There Goes the Crow
There goes the crow, there is the shoot-em-up
there slips-through-fingers, here is the waking
shudder
Once a man travelled to a sea
of white spruce and lodgepole pine and the yellow fir.
He hid from the world and his wife in a cabin he found
crammed with things
which toppled onto him when he opened any door.
He picked each thing out,
one by one arranged them on the lawn, and made his way in.
Bookcase basket lamp glasses
pillow shoe coffeepot toilet-seat radio
candlestick ribbon spanner matchbox chair shoe
shampoo pill-box hairclip bathtub casserole-dish
everything was on the grass except
the thing
And once he was inside the cabin,
the night fell in slow motion. He lay on a bed
with white borders and in the morning
the things on the lawn had all slipped away like snow.
By Bella Hammad
There Goes the Crow
There goes the crow, there is the shoot-em-up
there slips-through-fingers, here is the waking
shudder
Once a man travelled to a sea
of white spruce and lodgepole pine and the yellow fir.
He hid from the world and his wife in a cabin he found
crammed with things
which toppled onto him when he opened any door.
He picked each thing out,
one by one arranged them on the lawn, and made his way in.
Bookcase basket lamp glasses
pillow shoe coffeepot toilet-seat radio
candlestick ribbon spanner matchbox chair shoe
shampoo pill-box hairclip bathtub casserole-dish
everything was on the grass except
the thing
And once he was inside the cabin,
the night fell in slow motion. He lay on a bed
with white borders and in the morning
the things on the lawn had all slipped away like snow.
By Bella Hammad
Third World Girls
Beyonce premiered her ‘Run The World(Girls)’ music video in June, the first single from her new album 4. Set in some part of Africa, perhaps Ethiopia, Beyonce is at once with Abyssinian lion and is once that lion King. She writes ‘King B’ on a mirror whilst looking at herself in one of the 4 album stills and I can’t help but think of John Berger’s idea that women watch themselves being watched – I certainly can’t stop watching her. And although her video may be about the revolution of the ‘third sex’, a revolution that Simone de Beauvoir did not anticipate, this video bares relation to Beyonce’s husband’s ‘Run this Town’ video and so I can’t help thinking whilst watching this that as James Brown put it ‘This is a man’s world’.
One man who would like to run the world, it would seem, is Dr Satoshi Kanazawa – the George Bush of social science. Having previously published articles such as ‘Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes?’ (in which he argued ‘high-class prostitutes like Allie and Maggie have more in common with college professors, corporate executives, or poets than with the more affordable and visible members of their profession.’), in the same week that Beyonce premiered ‘Run the World(Girls)’, LSE’s Dr Kanazawa published an article in Psychology Today in which he argued that ‘Black women are … far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women’. And so it would seem that such a man would be against the idea that women, let alone ‘black women’, could ‘Run The World’.
Kanazawa’s claim that ‘black women are less attractive’ is not only an inane instance of racism, but more importantly it is another instance of the racist’s idea that black people (by virtue of being called ‘black’ people) are a homogeneous group of people who are all the same colour (black and not varying shades of brown) and all originate from the same country (that country being the country of blackness known as Africa). What Kanazawa’s ‘research’ seems to want to show is that it is not black woman that are unattractive but it is African women who are unattractive. But perhaps what people can away take from his ‘research’ is that the people who were shown photos of these ‘black women’ did not find these women attractive, and from that we can conclude that these ‘black women’ were not found attractive by the people who saw their photos. Why must we then start making generalisations about ‘black women’?
I think that what is most important about Kanazawa’s ‘research’ is that it shows an impulse to want to define who ‘black women’ are. So that even in generalising about ‘black women’ Kanazawa shows us that even racists struggle with the concept of blackness. Psychologically speaking racists like Satoshi Kanazawa want to know something more about ‘black’ people like where they come from, in order to help them come to terms with them. The words ‘African’ or ‘black’ are no longer enough even for such people; and perhaps they are no longer enough for the ‘black’ people in question. Somewhat bemused at the idea that although he is telling ‘black women’ that they are objectively unattractive black women insist on seeing themselves as attractive, Kanazawa writes ‘It is very interesting to note that, even though black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others.’ Yes it is very interesting; it is very audacious.
