Ironic Application Part 1: Introducing quotes, taste & TMWRNJ
- This is the beginning of a new series, my own perusal of contemporary taste.
Ironic Application Part 1: INTRODUCING QUOTES, TASTE & TMWRNJ
“I don’t know art, but I know what I like.”
- Gelett Burgess
The above line is, I assume, familiar to most to some degree. I came across it most recently while watching a Monty Python sketch featuring the Pope and the famed artist Michelangelo. After His Holiness reprimands the artist about the extent to which he pushes his artistic license in depicting Christ and the Last Supper, Michelangelo opines that the Holy See is an artistic fascist. The Pope, of course, responds with the wit and grace of a man of God. “Look. I’m the bloody Pope, I am. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like!”
After a little research, I found that the original quote is most often credited to the artist, poet, author and cultural critic Frank Gelett Burgess. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that the line itself inspired the cogs of my mind to motion in any remarkable way, but it situated itself amongst thoughts that had been forming over a period of time.
To begin a lengthy personal discourse upon the question or problem of what art is, certainly is not my intention here. I do not know art, as it were. Perhaps I might be able to recognise or perceive art in some instances, if indeed art is at all, but the idea is inherently problematic. Instead, I find myself bound to discuss the assertion made by Burgess; that while he may not know art, he knows what he likes.
Crucial to what I am discussing is that Burgess does not disregard art. Rather, he affirms its existence. In saying that he finds it easier, as an essentially natural process, to discern what he likes, and situating that assertion upon the discussion of cultural and artistic connaissance, there is an implication that there is a denial of the natural by the typical artistic consumer. The artistic consumer seeks to discern what is art, through various avenues of oratory or varying degrees of intellectual discourse and, upon that discernment, can know what he or she, or a functioning social group, likes.
“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”
- Marcel Duchamp
A level of tempering or disavowal of one’s own natural taste as a function of the perceiving, subjective self is inherent to the development of a fuller taste. At one point on a spectrum, it may be the viewer of a pornographic text who then experiences a natural post-masturbation guilt linked to the problems of consumption of such material and their implications within the psyche of the viewer or a wider issue of society. At another it may be the grasping of irony and its layered application on a primary text of music, literature, film etc.
The Ironic Review, a comic segment on Richard Herring and Stewart Lee’s late nineties BBC show This Morning with Richard not Judy, or TMWRNJ as is lovingly known by many, muses upon the latter idea, considered ironic application. It is something comparable to the similarly satirically charged Sugar Ape magazine feature of Nathan Barley. The first installment that appeared on Lee and Herring’s first series is symptomatic of the whole. I implore you to watch it because it is very funny and pretty relevant to how this series of blog entries will go. Link below:
THE IRONIC REVIEW
Watching that may prove enough work for now. Ideas of irony and its cultural application will be the basis of investigation for the next couple of posts.
December 31, 2010 | Categories: Art, Cultural, Observation, Polemic, Questions?, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Artistic expression, Ironic Review, Irony, Quotes, TMWRNJ | Leave A Comment »
Horrible sickness. Filling space and time for a brief period before a death.
“… and even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved…”
Helplessness. You cannot find a key that you need to progress. Helplessness devours you. You wait for safety, in stasis, or struggle to go forwards. Because you cannot go backwards. Vladimir and Estragon would have. But it all ends the same and there is no way to delay it. You occupy time and space, reaching out for something, anything. A goal, a person, a phone call, a birth, a death, a dollar or a cathartic epiphany that tells you what to do or where you’re going. Time hits you as it travels by your shoulder, whispering to you that you are going to die at some point, that every second that passes no longer exists and you are unable to do anything.
Everything that has ever happened to you is irretrievable. Time does not remember. You cannot ever look into her greyish blue eyes for the first time again, nor dwell upon it. Memory is corrupted and is not a history. The seconds will run by you again. So you wait for a moment despite the fact that you can only ever exist in the present, or even try to force a moment. Nothing at all exists other than what is in the present. History, your first kiss, your last birthday, a cigarette, a chance meeting. They might be mildly relevant but who is to judge? Time itself is a chain reaction that does not even exist itself, an abstract metaphysical concept that designates moments or seconds or years as moments or seconds or years.
The sun rises and then sets. There is night and day. The cycle goes on until your second is up. You no longer exist. The phone call you were waiting fifty years or five minutes for is a trivial footnote that no longer effects anything. The letter that offered you something, or was returned to the sender with a slop of lipstick on it; it has turned to dust. And it is never alright. There is no satisfaction because you are constantly battling against the gradient of time. You do not have enough years or decades to be satisfied. She grows older too. Are you loved, do you love or is there love at all? Is that an answer? Even when you are curled up together the seconds slip away, yet you deny that you cannot hold her forever. When you look back it never happened anyway because all there is over your shoulder is time escaping with little pieces of you.
It is the only thing that you cannot do anything about. You can kick and scream and write helpless blog entries. Time will be passed. You will transition between moments still waiting. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved… But it never really comes. You may decide to be happy. You may ignore it all. Power to those who can “live,” with momentum. But trying to grab onto a buoy adrift in time is just so difficult, because you are hurtling towards an end, or another moment.
