MICK FARREN INTERVIEWS KENNETH ANGER

Kenneth Anger
Source: www.phinnweb.org/
links/cinema/underground/anger/

Mick Farren was hard to impress but I have a vivid memory of when he came back from an interview over lunch with Kenneth Anger. He was well chuffed that he had finally met one of his cult heroes. 

 As far as I am aware this article, which was published in the New Musical Express on July 31st 1976, has not been reproduced before. Much of Mick's work has been anthologised and is available in print or on the internet. Mick died on stage in July 2013 at the age of 69. Those who knew him still miss him like hell. Anger is 90 and still active.

'In all probability, Deep Throat will be shown at your local Odeon long before any of the films of Kenneth Anger. Although he's been making films since 1939, has worked with Mick Jagger in the past and is currently finishing a movie project that involves, among others, Jimmy Page and Marianne Faithfull, none of his work has ever been exhibited on a mass scale.

The closest that the films of Kenneth Anger have ever come to reaching a popular audience was probably during the psychedelic '60s' when his movies Fireworks and Scorpio Rising were mainstays of the hippie clubs, underground film fests and arts labs both here and in the U.S.A.

Kenneth Anger as the Stolen Prince: The
Changeling in A Midsummer Night's Dream

There's more, however, to Kenneth Anger than simply being an underground film maker who still makes his own very personal movies when most of his fellows have moved on to porn, sexploitation or TV commercials. He is an almost unique example of a jet age eccentric who manages to live, work and survive even in the depressingly buck-worshipping '70s.

It's hardly surprising that Anger, with his background, should become some kind of grand eccentric. He was born into a hard-core Hollywood family. Almost as soon as he could walk, he was placed in the Maurice Kosloff school of dancing. At three his grandmother hustled him the part of a sprite in Max Reinhardt's film of A Midsummer Night's Dream (that's the one with James Cagney as Bottom). He talks about his early life with a kind of camp relish. "My dancing partner in those days was Shirley Temple. I doubt whether she'd speak to me now." He even hands out pictures of himself in the film. 

In 1939, at the age of seven, he made his first film while he was in the Boy Scouts. In 1941 he made another, Who's Been Rocking My Dreamboat. At eleven he completed The Nest, a full-blown exploration of the subject of incest. He was only fifteen when he used a spare 72 hours (while his parents were away at his uncle's funeral) to make Fireworks which still gets shown in art cinemas today. 

Fireworks is a savage homosexual fantasy. Filmed in grainy black and white, it is an account of how a group of archetypal butch/sadist U.S. sailors, straight out of a gay porn mag, rape and mutilate a young teenage boy. There is so much of the director/producer/actor's wish-fulfillment and basic fear projected into the film that it's still numbingly shocking today.

Throughout the '50s he made four more movies including Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome, his first venture in psycho/sexual symbolic mysticism. Anger describes the film as "a full scale ritual to invoke Horus, the Godhead of the Aquarian Age.” He also started work on a movie version of the S&M erotic classic L'Histoire d'O (‘Story of O’ to you), but the money ran out and it was never finished.


1964 saw the completion of Scorpio Rising, a loving examination of the faggot end of bike-gang with a rock and roll soundtrack that includes songs by Dion, Presley, the Chiffons, and the Shirelles.

Scorpio Rising is, to date, Anger's most popular and best remembered movie: It, too, has its mystical undertones. As Anger put it, "Scorpio is the sign of violence and death. It's also the sign that governs machines. It was natural to celebrate it with a film centred around the Hell's Angels and leather boys."

A year later he started work on Kustom Kar Kommandos, a sequel to Scorpio Rising that, again with a rock and roll score, did for an apocalyptic hot rod gang what Scorpio Rising did for the Hell's Angels. It predated Manson’s plans for his dune buggy attack battalion by some four years.

In 1968, Anger started work on the first version of Lucifer Rising, a fast moving collage of Crowleyan magic, and his most ambitious project. There seemed, however, to be a jinx on the film. The majority of the footage was lost and all that remains is an eleven-minute fragment retitled Invocation Of My Demon Brother. A synthesiser track was added to the film by Mick Jagger. According to Anger, it was this work on the film that inspired Jagger to write the first draft of "Sympathy For The Devil."

Today Anger is finishing up the second version of Lucifer, working on the soundtrack with Jimmy Page, promoting the paperback version of his book Hollywood Babylon. He is also a leading disciple of occultist, misunderstood genius and Great Beast Aleister Crowley.

*

Okay, so that's the background. With all this in mind, I went to my lunch date with Kenneth Anger with a great deal of curiosity as to what kind of figure I was going to meet.

Would he be a mincing queen, a total fraud, a poseur or some sinister figure out of a Hammer Films version of a Dennis Wheatley black magic epic?

It was one of the first really warm days of the summer. I had arranged to meet him in the foyer of the British Film Finance Corporation. He was there to negotiate the finishing-up money for Lucifer Rising. At least he followed the same route as other money-starved film producers. He didn't make piles of gold coins appear in the middle of a sinister pentagram.

The person who came down the stairs was pretty normal. He wore a lightweight cafe-au-lait suit and could just as easily have been jiving up the money for Confessions Of A Randy Dustman as a movie based on the philosophy of Crowley The only bizarre touch was a gold pentagram hanging from a chain round his neck. (Later he was to roll up his sleeve and reveal that he had the same symbol tattooed on his arm. "My mark of the Beast.”)

As we walked across Greek Street to a nearby French restaurant, the sun didn’t darken, nobody threw us fearful glances, and dogs didn’t snarl or howl. In fact, Anger, who looked rather like a male beach hero running into the first phase of middle-aged paunch, proved an amiable individual with a sharp, if campy and cutting, wit. 

Original publicity still for Lucifer Rising featuring
a 1940 illustration by Virgil Finley. On
the back is a copyright sticker and a hand-written
sticker that says 'World Premiere. Easter
Sunday '77.' [The Generalist Archive]

After we'd settled down at a table, gone through the ritual of ordering and I was into my first gin and tonic of the day, the conversation kicked off with an obvious question. 

"There's been a lot of weird rumours about what happened to the first version of Lucifer Rising. What actually happened to the film?'

