Home Truths

I sometimes find people who think they're choosing the artistic high road do so to mask or divert others from seeing their essential conservatism. Almost (cough) like a straight man pretending to be gay to insinuate himself with women who would otherwise steer well clear of him.

Also, the word you're looking for is 'aficionado'. Wilde would be shocked; he never misspelt anything.

i get enough slice of dull life experience just existing, i'd rather expose myself to something else

1. I saw a poster for a zoo. I thought, in the 'Home Truths' view of the world, a zoo is rather uncomfortably exotic. I mean, why would anyone go to stand in front of a cage containing 'difference' when they could stand in front of a mirror instead? That's what Home Truths is, as Suzy points out: a mirror for the kind of people tuning in. Not a through-the-looking glass, just a looking glass.

2. The family is a sacred social unit for politicians of the right. The suburbs are where people go to have families. Many kids come of age at 20 grateful for the security their parents and the suburbs have given them, but determined to do something more with life, to go somewhere else. This we could call 'becoming'. To pick up the PiL reference, it's that sense of 'My entrance, my own creation...' This, above all, is what I believe in. The moment when someone decides to 'become'.

3. Arguably, the world's number one problem now is social conformity. We have more people alive than have ever been alive at one time, and yet there are not enough different ways of living. There is, increasingly, a global monoculture based on 'the family' and 'shopping'. Episodes like Sept. 11th merely worsened things by making all different ways of being look like 'evil'. Where do we attack conformity, and with what tools? We attack it at the level of the family. With Nietzsche, perhaps.

4. Whenever I see things being done differently, I'm filled with admiration. For instance, a band is setting up for a performance. But instead of drums, bass, guitars, there are all sorts of strange instruments, in strange places, some folk, some electronic, miked oddly, and a video screen. And when the performance starts, it's unclear whether this is vaudeville, or theatre, or dance, or rock, or art. Now, this kind of thing is easy to attack, just as it's easy for Ethan to jump in and call me an asshole. But I feel strongly that we have an obligation to attack, not deviants (who, no matter how unacceptable today, might be signposting the future) but conformists.

5. 'Breeders, normals, straights, squares, plastics...' These insulting terms sound so 60s because it's not since the 60s that the world of 'normals' was really on the defensive, really threatened by revolution in politics and art. Yet we need such attitudes all the more now we're surrounded by Gaps and Starbucks, when cultural diversity is really threatened, despite the numbers of people on the planet.

Those are my home truths, anyway.

Of course, i-D toys with the concept of Family. But look at their family special issue of a couple of years back and you find that the 'creatives' interviewed mean by 'family' the people they work with, gangs of likeminded fellow refuseniks, with the occasional biological family thrown in.

By the way, one of the saddest things I've read recently is what i-D publisher Terry Jones says in an interview on Nick Knight's website Showstudio about an anti- globalisation photoshoot killed in i-D after September 11th:

'We were very aware of what people were saying after September 11th, for us it would have been totally hypocritical if we also started saying that these events occurred as a result of global capitalism, or if our actions could be read as that. I thought the images and the styling of the shoot were fantastic, but thinking about it intelligently it seems we are all part of that business, we are all part of the promotion of capitalism. Whether it is StarBucks or Dior, Gucci or McDonald's, you can take a variety of companies that have entered the consciousness and each are ultimately part of the shopping experience. Essentially, we are part of the promotion of the shopping experience. So for us to attack it at that point seemed totally hypocritical.'

I know you can't bitch about your employer, Suzy, but how sad is that? Jones is essentially saying: 'After September 11th, anti-global messages are no different from terrorist messages. Consumer magazines must be on the side of consumer culture. There can be no self-criticism in the fashion industry.' So even i-D is just more canned music in the shopping mall.

