W o r d s

"TODAY WORDS MEAN ANYTHING"

is the same as

"TODAY WORDS DON'T MEAN ANYTHING"

Source 
Ian Lee, Third Word War. Thames and Hudson, 1978. 

 

For Apocalypse, Press 1

Here is an Afrikaans song I wrote, reflecting, I think, a sense of crazy, apocalyptic doom.  When I perform it (hitherto only to myself, for myself and by myself), I enjoy going a little insane at the end, improvising with the syllables.  This lyric is part of my collection of blues lyrics that I've written in Afrikaans.

The content, for those who don't understand Afrikaans, deals with anarchic signs of the apocalypse -  ants falling from the heavens and three-legged dragons puking...  charming stuff, but cathartically liberating.  If one can laugh about it, as I do, it remains in the realm of the Absurd.   The title is a wordplay:  almal  means everybody, but to separate the two syllables  al  mal   means   already mad.
If you're burning with curiosity, let me know - I'll provide a translation. 

ALMAL IS AL MAL

Almal is al mal

Almal is al mal
Die strate skreeu
en daar's vuur en sneeu
en almal is al mal
Die kraak word groter in die dam se wal
Dis mos miere wat uit die lug uit val
En almal is al mal

‘n Ou vrou trek met sakke drek
Gebreklike gekke lag hul vrek
Laagloodwolke kolk waar die kimme strek
‘n Krom ou man slaan sy trom
Reuse rotse brom
Die einde
is seer seker aan die kom

Almal is al mal

Almal is al mal
Driepootdrake braak
in die galdal
Die eerste skote knal
Dié wat nog kan vlug,
die sal
Want almal

is al mal

Almal mal almal mal   ad lib.


(c) Will v.d.Walt

Melancholy and the Absurd

  

Bernard Buffet (1928 - 1999) painted a series of Clowns that bear comparison with Albrecht Durer's Melencolia (1514). 

Durer's 1514 etching is a rich and complex work and there is a fascinating discussion of it in Wikipedia.  It differs from the Clowns done by Buffet precisely because it is so complex, so allegorical.  Buffet's juxtaposition of the funny man with a tear on his cheek, or the creeping melancholy of that thick eyebrow, seems simpler, less allegorical, less cluttered.  Yet what he depicts keeps resonating... 

Sources

Buffet's images not traced

Durer - britishmuseum.org

Historical Moment

Ideologues, I find, are the often makers of the Absurd.  Sometimes we suffer at their hands; sometimes we can smile.

In South Africa, we had from 1948 to the early 1990s, the system of social engineering variously called apartheid, Separate Development, Plural Democracies and so on.  For some it would be a contradition, for some a paradox and for some plain absurdity that our national motto was  UNITY IS STRENGTH .

Absurd Architecture

                         Erwin Wurm -  House Attack (2006)

He is a sculptor known for his humorous approach to formalism and this image has a well-deserved place in the fascinating website   50 of the world's most unusual buildings.  What does an image like this do for us?  Firstly, the earth is the most dependable of entities - until we have a quake.  Buildings themselves are wrought for dependability - here Wurm does the opposite, literally turning our expectations upsidedown!  This was part of an exhibition in 2006, in Vienna, Austria.

Piet Blom - Cubic Houses (1970s)

This Dutch architect wanted to create a sense of the randomness of trees in the design of these houses - a pleasingly bizarre confluence of nature and culture. Strangely there is an element of celebration here, an odd kind of love.  I think I'd find them difficult to live in.

The Ripley's Building (2005)

I haven't been able to trace the architect of this unbelievable (sic) Ripley's Believe it or Not edifice at Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.  Again, it challenges our ingrained sense of dependability when it comes to structures.  This is post-modern architecture at its extreme.  Amazing - it doesn't leave me alone. 

Norman Foster - The Gherkin Building (2004)

Who would have said, ten years ago, that a building like The Gherkin Building would become iconic in the London cityscape?  It is entirely Other!  As with the Eiffel Tower, there was probably some opposition - because the Absurd is challenging.  But slowly people come to love it and accept the challenge it offers us. 