The answer was as weird as any of the rumours. 

"You know that, in that version, Bobby Beausoleil played Lucifer?"

I nodded.

"This is the same Bobby Beausoleil who joined up with Manson, and was jailed for the Gary Hinman murder?"

"That's right. Of course, all this was some time before he got involved with Charles Manson's escapades." 

"Escapade" is a lovely word in the context. There's something quite fascinating about anyone who can deal with a first-hand contact with terminal sleaze in such a lightly urbane manner. 

"Bobby was living with me in San Francisco. It must have been the end of 1967 or the beginning of 1968. It was the time when the hippie scene was turning into a complete fuck-up. The flower children had started shooting up speed. It was all very depressing. Bobby had this fantasy about starting a rock and roll band. I got some money for him and he went down saying he was going to buy amplifiers and equipment.

"Of course, when he came back there wasn't any equipment or any money left. Instead I found several kilos of grass hidden in my cutting room. This was just too much. I told him to get out. A few nights later he broke in and stole most of the unedited film. Later he claimed I tried to turn him into a toad."

"Did you ever find out what happened to the film?"

"I suppose it's buried out in the Mojave somewhere. I thought of getting a guy with a divining rod to look for it."

“And Beausoleil's now doing life?"

"He was twenty-one when he went in. I doubt if he'll ever get out." 

Bobby Beausoleil mug shot. 1969. Source: Wikipedia

*

The conversation moves on to films. After Warhol's posture of seedy decadence and Godard's trendy Marxism, Anger is refreshingly down-to-earth. He has little time for the kind of cineaste who wants to prattle about art and symbolism. He is Hollywood born and bred, and many of the terms of reference in the conversation are unashamed trash; Roger Corman, Night Of The Living Dead, Mae West, Invasion Of Body Snatchers.

He also has a devout love of gossip. One minute he’s talking lofty metaphysics. the next he’s letting go a choice morsel of name-dropping.

“I think I’m getting rather tired of Mick Jagger. It's all getting rather childish and petulant. There was a party at a pub just out of London where he threw a table through a window because some people told him to make less noise. It does seem rather unnecessary”

The next moment he has grasshoppered back to his latest movie.

“Lucifer is the hero. He shouldn't be confused with the Christian devil. Lucifer is another name for the Morning Star, the bringer of light. He is the one who helps man in his search for truth and enlightenment."

Prometheus?"

“A very similar character." He jumps on to a story about the making of the film.

“The next Lucifer after Bobby was Chris Jagger. Unfortunately he started taking himself very seriously. We were shooting in Egypt, in desert, near the pyramids. Marianne was having a bad time, she was strung out on heroin."

Anger pauses.

"I don't think that's an indiscretion, is it? Marianne's always been very open about the problems she's had with drugs. She was also being eaten alive by mosquitoes. We started to believe that the heroin in her bloodstream was attracting them.

"At the same time, Chris Jagger began acting like some kind of Hollywood prima donna. You know? Turning up late, that sort of thing. We were working on a very tight budget and starting to run out of money. It all got so difficult that Chris had to go."

"Marianne plays Lilith, the Jewish demon. She is also the goddess of abortion. It seems kind of appropriate."

From Lucifer (the bringer of light) we move on to Aleister Crowley. "Crowley was a greatly misunderstood genius. After World War I, the British newspapers did their best to destroy him, particularly the Beaverbrook newspapers. They labelled him the wickedest man in the world and presented him as some kind of Satanist. After one of his group died from drinking contaminated water, stories went round about murders. Crowley could have sued but he never tried. I don't think it occurred to him."

Far from being any kind of Satanist, Anger paints a picture of Crowley as a searcher for truth and enlightenment through the essential human sexual energy. For this, he was pilloried by a vicious press and sensation-hungry public. Even when talking about Crowley, however, Kenneth Anger can't resist a gossipy anecdote.

"It got so bad that, when Crowley wanted to conduct certain nude rituals, the only place he could do it was at the Turkish baths in Jermyn Street. All these people would sit round in their towels watching this middle-aged gentleman waving his arms about. They didn't have a clue that it was Crowley conducting one of his most important rituals. They probably thought it was some sort of calisthenics." 

American paperback copy of Hollywood
Babylon [Dell Publishing 1975], bought at
the Academy Bookshop [7/8 Holland Street
London W8] .I have written my name in the
frontispiece and the date: December 1977.
[The Generalist Archive]

Anger's love for gossip and scandal came to fruition in his book Hollywood Babylon. The book is a virtual directory of suicide, murder, drug addiction and excess in the movie capital of the '20s and '30s. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to be published in this country under the current libel laws. Unlikely, that is, until the last of the people mentioned in the book have died. 

"The stumbling block is the section on Chaplin. No British publisher could get that past the lawyers."

The coffee and brandy arrives. It's getting close to wind-up time. We've drifted into discussion of the age of Aquarius. With someone like Kenneth Anger this is very easy. He seems to see Crowley as a kind of John the Baptist for the epoch. Anger is, however, very matter of fact about his mysticism.

"We're probably in for a rough time: The age of Aquarius isn't quite what they sing about in "Hair". The predictions are that there'll be 500 years of utter chaos with hate, conflict and false prophets. It could be tough before we finally achieve enlightenment."

It's hard to sum up Kenneth Anger. He is a very complex personality, part Hedda Hopper and part mystic. He is obviously obsessed with his work.

"I can't tolerate the kind of lazy fuck-offs who talk all the time and don't do nothing. I can't think of anything but work, there's nothing else."

He can even get away with the ponderous statement that is reproduced in a current press handout.

"I have always considered movies evil; the day that cinema was invented was a black day for mankind... Photography is a blatant attempt to steal the soul . . . My films are primarily concerned with sexuality in people. My reason for filming, has nothing to do with 'cinema' at all; it's a transparent excuse for capturing people . . . it's wearing a little thin now. . so I consider myself as working Evil in an evil medium."

When you meet the man, the first impression is that he delivers these kind of statements with his tongue firmly in his cheek. And yet he is also perfectly serious. It's an odd paradox.

