The Mad Straight Road

Coming to a corner, a path diverges, one, well worn, strewn with a lifetimes garbage, leads toward the cities. The other, clean, with warm mossy earth underfoot leads into a cloistered wood, dark and unfamiliar. Along this latter avenue I find myself inexplicably drawn, the smell of sleeping ferns and nightflowers growing on my senses. From here the tangled trees seem almost blue against the moon, complex and mercurial, and the moist wind seems heavy with their somber song.
There is no guidepost, no chart nor measurement, by which to wander, merely an intangible summons amongst the ancients to follow.
I am a somnambulist, and there lies my sleep.

I plunge into lapis woods, and the boughs of trees are the blue mirror of my anxious blood.

From some distance a vague light shifts and dances amongst the black, opal votives in the dark.

The sound of running water floods my hearing.

Ahead a ruddy glow reveals a small clearing, and suddenly, voices.

As quietly as possible I move onward, my hand coming to rest against the cool flesh of a fir.

Before me, and before a blazing fire in its center, a man, sits singing, his voice heavy, deep with some vast experience.
In the wavering light, other beings are revealed, musicians from some forgotten age, marking time and sending up a strange chorus.
On the periphery of the clearing the dancing lights I had seen earlier have gathered and are still, ringed round by diaphanous forms undulating in the thick mixed air.

The man, to whom all harmonies are obliged, is thin, almost sculptural, a bittersweet smile always playing about his mouth. He sings of friends, of lovers passed beyond reach, of other places, times from which he has long been removed. He sings of birthdays and the end of all things, his voice sometimes soaring, sometimes falling below familiar hearing.

Above, the moon has risen to its fullest, and swathes the clearing in a cool opalescence, betraying my presence.
The man simply smiles and beckons me.

And soon, I too am singing.

"Dont' make me say it out loud, when I can't even write it down" - A Conversation With Anthony Reynolds

First a little detail:
Anthony Reynolds was born in Cardiff, Wales in the early seventies.

In 1993 he moved to London where as part of the Pop group ‘Jack’ he signed a record and music publishing deal.

He has worked as a professional singer/songwriter/performer since, using various names and releasing eight critically acclaimed albums and various singles and EPs to date.
He has lived in London, Paris, Shropshire and Cardiff and has also toured and traveled widely playing most of the major music venues in Europe and the UK, including Paris’ L’Olympia and the Royal festival Hall.

He has collaborated with many European musicians, both as a co-composer and producer and in 2000 sang with the Moscow Philharmonic.

Since 1992, he has also worked as a journalist writing essays and critiques for various magazines in the UK and the U.S. since 1992.

Anthony has also written two full length biographies.

The first, on The 60’s group ‘The Walker brothers’ (to be released on Helter Skelter publishing) and the second on the singer/Songwriter Jeff Buckley (Plexus publishing).

His latest collection of poems, Calling All Demons, penned both in Spanish and English, is available for order here: http://www.anthonyreynolds.net/pages/ii_news.htm
In addition, his new EP, "Blues For Bobby Solo" will be available on the 29th of March here: http://www.chaffinchrecords.com/2010/02/anthony-reynolds-la-muneca-de-sal/




David Laurent-Pion: What was your earliest experience with the written word, and do you recall a time when something you read moved beyond mere letters and syllables and became potent?

Anthony Reynolds: 126 railway Street, Cardiff. I moved from there when I was almost four. So I would have been between 2 and 4 when I found a Porno magazine in the middle room. The middle room also had a real fire in it. I don't remember much of the graphic content of the mag but I can still see the shape of the words. They were written within a kind of 'cut out silhouette' shape of a naked woman. I remember, clearly, looking at these words and thinking. 'I do not know how to read. But I will soon'.
First stuff I read was comics. Marvel. Silver surfer, Human flame. In direct contrast to the porno, the images were everything for me in these. Words hardly mattered.
I read from as soon as I could but it was science fiction and children's books as such.
Comics were a huge thing for me. I remember reading BATTLE ACTION. In one frame a German WWII pilot had been hit and was plummeting into a forest. (I think the strip was 'Johnny Red'). I remember vividly the jolt I got from the speech bubble coming from this doomed Pilot : 'I am seconds from the next world'.
Kinda makes me laugh now but at the time that little sentence was very powerful.

