Home Truths

For God's sake, Momus. You're acting like a 17 year old here. When I was 17, I thought there was an 'us and them'. I dressed differently (same as the rest of 'us' my how unconformist). I got pissed off with someone who went over to 'them'. It was a stupid and juvenile decision.

You're absolutely right, Bill, I am very binary, very us and them. And it's probably because I feel halfway between 'us' and 'them'. I can still listen to Radio 4 and recognise that view of reality, even though the only people in R4's target demographic I have any dealings with are elderly members of my own family. R4 makes sense to me as much as, say, 'Les Onze Mille Verges' by Apollinaire does. But one of them is pulling me towards the ordinary, and the other towards the extraordinary. And they cannot co-exist in my head. One of them has to die, be trashed. It's interesting that when I trash Home Truths, people start trashing my records, like I was Lennon saying The Beatles are bigger than Jesus. I mean, at least both The Beatles and Jesus were radicals; exciting people with a big vision for the world. Whereas I was setting up the dry, twee fantasies of Ivor Cutler ('Life in a Scotch Sitting Room') versus the dry, twee narratives of Mrs Taylor from Aldershot. And still they trash my files! Time to join the Symbionese Liberation Army.

that is fair comment, re you sticking around to discuss: i always assume (trans: struggle hard to remember) that you momus are being deliberately infuriating when you take up one of yr impossible contrarian contradictory positions (and i am not exactly innocent of being infuriating myself) => but if yr opponent stalks out of the room furiously, it means you have won the fight but lost the argument

(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

18 TILL I DIE! (Me and Bryan Adams.)

'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'

But this 'nobody thinks about it anymore' is dangerously close to 'common sense', i.e. whenever somebody raises the hi/lo divide it immediately gets slapped down, "We solved that ages ago". Why the garlic and crosses to ward off elitism all the time?

bah i keep posting simultaneously

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)

close italic, open italic, close italic. Now form a band.

This is very funny.

"garlic and crosses": but the ppl who left the room squawking are not the pro-elitists...

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)

Hail, fellow troll! Here's the secret handshake and the baton Mr Q!

Mark: 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

This is why I bring these things up, because I have a cigar in every ashtray on topics like these. On the one hand, I like to think my work is futuristic. On the other hand, it's retro. On the one hand, I quote Takashi Murakami's Superflat thing and say 'There is no high / low distinction any more', on the other I'm hanging with Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis and advocating scrutiny and discrimination. On the one hand I love people and their capacity for invention, irregardless of what stylists and curators and editors tell them to do. On the other hand I'm siding with the creative professionals against the idiot masses. I'm all over the shop, which is why I want your feedback.

So why are people so terrified of this hi/lo thing? Doesn't it tie into conformity and a hatred of diversity / difference (the radical line)? Or is it that people simply have no respect for their betters any more (the reactionary line)? — 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)

(Whoops, my post ends with the words 'the reactionary line', the rest is spurious paste.)

blimey original pirate material

Betters? Yes, people don't have betters anymore, there are now just people who have more money and more stuff.

Also it just occurred to me: this prog HOME TRUTH is being beamed to Japan because it REPRESENTS AN ESCAPE FROM CONFORMISM AND NORMALITY in Japan -> as Frank Chicken Kazuko Hohki always says, I fled conformist Tokyo for England because I read WIND IN THE WILLOWS and wanted to be where it had come from, and on the first day I was here I met a man who played the piano WITH HIS FEET and knew I was home.

Well, I certainly have betters. For instance, as I've mentioned recently, I'm totally in awe of what Holger Hiller did in the early days of sampling. And his composition talent, which he learned from a pupil of Hindemith. And the fact that, given two sides of a 12", he didn't make a 12" single (as I probably would have done) but a mini- operetta about trousers. Or the fact that he worked video sync into his 80s performances. Or made a wonderful sound portrait of the city of Tokyo. Hiller is my current hero, therefore I acknowledge him as my better. Without betters, how would I improve my own work? Without admiration, there could only be self- admiration, surely? Is it only artists who feel this way about other artists? No, I'm sure sportsmen feel it about other sportsmen, ad men about other ad men, etc. The difference might be that now we don't accept a fixed social order in which people are better by virtue of rank, title, or privilege. We choose our own betters for capricious personal reasons. But we won't hear any potential betters on Home Truths. Unless, perhaps, better mothers, or people with a better sense of humour about their problems. Is that it? Is daily life also a competence, an art, capable of inspiring 'survivors' and 'copers' the same way Holger Hiller inspires fellow samplers?

