With the exception of a visit to 'The Loveless' (formerly The Twitterdilly Arms) by Astra yesterday lunchtime, all has been quiet in both MorrisseysWorld and Morrissey's world, so I have spent my morning listening to Billy Fury songs (particularly It's You I Need), watching Moz clips on Youtube, and trawling through the unpublished archives of FTM.
Astra's very brief visit saw her thank Heather and EARS for their kind words and thoughts, and saw her also retweet my tweets about The Twit Arms being renamed The Loveless, and Joe Dallesandro joining the throng.... although as there are only about a dozen of us, perhaps throng isn't quite the right word! Astra also told me that Janitor of Lunacy was, "Sublime Nico, at her sublime Nico hardest".
Astra actually made another very brief visit to The Loveless at 9.30pm, to simply tweet, "Well, that was the end of that. And the other."Of course, I have no idea what Astra was referring to, but I can't help feeling that something's been Marred!
Also seen hanging around The Loveless in recent days, is Marion singer Jaime Harding (@jaimehofficial), who has been favouriting a certain somebody's tweets. Hmm.
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One of the Morrissey songs that I have been watching on Youtube this morning, is I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday from his 45th birthday concert in Manchester. I was instantly reminded that Morrissey DIDN'T use the 'radio transmission' intro that is used on the Your Arsenal LP at that concert, and yet, when the song was brought back into the set in San Jose May 2014, the 'radio transmission' intro was used, which, of course, was on the back of those many conversations on FTM during the early months of 2014, in which Mademoiselle Fifi informed us that the 'radio transmission' intro to the song was a Jean Cocteau influence from Orpheus. God, this journey of ours has been exciting!
And now for a little something that I found whilst rummaging through the unpublished FTM archives. This is a MorrissysWorld blog classic from 2012:
WEDNESDAY, 8 AUGUST 2012
An Essay on Loneliness in the 20th Century
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Before television, before radio, before photography, the kiss was a beautiful accident, a mysterious rumour, an uncertain recoiling. The senses were clean and vigorous - deprived, yearning and unfettered by the morass of over-stimulation, artless communication and deadened intellect, which characterise 21st century living. When television year by year becomes something closer to parent, teacher, judgemental peer - the source of knowledge, the cause of laughter, the purpose of living - the homogenisation of humankind is almost complete. Now that television is what we do, our actual lives are relegated to a sideshow, a meaningless burden which we undertake with extreme reluctance, like sleep to a child. The mindless carnival of mediocrity that is media-brand Britain is nothing less than a cultural cancer.
In the 21st century loneliness has taken on an entirely different meaning. Loneliness is no longer silent, grey and voiceless; it is loud, high definition colour - voices, voices, always voices. They cry, shriek, lavishly swoon; they fawn over and under; they ignore, deny, speak over; while we matriculate into media-brand existence; we copy and we adjust. Loneliness in the 20th century was not displaceable. Even when technologies arose to submerge the quietly hollow screaming - of boredom, of emptiness, of loneliness - under an ocean of sounds, pictures and feelings, we were not entirely of the media. Loneliness is no longer satisfying. Loneliness is virtual reality where once it was nothing at all. The space has gone. The imaginary life of media is now so deeply embedded, we are all television. Television is us.
Technology is the plughole through which our humanity pours like used bathwater. No heart yearns like the lonely heart. The mad cravings of the lonely are the very soul of romance. Facebook iPod Internet Flat-Screen Television; dry rot in the fabric of the heart. When I walked home in the rain, I tasted those Pinot Noir lips of rich cherry, I saw those eyes of black. Now there is no need. Every thing is at your fingertips, flat and grimly satisfying.
Today's youth will fall in love on Facebook.
The quiet dignity of life smeared with Nutella, images of the royals projected in all their ostentatious stupidity, the vile patriotic bluster of a war-mongering elite, keen to keep the working class and middle class in line with their austerity scheme. The budget for unnecessary war is, as ever, limitless. The outcry is... nowhere.
The drip, drip, drip of the media cycle. The same stories on half-hourly repeat. Man in suit. Younger woman with expensive perm. Smiling through empty eyes. Celebrity watching.
Loneliness was a threat, a promise, a dream, a nightmare.
Today loneliness is nothing but boredom.
Pragmatists fall in love using their senses. Idealists fall in love while they're alone. But when, oh when are you alone?
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The nineteen seventies were a time of tremendous excitement. Fighting bravely against religious morality seemed to be the vocation of any intelligent person. Feminism liberated the feminine spirit. Gay rights achieved lasting safety for the persecuted. Animal rights and vegetarianism spread like wild fire and still do so today, though they have not yet created a secure environment for animals.
Yet we have replaced one form of mindless moral oppression with another.