The human condition represents a perilous, ultimately fatal journey through time. All we can do is try to come to terms with the unbearable concept of existence, pretending that we are okay, just coping with the loss of self as we slowly fade away.
September 25, 2010 | Categories: Death, Observation, Questions?, Religion, Romance, Sex, Social, The Human Condition, Waiting | Tags: Death, Dying slowly, Human Condition, Struggle, Time | Leave A Comment »
Mass ruined, “renegade” priest arrested, Brady silent
The following is a fully fictional news report. It has no basis on any reality whatsoever. Any correlation with reality or real people, past or present, is completely coincidental.
MASS RUINED, “RENEGADE” PRIEST ARRESTED, BRADY SILENT
- April 2010
It has emerged that yet another Catholic Priest had been arrested in the child abuse controversy that continues to rock the Irish Catholic Church. According to reports close to the story, Fr. Brendan Smyth of Castleblarney in Kerry is being held on suspicion of not abusing young children.
Gardaí apprehended Fr. Smyth in the middle of 10 o’clock mass at Castleblarney’s Church of the Holy Carpenter yesterday morning. They can hold him for questioning for up to 72 hours before pressing charges, in line with Section X-62π9-5D of the Criminal Justice Act.
While there has been no official confirmation as of yet from Gardaí, it has been suggested that Fr. Smyth was the subject of numerous complaints from his parishioners over the past number of years. One member of that congregation who wishes to remain anonymous told lolquietly of how Fr. Smyth had made him feel “ugly.”
“I’d go away to see my cousins in Meath or Dublin and it seemed to me that every child I spoke to was talking about their experiences at school or after mass. Fr. Smyth never showed an interest in any of us, leaving hundreds unmolested. He made us feel like ugly little children as we grew up. That’s why we informed the Gardaí. The bastard.”
If convicted, Fr. Smyth could face up to seven years in prison, the maximum punishment for not methodically beating, molesting and raping little boys and girls. That lengthy sentence would not be unprecedented but depends on the extent of Fr. Smyth’s refusal to look at the youth of his parish as sexual release from holy abstinence.
This latest stain on the reputation of the Catholic Church in Ireland comes at a very difficult time as numerous priests are being revealed to have “let the side down,” in the words of Papal representative Giuseppe Leanza. The Most Reverend Leanza expressed his outrage in an unusually candid radio interview with George Hook on Hook’s syndicated Newstalk show yesterday evening.
“I really can’t believe it,” said Leanza when asked by Hook of how the continuing revelations were affecting the church. “In these times of crisis we are trying to present a united front but this kind of renegade behaviour is undermining that effort. Many have, em, indulged, and for a small minority to be publicly exposed as having never, em, indulged, really does show the whole lot of us in a poor light. I am extremely disappointed in Fr. Smyth’s behaviour.”
It is widely alleged that Cardinal Seán Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, was fully aware of Fr. Smyth’s behaviour over the course of his priesthood. Indeed, Fr. Smyth’s refusal to abuse children was, according to most media outlets, actively covered up by His Eminence as part of an internal Church legal process in 1975. The process saw victims of Fr. Smyth’s restraint implored to remain silent about their troubles and forced to sign oaths not to discuss the lack of penetrative, paedophilic sex they were subjected to.
When contacted by lolquietly, Cardinal Brady was unable to comment due to his head being firmly buried in his anal cavity. His secretary said that she was unsure when her employer planned to extricate his head from his posterior, but speculated that it wouldn’t be any time soon due to his unwillingness to face the reality of his wrong doing in aiding Fr. Smyth’s systematic refusal to destroy the lives of children.
After the publication of the Murphy Report late last year, Cardinal Brady speculated on the position of former Limerick Bishop, Donal Murray: “If I found myself in a situation where I was aware that my failure to act had allowed or meant that children were not abused, well then, I think I would resign.” The report had asserted that Bishop Murray had mishandled allegations of a lack of systematic institutional abuse of children within his diocese.
Cardinal Brady is yet to fully admit that his active participation in covering up the abstinence of Fr. Smyth led to numerous further cases of children going unmolested. To any individual with a reasonable grasp of logic, it would seem that his actions are inexcusable. He helped a priest to get away with refusing to abuse young children. These children were damaged by their not being the sexual targets of a sick and twisted man, and many of them were scarred for life. Fr. Smyth is obviously a terrible man – he is the one who consistently refused to have sex with children – but Cardinal Brady’s guilty position as an accomplice cannot be overlooked.
lolquietly
June 17, 2010 | Categories: Crime, News Story, Questions?, Religion, Social | Tags: Catholic Church, Child Sex Abuse, Guilt, News Story, Paedophile Priests, Sean Brady | Leave A Comment »
Irony Croaks. Old News?
Irony is dead. Apparently.
