I
We live in a visual age.
The splash graphic
And its slick 'vox pop'
Defines our responsiveness:
The power of charts
The aphorisms of moving images
Demonises said thought patterns
Lurking beyond the internet’s stony headlines.
Where does elongated thought now hide
When shallow judgement pounces on every inflection
When classroom technology
Prods young brains
Into aphoristic scripted learning?
The simplicity of the past centuries ‘isms’
Survives
Morphed on the palate
Of infinite truths
The strict smorgasbord of neoliberal shibboleths:
Lower company taxes!
Keep the refugees at bay!
The war on terror must never end!
Financial excess is the heart of happiness!
Collective action ruins our pride!
The wealthy are our new poor
Sanctified schemers
Able to shut down divergent viewpoints
When uncontested profit for some
Leads the pulse of governance.
It is easier to oppose than build
Simpler to rain regret
On acred fields
Than ache for its fruitful crop.
Time and the cycle of life
Now move too slowly
For our rapid brains
That fire neural blanks with impossible expectations.
II
Resistance still beckons:
Against the proliferation of motorways
The gouging of banks
Hard against the pall of coal seam gas
And the gorging of private schools.
This counter force
Is certainly more elusive
But its pulse is no less real.
How to map such convergence
How to weigh and influence
Within the technological fulcrum
Of social media and its reach?
Yet even here
The twitter sphere requires reduction
A footprint as a pithy phrase
Headline shouting.
Mobilising resistance
Has always relied on slogans
But the breathless overlaying
Of multiple claims of victimhood
Now almost damns our meaning.
Prosperity drunkenly lunges forth
On a world view
That leads inexorably
To celebrity (the new religion) and profit.
The commodification monsters
Are now our bedtime reading.
Fiscal fear lurks in the hallways:
You will never have enough!
Inure yourself, insure yourself
Let the financiers play with your geld and greed
The prospectus unending
For buying shall instantiate fear.
III
Alas, the feast of concentration
Is an old fashioned thing
An offering from the Greeks
That now must be excavated.
Bach and books
Still hollow out a safe house:
Ich habe genug!
The ache of resistance
Throbs as a low heart beat
Near the gauzed bedside lamp
And the flick of a turning page.
Visual and poetic
But as words
And imagined conversations.
Breadth and depth
Skim the oceans wide
Playful thought
Anchored to an inky sea.
In these chapter houses
Complexity reigns supreme
And forgiveness lurks
As understanding and elaboration
Flit between
Challenge, despair and catharsis.
Elongated thought survives
Endangered but alive
Precious be its survival
Or Fahrenheit 451!
Gar Jones: September 2016
We live in a visual age.
The splash graphic
And its slick 'vox pop'
Defines our responsiveness:
The power of charts
The aphorisms of moving images
Demonises said thought patterns
Lurking beyond the internet’s stony headlines.
Where does elongated thought now hide
When shallow judgement pounces on every inflection
When classroom technology
Prods young brains
Into aphoristic scripted learning?
The simplicity of the past centuries ‘isms’
Survives
Morphed on the palate
Of infinite truths
The strict smorgasbord of neoliberal shibboleths:
Lower company taxes!
Keep the refugees at bay!
The war on terror must never end!
Financial excess is the heart of happiness!
Collective action ruins our pride!
The wealthy are our new poor
Sanctified schemers
Able to shut down divergent viewpoints
When uncontested profit for some
Leads the pulse of governance.
It is easier to oppose than build
Simpler to rain regret
On acred fields
Than ache for its fruitful crop.
Time and the cycle of life
Now move too slowly
For our rapid brains
That fire neural blanks with impossible expectations.
II
Resistance still beckons:
Against the proliferation of motorways
The gouging of banks
Hard against the pall of coal seam gas
And the gorging of private schools.
This counter force
Is certainly more elusive
But its pulse is no less real.
How to map such convergence
How to weigh and influence
Within the technological fulcrum
Of social media and its reach?
Yet even here
The twitter sphere requires reduction
A footprint as a pithy phrase
Headline shouting.
Mobilising resistance
Has always relied on slogans
But the breathless overlaying
Of multiple claims of victimhood
Now almost damns our meaning.
Prosperity drunkenly lunges forth
On a world view
That leads inexorably
To celebrity (the new religion) and profit.
The commodification monsters
Are now our bedtime reading.
Fiscal fear lurks in the hallways:
You will never have enough!
Inure yourself, insure yourself
Let the financiers play with your geld and greed
The prospectus unending
For buying shall instantiate fear.
III
Alas, the feast of concentration
Is an old fashioned thing
An offering from the Greeks
That now must be excavated.
Bach and books
Still hollow out a safe house:
Ich habe genug!
The ache of resistance
Throbs as a low heart beat
Near the gauzed bedside lamp
And the flick of a turning page.
Visual and poetic
But as words
And imagined conversations.
Breadth and depth
Skim the oceans wide
Playful thought
Anchored to an inky sea.
In these chapter houses
Complexity reigns supreme
And forgiveness lurks
As understanding and elaboration
Flit between
Challenge, despair and catharsis.
Elongated thought survives
Endangered but alive
Precious be its survival
Or Fahrenheit 451!
Gar Jones: September 2016
