Cassandra Voices

Category: Culture

  • No Comment: London New and Old

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  • All Cassandras Parties

    In this benighted ‘Republic,’ spectral beggars haunt the streets of Dublin, soup kitchens multiply, and the sick lie in agony on hospital trolleys. The ‘booming’ economy is really a country where working people are known to live in cars, and some of the nation’s children bring toilet paper to school (no, it’s not Venezuela).

    The Taoiseach (such a dude) has serious decisions to make, on what socks to wear, and Pop Stars to meet; a truly punishing schedule posing for Irish Times photo shoots. In Dáil Éireann, meanwhile, the Minister for Trolleys and overpaid Consultants, along with the Minister for Homelessness, make speeches on ‘progress,’ but the Great Unwashed have had enough of hapless politicians falling on their arses.

    There is not a single intellectual voice raised above the clamour of sniping; Mary Lou is screeching at everyone, while fashion icon Michael Healy-Rae advocates for drunken driving – in short, a confederacy of clowns.

    The state broadcaster RTE offers up an unwholesome diet of Donald Trump’s choice in burgers, and even the odd scallion recipe. Towering minds like Ray D’Arcy discuss dogs barking (now it really would be something if a dog meowed!), and we are simply riveted by ‘Tubs’ interviewing female soap stars about plastic surgery (when it is some of the fellas who need it…).

    In mainstream print media we find hysterical articles about Russia, and Fintan O’Toole bellyaching about the Brits, and missing the point of it all. This apparent collective collapse in national IQ is almost certainly a conspiracy to sedate the mutinous instincts of the scruffy oppressed.

    Yet revolution is nigh, and leading the way is a committed group of journalists behind Cassandra Voices, a new online and print magazine.

    We desperately need independent media, so I was delighted to attend the launch of Cassandra Voices II. Donning overalls, and packing my copy of Das Kapital (and a pike for good measure), I went along to Ian Lumley’s unique residence on Henrietta Street, where a crowd was mustering in the fading evening light.

    There I encountered documentary filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle, that well known champion of the downtrodden masses, greeting guests with camera poised as they entered the building. Frank Armstrong, the slightly dishevelled editor, was standing on the steps, and rebellion was is in the air. Milling around inside were a ragtag collection of aspiring Marxists, legendary lunatics, self-confessing anarchists and dissenting intellectuals, murmuring sweet-seditious-nothings to one-another amidst neoclassical sculptures in the ghostly venue.

    It was a pleasure to find so many beautiful young revolutionaries (and that was just the menfolk!) under the same roof. Storming around filling glasses was dashing Comrade Ruadhan Mac Eoin, there followed by Comrade Daniele Idini, of Sardinian descent it is said … just like Antonio Gramsci … and nearby Comrade Ilsa Monique Carter was adding a dash of New Orleans glamour to the mix.

    Before the speechifying, Cora Venus Lunny improvised a wonderful piece on the violin, evoking a mad genius, before segueing into haunting melodies. Then Frank eloquently introduced the magazine, and Bob Quinn, that long-time critic of venal corruption, warmly welcomed the magazine, featuring his mug on the cover alongside Muammar Gaddafi – it’s a long story…

    Mingling among the revolutionary throng, I encountered Comrade Ronan Sheehan (soon to publish a book of translations of Cuban poetry). We spoke about class struggle, neo-liberalism, and laissez unfair economics. ‘Einstein’s your man,’ I opined. ‘Believed the worker should seize the means of production. A great economist altogether.’

    Before Ronan had a chance to recite his beloved Catullus, I had beetled off to refill my glass, and came across Comrade Jim McGurk, delicately quaffing his own tipple. He was in deep conversation with yet another revolutionary about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. ‘Ah sure that’s old hat’ I proclaimed. ‘He was onto the protons and the neurons alright, but he missed the morons – the cause of it all.’

    A few more comrades joined as I held the stage: ‘Democracy cannot survive in a capitalist system,’ I asserted, ‘because it will be overtaken by oppressive elites. Socialism can’t survive without democracy, I added. My voice rose to an impassioned crescendo: ‘Comrades” I said, ‘whether you’ve a capitalist system of government, revolutionary communism, or anything in between, it will be sabotaged because the men will make a pig’s mickey of it all.’

    ‘I think a woman should be put in charge – such as myself,’ I proposed. An awed silence followed thereafter, not a murmur of descent to be heard.

    The evening wound down with the Dublin premier of Bob Quinn’s film ‘Bog Graffitti’, (introduced by the indefatigable Merry Doyle), containing an apocalyptic vision of a dying planet, evoked by insects writhing in agony, and set to music by Roger Doyle. Later on, I’m told, there was more music from Italian songster Massimiliano Galli.

    In this haunting building there was a sense of something waiting to be being born, a new dawn perhaps. Indeed, as the sound of the fiddle wafted through the house, I had the distinct impression of the Rough Beast taking off like a scalded cat. Three cheers for Cassandra!

    Do you think this piece is valuable? If so, you might consider providing us with financial support via Patreon, or simply pay us a small sum directly using PayPal: admin@cassandravoices.com. Thanks for supporting independent journalism. Subscribe for free to our monthly newsletter here. 