In the early hours of yesterday morning the shocking news of the death of Irony began to filter through to the waking world. Over the coming days, it is expected that she will be cremated at a small ceremony to be attended by close friends and family including her aging and ailing father, Wit, and her now senile mother, Knowledge. Early indications also suggest that her ashes will be scattered at the same beach where those of her late brother, Intelligence, were strewn lovingly just over a decade ago after his widely ignored suicide.
A clear picture has yet to be revealed of what actually happened but it was at around 6am that emergency services found Irony’s body. The unfortunate discovery was made after neighbours decided to alert police to a disturbance at her home. According to most media outlets covering the story, that disturbance came in the form of a piercing scream that was heard up to a mile around. This story has since been confirmed by a community spokesperson, the deceased’s neighbour, Ignorance.
“I was lying in bed when I heard the scream,” Ignorance told lolquietly. “I usually work around the clock so I really treasure the rare chances I get to catch some shut eye. Needless to say, I was furious when I was disturbed. I immediately rang Apathy, her neighbour on the other side. He said that he had heard it but was just planning on going back to sleep. It was when I called Intolerance, who lives just a few doors down, that we decided to make the complaint about the noise.”
Unofficial reports from sources close to the investigation have painted a stark and brutal picture of Irony’s death scene. After the promise of monetary reward and total anonymity, a police officer confidentially told us of how Irony was found lying face down, naked, in a pool of what he could only guess was a mixture of her own blood and faeces. Her posterior was hitched up slightly and, according to our inside source, had a huge pair of novelty sunglasses lodged firmly in her bloodied anal cavity with an even larger pair of headphones protruding from her mutilated vagina. Lol.
While nothing concrete has yet been revealed by police about their progress with the case, they have publicly stated that they are treating Irony’s death as extremely suspicious. This seemingly tragic incident is, unfortunately, an appropriately crimson final curtain for a woman who suffered a great deal through her life’s dénouement. Indeed, it is the death of her brother, Intelligence, which marks the point where she came to know real hardship.
Intelligence had been a well-respected member of society for a number of years and lived a pleasant life. He was seen by some as an ideal, an example for their children to try to follow. However, as time passed, Intelligence became difficult for those around him to engage with. While he professed that he had not changed, it was clear that the world around him had and, despite his best efforts, there was little he could do about it. He didn’t quite fit in with the conscienceless, postmodern evolutions of a wider society where it was becoming accepted to aspire towards different examples.
His childhood and college nemesis, Stupidity, usurped the reverence that had once been his. Stupidity in his different guises became the ideal, as long as the individual was self-aware and exaggerated their love for him to disingenuously sardonic levels. Of course, it wouldn’t have been wise for Stupidity to retain his real name as it carried overtly unintelligent connotations. Instead he used different aliases including Kookiness, Quirkiness and, to really make Intelligence’s blood boil, Irony.
It quickly became evident to Intelligence that he had effectively been rendered defunct as an entity. Furthermore, for Stupidity to drag his sister into the mix was disgusting. Irony was used and abused to indulge in Stupidity. This realisation left Intelligence without hope. It led him to take his own life with the help of a shotgun. A short suicide note was found in his pocket:
“Not only have I been shunned by society, but I am now an actively ridiculed hate figure. I would justify my choice of death over life if I thought that anybody would care. Please stop hurting Irony. I’m sorry I won’t be there to protect her. It’s better to burn out than to fade away, smoke weed every day.”
He was right. When it was covered in the media it was obvious that the general public did not care about the death of Intelligence. If anything, it was old news. Society had rejected and killed Intelligence before the trivial footnote that was his physical death. He had faded away before he had burnt out. This just meant that he wouldn’t be coming back. Obviously, that suited the herd right down to the ground.
Irony had encountered different problems in postmodern society. As Intelligence was demonised and then slowly forgotten, she was made a mockery of by a world which had embraced the cult of Stupidity. As she walked by they would pinch her bottom or make terrible jokes at her expense. Needless to say, with Intelligence’s final expiration, this treatment went from bad to worse. Intelligence had always been integral to Irony but now, without him, she became a commodity for indiscriminate use.
Before long, bottom pinching and verbal abuse turned to brutal beatings and gang rape. Towards the end of her life she was essentially a scrap of a woman, helpless to the whims of Stupidity and his followers. When they wanted to use Irony to their benefit, no matter how questionable the instance, they did so without a care for her integrity and a bare disdain for the memory of Intelligence.
As early and crude as it may seem, it has been quietly suggested by some that Stupidity essentially raped Irony to death. Stupidity made Irony a useless piece of meat and the horror of her death scene looks, sadly, to have been a fitting end.
The murder investigation is beginning and police are appealing for information that may lead to a resolution. Stupidity has already been questioned over any possible links, but it would be remiss to place the blame with him just yet. Maybe another question needs to be asked though. Is there blood on the hands of wider society? Stupidity reigns but, as long as we are happy to actively or passively indulge in Stupidity in his many guises, we are fully complicit.
lolquietly
June 15, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, News Story, Observation, Questions?, Social | Tags: Culture, Death, Irony, News, Society | Leave A Comment »