Let us question Kanazawa’s use of the word attractive and his ideas about attractiveness. If by attractive he means ‘sexually desirable’ his claims are necessarily false. We infer that his are false claims from examples of the millions of black women that have been born and therefore exist, from the millions of black women who find themselves being desirable and are thus able to have sex with men and/or women, and what do the x amount of black women who were raped during colonisation, the slave trade, the abolition of the slave trade and today tell us about attractiveness and the power of ‘black women’? Indeed if black women were truly as unattractive as Kanazawa says they are it would seem that they would not exist and he would have no reason to make such claim. Thus the very existence of a ‘black women’, whether she is Ethiopian or African-American, is necessarily undisputable proof of attractiveness of other types of black women.
Now, I’m not attempting to answer any of the sociological implications of attractiveness; I am merely addressing the biological ideas of attractiveness that Kanazawa draws his conclusion that black women are unattractive from. Yet from the observations I have just made it is obvious that to say that black women are attractive is false. Thus what Kanazawa really wants to be saying is not that black women are unattractive but that they are ugly, and this is of course a very inane thing to say, and it is precisely because he attempts to do this is why his arguments must be interpreted as racist.
Now Satoshi Kanazawa may not find whatever he considers ‘black women’ to be attractive but I don’t particularly find chubby-mole speckled-middle aged-racist academics attractive, regardless of their ‘race’ – but that’s just me. I do not dispute that people have the right to express themselves, but Kanazawa has a status as a social scientist, he is a lecturer at LSE and so that means his mode of expression should be rooted in scientific practices. But his practices are not scientific and so we have to question the nature of his study: who were the ‘black women’ that were shown to these people and how were they selected i.e. were they all from the same family or country? How did Kanazawa’s biases of what he thinks the ‘black women’ are affect how he chose black women? Moreover the Japanese UK based social scientist argued that Asian women ranked the highest but what did he mean by Asian, i.e. South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern? Essentially we must ask what biases were at play, in order to test how valuable his findings are.
Dr Scott Barry Kaufman and Dr. Jelte Wicherts have since conducted an independent analysis of the same study that Kanazawa used and found that amongst other errors of Kanazawa’s analysis, black women were not rated as least attractive. Their study showed “there is no difference between the ethnicities in terms of ratings of physical attractiveness.” The percentage of black women and Caucasian women who were deemed ‘very attractive’ and ‘attractive’ were exactly the same. And Asian women had a slightly higher rating, in the same way that black men had a higher rating than men of other racial groups in the study Kanazawaa conducted (indeed the fact that Kanazawaa’s study was not entitled ‘why black men are more attractive than other races’ or ‘why Asian men are the least attractive of all the races’ shows us more about his own prejudices than any objective facts such a study could show). Now of course this independent study shows Kanazawaa’s research to be ‘scientifically’ false. And yet I would argue that Kanazawaa’s research was not research, it was not valuable, it was a weird parody of the BBC 3 make over programme ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’; and any repeat of such research is also that. A necessary repeat perhaps but a repeat nonetheless and so we must not attach much value to such findings. Or should we?
For if Satoshi’s findings are right it seems that we can say good bye to the millions of black women, who indeed by 2012 will surely become an endangered species. We can say goodbye to figures like Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Iman, Grace Jones, and Beyonce who are valued in other terms of attractiveness i.e. their talents, their intelligence, and their iconism as well as their ‘beauty’. Indeed Oprah Winfrey has been listed as the most influential women in the world (and yet I would argue that Michelle Obama is giving her a run for her money) although since Kanazawaa’s ‘research’ was published I’m sure that her influence has started to wan. Scared, I count the days until she is kicked of the Forbes list. I count the days until lots of other black women start disappearing…including myself. Let’s hope that women, whoever they may be, can finish the revolution Beyonce sings about. But please hurry….the light has gone off and I can’t see myself (being black and all).
By Clarissa Pabi
TO YOU
Your patterns are hairline fractures,
acoustic reverberations marinated in stone
and you plant yourself
moonstruck and heartbroken and soul strung
are you wrong
to be drones in a lonely crowd
to make shoes for a commonwealth
gut worms fossilizing flesh
ringing out in seismic waves,
deaf to your echoes and glad of that fact?
Are you wrong to massacre the humdrum,
inflate a soundtrack with mesmeric song
and then to revolt in the belly, torch microvilli in tunnels
underground moles that walk all night in tube stations,
pale from deprivation.
this is the new order
protecting the valiant through submission to fashion.