Caught in the middle here. People internalize stereotypes about themselves, and our assent to them greases the big machine. The steelworkers are a lot more diverse and weirder a bunch than you might think, but there are always the bigshots, the alphas, who try to keep everyone 'authentic' and in line.

We have to be more specific when we use phrases like 'ordinary folks', because those who have a career and those who have a job are not the same. I actually think that there is more hope for those who just have 'a job'. The careerists will be tougher nuts to crack.

Once upon a time, there was a talented, good-looking, charismatic boy who wanted to be an actor. But he did the day job thing while feeding his dream at night. He made a lot of friends this way, he was well- liked and 'well-adjusted'. Then, at 30, he found himself married with a baby to support and he started his own business to keep the whole thing afloat. But something was nagging him - he needed a charge, a sense of risk in his life that was difficult to find in remote suburbia. So he started driving down to the waterfront to do some gambling. And he became an addict and went deeply into debt.

The business required much work and travel, and between that and the gambling, he wasn't seeing his family all that much. So one day, he decided to take the day off to spend with his child. Only, somehow he ended up at the boat again (the boat that never leaves the shore), and he once again lost a whole bunch of money.

The next day, he shot his wife in the face and then shot his baby as she lay in her car seat, ready to go for a ride. Then he got in his car and drove to his parents house and shot them as they were making breakfast and he shot himself.

They are all dead but the family decided to bury them together as whatever this was, it was not about hate.

Betters seemed like such an anachronistic way of putting it, laden with class/caste connotations. That's all. Heroes, maybe that's better.

why are role models called role models? if "better" is as Momus is currently claiming conformistly defined as "more ordinary" then all that will happen is that in the struggle to emerge was the "most ordinary" some very extremely bizarre distortions of "the ordinary" will emerge. Home Truths is not a cultural monolith watched by all, and it's at [ratings] war with dozens of other progs which are proposing other, conflicting versions of the humdrum-as-ideal... the Darwinian um "Role Models" on Temptation Island are not very Peel-oid, that's for sure. I'd say the skills these various programmes call for are quite unusual. Not necessarily in a good way at all. TV as I watch it is an endless series of clips of extreme non-normal incidents: last night THE MOMENT OF IMPACT showed a series of racing cars and motorboats hurtling at high speed into the crowds watching them.

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...

As I read U No's post I was expecting him to say "and I was that boy..." until I got to the part about the murders.

i just remembered that the thread here where i was accused — most upsettingly because i think probably most accurately — of being a fake populist and secret elitist was about (at least for me when contributing) abt Quality of Writing, and who causes bad writing, eg Ronan's on his journalism lecturer. I am very Momus-ish and Hi-Lo in my elitist attitude to writing, probably: though my canons of quality do not I think accord with those of the cultural elites as generally recognised. (eg i think there is far more great writing on ILx — and not by me — than on any magazine currently publishing...)

U No's story is surely the deep dark downside of having heroes OR "betters"/role models: that you come to hate yourself — and despise what you may in fact be very good at — because you are not good at things you revere more. Aspiration turns to horrible imprisonment. At which point, having a sense of humour about yr plight may WELL be the lifesaving skill you most need to cultivate.

Mark: Home Truths is on BBC Radio 4. It's not at all extremist, and not 'competing' with anything other than a string quartet on Radio 3 and some sports news on Radio 5.

Peel, in a webchat on the BBC Home Truths page:

Tricia Twelvetree: Did you ever envisage that Home Truths would touch such a core of UK family life. You broadcast many items to which I think "My God I thought that only happened to me!!

John Peel: That's exactly the feeling I have too, I'm amazed that so many people have had experiences I thought were unique to our family. I just like the fact that almost everybody you speak to, has some feature in their lives that they regard as absolutely normal. Which would have any other person whistling in astonishment.

And here's Ozzy Osbourne on 'The Osbournes', from the CNN website:

Ozzy seems pleased with the attention, even if he doesn't quite understand it.

