Nyx 5 - Myth

Issue 5 of the renowned cultural magazine Nyx is to be launched on the 27th May. Centered around the sprawling topic of myth, you can expect to find thoughts relating to Pepsi, revolutionaries, Rage Against the Machine, the Big Society, Happiness and post-simian becomings.

http://www.nyxnoctournal.com/home.htm

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There will be those who's eyes dodge the lens of their glasses, who peer over the frame with the stern eyes of critique and dismiss the whole affair without uttering a word. And those who put the printed word to death long ago and have long since ceased their lament. And still those who put 2 fingers up and say go away your argument is flawed and you're an obscurantist.

But to you I say I may put ice cream in my coffee! I may have African rooibos and red thyme shower gel! And dammit when the time comes to address the problem of the nature of myths which are in turn products of the myths that constitute our understanding of the world, you better believe I'll give you an an answer. Now fetch my pipe!

Sketch for a theory of invisibility

As hopeless prisoners of ourselves, cruelly predisposed to a sensory faith, we are never able to not hear the tree crash but know of its sound. Aliens to the event, it ceases to matter. The question of the acoustic residue of a crashing tree becomes replaced by another: did the tree ever fall?

As cohabitants in the house of ego, that merciless housewife of apparent unity, we only care for the status of the tree insofar as it effects the immediacy of our being. The question is once more supplanted: does the tree exist?

To some, it may; to I, it does not - other issues are at hand. But I do not question the realist; I am prepared to concede that it exists, but is invisible.

To be visible is:

1. to influence the nature of the field of vision.

2. to register upon the perceptive apparatus of the observer.

3. to be mediated.

The degree of visibility/invisibility is correlative to the degree of obse

rvation.

This is the ontological condition of being visible.

The tree in question, its existence and its acoustic qualities, bear no significance, for these questions only come into being once the tree has been deemed visible. Until then, it is invisible and immaterial.

Thus, to be invisible is:

1. to not influence the nature of the field of vision.

2. to fail to register upon the perceptive apparatus of the observer.

3. to be isolated.

Invisibility is a matter of negation.

On attaining invisibility

One cannot decide to be invisible, it can only occur through the co-operation with perceptive beings, and their ability to not perceive.

The insignificance of the object leads to its failure to be observed, thus to be insignificant is to increase chance of invisibility.

Insignificance is the inability to affect the environment, it is stasis manifest in suspension; a perimeter that connects to nothing.

Invisibility is the visual non-manifestation of the force of neglect.

The invisible lacks substance; it lacks the impetus with which to become visible. The invisible thus secures its own sustained invisibility.

To be invisible is to not be: to not be is to not be invisible: the condition of double negation.

The invisible non-being's sustained non-being is assured. This is the one and only attribute of the invisible - endlessness.

End.

On this day . . .

Police Numbers to be Cut.

Government crack down on gang culture.

Home secretary Theresa May is committed to new measures to prevent 'known hooligans' (pictured) from attending future demonstrations. Said May on the gang's violence during recent protests, 'The message to those who carry out violence is "You will be caught and you will be punished."'

But the Police, a gang based in London but with a network spanning the nation, have been notoriously difficult to indict, having frequently eluded continued efforts to bring them to justice. Attempts to resolve high profile cases such as the deaths of Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes end up being thwarted by the bureaucracy of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and the problems of violence at protests and institutionalised racism continue to thrive.

Without the ability to completely crush the Police, the hope is that cutting numbers may combat some problems.

All I know is that I know nothing.

Apart from one eternal truth . . . you can't shave when you're in exile.

Post-postbox experiences

The great red phallus has gone too far this time.

Look out for documented accounts of one man's struggle searching for humanity in the crippled postal service . . . to be put up here soon.

Worth Noting: the really free school.

Yesterday I went to the Really Free School, a space invented by a collection of proactive individuals in the wake of an education increasingly becoming threatened by supermarket aisle logic. The Really Free School indeed professes to be free - and it is. 'You will not spend one penny inside these doors...' they say. It is also free in the sense that it is transient, unanchored and manoeuvrable, both in the sense that the schedule and topics covered are in constant flux, dependent simply on what sessions people want to propose, announced a couple of days before they are due; and that hired thugs turn up to eject them from their premises, and court proceedings linger threateningly. Happily though, no one seems too troubled but these somewhat empty threats.