D.L-P: Leonard Cohen has said that poetry is not an occupation, but a verdict. If we take this literally, it implies a kind of inescapable permanence. I'm wondering if you feel this in terms of your own work. Was there a specific incident, or inspiration when you felt marked by this sentence? What transformed you from reader to writer, and when did you recognize it as something essential to your being? Why?

A.R.: I take what Lenny is saying as this - that one doesn't decide to 'Be a poet'!! but rather the proof of whether one is or not is measured by the work produced and how its received. I don't think many people can be trusted to call themselves by such names..you know..'I am an artist'..'I am Genius'...Dali said both on many occasions and maybe he was. Can't recall Picasso saying either - probably because he was so engaged in being both that he hadn't time for such reflection or pronouncements....
As for me, I don't consider my self a poet. I think I've written some stuff that stands as poetry but mostly its either lyrics or when without music, just words. I consider myself more of a photographer than a Poet. Then again I don't consider myself a musician either and until I did those Syd Barrett shows, did not consider myself a singer.
But what/who decides what is poetry? Last night I read Philip Larkin, Raymond Carver, and Charles Bukowski...the gap between Larkin and Bukowski is wide, less so between both and Carver...
Burroughs said that the test of a writer was that if you were shipwrecked with absolutely no hope of being rescued or anyone ever discovering your work, would you still write? if the answer is 'yes' then you're a writer.
I think the act of writing is very physical. Ive noticed that I enjoy the actual process of reading. I get pleasure from looking at and processing words....so I think there's more to writing, and expression of etc than just a cerebral manifest...
I always wrote stories as a kid , for schoolwork and did comic strips for myself...then lyrics for music when I was 13 on...poetry from a bit later.
I don't question why I need to write. Its not prohibited where I live! But its like letting something run through you, like having water fall out of you, connecting you, linking to there then, here....

D.L-P: Through your years with Jack, from recommending the poems of Rupert Brooke in the liner notes of Pioneer Soundtracks, to the assorted evidence of still later periods, grainy footage of a bookshelf: Cocteau, Bukowski et al there has always been a literary quality to both your own work, and those whose influence, indirect or otherwise, has marked you. Can you tell me about the attraction to these individuals, and are there others whose work has affected you strongly? And can you define what is their appeal for you?

A.R.: I liked Both Cocteau and Bukowski because in some ways they were poles apart. I like it when you love the work of artists who are so consummate unto themselves that its hard to imagine them sharing the world. Sylvian in a room with Elvis Presley, for instance.
I loved the fact that Cocteau did so many different things and his lack of apology for it. His insightfulness and his playfulness. I loved the way he looked too. A picture of Cocteau will reboot me, charge me up, reminds me how big the world is.
...Bukowski - I am and was attracted to his sensitivity and his macho response to that, within a world that tried to trap and exploit him. he was a tender man in cruel circumstances and despite everything he gave into his tenderness and beauty. Many don't, most fail and are crushed.
Im touched by the work of many, too many to go into here. I guess I love the idea that despite appearances, Morrissey, Marvin Gaye and Miles Davis are all coming from the same place. That thrills me. I also feel these people to be my companions. They are so evident- their style- in their work that you can feel their presence in it. And their style is so developed it becomes an art in itself I think. Style and art. What more do we need? Its a start, certainly.

D.L-P: Many artists are figureheads of extremity to the outside world, but it's not often discussed from the creators perspective. We know that Joyce burned his Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man over some nebulous dissatisfaction, that Rimbaud wrote ferociously for a few years and then abandoned writing entirely, that Huysmans actually claims to have been visited by the Devil while writing La Bas, and immediately turned his back on "dark things" to pen the lives of obscure Saints.
Was there ever a time when you felt a repulsion, a sense of hopelessness toward your own work, and how did you find means to continue?

A.R.: Oh yeah...Self disgust can be an important part of growing up, I think...noone, well hardly anyone likes to listen to their own voice in any context...I remember I hated my singing voice around the time of the 3rd album ...but...that can help- it made me think of ways of getting over that and so I brought Dan Fante and other voices in on some of the tracks. I always got a perverse thrill from not singing on my own records actually...
But then , part of real singing involves not making any noise at all. When I saw Nina Simone live, she was singing even when she wasn't. She inhabited the song throughout, the whole concert in fact. That's incredibly hard to achieve...