I have a great respect for the 'ordinary' individual, the problem being that I don't believe that such people exist anymore. The suburbs have destroyed the (American) honorable working class, the inhabitants of small towns, etc.

by definition, how could everyone be "exceptional" at the same time??

also, a genius is only fun to study and talk about etc. not much fun to talk to, they tend to be assholes

i don't think peel's evolution is in any sense a surprise: his "anti-mainstream" attitudes carry the same seeds of the reaction as yours sometimes seems to -> but he's a "find a companion i can die with" kinda fellow, reduced to seeking the ever-changing pure sensations of the new in one familiar loved face, whereas you are notoriously mr serial best girlfriend, so you hunt on round the world for the realm of untainted non-conformism (which you will NOT btw find in japan, beguiling as it doubtless is for a year or so)

my objection to indie-world has always been that it has ALREADY signed its pact with the devil it defines itself as resisting: which is to say, it underestimates the devil and overestimates itself

ps anyone watching POPULAR will understand that as usual american teen tv is exploring these issues more intelligently (= dialectically heh) than peel ever did, or even PiL and you KNOW how much i heart lydon

Here is my home truth: the advertising/marketing industry is THE MOST CONSERVATIVE of ALL, no question. It is imperialist, sexist, racist patronising, totalitarian, and utterly mediocre, colonising anything 'new' - and if you give an ad exec one inch, they'll take the mile eventually. In fact, anyone in ANY line of work who mentions their brand more than once in the first ten minutes of interaction must be taken away and shot in the spirit of revolutionary insurrection. Or at the very least this is a reliable guide for spotting assholes who aren't geniuses.

The current climate in consumer magazines, where advertisers claim to be tightening their belts, is detrimental to freedom of expression because the magazines in question are tripping over themselves to win favour with the stealth conservatives who make up the industry (look, I don't care how cool the toys are that you buy with your £50k a year are, if you use your economic power to prevent someone from disagreeing with you in public, you are on the same primrose path as Pinochet).

A few years ago I suggested a piece where advertisers would be called into question for appropriating the ideas of the creative types (eg. Gillian Wearing) regularly featured in the magazine, which never ran shy of profiling, for example, the McLibel trial people or grassroots anti-government protestors. But when faced with a criticism of the advertisers buying space in the magazine, my editor said no to such a piece because she was scared the advertisers would pull their spending if criticised (it was okay to criticise McDonalds because they didn't buy space, and the government because we do ostensibly live in a democracy in Britain). There was a similar problem with the criticism of 'foundations' run by fashion companies to give artists money for projects, eg. the Prada Foundation. As a friend of mine, a very prominent artist, said, 'Oh, a *foundation*. If it makes them feel any more intelligent, fine. But it has TAX DODGE written all over it.' These companies want to be seen as having a link with the cutting edge of the culture, to elevate themselves above mere 'shopping', but quickly display their true colours if challenged with the sort of discourse found at the cutting edge, where people argue about intent, content motivation and appropriation.

I've met virtually no-one who has achieved *nothing*. Of course stuff like building a boat, renovating a house, running a marathon, learning a couple of languages, coming out as gay at 30, working for charity, and juggling work and family through serious illness, probably rates as *nothing* vs the ability to flaunt a surface knowledge of two or three philosophers. (These examples btw were taken from my immediate family and folks at work).

**We live in a world in which the dogma is 'we're all equal, we're all as valuable as each other'. But that doesn't mean we're all the same. I, and most people I know, are people who were ostracised at school as 'freaks'. And school was the last contact we had with 'normal' people. We gravitated to people like ourselves -- by and large self-employed, artistic, creative people**

What Gareth said. If you bothered to find out, instead of holing-up with fellow pseuds 24-7, you'd see what people had to offer, and value what they know, respect the way they live. Problem is, they might just spot that you're a ridiculous, pompous bigot.

Equality: we are supposed to enjoy equal protection under the law regardless of sex, income, beliefs or race. Talent of an exceptional type can crop up anywhere.

For someone so interested in seeing the world and dinding 'interesting' folks, how can you have so little faith in people? How fucking boring.

If I was Joe Orton I would probably be fucking them, though.

I know it's elitist of me to think that 95 per cent of people are breeding stock who I probably couldn't (or wouldn't) find much in common with, but I'm not bothered about anyone thinking less of me because of that, since I don't hate the masses enough to make them consume innocuous, plebian things dreamt up by my patronising mates in a focus group. But 95 per cent of people are ruled by the other five per cent, and quite willingly too.