The Broken Temple along Durbanville Road in upper Bellville, Cape Town, must one of the most adventurous architectural statements in South Africa.  It flies in the face of the lack of imagination that characterizes so much of what we build.  It is a profound philosophical moment in our architecture.  It is magnificently crazy!  

Sources

Images from fiftyunusualbuildings.com

Broken Temple - photo by will 

Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg (1914 - 1999) was a Rumanian artist who settled in America and often illustrated for The New Yorker.  He became a much-loved commentator on society, his social criticism,often strange can be acidic. Some considered him a surrealist.  The ones I like especially are those that deal with human kind contemplating question-marks.  His inventive vision was ever intriguing.  Absurdity lurks in much of what he does.

                                                          A landscape of Question-marks

                                                                            R o o m

Source
Saul Steinberg, The L:abyrinth, Harper and Bros. New York, 1960. 

Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake did this illustration for the collection of nonsense verse called Rhymes without Reason which he published in 1944.  He worked for many years on The Gormenghast Trilogy which, in my limited experience, is the richest prose I've read.  He offsets his melancholy with the grotesque and flights of fantasy that reform your imagination.  The poem to follow offers a sample.    



Source

thedabbler.co.uk 

Mervyn Peake (1911 - 1968)

Sensitive, Seldom and Sad

Sensitive, Seldom and Sad are we,
As we wend our way to the sneezing sea,
With our hampers full of thistles and fronds
To plant round the edge of the dab-fish ponds;
Oh, so Sensitive, Seldom and Sad
Oh, so Seldom and Sad.

In the shambling shades of the shelving shore,
We will sing us a song of the Long Before,
And light a red fire and warm our paws
For it’s chilly, it is, on the Desolate shores,
For those who are Sensitive, Seldom and Sad,
For those who are Seldom and Sad.

Sensitive, Seldom and Sad we are,
As we wander along through Lands Afar,
To the sneezing sea, where the sea-weeds be,
And the dab-fish ponds that are waiting for we
Who are, Oh, so Sensitive, Seldom and Sad,
Oh, so Seldom and Sad.


Source
thedabbler.co.uk 

Sisyphus Video

www.dailymotion.com/video/x17xcx_marcell-jankovics-sisyphus

Jancoviks' brilliant animation is in the tradition of Eastern European animation from the 1950s onwards.  These artists were working under oppressive regimes and created animations that, in my opinion, are unsurpassed in the history of animation.   

Camus and Sisyphus

                                                                 SISYPHUS by Titian

"The struggle itself... is enough to fill a man's heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

                                                            Albert Camus  (1913 - 1960)

Sources

Titian - museumsyndicate.com
Camus - notesonquotes.wordpress.com

The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus outlines the legend of Sisyphus who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the underworld. Finally captured, the gods decided on his punishment: for all eternity, he would have to push a rock up a mountain; on the top, the rock rolls down again and Sisyphus has to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death and is condemned to a meaningless task.

Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious."

Camus is interested in Sisyphus' thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew. This is the truly tragic moment, when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition. He does not have hope, but "[t]here is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." Acknowledging the truth will conquer it; Sisyphus, just like the absurd man, keeps pushing. Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance.

Source
Wikipedia 

Paperback Writer : comment

Somehow there seems to be more of Lennon than of McCartney in the lyric Paperback Writer.  The tragi-comedy that we recognise, the sad absurdity, is distinctively his.  I may be wrong, of course;  it was their combination most often that did it.  But here he is, the character of the song, the quietly desperate writer, whose effort is doomed from the start, like Sisyphus.  He has no concept that style has nothing to do with length;  he has plagiarised the story-line, not even knowing that (Edward) Lear didn't write novels.  The very character he writes of bears his own ambition to be a writer.  Desperately, he resorts to porn ("dirty story of a dirty man") to get into print.  He begs the publisher.   And we smile thinly, we who have been there, done that.  We who have ached for recognition.  We who have pushed that rock.

Paperback writer

                                       

                                 

Paper back writer (paperback writer)
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

It's a dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand.
Their son is working for the Daily Mail,
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

It's a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Sources
Image - telegraph.co.uk
Lyric -  sing365.com 

T i n s

Much ink has been spilt about Andy Warhol’s paintings of Campbell’s soup tins and Wikipedia has a summary.  Received with confusion at first, the juncture is now considered as an important contribution to art and to pop art, in particular.