D.L-P: The few extracts from your next collection 'A call to all demons' which I have seen, seem to possess a certain continental character, a kind of Nerdua-like spirit, simultaneously sad and playful. What informed this collection, emotionally, aesthetically, physically?

A.R.: I'd never make any claim to being a poet. I love poetry, I have friends who are poets and I recognize poetry. but I ain't one. A few months ago I got fucked up with a friend, Christopher Brooke. ..he had a collection of poems out...a book I really love...'and the concept of zero'. It was about places I know intimately and some people too..but also worked on a more formal level, I mean...it was properly constructed stuff...well put together around an emotional boiler room...anyway....we were getting fucked up in this little office he has and reading each other our poems...in the telling haze of intoxication his ran true. Mine sounded like figments, fragments...trailing off...they weren't poems...so..although I don't have any aspiration to 'being a poet' I love using words, I like the musicality of writing...and I was disappointed with what I heard in that room..so i did make more of an effort with this book..tightened stuff up..made...tried to make them stand alone as words...works in themselves...not just as lyrics...and yes, I did discover Neruda during the writing of the earlier ones..and the Italian poet, Montale too..they blew me away and were perhaps an influence...the unabashed romanticism of the former, in particular...The book covers a rich, painful period of being alive...the end of a long relationship through to being a 'Bachelor' again for the first time in a decade and finding myself a fat drink sodden, coke snorting brute...through some potent encounters up into a realer relationship..albeit brief...it does of course, end a while ago..Im into a new phase now, writing poems that i think are the best Ive done...they'll be in the next book..whenever that is...


Anthony Reynolds: http://www.anthonyreynolds.net/index.htm
http://www.myspace.com/anthonyjreynolds

David Laurent-Pion: http://www.myspace.com/durtal

Notes On Nietzsche

The great misapprehension of Nietzsche. Not the monster, the malefactor of annihilation. Not the appropriated Nazi sympathizer. Not the misogynist leveling the whip. Madman perhaps, in later days when spirochete ate away at his cerebral cortex. Instead shy man, devoted friend, child. It has been said (was it Sartre?) that the greater the intellect the greater the need for play.
Nietzsche was a great player. He navigated words the way a ships captain might navigate ice floes, dallied with appearances the way a quiet man becomes an exhibitionist before an audience. His was the great playground of language. Yet associations darken his most elegiac work. For many all they know is at best the work, at worst the accusations. But here was a profoundly gentle man, a deeply spiritual man, carried along the cause of his thought, confused by conventional feelings, yet needing to live amongst ordinary people. Here was a man who seemed vastly ahead of his time, an astonishing intellect, who faced fleeting disappointments with the rancor of a child. In short, here is a man of contradiction.

From the devoted study of the priesthood, to the author of the Antichristian, Nietzsche came to seek absolution not in the body of the church but in the overcoming of his own nature, in the rapture not of the saints, but in that of the evolving self. He often expressed the feeling that the ones who might understand him had yet to be born, that some future being(s) might contain the seedling of his prophecy. True, few contemporaries ever understood him. Most in fact ignored him. It is a great tragedy that what truly introduced him to the general public was the Third Reich, for in his day, Nietzsche deplored nationalism, racism, he despised the notion of Empire, and yet, after his fall, his sister Elisabeth was able to manipulate and obfuscate these references and pervert his work to suit the needs of propaganda.

But Nietzsche never held to any category, never sought type. His vision was not elitist, instead it encompassed everyone. He believed that humanity was capable of greater things, of healthier things, of going beyond its own self imposed limitations. If anything his was a truly Utopian message. The presumed malice in his work stems, less from actual venom and more from exasperation. He sensed that the evolution of humankind was not something involuntary, but rather something which required action, commitment, questions, an effort and desire to transform. His frustration was a question of idle faith. He believed humanity capable of astonishing things, and yet what he witnessed was complacency, laziness, religion. Nietzsche believed in us, but he was unflinching in chastising our procrastination.

He never worried after his reputation, never sought the auspices of leader. He himself knew his own failings and never for a second believed himself to be the first in his evolutionary concept. In this sense he was less arrogant than self sacrificing, and he sometimes spoke about being happy at the notion that another, more prepared for the journey might utilize him as a stepping stone.