Hey, Nick...hitting the Hut for cash? You are now attempting to advertise American fast food. Wasn't this one of those non-negotiable points of no return where you insisted on being taken to the proverbial field and being shot should you ever collude in this way?

Oh, the danger of a friend with a good memory.

Hitting the Hut for cash is either my lowest point yet, or a brilliant strategy to get the sleepwalking masses to pay for the promotion of Super Madrigal Brothers and The Gongs, young American artists on my label who make work which I want widely heard, even though it will cause barfing in approximately 90% of the pizza munchers who, unbeknownst to themselves, are paying for its promotion.

(Note to Momus: Not everyone gets hit upside the head as much as you do. And no, it doesn't make you special either)

If someone finds your life boring, average or in some way mediocre, relax. The important thing is that you do not. Or do you? Is that what this is really all about, someone had the temerity to suggest that certain ways of living are not satisfactory because of the implications of that lifestyle serving the needs of a conservative social agenda, which as a teenager you may have seen in black/white instead of shades of grey?

Is the teenager really so wrong? Would your inner teen be revolted by what you had become, or pleased?

(this particular argt was always completely unwinnable anyway, because it requires re-establishing an opposition that hardly anyone seems to accept or understand any longer, crowd vs star, expert vs punter, elite vs mass, doctor vs patient, general vs grunt, political spinmeister vs ordainry working ppl => you can get it up and working locally, or one zone, reasonably impressively, but as soon as you let it travel it falls to bits)

eg momus jumped along four or five steps becomes mandelson

when you were on that other thread dissing those poor 50s UK artist folks for being down with picasso years too late, and a wee bit tepid with it, i thought => but momus that is YOU — and also it is the Actual Factual Founding Era and Rationale for the ICA heh — and that is why you (and they and the ICA) may be much more interesting than you're (on THAT thread) claiming, because they have querulously refused to get with the Big Canon (= Modern Art = the top ten, same diff).

(i realise there is little real percentage in trying to find convincing common logical ground between Momus postings on difft threads)

This is very funny.

anyway the point i am making is that it cannot be introduced as the argument-winning capper to the debate, the devastating ground on which all agree all agree, because it isn't: i didn't put this in my list becuz i wanted it to stay non-toxic, but i could also have said eg general vs grunt, men vs women, white vs black... see? it can be shifted into a territory where you suddenly think, ok, hold on, yes, now i'm anti-elitism

what i am getting at is that there is no longer an agreed-on CENTRE to this "elite" argt => that an elite that you may APPROVE of in one area of yr life (for example, i like ppl who can WRITE, tho i have a quite idiosyncratic definition of that) is very likely the OPPOSITE of an elite in other areas of yr life (great artists are rubbish husbands, say). The argt is unwinnable because no one today will say YAY 12-LIZARDS (even if they secretly believe it) (which you dave q do not, tho some of yr critics on this board believe you do)

Presenting it as the "hi-lo debate" is completely misconceiving it: that's no longer the shape of the argument (and — as i said above — trying to re-establish it as being basically this shape is a mug's game...) If my brain were to turn to mush and I were suddenly to say, "Yes!! High was right all along and always", surely the first thing I'd take off my computer would be my Momus and Brazen Hussies MP3s...

'Normal life. Family life. Family life. Normal life. Shopping as patriotism. Social care farmed out to church groups. Shareholder value, advertiser approval. Family normality for the normal family.' Doesn't it make you want to scream?

Noone's saying they want to live a predetermined boring life. I don't think anything to do with a family is necessarily that. If you're criticising peoples tendency to paint those who don't go down the "family life" road as odd or not normal, then sure I agree with you. But that's not to say those who do are boring either.

But there are ways, I mean as a polynontheist, the only thing I have hope/faith for/in are people - they disappoint me a lot, but I'm sure others get pissed off when the gods don't give them what they want...but this is not a discussion about religion,, more about class...