*

'Legendary filmmaker and occultist Kenneth Anger has released a limited edition run of Lucifer jackets, inspired by his classic 1972 short film ‘Lucifer Rising.’ Originally worn by actor Leslie Huggins in the film, the iconic multicoloured design has been embroidered onto a limited number of black nylon bomber jackets. Gold satin bomber jackets are also available from Anger’s official online store at collectors’ prices. Each jacket is unique featuring a stitched label of authenticity.'

           Source: Coney's Loft [15th March 2017]

Published by Black Dog Publishing 2004

To my knowledge this is the best single book on Anger's oeuvre, containing as it does detailed essays on all his key films with images + a great deal more besides.. The entry on Lucifer Rising is very interesting and adds more detail to the story. Hutchinson writes:

'The concept of Lucifer Rising began in 1966 while Anger was in San Francisco as a "sequel" or response to Scorpio Rising  from the beginning of "the new age". Much of the original footage shot went missing during one of Anger's ritual performances at the Straight Theatre... with the rest of the footage shot at this time edited by Anger in London. Led Zeppelin's resident Crowley aficionado, Jimmy Page proposed the orginal soundtrack for Lucifer, which was removed in the 1981 re-edited version and replaced by Bobby Beausoleil's composition.'

 To produce the soundtrack, Beausoleil formed the Freedom Orchestra in prison. Hutchison says that the instruments were delivered by mail order and that Anger provided him with a time sheet for the film. A  full and complete remastered version is now available according  to the Beausoleil website.

According to Hutchinson, Anger and Page first met at a Sotheby's auction of Crowley books in 1973. Page at that time had the second largest collection of Crowley's work in the world and was living in Crowley's former house at  Boleskine on the edge of Loch Ness in Scotland. Page worked on the film for three years and produced 28 minutes of music. Anger had been
using the film editing facilities in the basement of Page's Victorian mansion for three months when there was, one night, some kind of altercation with Page's girlfriend which lead to Anger being evicted.

PREVIOUS POSTS


60s Underground/Mick Farren & The Deviants [November 2012]

Underround Press [June 2013]

Mick Farren Tribute [August 2013]

BACKPACK AMBASSADORS and the TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY OF YOUTH

Published by Chicago Univeristy Press

Just at the time when the direction of travel is shifting away from allowing free movement across frontiers and towards the reimposition of  hard borders, comes this book which tells us how it was the backpacking youth, travelling freely across Europe, that helped to reintegrate our societies, connect cultures. heal wounds and broaden horizons after the devastation of World War II. This story has, to my knowledge, never before been spotlighted.

Its author Richard Ivan Jobs, a backpacker himself in Europe and India in the 1990s, is now a history professor at Pacific University in Oregon. His penchant for travel has servcd him well, both then and now, because this book required conducting research in roughly forty archives, libraries and institutes in eight countries and five languages.

The book's fascinating story. which extends to the end of the Cold War and beyond, begins with large numbers of young people, students and volunteers, being funded to rebuild the remnants of a nascent youth hostel network and repair railways across the continent. Large mutinational gatherings of youth encouraged a new feeling of connectedness, a desire to dismantle borders and create a peaceful, harmonius united Europe.

In the 50s, the recovery process begins to take hold. The road and rail networks are repaired, there is a vast expansion of youth hostels and large numbers of hitchhikers become a common sight.

In the 60s, this existing youth travel movement intersects with the new counter-cultural and political youth trends, creating a powerful interconnected web of activity linking hip cities like London, Amsterdam and Berlin with the eastern bloc. A  disastrous flood in Florence in 1966, which threatened and damaged treasured buildings, documents and works of art, triggered off a huge youth response. These so-called "mud angels" flocked to the city and worked tirelessly to rescue and clean-up the city. 1968 saw revolutionary activity across Europe. The youth also began travelling overland to Asia via Istanbul on what came to be known as the "hippy trail".

By the 70s, the Interail and Eurail schemes allowed the youth to travel widely and cheaply. An increasing influx of Americans came to Europe courtesy of a new breed of budget airlines and a new generation of guide books provided advice to the burgeoning tribes of travellers.

With the dramatic events leading up the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, east and west travel expanded and by the 90s, youth travellers' focus extended to Latin America and South-East Asia in particular. The concept of a 'gap year' became established as a career move for your own personal development and future prospects. Now there's a new breed of digital travellers who use social media to organise their way ahead in a much more improvisational manner and who broadcast their adventures and pictures on the web.

There is a bigger message embedded in 'Backpack Ambassadors' - namely that the contribution of youth has been undervalued in our historic accounts.  I discovered, during a 50-minute conversation with Jobs in Oregon via Skype, that two earlier works set the stage for his latest production.

First came 'Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France After the Second World War' [Stanford University Press 2007]. Yet to be read by The Generalist', the blurb whets the appetite:

This book tells the story of France's remarkable transformation in the 1940s and 1950s through exhaustive study of the role of youth and youth culture in France's rejuvenation and cultural reconstruction in the aftermath of war, occupation, and collaboration. Examining everything from Brigitte Bardot and New Wave film to Tarzan and comic books, from juvenile delinquents and managerial technocrats to soldiers and 1968 protesters, from popular culture to politics, the author makes a fascinating case for reconsidering the significance and meaning of youth in postwar France. Riding the New Wave advances a new methodological approach by considering age as a category of historical analysis comparable to, and in tandem with, race, class, and gender. This history reveals youth to be a central feature in France's recovery from the Second World War while also clarifying the international significance of youth in the tumultuous 1960s.'

Some years later, together with his colleague David Pomfret, he organised a workshop/conference in Hong Kong, attended by scholars from all over the world, which resulted in a multi-author book 'Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century' [Palgrave Macmillan, 2015], that Jobs and Pomfret co-edited, about the hiustory of youth in a global context. It emphasised the need for a history of youth that, says Jobs, "thinks of young people as 'agents' and asks what are they doing and experiencing."

*

The idea of transnational histories of youth is an important one and Jobs' 'Backpack Ambassadors' is a valuable addition to the literature. In it Jobs highlights the fact that the 'Delphic priests of ancient Greece considered the right to come and go to be one of the four fundamental elements of freedom'. Jobs concludes:

'As internal border controls are introduced within Europe to stem the flow of migrants, refugees and security threats, it is ironic that while free mobility was used as a means to achieve stability and national security in the decades aftre the Second World War, it is now seen as a threat to those achievements. If rights of passage, the freedom of movement, were to be curtailed and the open borders closed, what effect this would have on European integration, already under stress, is unclear. Still, the transnational mobility of youth may remain an impetus for integration.'