His own variegated illnesses seldom found their way into his work, for good reason. He didn't want to become the expression of his sickness, instead he sought to use its effects as fuel to exemplify the need for overcoming, for enduring, for celebrating what could stem from the refusal to succumb. He was not used by his weaknesses, he used them.

And as much metaphor is intrinsic to his work, as much bombast, there is a wonderful simplicity to it all. This too is something of an apparent paradox in Nietzsche, yet it has more to do with the urgent need he had to express, to dance, to poeticize, than to obscure. He wanted to be understood, yet he was unwilling to trivialize his ideas, and besides, he wanted to play.

For as much as he was a philosopher, as much as he was a philologist, he was at all times a musician, a composer and conductor of words. In short he was a lyric poet. His love of the pre-Socratic informed much of his style and filled it with both grace and violence. To an extent, to truly embrace him, one must have song in ones blood. One must recognize the cues and notes inherent in every line, the rhythm of every passage, the poetry of now subterranean, now mountain air.

In a sense reading him requires both stringent focus and pure abandon. Things reverberate in Nietzsche, and they linger long after having read him.

In the end though, it is to be hoped that he might one day be understood in terms both public and private, for it is only then that he becomes less the man of Freidrich's lonley mountain, than the man who, despite himself, becomes beautifully, human, all too human.

Elizabeth Thomas: Author, Scientist, Sadist.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas is a loathsome individual. Her book, Tribe Of The Tiger, which purports to examine the interconnectedness of domestic cats to the large predatory cats found in nature, begins pleasantly enough, relating a fairly common story concerning her and her husband watching the flight of several deer, who it is revealed were being pursued by their cat.
All well, and good. Prosaic, episodic, personal in that palliative way of certain cat fanciers.

The problem arises later, in chapters reserved for the Circus and Zoo trade. Thomas proceeds to expound on the virtues and benefits afforded large cats kept in this way, rigorously (often ruthlessly) trained, confined to infinitesimally small cages, forced into theatre. She feels that this is just, and apt, and perfectly acceptable, and goes yet further relating that, in essence, these creatures are of so little quality as individuals that their confinement and coercion is of no moral question.
This is untenable, and entirely without sense, to say little of what we know of the vastly complex nature of these beings. Worse, it is dangerously misleading, for, though anyone of any moral awareness should know better, there will inevitably be a few whose perceptions, whose guilty consciences will be absolved by such statements, coming as they do from an (unbelievably) established authority.

It speaks to the overweening ignorance that persists in certain quarters of society, crucially, to the self imposed ignorance of these people. The least among us can see that a being whose very sense of self requires vastness, freedom, and a responsibility to it's own drives, should never be imprisoned for our sadistic amusement, and yet every year, hordes of beings gather to watch. Worse is that people bring children to these diabolical exhibitions, whose perceptions will be perverted and become muddy. People do not go to these places because they despise the animals in question, they do not attend in hopes of seeing a majestic creature suffer, often it is their great admiration that draws their attention. But it is a kind of deeply held self deception that allows such hypocrisy. It is little different than individuals who claim enormous affection for deer or bear, or sailfish who proceed to murder them and mount their dessicated bodies on their walls. There is little difference, but at least the hunted have the benfit of death, to end their torments. Exhibition animals do not have this luxury, and if we recognize that death would be better than the life they endure, certainly this should speak to its awfulness.
We live in a world rife with moral compromise. It is undeniably true that few of us have not run counter to our own supposedly intractable beliefs at one time or another. We are all guilty of something, and yet we persist, we endure, we carry on and make efforts to amend our occasional failings. But it needs noting, that these events arise by our own choices, our own actions, they are essentially intrinsic exceptions in our characters, and thus we are responsible for them. These animals however, these incarcerated beings, do not have choice, they are stripped of all individuality the moment they are confined. We may navigate our own slippery moral road as we see fit, it is our right as sentient beings, yet it is not our right to strip these inalienable statutes from another, be they human, tiger or toad. Our rights end where another life exists, and to maintain our willful ignorance of our treatment of fellow beings as a whole is no different than were we to accept a Dachau as "entertainment".