Having previously been based in a house in Bloomsbury Square and Guy Ritchie's house in Fitzrovia, in obviously fun but unstable circumstances, the Really Free School seems to have settled for now in a pub, The Black Horse, near Oxford Street. That's where I went yesterday, having been intrigued by a lecture on the Middle-East.

On one of those pub-sign-balckboard-things you get outside pubs was scrawled a few of the events that were taking place. Another sign just inside the door had the schedule of classes happening that day. Such delights included Indonesian Lessons, ethnomusicology, a workshop by the Paper and the Middle-East history lesson I had gone for.

I chatted to a couple of chaps manning the door for a while, who are effectively living in this pub. They told of the ups and downs of their precarious existence spreading the good word of education. A bashed up piano was there. I sipped my coffee and gormed at things. An anti-capitalist banner spread across the inner wall, and I new I was in the right place.

I was directed upstairs to where the Middle-East class was due to be held, and I wandered into a room containing what can only be described as a 'circle group'. I've been in the vicinity of many of these recently. This one was slightly different as someone was sitting in the middle, presumably a kind of focal point of the discussion, a target of interrogation. The content had a revolutionary spirit, an analysis of the protests in Egypt and Libya and their analogous qualities to things happening back in happily democratic Britain.

I assumed the Middle-East class was next, so I slunk into a corner, found a chair a positioned myself upon it. No one questioned me, included me, or noticed me - it was business as usual. Then someone else came in and asked 'is this the Middle-East?' 'I think it's upstairs,' someone replied.

There was another upstairs. Stupidly I had remained in mere id territory, I still had another flight of stairs before reaching the ego. I went up too far, found come bedrooms, mattresses on the floor, sleeping bags, and went down again. I found a small collective preparing for the talk. A blackboard lay horizontally on a table with a map of the Middle-East on it, all in an unassuming beige room, where the windows failed to keep out the busyness of Oxford Street down below. As I enjoyed the juxtaposition, the talk started.

For one and a half hours this young guy, a student from SOAS, traced the history of the Middle-East from Muhammad to now, pointing out the misconceptions along the way; illuminating the complexities and ambiguities of territorial and religious stand-offs; the golden cultural ages, the inventions of writing and the wheel in the Persia/Iraq areas; the merits of Islam and the impact of Orientalism.

Sitting on benches and on the floor, our teacher found an attentive audience, peering over the map, making suitable noises when something clicked. The class came to an end and a more casual type of general chit-chat continued - the current turbulence in the middle east; what was going on later in the free school; how cool this whole thing is. I peered across the room, watching these intrepid conversationalists and keen learners, all so encouraged by the advance of the School, and slipped out the door. Down the superego-staircase, passing the continuing circle group, down down down back towards the cruel reality that was Central London outside, it's gates open and beckoning.

On the ground floor another class was underway: a discussion on disability activism was in full swing, impassioned and good-natured exchanges zig-zagging across a crumbling table, shiny with the beer stains of its previous life. I eased past and went outside.

Their radical anti-establishment ideology maybe a bit naive, as some have said, but it has a kind of from-the-rubble-build-something-great optimism. It also importantly contributes to the continuing debate that is surrounding education now, manages to avoid being a Big Society bastard, is fun and makes a mess. For a pleasant, learned experience in a place that welcomes all, you could do far worse, and someone who lacks my social ineptitude could really flourish here, provide their own lectures, man the door with the other revolutionaries, penetrate the circle group of dissent.

Go forth, intrepid rogue - heed the call of the Really Free School!

Between Pretension and Vulgarity: A question of deliverance

Well the rifles are still loaded and the crosshairs are faithfully positioned. No, I'm not referring to the arms bought by Libya from the West so they could shoot their own people, and then be told off by the West. I refer to the struggles back home, where despite the government mooning the public in a 'kiss my arse' moment of defiance and continuing to push through damaging cuts like they were going for a world record, the resistance continues now in the desolate no-man's land between the previous London and Manchester protests and the big one that's to come in March. Disparate groups are uniting, and much discourse is circulating, although I think it's amongst people who are already well convinced of the impending damage. The media have all but given up commenting on public dissatisfaction, as no windows are being smashed, preferring instead to focus on the Middle East and Cameron's apology. A politician apologising is a headline story - what toss. Only the Socialist Worker seems to make the connection between the demonstrations in Egypt and the unrest in Britain, but is this a good thing? The type of mediation, from the 'grass roots' to whoever is listening, is something that was discussed at the Goldsmiths teach-in last week, and maybe came up implicitly at the protest at Goldsmiths on Wednesday - an expression of disgust at having the New Academic Building opened by ex-Tory MP, ASDA-sell-off visionary, and all round embodiment of what Goldsmiths' students and many others question in our society, Archie Norman.