*

JAZZ GREATS: KAMASI WASHINGTON / JACO PASTORIOUS

KAMASI WASHINGTON rules. His triple album 'The Epic' is No. 1 default sound on my system since the end of April when I got it as a birthday present. Then yesterday I discovered in a slush pile of clippings this great article from June 2016 by the grandly named Ludovic Hunter-Tilney. LHT's punchy piece puts Kamasi and his band at the LA epicentre of a new politically infused jazz movement. Kamasi says: "The whole point of playing this music is to convey a message. That message comes from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, the year he was assassinated. Copies were handed out at Kasami's school by black activists and it stuck with him. The message is: "Self discipline, self understanding and self love, that's what it was really about. Just love yourself, you're beautiful, your history, your culture, you come from someone who is beautiful, you're not just the descendant of a slave, you should have pride in who you are, knowing why you are."

Kasami won a scholarship to study ethomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles,where he learnt about 'north Indian classical music, Indonesian gamelan and Ghanaian gospel choirs.' The album took four years to make and features a 10-piece jazz band, , a 32-piece porchestra and a 20-voice choir. His touring band features seven musicians including his father Rickey who also plays sax. The band, reports LHT, is made up of his LA peers, most being also the children of jazz players. They formed a musical collective named  the West Coast Get Down who played every week at a Hollywood club. A monthy-long collaborative session in the studio provided the germ of 'The Epic'. That's all you need to know as a taster. Now book a comfortable couch and immerse yourself in this amazing music. Several great live concerts on YouTube, including a Glastonbury show. Powerful healing force or what.

JACO PASTORIOUS is widely regarded as the Jimi Hendrix of the bass guitar. He reinvented the instrument, expanding its possibilities by removing the frets and pushing the playing techniques into unknown territory. At the level of musicianship Pastorious reached, he was soon feted and showered with superlatives. His work with Weather Report, Joni Mitchell and Herbie Hancock -  to name just three  - is outstanding. His many other ensembles that played his compositions, range across many fields and emotions. Jaco's bipolar extraordinariness spilled over into drug use, uncontrollable antics and, in the end, murderous violence. Set against this is much beautiful footage of his children and himself, swimming, juggling, having fun. Packed with harsh and tender moments, great interviews and tasteful clips and tracks, 'Jaco' will bring tears but also profound inspiration that so much wonderful music could pour out of this man. Ditto as above: YouTube and many great albums to explore.

THE HUMAN MICROBIOME

Source: Teach the Microbiome

For a long time now THE GENERALIST has been curious to know more about what is now referred to as the human microbiome - the entire ecosystem of bacteria (and other organisms) that we carry on us and inside our bodily containers. 99% of the bacteria are found in the gut.

I find this whole area of science incredibly powerful and it is clear from the research for this post that many discoveries are revealing a whole new world of medical investigation.

Published by Scribe 2016

My first main source is this highly accessible book by a young German scientist which is a great place to start understanding this remarkable new paradign shift in our thinking about our own bodies.

It seems we're built of three main tubes: the cardiovascular system with the heart at its centre; the nervous system, running in parallel, with the spinal cord, our brain at the top and nerve networks across our entire body. The third is the intestinal tube running through us from end to end via the mouth, oesophagus, stomach, small and large intestines and anus.

This is where it gets real interesting. Something called the vagus nerve serves as a fast and direct link between our gut and our brain. It runs from the diaphragm, between the lungs and the heart, up along the oesophagus  and through the neck to the brain. As the brain is insulated from the rest of the body, it needs information from the gut to form a picture of how the body is doing. Enders writes:

'The gut has not only a remarkable system of nerves to gather all this information, but also a huge surface area. That makes it the body's largest sensory organ...a huge matrix, sensing our inner life and working on the subconscious mind,'

Here are other things I learnt from this book:

• 'Stress is thought to be among the most important stimuli discussed by the brain and the gut' writes Enders. One theory is that the 'altered circumstances stress creates in the gut allow different bacteria to survive there than in periods of low stress. We could say that stress changes the weather in the gut.'

• 'Anyone who suffers from anxiety or depression should remember that an unhappy gut can be the cause of an unhappy mind.'

• 'Our gastrointestinal tract is home to more than a thousand different species of bacteria - plus minority populations of viruses and yeats, as well as fungi and various other single-celled organisms.

• 'Our gut's microbiome can weigh up to 2 kilos and contain about 100 trillion bacteria. One gramme of faeces contains more bacteria than there are people on the Earth.

• 80% of our immune system is in the gut.

• 'We are influenced by the microscopic world that lives in us. This is all the more interesting when we realise that every person's inner world is unique to him and her.'

• 'While 100 per cent of the cells that make us up when we start life are human cells, we are soon colonised by so many micro-organisms that only 10 per cent of our cells are human, with microbes accounting for the remaining 90 per cent.

• 'Our lifestyle, random acquaintances, illness, or hobbies all influence the shape of the populations inside our bodies...It is generally accepted that the first population to colonise out gut lay the main foundations for the future of our entire body.

• In the April 2011 issue of Nature, scientists cliamed to have discovered three main enterotypes - bacteriological ecosystems - which appear in humans of all ages, genders, body weight and nationality. Type 1 is domninated by high-levels of Bacteroides, Type 2 by Prevotella and Type 3 by Ruminococcus. There are indication that long-term diet influences these enterotypes. Bacteroides seem to like meat and saturated fatty acids; Prevotellas are more common in the guts of vegetarians; Ruminococcus feed on the cell walls of plants.

• Some scientists now support the theory that our gut microbiota can be considered an organ

*

The Human Microbiome Project (HMP), involving some 200 scientists, was a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiative with the goal of identifying and characterizing the microorganisms which are found in association with both healthy and diseased humans. The results were published in June 2012.

