R.I.P. JG Ballard, dystopian visionary and author.

I’ve just returned from holiday to discover the news that my  favourite author – possibly one of the 20th Century’s greatest authors, whose works I have digested since I was a teenager – has died from his long standing prostate cancer.

Such a loss. I believe that I have read every word he has written, and all of them resonated with me, and many may have changed my life as I grew older. No more words – visit www.ballardian.com if you want to really understand more about this incredible man.

 

 

[ Simon Sellars ]

Just some words:

Inhale resolve, Exhale ambition

Inhale all I need, Exhale all I want

Inhale love of life, Exhale fear of death

Inhale power, Exhale force

I have all I need

I can live without

I have what I need

I can live without

Inhale tolerance, Exhale judgement

Inhale what I am, Exhale what I think I am

I have all I need

I can live without

I have all I need

I can live without

Don’t hold me down

Inhale fact, Exhale assumption

Inhale what I want to be, Exhale how I want to be seen.

Henry Rollins.

Best song title I’ve heard this week.

 A new album that I doubt many of you are familiar with, called “Black Sheep” by Julian Cope – ex “The Teardrop Explodes” for oldies and late 70’s throwbacks.

It has to be said that Cope’s work has become, well, let’s be frank and call it weird shit since his Jehovahkill album of 2000. And he has written two huge tomes of work on Megalithic structures in the UK, and in Europe. Well recommended reading if you can lift the damn books off the table! I have a copy of the first hardback edition, and I’m still not sure if he didn’t intend it to be a monolith itself

He is totally out there, as his Head Heritage site proves, but the song title, and I love it:

All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers

(Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)

Today’s quote. J.F.Wallace.

“I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests, and feel like I’m not one of the good ones. But then I countenance the fact that at least here I am worrying about it, noticing all the ways I fall short of integrity, and I imagine that maybe people without any integrity at all don’t notice or worry about it; so then I feel better about myself. It’s all very confusing. I think I’m very honest and candid, but I’m also proud of how honest and candid I am — so where does that put me?”

Sometimes, you just have to be thankful.

And stop complaining! Roof over your head? Food on your table? Family – OK, maybe a mixed blessing sometimes – all healthy. Loving friends? And you haven’t just experienced an earthquake or Hurricane?

In the modern era of jealousy, greed and rapacious selfishness – “So one secret of happiness is to ignore comparisons with people who are more successful than you are: always compare downwards, not upwards.” Richard Layard, 2005.

And for all time:

“It put me to reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings.” Daniel Defoe, 1719.

The truth is everything.

Quoted from Steve Wozniak’s autobiography, iWoz:

“My dad believed in honesty. Extreme honesty. Extreme ethics, really. He used to tell me that it was worse to lie about doing something bad….than it was to actually do something bad, even like murdering someone.

That really sunk in. I never lie, even to this day.”

I believe that the same goes for hiding the truth, for whatever “good” reason that may seem at the time.

My word for today.

Opsimath.

One who begins to learn late in life.

And an aphorism:

The fool says in his heart that there is no god.

And the wise man says it aloud.

George Carlin. Don’t RIP!

So many losses this last year or so: Thompson, Mailer, Vonnegut, and now Carlin. Reckon if there were a heaven they would be “at peace?” They would be kicking the shit out of death as they did in life!

“Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.” — George Carlin

Depression.

One of the most beautifully written, most descriptive pieces ever on the subject of depression comes in Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2 – I spare repeating the content and context of the Scene for those who know their Shakespeare, anyone else can see the play or read it if they want.

It was also used to great effect as the final speech in the brilliant, hilarious and superlative 1987 film, “Withnail & I,” by Bruce Robinson, and starring Richard.E.Grant and Paul McGann. Anyone who hasn’t seen this film has missed something of rare quality, IMVHO.

So the lines quoted below, as spoken by Hamlet in the eponymous play, are the (very slightly truncated) version as used to such great effect in the final scene of “Withnail.”

Very few people have described the terrible dichotomy of the conscious realization of depression so superbly.

I have of late—but wherefore
I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of
exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to
me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why,
it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me—no, nor woman neither, no nor woman neither…..

A few favourite quotes….

A few quotes that are always worth more than just the words they convey, because the meanings are much more than the mere words:“

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.” – Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate Physicist (1918-1988) 

“It put me to reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings.” Daniel Defoe, 1719.

 

“working is not a sign of intelligence” –  attributed to Robineau, a top French chef who retired at the peak of his profession.

 

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) 

 

And one of the ones that means most to me, for many reasons:

 

But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me. – Richard Feynman 1981 (when he was already terminally ill with cancer)