The glamour is thin: this is known,
known, this becomes a buyable thing.
The high will be low, tastefully.
Well then fossilized jailbait, mechanically up-thrusting:
swallow here this slice of mine
that will appreciate like your humble high
street cred appreciation.
Look at it: full-moon round, like a constant cartwheel.
Like a backwards somersault on a vaulted trampoline in space,
where gravity fails and oceans fall upwards.
This is your phantasma and hideous dream;
the interim of action;
the unglorified insurrection;
the perpetual Piccadilly where we all impersonate beautiful children.
By Bella Hammad
FOUND!
Photos by Joel Phillimore
FOUND! was part of ‘Mindful of Art’ at The Old Vic Tunnels.
For more details about other Flipping The Bird productions, see: http://www.flippingthebird.co.uk/
Fox Doctor
An old man, loose and droopy lipped,
Spit juicy-dripped, no short supply
To irrigate with spray slight cabbage sprout, as
Pressed into a sidelong scrape of scumberous soil.
Potent mouthspill, spell, or other surprise?
From spare and scroungy earth the cabbage spurt
Whowsed upward swift with sprunt and shoot
What a bounding spring! A quick rush to ceiling.
Old man holed the mouldy floor above,
Span for the prodigal vegetal premium springer
And up to the roofing, the thatching, the rafter it sped
High with hopes for the hoist to open space
Albescent with awe, elder ascended stairs
To rise to the roof and arrange further passage
Rend off tile til light chink
Spread to open pool and no obstacle.
So outswept cabbage clean skyward
Shuffled off shade and swung to the heavens.
The leaf-tongued trees left talk
To hang still with the dumb weight of wonder.
And the man gaped out of the hole like an eye in the roof
As leaves furled forward and fed forth the shoot.
Imagine holding the sphere of sky in your hands
Balloon with threatening needle speeding out from within.
For the growing kept going, no slowing from sowing to soaring
And sure as the needle approaches, the breath is held down
but the wind round the hurtling stripling not dropping but roaring
as the brink of vertiginous sky is approaching, approaching –
Breached, blue brim of broad space:
Not burst to azur scrap like needled balloon
But opened, a cabbage plant pointing the way
And a tiny black star in the bright sky.
One open mouthed old man began to climb
The stem’s solid trace of its own trajectory
Like Jack who accomplished another beanstalk clamber
On his own prodigious botanical scaffold –
As if whole human become ant, silhouetted,
Crisp speck on a whole new scale,
The tiny attempting tremendous ascent
Towards the giant, the huger than known.
So he rose, rose and rose with a hero’s resolve
Til he gained the hole that gaped like the dot on an I
And poked thru his head ready to lap up the sight
As pupils, eyes dots, spread outwards like pools.
In blackness abounding were millwheels and millwheels
Each distinct as if doused with daylight
Which with each turn loosed a loaf –
Warm crust that cracked with slight crush of thumb.
Stringfingered old man broke off a chunk
Chewed deeply, yielding gracious savours –
Tears slipped from his ducts at the taste on his tongue
Unleashed by lacings of saliva across divine dough.
Swift descent fuelled by the tang of the sample,
And cry to his waiting wife of wide joy
“at the top of the stalk is an ambrosial spot –
there are millwheels there, each time they turn
they freely toss out sweet loaves,
the best of breads, of soft white flesh
which houses the thumb’s impress when tenderly touched
and the crisp crust splintered to flakes and crumbs.”
“Show me!” cried wife “haul me up in this bag”
for she hopped in a hessian sack hotly eager,
and was willingly lifted in renewal of upward adventure
a return to the loaf-haven, harbouring delights.
Perhaps it was due to pads of fingers still reeling
From the kiss of a yielding crust just moments before
Too electrified to stick to slack hessian here –
For they betrayed the man’s grasp at the topmost height!
Trusting wife, living contents, tumbled
With plummeting increase of speed in the downward plunge
An inversion of flight, to achieve no fabulous zenith,
For the crust of earth did not yield or open with contact.
From above the man saw his wife become a bag of bones
Powerless, his loss of power the exclusive cause
Of such dismal demise, a dire, too-human crumpling,
A fleshy death unabsolved by the bounty of bread.