Having been bron into the under-uber-class, moved within the uppers of argentine class, intellectually/artistically cocksucked my way into the middle class and then decided I liked it better where I satrted out, I have to say that at least us working class'ers are honest - we tell you straight up we think things are shit (btw momus - i don't include you in this category, and I actually value a fair bit of yr argument here) even when we move between cultures ie patti smith escpaed new jersey working class life went via rimbaud and then back to suburban motherhood...

I don't think there's anything particularly bad momus with you not seeking out steelworkers...there is something wrong with automatically dismissing them without knowing any of them, and broad generalisations and the such, but if you want to hang out with artists...well ok, cool...

Diversity is interesting, it's at times exciting, but it's also incredibly banal - I live in a multi-cultural block of lfats and all our shit stinks.

John Peel: Well, I always hoped there'd be some kind of cross-fertilisation. I'd like people who listen to Radio 4 to listen to Radio 1 and vice versa. I don't think many do to be honest. The thing is, the Radio 1 programmes apparently have the highest number of listeners under 16, which is a source of great pleasure to me. If they start listening to Radio 4, that's good for Radio 4. We've always been told the average Radio 4 listener is about the age of 80.'

So some of those 80 year olds are tuning in to hear the Rechenzentrum session on Peel's Radio 1 show, then, after being drawn in by innocuous human interest stories on Home Truths? I think not. Rechenzentrum's world is full of the 'otherness' that Home Truths avoids like the plague.

Peel seems to be suggesting that, at around the age of 16, people might be interested in that otherness, but later they'll settle back into 'normality', which means reproducing themselves. So, in a life with seven decades in it, you might spend one decade toying with 'the extraordinary' (the world of art, of drugs, of dreams, 'perfumed garden'-style sex, lifestyle experiments) and the other six preoccupied with family matters, with repetition and reproduction and tradition. It's just a dismally conservative view of life.

On another note (and somewhat playing devil's advocate), I'm sure you're finding Japan to be a country free of concerns such as family matters and tradition.

Because my contributions to this thread are so important, I'm asking readers to mentally delete this sentence from my post.

(also wasn't that the guy who tried to date ronan?)

As a gay man, I guess I'm glad I'll live a life that is different than the oft-travelled path of eveyone else... but I also am somewhat envious of the time-tested charms of marriage, family, etc. I think the family is ideally the foundation for you to build on, not a stone around your neck. Of course, the outcome depends on the decisions you make and the attitude you have.

Of couse, being gay means I get to play with other guy's dicks, which I have to admit is pretty cool.

Suzy: But surely saying this is saying exactly the same as what I said. If everyone is different, then that is normal, isn't it? (Sorry to be so contrary about this but still...) And yes, I am happy with where I am now, because it has made me content instead of sitting around and being depressed with my lot, and because I believe I have the drive and conviction to do whatever I want with my life whilst operating within within 'average' parameters. If you see what I mean.

I have heard very few momus songs. I have only very recently heard of the guy. I was at the point where i was curious to see what he was about, so i downloaded TWO SONGS from YR OWN FUCKING WEBSITE for fucks sake. Also Anthony sent me one he wanted me to hear while this discussion was happening. I grew angry at the attitudes that were being presented and decided that I dont want to be supportive of someone who is blindly dismissive of people that are my friends and whom I love. Forgive me for having an emotional reaction. surely if you can dismiss the 95% as being useless, i can dismiss one little 'artist'

also I think that by removing themselves from contact with the general population and cultivating animosity, the intellectuals and artists are making the situation much worse. you have ended up preaching to the converted and give the stupidity gene which you fear much more evolutionary sway.

And every 25 years they do it all over again (20 in Appalachia and Rotherham).

'Cept buy copies of your novel. Which they apparently did not do...! Christ, this thread smells like ass.

Momus, do you want to know why you are not famous? Read this thread again - you only connect with Hoxton types.

I'm believing the later.

Assholes.

Last I checked, I hadn't published a novel for you to call a failure, or provided a surname here for your busy little fingers to google.

Did you learn to criticise Hoxton types from reading the NME or something? Are you nuanced enough to figure out that what I was saying about the vast majority of people was: unlike the people who run virtually everything they consume or take in, I don't hate their fucking guts? I just wonder why they don't demand better treatment generally and then take some decisive action to make it happen.