This protest was deemed a success, and it was - it was fun, and we ruined the corporate event that was planned for that evening, in the newest building of our 'radical' university. But did it lack something? A message? We had no big speech, just a few banners and some cross words with Archie Norman towards the end of the evening.

As Mr. Dan Taylor has noted here in a gripping account of the evening, the invitees seemed largely unimpressed and bemused by our demo, failing to understand it's relevance. An education editor from Channel 4 thought we were stupid, and Archie Norman was condescending and feigned perplexity. The talks outside with Archie Norman showed the polarity of approaches we protesters use to mediate our concerns, shown also in the two pictures up there. One is with the cold, brazen use of impressionable angry language, and one which provides some idea into the ethics behind the anger. As people struggled to get Archie Norman's attention, some we of the 'You rich piece of shit, fuck off out of our Uni, you don't belong here!' kind of persuasion; other's were more like, 'we are here because of the arrogance of those like yourself, who push for unfair free markets and the marketisation of education, and come to stamp your imprint on our university, which is already threatened by measures that you and your friends endorse, while all along your position in the wealthy elite renders you incapable of ever understanding the concerns of the struggling hopeless youth.' It is this negotiation of these approaches that we are struggling with. What is accomplished with either?

To those who we feel are causing irreparable damage - those in power, governmental power; and those who influence power, corporate power - we can probably give up reasoned arguments on the streets. No one is listening. This may be why my friend was chanting 'Go away, Tony Blair' during the first march in the Autumn. In recognition that our words fall on deaf ears, his voice assumed one emptied of content, it merely existed to add to the sounds of dissent. And to those in the general public, currently working out where they stand on the issues, chants about neoliberalism and capitalism come across as a bit pretentious and cliquey. Protests become things that 'other people' do - other people who think they know all the answers, just because they've heard some stuff at uni about how terrible capitalism is. This, too, is how the Socialist Worker comes across. Isms are exclusive, people don't want to be told they're stupid, or asleep, and they don't want to be indoctrinated. Also, 'socialism' has a lot of baggage, it scares people, and 'anti-capitalist' has cleverly become code for 'naive hippie'.

Do we crave media attention? Is this the way to get the message across? It is often assumed so - media attention seems to point to a legitimacy of action, it suggests that those in power are noticing what's going on. But it means that we have to play a certain game: smashed windows - great; 'bad' language - won't get shown; academic opinion - scarcely a mention, and presented as too highbrow to be realistic; student's opinions - it's hit and miss and usually a let down. I've never heard the word neoliberalism on BBC News 24. Playing along to these media guidelines is not and should not be the way that disgruntled citizens play out their grumbling objections, for it reveals a compromise. A story told through the media lens is never the true story, it is spun to satisfy particular ideas of what makes something newsworthy. Villains, heroes, shocks, blame and fear - all needed to work together in an audience-friendly narrative.

So one can understand those who say, like the girl standing next to me as Archie Norman was being berated, 'he's not worth it, I'd be happy just to smash his face in with this party hat.' It's because words of reason are no match for the intrepid capitalist, with a snake-like tongue of silver, after inevitably weaselling his or her way to the 'top'.

But anger is just as alienating, inseparable as it has become from violence- most people who you ask will not condone the smashed window at Millbank, a mixture of a refusal to admit that these moments of transgression have the biggest impact, are in themselves liberating, and a response to scenes depicted by the media as feral, dangerous and condemnable. People are also put off by swear words, as they are by more highfalutin language. In both instances, language is seen as belonging to a particular group that they are not in. They are hesitant to encourage the activities of a group that seems to exclude them.

I don't know how to engage with those who are sceptical of the sceptics, or those who wield the axes, but it might be a question to address. Should we make our message clearer? It certainly doesn't work when you have bodies like the NUS taking that role. Do we get lairy and wreck shit? It's certainly noticeable, but our integrity gets questioned, our anger is said to have no foundation. Is there political force in the use of irony - in the appropriation of political campaigns and corporate events; in the theatrics of the UfSO? Maybe next time, all fifty thousand of us should be chanting 'Go away, Tony Blair.' In the words of Superhans, 'It'll freak 'em out.'