The Human Microbiome

The Human Microbiome is the collection of all the microorganisms living in association with the human body. These communities consist of a variety of microorganisms including eukaryotes, archaea, bacteria and viruses. Bacteria in an average human body number ten times more than human cells, for a total of about 1000 more genes than are present in the human genome. Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 percent of our body mass (that's 2 to 6 pounds of bacteria in a 200-pound adult). These microbes are generally not harmful to us, in fact they are essential for maintaining health. For example, they produce some vitamins that we do not have the genes to make, break down our food to extract nutrients we need to survive, teach our immune systems how to recognize dangerous invaders and even produce helpful anti-inflammatory compounds that fight off other disease-causing microbes. An ever-growing number of studies have demonstrated that changes in the composition of our microbiomes correlate with numerous disease states, raising the possibility that manipulation of these communities could be used to treat disease.

The Human Microbiome Project

The NIH Common Fund Human Microbiome Project (HMP) was established in 2008, with the mission of generating resources that would enable the comprehensive characterization of the human microbiome and analysis of its role in human health and disease.

Traditional microbiology has focused on the study of individual species as isolated units. However the vast majority of microbial species have never been successfully isolated as viable specimens for analysis, presumably because their growth is dependent upon a specific microenvironment that has not been, or cannot be, reproduced experimentally. Advances in DNA sequencing technologies have created a new field of research, called metagenomics, allowing comprehensive examination of microbial communities, without the need for cultivation. Instead of examining the genome of an individual bacterial strain that has been grown in a laboratory, the metagenomic approach examines the collection of genomes derived from microbial communities sampled from natural environments. In the HMP, this method will complement genetic analyses of known isolated strains, providing unprecedented information about the complexity of human microbial communities.

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Source: It's OK to be Smart

In 'Tending the Human Body's Microbial Garden' by Carl Zimmer [New York Times / July 1 2012], he writes that, for more than a century doctors have been waging war against bacteria with antibiotics. Now a new approach known as 'medical ecology' suggests that by nurturing our 'garden' of gut flora we may discover entirely new approaches to infectious diseases that have previously been treated with antibiotics. Tending the microbiome may also help in treating obesity and diabetes. Many of bacteria have co-evolved and work to maintain the health of our bodies.

*

'Germs Are Us' by Michael Specter [New Yorker / 22nd Oct 2012] quotes David A. Relman, the first scientist to sequence the genomes of a human bacterial community - which happened to come from his own mouth. 

He tells Specter: "We have to stop looking at medicine as a war between invading pathogens and our bodies". He believes we need to employ a "sort of stewardship which has more in common with park mangement than it does with the current practice of trying...to kill microbes."

'Looked upon this way,' writes Specter, 'the human body turns out to be a vast, highly mutable ecosystem - each of us seems more like a farm than like an individual assembled from a rulebook of genetic instructions. Medicine becomes a matter of cultivation, as if our bacterial cells were crops in a field.'

Specter also refers to a 2009 paper entitled 'What Are the Consequences of the Disappearing Human Microbiome'  written by Martin J. Blaser and fellow microbiologist Stanley Fallow which focused on a loss of diversity in our biomes due to antibiotics. In a theoretical case a woman born at the start of the 20th century might have 10,000 species of bacteria, From the 1930s on, most people would have  one or two courses of antibiotics in their lives and will thus have lost some species. Her child will take many more antibiotice and will lose more species. Blaer says:

"A lot of things are happening at once. The rise in obesity, celiac disease, asthma, allergy syndromes and Type 1 diabetes. Bad eating habits are not sufficient to explain the worldwide explosion in obesity...We are not talking about illnesses that are increasing by ten per cent. They are doubling and tripling and qudrupling. With each generation there is a heavier impact on the early-life microbiome. And it means we are less and less able to metabolize the food we eat.'

*

'I had the Bacteria in my Gut analysed. And this may be the Future of Medicine' by Andrew Anthony [The Observer Review / 9th Feb 2014]

'Humans are first colonised by microbes during birth. Then through breast milk, which contains both probiotics ( beneficial microbes) and prebiotics (compounds that foster the growth of probiotics).

"There is strengthening evidence ", says microbiologist Paul O'Toole, " that the explosion of auto-immune diseases and immune disregulation diseases in Western society may be due to suppression of gut bacteria from infancy onwards."

'It takes about two years from birth...for a child to attain a mature microbiome. There are several factors that may contribute to childhood microbial dimishment. One is the increase in caesarian sections...Another is a lack of breast milk and a third is the increased use of antibiotics.

'In fact there are many studies around the globe ...which point up connections between the microbiota and diseases and complaints as diverse as  irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's. Alzheimer's, autism, depression, cardiovascvular disease and colon cancer.'

*

Source: Wikipedia

'Why modern life is bad for the gut' by Clive Cookson [Financial Times / 25th April 2015]

 reports on two studies on the microbiomes of remote human communities to compare their diversity with those in the US. One was a isolated Yanomami tribe in the Amazonian forest, the other subsitence farmers in Papua New Guinea. Both had considerably more diverse microbiomes than  Americans. The team leader of the Amazonian project said:

"Our results bolster a growing body of data suggesting a link between, on the one hand, decreased bacterial diversity, industrialised diets and modern antibiotics, and on the other, immunological and metabolic diseases such as obesity, asthma, allergies and diabetes, which have drastically increased since the 1970s.We believe there is something environmental occuring in the paset 30 years driving these diseases. The microbiome could be involved."

*

In an article by Chloe Lambert entitled 'Gut Thinking' [New Scientist. 21st Nov 2015]:

In 2014, scientists at the University of New Mexico published a review of reasearch on human microbiomes and came to tthis intriguing solution: 'gut microbes don't just flourish on certain diets, they may also control our food cravings and preferences to serve their own purpose'

This raises the intriguing possibility that through the spread of microbes, person to person,  those cravings could become contagious. Lambert says: 'We already know people are much more likely to become obese if they have a friend who is obese.'

According to Tony Goldstone, an endocrinologist at Imperial College, London: 'There's evidence that gut hormones modify not only reward and consumption of food but also any drug of abuse - such as nicotine, cocaine and alcohol.'

HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS HAS DIED

This is a great picture of Heathcote Williams who died earlier this week after a long illness that kept him out of the public eye for the last years of his life, though he continued to lambast the establishment and prick pomposity until the end through his work on the online International Times website and his last opus on Boris Johnson. 

For many years Heathcote worked in our office at 2 Blenheim Crescent just off London's Portobello Road in a small back room with the graphic designer and illustrator Richard Adams. Together they founded the Open Head Press, named after the printing press you can see in this picture. 

Over many years they produced a wide variety of posters, pamphlets, booklets and other valuable outpourings. Their space was often filled with visitors including the great poet Christopher Logue and John Michell, the author of 'View Over Atlantis' and many other arcane and wonderful books. The early issues of Fortean Times were also produced in that room. Cider was often the refreshment of choice and, as the working day progressed, there was often a trace of unruly behaviour and schoolboy pranks, much laughter and the occasional altercation between the assembled bohemians.

This is the work that first brought Heathcote to public attention. This is the cover of the 1st Edition which was published in Britain  by Hutchinson in 1964. Heathcote was 22 and this was his first book. 'The Speakers' was brought back into print in 1982 by Robin Clark. Both copies are in the Generalist Archive.

I have several powerful memories of Heathcote. I remember being in his flat on Westbourne Park Road one evening when he tried out some of his newly-written verse in front of a small group of invited friends including myeslf. Heathcote had the most beautiful speaking voice and was without doubt a great and important English poet. As his mellifluous phrases rolled out, there was true magic in the air. No wonder Derek Jarman cast him as Prospero in his film version of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'. Al Pacino was a friend of fan of Heathcote's.

[Left] First amazing issue of The Fanatic produced by Heathcote and designed by Richard Adams.

Equally memorable was the day when I travelled to Plymouth to interview James Lovelock, the now famous scientific author of the Gaia hypothesis, on 1st May 1984. You can read some more about this in my previous post in January 2006. After a remarkable afteroon of discussion, I was driven by taxi from Lovelock's house to the grand surroundings of  Port Eliot, a stately home set in beautiful grounds, at St Germans, Saltash in Cornwall. Many of you will know this as it became the site for the Elephant Fayre which began in 1980 and ran until 1986 in its first incarnation. Details of the 2017 Festival can be found here.

Was delighted to discover in the Archive this hand-drawn map that Heathcote had sent me
in advance so I wouldn't get lost. Tacked to it is a train ticket for £1.30

The owner of the house and Estate at that time was Perry Eliot, who was a friend and supporter of Heathcote's. I had arranged to meet Heathcote there and when the texi dropped me off in front this imposing Gothic building I ventured inside a maze of corridors and happened fortunately to bump into one of the house staff who directed me to the upstairs room where Heathcote was holding court.

 Heathcote always did resemble a Pres-Raphaelite figure never more so when I entered a large high-ceilinged room with a long wooden table strewn with manuscript pages and handwritten notes. Heathcote had beautiful handwriting. I think we ate and drank and I certainly slept the night there.

As I recall I was there to talk with him about his current work at the time which was a lengthy poem entitled 'Whale Nation', to be published by Jonathan Cape. I had for many years being writing about the Save The Whale movement and had met many whale experts and read extensively on the topic. I was able to feed much information into the mix which was duly acknowledged with this note on the front of a photocopy of the original manuscript. A treasured possession.

The handwriting is somewhat faded but his inscription reads: For John May: sine qua non [which means 'an indispensable and essential action']. Under his signature he writes: 'without the growth hormones supplied by you this work would never have seen the light of day.'

Incidentally it was Heathcote who first turned me on to the activities of the Animal Liberation Front, when he showed me an article by Ronnie Lee, the ALF founder, who had just been released from prison after a number of years sentence having been found guilty of arson. This led me, via journalism for the NME, to found,with my colleagues, one of the first ever animal lib magazines 'The Beast'.

THE GENERALIST ARCHIVE  is particularly rich in material from and on Heathcote. Its been some time since I've been through it all and I'm deeply touched by what I've found. An extensive exchange of correspondence, all hand typed and signed in pen + postcards, clippings + magazines and poster poems. Here are some of them:

What claimss to be the first publication of 'Whale Nation' .
Probably an earlier version. paper is undated.

The covers of Heathcote's four animal/environmental poems,
all published by Jonathan Cape in London, all signed. 'Whale Nation'
was a huge success, published in many languages, turned into a theatrical show [see poster below]
and an Arena documentary. The others were successful too but perhaps sold in lesser numbers.
The version of 'Elephants' is another early version, of 'Sacred Elephant', published on a large-format paper size
that is called 'elephant'. At bottom, cover illustration for 'Autogeddon' by Ian Pollock.

OBITUARIES TO DATE:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jul/02/heathcote-williams-obituary

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2017/07/03/heathcote-williams-poet-polemicist-obituary/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/02/heathcote-williams-radical-poet-playwright-actor-dies-aged-75

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/heathcote-williams-british-playwright-and-countercultural-giant-dies-at-75/2017/07/03/8e0025ee-5ff6-11e7-84a1-a26b75ad39fe_story.html?utm_term=.7c2a521fa46a

Hastings Independent

THE ECONOMIST

DRVING THE BEAT ROAD

THE GENERALIST had other plans for Saturday which were overtaken by a tip off from Peter Mobbs in France who pointed me to a remarkable piece of journalism by Jeff Weiss recently published in the Washington Post.

Entitled 'Driving The Beat Road' its a great account of the history of the Beats in San Francisco of which scant traces remain (City Lights bookstore, the Vesuvio Cafe plus the Beat Museum at 540 Broasdway) combined with a series of interviews with some of the surving members of the Beat Generation namely Lawrence Ferlinghetti (now 98), Michael McClure (84), Gary Snyder (87), Diane di Prima (82) as well as what Weiss calls a 'Beat-adjacent novelist' Herbert Gold (92).

Published by New Directions. 1973.
Second printing. The Generalist Library

Ferlinghetti is nearly blind now but, writes Weiss, his failing eyesight 'has been swapped for oracular vision'. He reports that F looks 'vaguely like a bust of Socrates, bald, white-bearded and wise' but, having lived nearly a century, he has sustained a 'serrated intellect, righteous integrity and good health'.