I'm proud to be part of the 95% of the people that do the loving, the fucking, the working and the living in my town.

Mind, to make that claim isn't saying much.

Momus? I'll give you twenty of my ordinary dollars for you to write a jungle jingle for the birth of my son next week. Come on. Twenty whole normal ordinary dollars or would you prefer to be paid in majick beans and Can albums?

ENOUGH. Said the King to the Jester. NOW WE DANCE!

What kind of dork wastes valuable sex time quoting Henry Miller? Honestly, you'll have to do better than that.

Mmmm, bacon. Canadian bacon...

Momus, I'll need twenty jingles on my desk by tomorrow or else your FIRED!

Momus: Yes boss, right away boss.

(Momus works long into the night)

HOME TRUTH: We are all whores for cash.

You can talk about but we all fuck the big boss man for money. Momus, Suzy, everyone. Only twits and twats think otherwise.

(Momus laying in bed with a shattered Suzy. "He's wrong. I'll come onto this board tomorrow and show him how wrong he is". Suzy: Why of course, everyone is wrong, everyone, HEHhehHEHEHEHEHEH..)

Bye.

Everyday I wake up glad not to be pondered down with the weight of nothing like you folks.

Funny boy.

*drops out again for months to come*

That is so almost an Indigo Girls lyric.

obviously i'm not as smart as the people on this here board but i'm doing as gosh darnit good of a job as i can do.

Eh to move away from the warzone a little.....

plus you can read some stuff that i've got coming out in some magazines and a short film that is being done at the moment with somebody coming out sometime soon.

ha! heh! ha!

going to bed.

i was blocked and came on here for a bit of a relief. i'm busy busy busy.

i'm doing an article for a well known american magazine at the moment commissioned just three days ago ummmm........what else? just little bits and bobs of writing as i am the ghetto balzac.

ps. i didnt steal anyone's dialogue but i think i just came up with the line that i was looking for bespoketh by me! hooray!

"Momus - Do You Like Hitler?" would win the booker prize, going by the title alone.

No, you're not alone -- it's thanks to the Peel Sessions discs and comps, though, that he really became known at all in the States, and then to a large degree among college DJs like myself who envied his ability to control an entire nation's airwaves rather than a campus that wasn't tuning in much anyway.

Here's an Ivor Cutler website with sound samples of his Glaswegian-Beckettian (not to mention Oblomovidian) art: www.ivorcutler.org.

So that's why he sings the way he does.

poor ethan really nailed this one with the first answer though. yet here we are 180-odd later...

I'll have to try harder next time.

That said, I went through and read the whole thread so I could get a better sense of what exactly was going on.

I think it needs to be said first and foremost that I came from a perfect example of a stereotypical family dominant-American style as such. Dad = breadwinner; Mom = college-educated teacher who became full-time housewife; two kids, me the older and my sister the younger; Caucasian, Protestant (if only just, thanks to Anglicanism), partially Anglo-Saxon, lived in suburbs or 'small towns,' family dog (several in a row).

The Momus vision of things is that I should thank my parents for the upbringing and then go out and find ways in the big wide world all my very own. Terribly seductive. But not in and of itself an automatic answer. I live in the suburbs now and aside from a stint at UCLA have done so since leaving home. I ended up at UCI here in Orange County by the luck of the grad application and am still here even with school long behind me. I have ye olde stable job thanks to the college library, with those all-important Good Benefits (at least in America). Every workday I get up at 6:30 am, arguing with myself the entire time about maybe calling in sick until I hit the shower, leave the house by 7:00 am and take an hour to get to work via three buses (in itself an anomaly in such a car-centered country, state, and county -- public transport being supposedly there for the 'hired help,' to use the ridiculously euphemistic term for the many Mexican American and Central American riders going to their own jobs). At work I follow certain set patterns throughout the day, including firing up both boards and obsessively reading and posting on them -- not what I am paid for, but which I am fortunate enough to do given my work and its lack of micromanaging. I have my lunch, whatever it is, work through the afternoon, including my regular stint at the library front desk, then make my way home. If I'm not going out -- and I usually don't -- I fire up the computer here, then maybe listen to music, read a book, watch a movie, whatever. I eventually go to sleep and the pattern continues.