"I see the show. I don't see anything funny about it. It's just me with my family, at home," he told CNN's Anderson Cooper on "American Morning." "People go, 'Oh, that's so funny, Ozzy, when you run up the stairs' and the dog craps on my carpet, you know. It's normal for me. ... We just went with what is normal."

These are pretty similar. They seem to propose that 'the ordinary is extraordinary'. They basically reverse the media cliche Barry Humphries was parodying with Dame Edna, 'housewife superstar'. Here, Ozzy (and, to some extent, Peel) is 'superstar housewife'. What irks me, though, is that behind the ingenuous tone and the Phil Collins-like 'I'm just an ordinary guy, no jacket required' kind of charisma, there are two wily and experienced media professionals. Peel and Ozzy have both had contact with 'other worlds'. I'd love to know about the creation of 'Paranoid' or what it was like to hang out with Marc Bolan. Instead, I get domestic trivia. And this is, I think, because we live in a world frightened to death of the otherness which inhabited Bolan or 'satanic period' Ozzy, and which rewards and relays only their total domestication.

In fairness, perhaps one's appetite for "other worlds" diminishes as one moves towards old age? Especially with a family to keep you busy? And perhaps a fascination for the (seemingly) banal is only there to offset everything else? Yes, there are those who exclusively consume the banal, but that is their choice. I don't want a steady diet of exotica myself.

Maybe the key word in my above post is "perhaps". I don't know what I really think.

'Then, at 30, he found himself married with a baby to support and he started his own business to keep the whole thing afloat'

Well there's your answer. 'Role models' = 'betters' = people who don't 'let things happen' that fuck up their master plans. 'ccepting the specialness of ordinary people' in practice too often = 'realism' = acceptance of 'outside forces' (as if the decision to have a family, to do ANYTHING, is an irresistable juggernaut force that frustrates well-meaning artistes to fuck their lives up and then blame cruel caprices of fate). Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made and the fact that nobody wants to do that anymore might have something to do with rabid consumption of portrayals of other people's powerlessness and methods of coping with same? It's always been easier to claim all along that one is mute & inglorious rather than offer proof otherwise, now it appears as if the mute ingloriousness is validation in itself.

'Family life. Normal. Normal life. Family.' Am I the only one to think there's something shrill about this? That it's ideology? That it sticks in the craw when you know that the same individuals retailing it were, a couple of decades back, offering the world 'The Perfumed Garden' and 'Paranoid'? Sure, we all glide towards the slippered anodyne as we get older, but *fuck it*, some of you on this thread are young! Why are you justifying this crap?

'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?

When you put it THAT way, of course..........

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.

Maybe "Children of the Grave" EARNED 'the Osbournes' the right to promote their model of reproduction etc? (Like "Ha ha Mom, remember those Sab records of mine you burned because you wanted me to follow the straight family path? Well, the people who MADE those records are now a family role model on TV! Ha ha ha, spend the rest of your days babbling about your lost utopia like Maggie T!") Even if that's the case, I doubt their TV show's influence will cork the Sab genie bottle. (There's no way it could, anyway - one problem I find with Momus' analysis is he conflates family hegemony with consumerism, when consumerism = ageism/destruction of all values that stand in the way of consumption/selling rope to hang oneself with etc. which is what's cool about rampant consumerism IMHO - except that the plebs spend their money on such SHIT! etc., which is the Great Unspoken as to why 'writers' waste so much goddamn time writing, trying to figure out why this is and hopelessly trying to change it, and not admitting to it of course)

hmm, everything is an advertisment - uor cothes, even our posts here are ads for a way of life, an ideology, a sexuality, not necessarily blatant ads, but certainly a recognition, even down to our email addresses...so there's no way out of that system, we are what we advertise, I guess...

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.

can you give an actual reason why your momus-style life is better than a stable middle-class family, considering only the absolute ideals of both? i mean it's such a meaningless cultural stereotype to fight, you're just playing the extreme taste of mountain dew to the boring b&w father knows best family, but even at the basics of that cliche (happy children, loving wife, church on sundays) can you explain why i would rather choose lawsuits for crap novelty songs and syphilis tests instead?

From the Peel webchat again: 'K B: John, do you think Radio 4 listeners have ever been put off by frequent references to your other (fabulous) radio shows?