His remarkable life story includes a visit to Nagasaki short weeks after the atomic bomb blast. Of this experience he wrote: 'The city had just vanished from the face of the earth. Skeletons of trees on the horizon. Not a soul in sight...all souls melted.' He became an ardent pacifist as a result.

Ferlinghetti, says Weiss, has never 'stopped wondering where we're going, what will be lost to history and what may never be noticed at all.' As for the future, he predicts SF will be underwater in 50 years time.

Published by City Lights Book. 1sr Edition
1963. The Generalist Library.

Michael McClure is someone whose works I know less about and this valuable profile and interview is a fantastic read. For instance, he collaborated with Ray Manzarek of The Doors over a 20-year period and became drinking buddies with Jim Morrison. He says: "I don't think there was a better poet in America at Jim's age". Weiss claims that McClure 'helped crystallize the modern Rimbaud mystic archetype that Morrison ran with.'

McClure is worried about the future: "I know that young people are striving for change but it seems like they don't know how to rebel or what to rebel against." So, says Weiss, what are we supposed to do?

"Turn off the television set and turn off the distractions. Turn to your most intelligent friends and begin to imagine what's really going on...If we can...start to feel and think together again and let our imaginations and inspirationsa go...that will bring more change than anything."

One of McClure's big contribution was to help raise public consciousness about the environment in what he calls the "early bioromantic poems" alongside the remarkable and enigmatic Beat poet Gary Snyder, who Kerouac immortalised as Japhy Ryder in 'The Dharma Bums', and who is often referred to as a 'nature poet' - a kind of modern-time Thoreauvian - although Snyder considers himself to be a 'poet of reality'

Published by New Directions. 1972. Ninth
printing. The Generalist Library.

Snyder now lives in a far-flung deep country sanctuary and is, says Weiss, 'a man who doesn't particularly want to be found' and later describes him an an 'outrider of the outsiders' - a beautiful and apt phrase. Setting up the interview proved a lengthy process and following complicated directions to Snyder's hideout proved equally difficult. It was worth the effort.

Famously Snyder went to Japan to study Zen and translate ancient poems and stayed there off and on from 1956-69. Some have argued that The Beats were the main transmitters of Buddhism in America. If so, Snyder was the key figure. Pithy and meticulous, he brings his Zen training into play, challenging Weiss to ask him questions that no-one else had asked before. Its a truly wonderful encounter which bears rich fruit.

Weiss writes: 'Snyder is as close as we'll find to a legitimnate visionary....whose prescient views on recycling, overconsumption and leaving a modest footprint are now accepted wisdom among all but the most gluttonous.'

Published by Last Gasp of San Francisco.
1988. Original edition/Olympia Press 1969.
The Generalist Library

Equally impressive is Weiss' profile and interview with the most prominent female Beat Diane Di Prima, who has authored more than 40 volumes of poems, prose and stage plays. She also co-founded the New York Poet's Theatre, operated her own independent press and ran the 'Floating Bear' literary journal with her then clandestine lover LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka).

Here poetic strategies are valuable. I like it when she tells Weiss:"My subconscious would tell my mind to catch where the poem had fallen down". She reminds you that you are just receiving the poems and advises writers: "Read a lot. Read out loud a lot."

Weiss sketches a vivid picture of this truly remarkable womsan, fragile and virtually bedridden but 'her orphic transmissions continue unabated'. He writes: 'Da Prima is one such rarity: a conductor of benevolent spells, a natural-born Gnostic, an antenna for arcane prophecies.'

Published by Simon and Schuster. 1993. 1st
Edition. the Generalist Library.

Herbert Gold is the first to say that he's not a Beat but his 30+ novels, non-fiction and short-story collections and his life in general interweaves with the Beat scene. Ginsberg, he says, alweays asked him why he didn't try homosexuality. "How would I know if I didn't like it'. He didn't like Kerouac at all: "Kerouac destroyed himself with alcohol by 47. Like James Dean, he looks great stenciled on T-shirts."

His 1993 memoir 'Bohemia' is packed with reminiscences about Burroughs, Norman Mailer, Jean Genet, Anais Nin and Tom Wolfe. During his time in Paris, he was mentored by Saul Bellow and James Baldwin. Nabokov considered him one of America's finest writers. All of which whets the appetite for exploring Gold's work further.

With this long-form piece, Weiss has made great and timely contribution, bringing valuable insights and information on these seminal survivors into our  consciousness at a time when they are needed most.




DRIVING THE BEAT ROAD by Jeff Weiss can be read and experienced on the Washington Post website. The text is interspersed with some great black and white photos and peppered with video and audio links. Its a remarkable piece of work which is worth repeated readings.

CLICK HERE TO SEE PREVIOUS BEAT POSTS ON THE GENERALIST 

JOURNALISM FOR OUR TIMES: CAROLE CADWALLADR / FINTAN O' TOOLE / REBECCA SOLNIT

The Malestrom

Britain's suffering (or enjoying) a heatwave at present whilst an atmosphere of drama and uncertainty prevails on the political and economic front. We are in uncharted territory and no pollsters or pundits can be sure of the outcome. It's at times like this that great journalism rises to the challenge. These pieces are essential reading:

Arron Banks: ‘Brexit was a war. We won. There’s no turning back now’ by Carole Cadwalladr 
[Observer 2nd April 2017]
Now out of Ukip – the party he bankrolled – Arron Banks is creating a political movement of his own. We met the ‘bad boy of Brexit’ just before article 50 was triggered – and found his ambitions go far beyond leaving Europe

This is a very chilling piece about how a group of men, working on both sides of the Atlantic. have successfully intervened with our democratic procedures using sophisticated algorithms and dark arts. They are the real enemy.

Arron Banks (second left) with Donald Trump. Banks and Nigel Farrage with Raheem Kassam (far right), the editor of Breitbart London [a right-wing website], are the self-styled “bad boys of Brexit”. 

'Though Nigel Farage is the face of Brexit, Arron Banks is the man who made it possible. He bought Brexit. Or at least paid for it. Until 2014 he was an unknown Bristol businessman. Now he’s the biggest political donor in British political history. The most powerful. He put more money into funding the Leave campaign than anyone else – more than £7m. He donated his office space, his computer equipment, his senior staff. He’s the co-founder of Leave.EU, the so-called “provisional wing” of the Leave campaign, spearheaded by his close confidante Nigel Farage, and he’s now contemplating his next move: taking an axe to the rest of the parliamentary system.'