Down crept the man, hunched, grief-doubled
Till he sat and wept by himself on the floor
Tumbling tears told a tale of tragic trajectories
And each turn of the heaving heart freely loosed a sob.
Along came a fox who saw the sorrow
And silently discerned the cause of distress to the man –
Witness to a sack several metres distant
He muttered, he spilled out sly words of comfort:
“O stranger, rejoice, I’m the fox, the fox doctor
and I’ll deal with your dismantled companion deftly –
give me a matter of minutes, some oatmeal, and honey
and leave me to perform operation in peace.”
The man felt hope flicker an instant –
Perhaps here was a dreamt of wife-restorer –
So he installed the fox in the bathroom with fervour
And sat once again in tired tears’ pools.
The fox, wily, wicked – pure evil – exalted
Here was a feast from this luckless old fool!
He opened the sack and slaveringly set about
His operation – the fresh consumption of tough flesh.
Finished, he fashioned a fine desert from the oatmeal
With honey run in, achieving delectable sweetness
And for a fiendish flourish he then took a bath
Reclining warmly in pools of saltless water.
Outside the man was waiting wet with sorrows
When the fox leapt out and devilishly dashed off.
The door swung open on dined-off bones
And the man was left where he dwelt in his misery.
By Joe Minden
Just
Just
A touch is just a touch is just a touch is
Only an inch, a moment, a glance away
From not being a touch.
It’s a cheek against a cheek, a hand in a hand, a body in body,
Any body. Anybody. Anybody will do.
It’s not the meeting of hearts, it’s the meeting of parts, innit?
Innit. In it. Except when you are in it. Can’t control it when you are in it.
Can’t explain it, justify it, don’t try to rectify it, when you know you can’t defy it.
When you know you can’t define it.
In it.
A kiss is just a kiss is just a kiss is
Eyes closing, lips touching, pulse rising,
Then swinging to and fro, before falling back down so low,
But not solo
‘Cause after all this hesitation, I’m now getting this sensation
That there’s a kind of syncopation between
Mine
And yours.
A fuck is just a fuck is just a fuck is
In. Out. In. Out. You shaking it all about.
Getting to know you. Getting to blow you.
Letting you blow me, now, I see,
That a fuck is not an accurate reflection of affection.
Correction.
‘Cause when I’m laying bare on you,
I’m baring myself up to you.
My wrist, your knife. My neck, your noose.
And all I want you to see is that this is open.
Can’t be shut. But
All you say is
I’m just a
You’re just a
It’s just a
Fuck.
By Leo Marcus-Wan
Aleister Crowley
They really don’t make freaks like they used to. The occult magician Aleister Crowley has to be the number one nutter par excellence. Born in 1875, Crowley was an English magician and occultist, who started his own religion called Thelema with his own brand of magick -yes that’s magic with a “k”-. Crowley was also an artist, mountaineer, heroin addict, excellent chess player, writer, poet, and leader of a sex cult – otherwise known as “the wickedest man in the world”. Aleister killed his first cat aged 11, and was linked throughout his life to rumours of infanticide and cannibalism. He caught gonnorhoea before he even got to university (not bad), though it was while studying English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, that he started fantasizing about blood and torture, and being degraded by a ‘Scarlet Woman’. Crowley was openly bisexual, and would often brand his lovers with magic symbols on their chest. In his book Revelations, Crowley describes how Leah Faesi, one of his models and subsequent lover, posed for one of his paintings. Having asked him to paint her as “a dead soul”, Crowley conducted a ceremony, where he uncovered Leah’s breast and with a Chinese dagger branded her with the Mark of the Beast – the cross within the circle. Thus was born the Ape of Thoth, which was the magical title Leah Faesi adopted, spending whole days stark naked so everyone could see the sign. Crowley was also pretty big on pederasty, which he liked to incorporate into his poetry. His performance art often involved a combination of chanting and dancing, with hallucinogenic drugs, incense and music. One such performance piece was the Rites of Eleusius, where he used the English poet and occultist Victor Neuberg to dance amid a background of incantation and incense. Crowley also liked to wear a talisman around his neck called Segelah, which was smeared with dried semen and menstrual blood. Nice. But enough about the man, I’ll let his poetry do the talking: “Stab your demoniac smile to my brain,/ Soak me in cognac, cunt and cocaine”.
By Sophia Satchell-Baeza