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.

"When airwaves swing, distant voices sing." Kraftwerk

momus you sound like daria for christ's sake.

No, Ethan, I really can't justify it with ref. to 'absolute principles'. They're my politics and my religion: creativity, art, sex, and experiment. They're what make me feel alive. Ask me again if I ever have kids.

for the sake of humanity i hope you don't!!

People seem to automatically give breeders a free pass, like they're heroic just for doing what insects do without thinking about, when in reality, most breeders, while being nice people and all, simply have no foresight, imagination, or will to resist stuff. That's OK, but when thy start to get militant about it that's when elitism becomes not only defensible but mandatory. They've already earned their place in society (unjustified IMHO), so slap 'em around all you want, without mercy. It won't kill them, just restore a bit of balance?

Momus I hear what you're saying; trust me. But a seven-decade life with one decade of toying with the "extrordinary" and the others filled with tradition and family matters may perhaps in one sense be conservative, but dismal? Surely your sense for the dramtic is overselling the point here. In the most broad terms, such a life could be spectacular and fulfilling. It could also be dismal, but it's what you full your life with that matters, not just the vague outline or arc that you're on. Repitition? Please, human life is full of repetition. Wanting to escape the mundane is understandable. But are you swinging too far in the other direction?

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.

bach had about 10000 children...

No 'breeders' = no 'exceptions, freaks, visionaries, loonies'

But are you swinging too far in the other direction?

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

Momus - have you read "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates?

Momus YOU are the one who is listening to Radio Four = if you seek out middleclass conformism you will find it. Watch TV you ninny = it is mostly all about carcrashes and volcanoes and supermodels and serial murderers and little kittens dying or going into surgery. All families on all UK soaps are a dysfunctional disaster area hurrah.

Even if constant bashing of breeders was cranked up to a hysterical level (which it's NOWHERE NEAR on this board despite what some people appear to think and despite my best efforts), it doesn't change the fact that in mortgaging their ambitions and talents they're avoiding a collective lonely, squalid death as a pathetic 80-year-old faggot living in a public toilet, having had all the 'experiences' the world had to offer and nobody to listen to them recount them. Breeders are protected by their shrewdness/'cowardice', so all the slings and arrows directed at them are deflected by the mortality-reconciling- invisible-force-field.

dave q is getting broody!!

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

Excellent point from Mark S. That British TV is now so thoroughly grotesque, crass, self-referential and completely offensive on every level should be paradise for fringe-art aficionados! JG Ballard's "People complain about sex and violence on TV, there's nowhere near enough to make it worth watching" - that was said in the 70s, and hopefully he's happy now - I sure am!

Oh fuck, a wake-up call? My distaste for using prophylactics must be abolished forthwith. Time to stand in front of the microwave on full power with my bollocks hanging out for an hour?

Being a breeder doesn't necessarily imply mortgaging your ambitions and talents,though, does it? And if the invisible force-field of family allows you to escape a miserable squalid death alone in a toilet etc., well that's pretty good, isn't it?

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.

Wait, did I just pay lip service to the "gay lifestyle" there, albeit in passing? Let me collect my wits.

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

There's NO SUCH THING as normal

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.

Why does the family unit = patriotic duty? Momus sounds like he'd be happier in a Brave New World where the family unit is obsolete, Mother is a dirty world and everyone indulges in elevated promiscuity orgy-porgy and all that. I don't want to hear about Bob's aching back but I don't really care that Bjork living in a tent either. She probably gets a bad back on occassion too. Is anyone going to give a fuck in 50, 100 years? For all the banal, reality-tv people shoved down your throats there is infinitely more crap on celebrities and "exceptionals". The problem is sorting the true exceptionals, a handful at best at any given time, from the hundreds of wannabe exceptionals.

All of this talk about family , where does those who cannot have children, what christ talked about "the eunuchs which have been born thus from [their] mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs of men; and there are eunuchs who have made eunuchs of themselves for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens. He that is able to receive [it], let him receive [it]. Mark 19" So how in your world momus do the eunuchs reject family and mantain he kingdom of the heavens (which i am assuming is crawling with breeders, think in metaphors)

suzy - i do not want to fite w/ you I'm sorry i was not nice to yr friend.

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.