The Independent is keeping its eye on the activities of Breitbart.

Britain: The End of a Fantasy
by Fintan O’Toole
[The New York Review of Books June 10, 2017]

For sometime now, it has been The Generalist's view that what we are witnessing is the beginning of the end of the Ancien Regime in Britain. This important and powerful piece nails it.

'May doesn’t actually believe in Brexit, she’s improvising a way forward very roughly sketched out by other people. She’s a terrible actor mouthing a script in which there is no plot and no credible ending that is not an anti-climax. Brexit is a back-of-the-envelope proposition. Strip away the post-imperial make-believe and the Little England nostalgia, and there’s almost nothing there, no clear sense of how a middling European country with little native industry can hope to thrive by cutting itself off from its biggest trading partner and most important political alliance.'

Protest and persist: why giving up hope is not an option 
by Rebecca Solnit
[The Guardian 13th March 2017]

The true impact of activism may not be felt for a generation. That alone is reason to fight, rather than surrender to despair

Rebecca Solnit is one of the most important writers of our time who bears comparison with Joan Didion in the 60s and Hunter S. Thompson during the Nixon years. A committed activist, her numerous books and journalism are essential reading. The above link is to a podcast. See also:

'The Loneliness of Donald Trump: On The Corrosive Privilege of the Most Mocked Man in the World.'
[Literary Hub May 30th 2017]

In recent weeks I have been reading and rereading Solnit's 'Hope In The Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities', first published in 2005 and reprinted with a new introduction in 2016. Hope is the most important idea to hang on to. Solnit traces five decades of protest and brings together deep thoughts of value in these difficult days. A superb prose stylist, Solnit will raise your spirits and will encourage you to greater efforts. She writes: 'An extraordinary imaginative power to reinvent ourselves is at large in the world.' She quotes from the aptly named Chris Bright:

'But the biggest obstacle to reinventing ourselves may be simply a kind of paralysis of hope. It is possible to see very clearly that our current economies are toxic, destructive on a gargantuan scale, and grossly unfair—to see all this and still have difficulty imagin-ing effective reform . . . We are used to constant flux in the daily details of existence, yet the basic structure of the status quo always looks so unalterable. But it's not. Profound change for the better does occur, even though it can be difficult to see because one of the most common effects of success is to be taken for granted. What looks perfectly ordinary after the fact would often have seemed like a miracle before it. '

I like the late John Berger's quote about Solnit:

 'Time and again, Solnit comes running towards you with a bunch of hope she has found and picked in the undergrowth of the rime we are living in. And you remember that hope is not a guarantee for tomorrow but a detonator of energy for action today.'

See Also: Rebecca Solnit: The self as story

Photo: Jim Herrington

PRINT IS DEAD, LONG LIVE PRINT / RUTH JAMIESON

Having spent a lifetime working with print and having an archive of magazines and papers dating back to the early 1960s, THE GENERALIST is delighted on a number of levels to  have discovered Ruth Jamieson's book [published by Prestel in 2015].

Elegantly designed and beautifully printed [in Slovenia] on black matt paper, Jamieson profiles more than 50 independent magazines in a stylish and intelligent fashion, showing covers and spreads and interviewing the creators. The huge range of creativity on display is awesome and stimulating, showing the inexhaustible possibilities inherent in the medium.

Equally valuable is the intro essay which explains that the mainstream newsstand mags may be dead or dying - their circulations and advertising eroded by the on-line world -  but a new generation of independent mags have emerged -  beautiful, collectable and timeless

objects, largely ad free, idea led, design focused and reader funded, with an international readership connected buy the internet not geography. This revolution in content, style and priorities also extends to the business model with alternative methods of distribution and financing. It's a fascinating story.

Fortunately, since the book's publication, Ruth Jamieson has been pursuing this wave of change with articles in 'Eye on Design' the on-line newsletter of AIGA, the oldest and largest not-for-profit membership organization for design in the United States. As you would expect, their logo and website are exemplary.

In 'Predicting for 2017'' [published December 21st, 2016], she writes:
'Whatever else went down in 2016, it was a strong year for magazines; this will go down in the books as the year independent publishing came of age.'

Amongst the trends she predicted are:

F*ck perfection: who’s sick of overly precious, overly curated minimalist mags, say aye! The next wave of magazines will be fast, cheap, and fun.

No more Mr. Nice Guy: now that all the feel-good lifestyle niches have been filled, we’re overdue for some honest, thought-provoking, and accessible political discussion.

In a great essay 'From Escapism to Activism, the Indie Mag Scene is Woke: How turbulent times are changing the face of publishing' [published March 15th, 2017], she confirms Prediction 2 in spades. It concludes:

'The thing I love about print is that just when you think you’ve got a handle on its role in our lives, it changes. If you’d asked me a year ago I’d have said print magazines were affordable luxury objects that allowed us to switch off. Now, in 2017, reading magazines is more about necessity. These titles drive activism, not escapism. Necessarily ephemeral, it’s a magazine’s job to respond to its moment in time.'

BIG THANKS to Paul Gorman for turning me on to this article. His book on the history of 'The Face' magazine is to be published  later this year.

 *

Why the Smart Reading Device of the Future May Be … Paper

Random Keim / Wired / May 1st 2014.

Why do traditional paper books remain so popular, especially for deep, immersive reading? Are some people simply too stubborn and nostalgic to adapt to new technologies? Perhaps it's because paper books are themselves a highly sophisticated technology, one that's uniquely good at stimulating focus and concentration.

[Thanks to Stephen Alexander in Queensland for tip-off]

SEE PREVIOUS POSTS

 MANGUEL and BORGES

Friday, September 14, 2007

GREEN PUBLISHING and THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK

 Saturday, November 15, 2008

PAPER1: AN ELEGY / IAN SANSOM

Monday, November 19, 2012

[Left: Signed paperback copy of 'A History of Reading' by Alberto Manguel / The Generalist Archive ]