Where once religion drove censorship and oppression, it is now the government.
Can human beings not simply be free?
'Hell is other people' wrote Sartre.
Cast aside technology and embrace solitude; embrace yourself.
Astra's very brief visit saw her thank Heather and EARS for their kind words and thoughts, and saw her also retweet my tweets about The Twit Arms being renamed The Loveless, and Joe Dallesandro joining the throng.... although as there are only about a dozen of us, perhaps throng isn't quite the right word! Astra also told me that Janitor of Lunacy was, "Sublime Nico, at her sublime Nico hardest".
Astra actually made another very brief visit to The Loveless at 9.30pm, to simply tweet, "Well, that was the end of that. And the other."Of course, I have no idea what Astra was referring to, but I can't help feeling that something's been Marred!
Also seen hanging around The Loveless in recent days, is Marion singer Jaime Harding (@jaimehofficial), who has been favouriting a certain somebody's tweets. Hmm.
One of the Morrissey songs that I have been watching on Youtube this morning, is I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday from his 45th birthday concert in Manchester. I was instantly reminded that Morrissey DIDN'T use the 'radio transmission' intro that is used on the Your Arsenal LP at that concert, and yet, when the song was brought back into the set in San Jose May 2014, the 'radio transmission' intro was used, which, of course, was on the back of those many conversations on FTM during the early months of 2014, in which Mademoiselle Fifi informed us that the 'radio transmission' intro to the song was a Jean Cocteau influence from Orpheus. God, this journey of ours has been exciting!
And now for a little something that I found whilst rummaging through the unpublished FTM archives. This is a MorrissysWorld blog classic from 2012:
WEDNESDAY, 8 AUGUST 2012
An Essay on Loneliness in the 20th Century
Before television, before radio, before photography, the kiss was a beautiful accident, a mysterious rumour, an uncertain recoiling. The senses were clean and vigorous - deprived, yearning and unfettered by the morass of over-stimulation, artless communication and deadened intellect, which characterise 21st century living. When television year by year becomes something closer to parent, teacher, judgemental peer - the source of knowledge, the cause of laughter, the purpose of living - the homogenisation of humankind is almost complete. Now that television is what we do, our actual lives are relegated to a sideshow, a meaningless burden which we undertake with extreme reluctance, like sleep to a child. The mindless carnival of mediocrity that is media-brand Britain is nothing less than a cultural cancer.
In the 21st century loneliness has taken on an entirely different meaning. Loneliness is no longer silent, grey and voiceless; it is loud, high definition colour - voices, voices, always voices. They cry, shriek, lavishly swoon; they fawn over and under; they ignore, deny, speak over; while we matriculate into media-brand existence; we copy and we adjust. Loneliness in the 20th century was not displaceable. Even when technologies arose to submerge the quietly hollow screaming - of boredom, of emptiness, of loneliness - under an ocean of sounds, pictures and feelings, we were not entirely of the media. Loneliness is no longer satisfying. Loneliness is virtual reality where once it was nothing at all. The space has gone. The imaginary life of media is now so deeply embedded, we are all television. Television is us.
Technology is the plughole through which our humanity pours like used bathwater. No heart yearns like the lonely heart. The mad cravings of the lonely are the very soul of romance. Facebook iPod Internet Flat-Screen Television; dry rot in the fabric of the heart. When I walked home in the rain, I tasted those Pinot Noir lips of rich cherry, I saw those eyes of black. Now there is no need. Every thing is at your fingertips, flat and grimly satisfying.
Today's youth will fall in love on Facebook.
The quiet dignity of life smeared with Nutella, images of the royals projected in all their ostentatious stupidity, the vile patriotic bluster of a war-mongering elite, keen to keep the working class and middle class in line with their austerity scheme. The budget for unnecessary war is, as ever, limitless. The outcry is... nowhere.
The drip, drip, drip of the media cycle. The same stories on half-hourly repeat. Man in suit. Younger woman with expensive perm. Smiling through empty eyes. Celebrity watching.
Loneliness was a threat, a promise, a dream, a nightmare.
Today loneliness is nothing but boredom.
Pragmatists fall in love using their senses. Idealists fall in love while they're alone. But when, oh when are you alone?
The nineteen seventies were a time of tremendous excitement. Fighting bravely against religious morality seemed to be the vocation of any intelligent person. Feminism liberated the feminine spirit. Gay rights achieved lasting safety for the persecuted. Animal rights and vegetarianism spread like wild fire and still do so today, though they have not yet created a secure environment for animals.
Yet we have replaced one form of mindless moral oppression with another.
Where once religion drove censorship and oppression, it is now the government.
Can human beings not simply be free?
'Hell is other people' wrote Sartre.
Cast aside technology and embrace solitude; embrace yourself.