My take is that Warhol and other pop artists were consciously or  unconsciously leaning into the realm of the Absurd.  If one has journeyed through the history of art from the Altamira cave paintings (estimated at 20,000 years, at least) to the Sistene Chapel, to Rembrandt, to Ingres, the 1962 Campbell’s Soup Cans seem like a joke and, perhaps, at some level, they were intended to be jokes.  A desolate kind of humour:  after all the wealth that we have inherited in terms of art, we arrive at a tin of soup!  It is the nadir of inspiration.  There is a horror about it – in primary colours.  Is that Soup Tin a statement or a question, or both?  Is it the death of all dreams and longing, of resonance, of spirituality? 

Ionesco said that our art is the storehouse of our despair.  It seems true for The Tin.  But I, for one, can’t help smiling about it.  It’s crazy and - dare I say it? – funny.  And Warhol is, of course, continuing what was started by some Modernists, the Dadaists, in particular.  Witness putting a moustache on a poster of Mona Lisa.  That’s absurd.

Source
Image - Wikipedia. 

Paradox Box

THE ABSURD    -    the fugitive healer

Shall we laugh or shall we cry when we view the complexity, the paradox, the mystery of this little portion of the universe that we are given called life?

What is it that we recognise in Bernard Buffet's painting "The Clown" which shows, in the geometry of his style, an angular tear on an angular cheek?

In Afrikaans, the Dutch-derived language of southern Africa, we have a saying "Ja-nee" inadequately translated as Yes-No.  Usually the speaker says it with irony, taking a step back from the blind simplification of life.  It's a kind of shrug.  It says, What can we do in the face of this fundamental duality of things?

I've asked myself, Why is it that in the best humour, the best comedy, there is often a touch of sadness?  I remember the movie "Mrs Doubtfire" with Robin Williams, one of the funniest films to come from the US and yet having an underlying heartbreak in it.  In a scene from Ionesco's "The Bald Prima Donna", a man probes a woman extensively on where he has seen her before, only to discover that she is his wife.  And Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" is subtitled a tragi-comedy.

Is it that this duality gives onto hope?  A wise hope that has no illusions.  This would be absurdity at its most positive, with an ironical wink.  And at its darkest... well, a pure darkness does not exist with the Absurd, I think.  There is always something odd, crazily disjointed about it, which keeps one from disappearing below the slag line of final despair.

The Absurd is not a good bedfellow with religion, at least, of the fundamentalist strains.  It is often experienced in a momentary way and can't be straited in the confines of theory.  If we contemplate Camus' Sisyphus, we have to admit that the image is not entirely devoid of a smile... We could even see the man rolling the rock as funny.

Empty yourself of hope, and live, Camus says.  To my way of thinking and feeling, this is the entry to despair, a humourless state.  The Absurd - and he's the high priest of it - has gone.

The Absurd is a subversive vision of the world.  It undermines the solemn complacency of much religion; it undermines the fixed eyed gloating of the nihilist.

The Polish play "Police" portrays the socialist state in which crime has been totally eradicated.  In this perfection there is the danger that the police, the cornerstone of the state's authority, will lose their function and so, to prove his fidelity to the system, an individual becomes a rebel - to reinforce the need for police.

It is the quality of inflexibility to which the Absurd is inimical.  The absurdities of ideologues and politicians are the bread-and-butter of satirical cartoonists.

The proponents of apartheid in South Africa (1948-1993) saw nothing strange in the following scenario:  coloured usherettes in a cinema may show the white patrons to their seats, but may not watch the film.  Recognising the absurdity of this privately might have sugared the ideological pill for them.

The quality of offsetting "the horror, the horror" is healing, but it remains at the edge of discomfort.  The Absurd is paradox;  it is chiarascuro.  It is impure of essence;  it punctures perfection.  It gives God a sense of irony.

The Absurd varies.  It can be gently humorous or aridly desolate.  The latter veers to solemnity and away from the eye's glint.  It keeps its heart opalescent;  it shies clear of definition.  

Source
my soul  

What is it about?

Sources
Drawing: Handelsman cartoon from The New Yorker
Sign:  concept from Ian Lee {Third Word War} .