From the sound of it, I'm little more than a timekilling automaton. Even more so, I have consciously excluded myself from an employment arena revolving around profit and therefore may well have sentenced myself (for the time being if not eternally) to less pay than I deserve, as Suzy mentioned elsewhere. I have an attachment to a slew of materials -- books, CDs, DVDs, other videos and more -- that would make them a burden to carry around if I moved often. I value a good night's rest, a comfortable bed, a roof over my head -- and I'm well aware that compared to a huge swathe of the world's population that I'm astoundingly well off in comparison to them, as it seems to me even a brief visit through, say, India might well demonstrate. I envy someone like Nicole her boyfriend-now-fiancee-soon-to-be-husband, not so much for some sort of conservative vision of 'the right way of things' but because she found someone and someone found her -- because I believe in such a thing as romantic love that stands the test of time, regardless of ceremony given over it. I have only to look at my parents to see that and know that while it's not *always* the case for everyone, it still exists, in many different forms.

Now, that said -- I don't watch TV these days outside of snippets and haven't for some years. I search out non-mainstream news perspectives. I am fascinated by artists few know about, whether in word or paint or on-line or whatever. I read and try to learn more about this world, in large part because I feel that when I die I die and that's that, and therefore I will use this one chance as I can, even if at my own pace. I have a sometimes flamboyant public/on-line persona I try and consciously pump up from time to time. And when I can, I create, in my own way, sometimes surprising even myself, possibly impressing or entertaining others.

So am I fish or fowl? Am I entrapped among the 'normals' of the world and therefore compromised? Am I freeing my personality to fulfill itself by making sure the bills are paid? Am I the social tourist getting off on things heard about second-hand and pretending to be above it all while cocooned away in 'safe' areas? Am I destined to 'repeat the cycle' with another generation?

I don't know. I don't think I will ever know. But it seems the answers depend on who asks the questions. Do I read weird cult novels or obvious constructions of a dominant artistic stamp? Is that obscure music I'm hearing or patently obvious drivel? Do I not do what 'everyone else' does or am I just a 9 to 5er in the end? Do I fulminate on the left with my thoughts and convictions or do I merely exhibit a hidebound smug conservatism without even trying? And so forth.

I don't use this to claim any sort of new, strange or useful identity. If I am coming across as trying to arrogantly claim some sort of middle ground -- if it *is* a middle ground, and maybe it isn't -- and mold it in my name, then no, no and no again. The only point to have is that I am here -- and that if *I* am here, if I can exhibit what appear to be a raft of potential contradictions in approach -- then why can't that be the case for so many, many others?

I don't see the vast sweep of people in early 21st century America as either dead drones or hypercreative avatars. I don't see either side as victorious or right either by sheer force of numbers or sheer amount of examples. I see more infinite worlds shaped by more infinite obsessions, desires, approaches, results, productions than can be imagined. And if I only see this as a reflection of what I see in myself as what *could* happen, then how are any of us any different in the ways we measure the world, when we do so entrapped in the expectations of our own experiences, pasts, bodies, minds?

I do think things are more boring and conformist now, though. I think all the people on this thread who revealed their stock of cultural references to be mapped almost exactly to Reupert Murdoch Fox TV schedules show that, and the fact that only one poster (Howie D) pointed me towards interesting culture stuff I didn't know about.

Ivor Cutler first came to fame as a voice in the Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine' movie. Do you think such a genuinely quirky and interesting figure could emerge from any Oasis project?

Well, without wishing to put you in a box, Ned, I'd say you're becoming -- which is by far the best state.

All very nice, perhaps, but something about the term makes me think I'm pupating.

If your novel flies, you may one day know the artist ghetto I live in. I hope you do, and I hope you don't.

Sorta hope I don't, really. An example that just leapt to mind: Tim Powers lived one city over in Santa Ana for many years and wrote a series of inventive, strange and wonderful novels all while working a city job, if I remember right, along with raising a family at that. Clearly the life of the mind doesn't determine one's living quarters.

