Pranks, Punk and Industrial Culture from V. Vale

“Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.”

QUOTED FROM OUR MODERN PRIMITIVES book (20th Anniversary soon):

() “We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.” – William S. Burroughs

() “We have the right to do what we want with our lives.” – “Things To Come”

() “The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time … and you can’t see it if you refuse to face the possibility.” – William S. Burroughs

() “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” – Flaubert

FROM J.G. BALLARD (his Birthday coming up: November 15, celebrated with a private memorial service at the Tate Modern, London, U.K.):

From J.G. Ballard QUOTES (published by RE/Search):

() “The Arab world, the Moslem world, may well take the place of the Communist world as the great bogeyman of the future.” [spoken in 1993!, p. 9]

() “There is a deep melancholy about fields full of old machinery or wrecked cars because they seem to challenge the assumptions of a civilization based on an all-potent technology. These machine graveyards warn us that nothing endures.” [p.178]

Quite awhile ago J.G. Ballard said something to the effect of “Ours may be the last age of (book-reading) literacy.” That is, a large populace regularly going to bookstores, browsing through dozens of books, and actually buying one, bringing it home and reading it. This may be the last age of the Used Bookstore as well. Another bookstore on Valencia near 16th St in San Francisco, Abandoned Planet, is abandoning its neighborhood. This homey-looking, idiosyncratic refuge, with plants and comfy chairs everywhere, which featured an out-of-tune piano (I tried to play it once) and at least one big cat sleeping in a corner, three years ago provided me with a rare old J.G. Ballard paperback for a very low price. I speculate that in ten years the number of used bookstores on Planet Earth can probably be counted on the fingers of ten humans’ fingers.

Yet it was in a used bookstore (now gone) on Clement Street across from Green Apple Books, where I met the so-called “satanist” Anton LaVey and his young blonde consort Blanche Barton, who moved up from San Diego to become his “assistant.” Our PRANKS classic had just come out, and LaVey agreed that “Pranks were Satanic” — whatever that meant (I guess it meant they had “his” seal of approval). For some reason LaVey didn’t seem to “get” J.G. Ballard — his psychology and methodology apparently revolved more around psychological and behavioral control issues rather than visionary/poetic/futuristic speculative fiction-writing concerns of Ballard. LaVey was very down-to-earth, practical, and somewhat obscurantist as to his literary influences — Ben Hecht was a favorite, but WHICH BOOK?! Not sure that Ben Hecht has stood the test of time…

Burroughs, on the other hand, will be influencing intelligent rebellious folks for generations. (more…)

() “I believe in the non-existence of the past, in the death of the future, and the infinite possibilities of the present.” — J.G. Ballard, “What I Believe”

() “I believe in the impossibility of existence, in the humor of mountains, in the absurdity of electromagnetism, in the farce of geometry, in the cruelty of arithmetic, in the murderous intent of logic.” — J.G. Ballard , ibid

() “I believe in anxiety, psychosis and despair.” — J.G. Ballard, ibid

() “A pointless death makes the rest of life seem a complete mystery.” — paraphrase of J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes

() “I try to write about 1,000 words a day in longhand and then edit it very carefully later before I type it out. I have been known to stop in the middle of a sentence sometimes when I’ve reached my limit. But self-discipline is enormously important — you can’t rely on inspiration or a novel would take ten years!” — J.G. Ballard, “How I Write”

() “I tend to write about one novel every three years. When I finish one I have a fallow period where I just jot down ideas, write short stories, and think — that could take a year.” — J.G. Ballard, ibid

() “The past is just one huge illusion.” — V. Vale paraphrasing J.G. Ballard, ibid

() “WE ARE ALL A WORK IN PROGRESS. We’re verbs, not nouns. We are not “is.” We “make” music, we are not “musicians.” — V. Vale
() “A high intelligence has a larger span or field; it knows more about the past and looks further into the future.” — Korzybski, Science and Sanity
() “All history shows…that the majority appears ‘always wrong,’ and that all that we call ‘progress,’ ‘civilization,’ ‘science,’ has been achieved by a very small minority. Such an understanding should guide our future conduct if we desire better results than we have at present.” — Korzybski, ibid
() As our lives are lived entirely on the unspeakable level… actions, functions, processes, performances, feelings, emotions — this level is obviously first in importance, and the VERBAL LEVEL, which is only AUXILIARY, comes next in importance.” — ibid
() Description comes first, inferences next. — Korzybski, Science and Sanity
() Suppressing or repressing our feelings is dangerous, and should be avoided. — Korzybski, ibid

() http://www.researchpubs.com has a special: All **four** of our J.G. Ballard books just $60!

“Every day, in every day, I am getting better and better.” Decades ago, I was taught to repeat this statement daily, apparently written by Emile Coue, the founder of Coueism. Was this positive reinforcement, self-help, neurolinguistic programming, do-it-yourself psychoanalysis?

A common human problem has a commonly-known label: “writer’s block.” So I propose repeating this statement daily as a kind of “cure”:

“I LIKE TO WRITE.”

Repeat it over and over. After a few weeks, you may actually find you really DO like to write, and you may find yourself actually writing MORE. Very strange. Try it? But let me know if it “works for you…”

Of course, you can substitute any number of other words after the phrase “I LIKE TO…”

Life itself can generate so many thoughts and quotations, like: The imagination knows no limits… The goal is always to be creating the kind of world you’d like to live in, every day… Live personal, think universal… Know what you like, surround yourself by it, and exclude all the rest…

“Culture is something that advances. I’m not interested in popular culture—if it’s popular, it’s not culture!”—Vivienne Westwood

“Punk took S&M and sex and put it on the street.”—ibid

“Coco Chanel was the first street fashion designer.”—op. cit.

“A good assistant is gold—more valuable than a brain surgeon!”—op. cit.

“I think having a cat around helps you remember that being human isn’t everything.” – V. Vale

“Always be sure to interview someone immediately, before they go and die.” – V. Vale

“Everything can be fixed. Except death.” – V. Vale

“I need to have my chocolate chip cookie now. I could die in the next fifteen minutes, I’m not going to wait.” – V.Vale