CosmiKnot

It started long before her term in office but Margaret Thatcher along with Ronald Reagan cemented the idea in the public's consciousness that if we keep our heads then a financial framework will make everything make sense. The hard working will be rewarded and wealth will trickle down creating a balanced and harmonious… harmonious er… You see she said there is no such thing as society. I’m reminded of this by Boris’s revival of the £350,000,000 a day debacle. Yeah maybe we could spend all of that on the NHS but we will still be in a dark place. This is because the framework has made everyone and everything into an abstract contract. A remote means of communicating. I mean money was invented so one didn’t have to actually meet the person you were making the exchange with. You know the one I’ve got a chair and I want a saucepan but you want a chair but have a vase.   Money helps this scenario. But like a glacier carving out valley money has steadily built a deeper and...

According to the curators of the Tracey Emin and William Blake in Focus exhibition, the link between the two is existential pain leading to artistic truth. I'm not convinced Blake was a champion of existential suffering as a prerequisite to creating art. Yes he had an insight into suffering but he was more interested in revealing our access to the creative soul as a means of emancipation from the institutionalised oppression of the goal driven, patriarchal/bifurcated forces that shape society. My Bed in some respects is the ultimate in turning art/life into a fixed object rather than the process of living event. The subject object split is the error at the heart of the mechanistic model of the mind that leads to human oppression. To think in terms of fixed substances is useful for certain forms of processing such as shopping lists or auditing of munitions but is a completely dysfunctional mode when it comes to addressing metaphysical matters (see how an elephant becomes an aspirin...

The power of a new facial expression SO this week sees the latest change of image from the nations beloved chameleon of pop. What do you make of this new incarnation? Well the shape shifting genius has done it again haven’t they? I mean would you have thought this was remotely possible? I don’t know would you? Is it the trousers or the extra layer of eye shadow that has facilitated this rug-pulling event?   I think is essentially something more superficial than that. Or perhaps a combination of the two.   The sleeveless jump suit could also have a major influence in the way the public perceive this tectonic shift though. But it’s not a new thing is it? I mean after all many musician have played with their image and the idea of celebrity haven’t they? Haven't they? Yes that’s true. Take Tony Hadley for instance he started off wearing tartan blankets and then morphed into a kind of city man suit-wearing persona. Or even someone like Toyah who entranced...

You are in the car reception Waiting for your car to be serviced   Your crutch is on the carpet tile covered floor Beside you You glimpse its large grey rubber end on the taupe texture of the tiles Stout and reassuring Is it you or the car that is being treated you wonder The car is having the oil changed It costs an arm and leg You dislocated your ankle on holiday It felt like a chicken bone when you carve the Sunday dinner Schlplop it went as it slid back into place Like a miracle The car that caused your fall then drove off It didn’t hit you Just threw you off balance You can bet they didn’t fancy that litigious look in your eye As you lay flat on the tarmac Then rose like the dying Gaul To stare in disbelief at the new angle of your ankle Then that schplop as it slid back And here you are now back in England Waiting in a car garage for your car Your crutch at your side Mosquito bites on your legs Soaring to strange heights of...

The mobile phone can take photos.  We shape our tools and our tools shape us Really detailed instant photos.  We work out too and our tools shape up So posing for a selfie is a reflex mode.  We shape our truth and our truth shapes us Hugging a friend in an instant well drilled repose.  We shape our tools and our tools shape us. We live in a realm mapped by the snaps we take.  We shape our tools and the tools shape us But what if mobile phones had been really good at testing air pollution as a side product? We shape our tools and our tools shape us. Or were easily adapted to being phasers set to stun? We shape our tools and the tools shape us Or mind reading devises? Or instant Voice translators? Or peace negotiating ambassadors? Or lie detectors? Or instant truth deliverers? Or Ghost revealers? Or God messengers? Or parallel dimension portal openers? We shape our tools and our tools shape us. Instead we have lea...

The Deadends are perhaps a view of ourselves through the cosmic microwaves of time via a post-apocalyptic primordial telescope. We live in a state of self-hypnosis to permit our disavowal to frame our lives with perfectly engineered precision. We are all akin to the footballer who inhabits a Caravaggio painted mask of pleading sincerity to indicate that he played the ball despite having been pulling his opponents shirt for ten seconds. He believes he is correct in pleading to the referee’s sense of reason. This is clearly an evolutionary glitch that has us in its grip. This separation is what keeps us estranged from the very part of us that would reconnect us to the immediate embodied responsibility to each other. Each and every other. Now here we will remain until more idiots claim to have a soul. This is Ginsberg saying something similar in the TLS in 1964 "The individual soul is under attack and for that reason a “beat” generation existed and will continue to exist under...