I think all the people on this thread who revealed their stock of cultural references to be mapped almost exactly to Reupert Murdoch Fox TV schedules show that

*arched eyebrow* Anthony, to name one example, probably wasn't echoing ol' Laughing Boy Murdoch when he talked of Benton and Pollock, for instance. If the argument is you're looking always for something new, does that mean anything already common currency is automatically invalid?

Do you think such a genuinely quirky and interesting figure could emerge from any Oasis project?

Does it matter? Seems like a battle/comparison not worth drawing out when other possibilities exist.

Isn't there an Elvis COstello song called Home Truth? Finally, why do the most babies come from the dumbest vaginas?

He said, I respect Nick cause he will stick by his opinion no matter what...and kudos, you did that man, thick and thin, you are a man with an opinion, popular or unpopular. And I respect that.

Doomie: thanks. The same could be said about you!

Even though I think you are wrong 'cept for the Ivor Cutler bit. Friends of mine followed him home once and finally asked him for his autograph. He looked scared and replied "I thought you were ghosts"...

He is obviously a genius.

Don't intellectualize my rock'n'roll. Though I have tried to sneak Kenneth Halliwell references in to no effect!

Are you not talking about ego. Who defines who is normal and exceptional. I mean, shit, I'm in England, where the class system defines the arts. Is it class that defines the normal and the exceptional? If that is the case then you are talking out of your ass.

Break that down into English for the eejits in the crowd.

But if Momus is defining this as bettering oneself, I agree absolutely, but you are talking to someone who dropped out of university in the second year to work in a factory. So, maybe I am not the best example.

Do we live in a system of mediocrity? Yes. YES. YES.

Are the normal people (who I count myself as part of) responsible for the mediocrity? No.

It is the artists responsiblity for this, the artists and cultural critics, who, as there job, should be responsible for this.

But then it's a tricky question, is there nothing more subversive than normality, nothing more violent and interesting than the psychosis of the american dream?

if the artist or culturalists places himself in the exceptional rather than normal mind set, which is fine, he will have to expect a cult sized audience of people who, as he does, think that they are successful but that way of thinking is hardly successful with the mainstream. You can still educate to some extent but it has to be subtle....

if he were to write a subversive and educating pizza hut jingle I would honestly think that he was exceptional.

but the thing is that he's stuck in the artist ghetto, by his market audience, the only way he can escape if he has some message of intent before entering the mainstream. If he had a pop hit, he would lose his bread'n'butter (his fanbase....who want him to be exclusive/elusive) but me thinks he wants to have the big pop hit and that is the interest aspect of Momus. One foot in cultdom and the other in mainstream superstardom, back and forth. Until he goes fuck it and goes for it, then he really can't complain. His cultdom has provided him probably the income of a city investment wanker or a member of Westlife, he has a couple of pads and meets interesting people...

It's possible to overrate the importance of how people earn their living: some (many) people lead outwardly 'normal' lives while being gloriously strange.

Similarly, Suzy's 'cannon fodder' statements overrate the importance to having a full / rich / strange life of consuming the stuff she considers good.

Both of you seem to be saying "if you're going to be strange you'd better do it like us".

*Something ineffably male too; the kind of lofty contempt tossed around for 'breeders' and hyperbole re artistic 'difference' neglects that the feminist (if not female) take on Momus' account might bring to light whole sets of social and artistic/cultural relationships, contradictions and possibilities otherwise steamrollered over here. Of course the 'life of the mind' (good god) is possible in conjunction with the domestic and the parenting; a history of women artists have (had to) make this pretty clear in ways that a fleeting reference to Patti Smith's retreat into the suburbs to raise a family doesn't address.

I can't help wondering if what irks you about H Truths (and like other people have intimated, picking on it is a straw man for cheap potshots; the issue w/ Home Truths is style of discourse rather than content) is Peel's occupation of what might conventionally be thought of as a woman's role, picking through the detritus of the ordinary/extraordinary in family life (a version of the lady novelist, perhaps), his move from sibilant seducer of sixteen year olds to domestic partner, rather than what it might have to say about the state of culture more generally.