Twilight Review

I know, I know, I am weak and common, I am now resolutely among the masses, no longer a man of cultivated and obscure taste. So be it. After months of observing the phenomenon by default in every grocery and department store in existence, I succumbed, and watched Twilight.
I admit now, for the record, that I shared the all too common scorn of my peers toward this ubiquitous product, I sniggered at cardboard displays, arched brows at the merciless industry that fed our cultures frenzied appetite, made light of the frailty of human all too human susceptibilities, and felt little more than a patronizing amusement at the existence of something so obviously cliched.

And while I retain my repulsion toward the overzealous merchandising of the series, the unending accesorizing of obsession, truth be told, in regards the film, I was utterly mistaken in my posturing.

The "Vampire Film" has been, if you will pardon the expression, done to death, and yet every year, if not every few months a new/old take on the genre appears, and every year/few months we attend in droves, further encouraging the Hollywood machine to produce more poorly concieved, poorly performed, creatively bankrupt movies. We are not part of the problem, we are the problem. What was the last vampire film that actually moved and or frightened you? My guess is that you cannot think of one. Consider that for a moment. If we can acknowledge for an instant that our compulsion for these things is psychological, and not easily satisfied, than perhaps, as consumers, we might be able to raise our expectations, and as box office returns begin to dwindle, Film exectutives will begin, gradually, to take chances again. The only truly exeptional exponent of the genre in recent memory was Tomas Alfredson's 2008 piece, Låt den rätte komma in, and it was Norweigan! A small budget, essentially independant film, it offered what few genre pieces, and to be honest, film in general, has so greviously been lacking: genuine power. It is all too easy to go to the cinema, consume copious amounts of false food, return home and remember nothing of what you saw, in fact, this is what most of us expect from movies these days. But is that all there is? Are we so reduced in our faculties that we now want to spend large amounts of money on something that we could so easily obtain in our homes? I have always felt that film should be seen much more as an artistic, evocative experience, that one should resound with the wonderment of a truly arresting encounter. We have no respect for cinema any longer, and thus it has no respect for us. We got what we deserved.

Yet, there are a few flickering lights. The aformentioned Let The Right One In for instance, and still more recently, in my estimation, Twilight. It goes without saying that the timbre of these two films couldn't be more different, the former, though essntially involving children, was strictly an adult affair, dealt with much darker themes, and in a much more claustrophobic atomsphere. Twilight on the other hand, is something of an exception categorically speaking. As a culture, we are obsessed by definition, and I am as guilty as the next observer in this erroneous habit, and yet, it is apt to say that Twilight defies it's genre expectations. Romance, coming of age, thriller, gothic horror, it embodies all of these things, and yet not one of them stands exclusive.

What it does convey, however, it conveys exceptionally. It is riveting film-making at its best, never once faltering, never once sinking into assumption, the story carries beautifully throughout it's two hours, simultaneously weaving and destroying what, in the wrong hands, could so easily have collapsed under its intrinsically simple arc. The primary characters appear to have been given great lisence with their roles, and not once does the trembling urgency of their longing ring false. The cinematogaraphy is perfect, and even the music has a quality to it of premanence, at once subtle, at once salient. I expect this film will eventaully outlive it's market trappings, and at some point be seen as the truly passionate, elegiac piece of cinematic beauty that it is.

The point needs making however, that, one should not watch this film with a predetermined bias, either positive or negative. Truly great film has always been expected to suspend the reality of the viewer, to truly displace one from his or her normal environs. We have become jaded to this in the last several years, and we are all guilty of suspicion at best, indifference at worst. Twilight is something of a return to cinematic wonderment, but it needs a willingness to be transported to be truly embraced. Give in and you will forget to be frightened of being a fan.

Karen Traviss Interview

In the coming month I will be posting my interview with author Karen Traviss, whose novels have greatly affected my often entrenched views. You can see her own superlative blog here: http://www.karentraviss.com/ as well as order her work. Always interesting, often edifying, she is an astonishing, sometimes merciless Mother to her creations, and thus all the more fascinating.

Hello World

Thus far, all my work is currently over at http://www.myspace.com/durtal including all artwork, photography, reviews and other writings.
I'm intending to move some of the material here, but it is a laborious process, and as such, it will be slow, but, hopefully, things should begin soon...