all. Anyways, my employers Jack Wills held a store event and asked me to take some snaps, so I tried it out..

 - Photos: Josh Moore -