A couple of years a whole ad campaign for an online knowledge service called Questia was based on my cabaret show 'Electronics in the 18th Century'. But by the time it was stripped down to 30 second clips with the URL and the selling line, it was just some guy in a wig with a silly french accent. It had none of the gestalt shock that I put into my original cabaret, the 'what if' proposition about a parallel world where they had Pong games in the 18th century. Was I surprised to have all the interesting bits smoothed off my original concept? Was I fuck. It's the story of the majority of creative people working in capitalism.

Yeah, but my original point stands, you are still attempting as well as drawing money out, to enter the mainstream through the advertisements. It's clever and it's often done. Stereolab/Spiritualized/Lilys/Clash/New Order/etc. Do it. And do it alot. Just not as blatant as you are.

Prog — which was an anti-canonic cross-class space in the late 60s and early 70s — was aggressively de-working classed by punk, a younger-sibling-rival strand of anti-canonic cross-class bohemianism.

(very early prophet of where peel was always headed = julie burchill) (both now shill for difftly shrill versions of normalcy, of course)

1. I came to Peel in the late 80s when he was already domesticated. His show was the first place where I heard reggae, techno, experimental pop musics and any kind of African musics. Yes admittedly at the time I endured these while waiting for that next Weddoes session track but I'm still grateful. Crucially he also played all this stuff with constant asides about Flossie and William and The Pig. Doing this he was setting out an inspiring having-it-all style model to me - he can have the comforting intimacies of family life and still be collecting thousands of records and reaching across the airwaves to shape the tastes of geeks like me, hooray!

2. I want to have children so I can make up stories for them, red others, embellish still more. A huge huge part of the imaginative and artistic tradition, certainly in the West and no doubt elsewhere, is born out of 'normal life'/'family life'. Next to religion it's the biggest artistic motor going - you told stories to entertain the family; you learnt to play, or compose, music in a family setting. So perhaps Momus misunderstands the problem - not one of elites vs normals but a change in the idea of what 'family life' is, one which downplays the self-created family experience in favour of the shop- bought one.

3. I think people are underestimating the wish for individuality, or at least the wish to define one's own environment - it's a motive force for 'creatives' but also for 'normals', too. What Momus is really talking about isn't elitism so much as cliquism, the desire to find a bunch of mates who share similar interests and disinterests. Momus producing art which gets consumed mostly by other artists or wannabe-artists doesn't seem too dissimilar to Pete or Emma or me or John or Tim or Sarah producing jokes in the pub which get consumed by other jokers.

Urgh! Those lines make me shudder. I hope he didn't mean for them to sound the way they do to me. Apparently, this argument is about John Peel but that just made me imagine a row of pretty but moronic girls, knees spread, crying "Impregnate me because I could never hope to achieve anything else in life!". It seems hateful of the housewife, a male disdain for the drudgery, the "less important" role of raising children. Can mothers and fathers not produce some of the most beautiful pieces of art, even more beautiful because it deals with their children? I am thinking of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Schumann's Scenes from Childhood. Flemish art that depicted domestic life (specifically female roles such as laceworkers and spinners) or Caravaggio's fortune tellers and local peasants were both considered controversial because it deviated from the 'high art' of the typical classical, elevated heroic mode. Jesus, I don't know how old John Peel is but he must be getting up there. He can't be dealing with bouncing girls and perfumed sex gardens forever, can he? That would be incredibly depressing. Everyone else will eventually have to deal with liver spots/sagging breasts/wrinkled penises which will not impress the cute girl/boy out there unless we happen to be fabulously wealthy. By then, will perfumed sex gardens even matter? No, you'll be hoping that you have grandchildren to take care of, tell stories to, admire their potential. Well, that is what I will be hoping anyways. Oh I am letting this thread frustrate me, sorry!

'what things are' is quite open to debate, is not not? what things are depends on what context you are looking from.

'SOMETHING GOOD ON TELLY ALERT' thread: 1 post. Mmm Pies: 76.

Come on, admit it, you love it!

Oh but I think there are several who HAVE heard his music and consider that also.

Ethan, what the fuck.

lol home truths