  • No Comment: Schools Climate Strike

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  • The Firstborn

    _          I thought that I would read the beginning
    _                      Of the last gospel, but
    _                      The book fell open at
    The beginning of the first, my thoughts misdeeming
    _                      What I needed to write this poem,
    _          But the book satisfying them.

    _          My intention was to write about
    _                      A father and a son
    _                      Hand in hand upon
    A curving shore, a memory I doubt,
    _                      But fitting image for
    _          All such memories I here recall.

    _          Those early summer evenings spent
    _                      With my dad on that outcrop
    _                      Watching peregrines drop,
    Or in the woods, off way-marked paths, intent
    _                      To find the fabled stand
    _          Of Weymouth Pines, which we, at last, found.

    _          Our lingering at Mickla Bridge,
    _                      Discoursing about Yeats,
    _                      As the sun politely waits
    To set behind the bluing fields’ high ridge.
    _                      My making for my first son
    _          My arm a pillow to rest upon.

    _          But while I thought on these things, behold,
    _                      An angel of the Lord
    _                      Appealed to my words and implored,
    All things are created through the Son, that child,
    _                      Conceived of the holy ghost,
    _          Praised suddenly by a heavenly host.

    _          What have I written? And what have I
    _                      Imagined and not written?
    _                      And what remains unwritten
    And unimagined in this poem? Before I
    _                      Knew it, my thoughts were lost,
    _          Or found with child of the holy ghost.

    Edward Clarke’s Eighteen Psalms was published by Periplum Poetry in 2018. He is also the author of two books of criticism, The Vagabond Spirit of Poetry (Iff Books 2014) and The Later Affluence of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and poetry editor Cassandra Voices. 

  • Gluttony, Gastronomy, and the Origins of ‘French’ Food

    As French President, François Mitterrand enjoyed his fair share of sumptuous feasts in the haute cuisine tradition. His enduring esteem reflects a wider French anxiety, in an era of Globalisation, expressed by Pascal Ory, as to whether French cuisine will be ‘all that remains when everything else has been forgotten?’[i] Thus, in 1996, for his final supper, the dying statesman made an unusual request – alongside requests for the familiar capons and oysters – for a small, yellow-throated songbird, the ortolan, supposedly representing the French soul, to appear on the menu. As is customary, Mitterrand consumed the plucked bird whole in a sauce of Armagnac, crunching the little bones with his face behind a napkin – ‘so that God himself could not witness the barbarity.’[ii]

    Even committed carnivores might baulk at devouring a morsel of flesh from a rare creature that fills the air with song, and, apparently, the mouth with blood – providing another use for the napkin. There was, nonetheless, a brutal honesty to Mitterrand’s act, acknowledging the wantonness of a food culture that permits the sacrifice of a songbird for the sake of a fleeting corporeal pleasure.

    French authorities prohibited the hunting of ortolans in 1999. Nonetheless, 30,000 birds are still trapped every year, and are said to fetch up to €150 apiece on the black market. Tragically, ortolan numbers have dropped by 84% between 1980 and 2012.[iii]

    For most of us, however, the sins of the table are indirect and unacknowledged, as where virgin habitat makes way for grazing the animals we raise for meat, or to grow the crops used to feed them – rather than ourselves. A blindfold of distance prevents us from witnessing the nesting grounds of birds going up in smoke on hillsides; or hedgerows being eviscerated; let alone the pesticides bringing Insectageddon,[iv] which are wiping out the primary foodstuff of many birds.

    Nonetheless, since the French Revolution, there has been a clear distinction between a gluttony associated with the vice of excess, and the virtue of gastronomy – ‘the art and science of delicate eating’, underpinning French cuisine in particular. Yet this gastronomy often acts as a blindfold to the gluttonous excesses of a food culture that has attained global dominance. French cuisine has much to recommend it, especially in terms of the value ascribed to unique environmental contexts or terroir, but it remains excessively dependent on animal agriculture.

    It might be helpful to chart the emergence of the Sin of Gluttony, originally encompassing both excess and delicacy. In Roman times Seneca (d. 65 CE) was appalled by his decadent contemporaries who would ‘vomit in order to eat, and eat in order to vomit’, bemoaning the wastefulness of ‘banquets for which they ransack the whole world.’[v] Later, St. Paul writes of enemies of the cross whose end is ‘destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.’[vi] This reflects Adam succumbing to the temptation of an apple, the Original Sin of greed, but distinguishing between greed and necessary – and invariably enjoyable – consumption of food is not straightforward.

    St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430 CE) provides an archetypal insight into the moral confusion wrought by appetite in the autobiographical Confessions. He acknowledges he must eat for the sake of his health, but is wary of the ‘dangerous pleasure’ he draws from it: ‘it is difficult to discern whether the needed care of my body is asking for sustenance or whether a deceitful voluptuousness of greed is trying to seduce me.’[vii] For St. Augustine, all bodily appetites are indicative of the fallen state of Man, a form of cupiditas: ‘Ardent desire, inordinate longing or lust; covetousness.’

    It fell to Pope Gregory I (d. c. 604 CE) to develop the most lasting definition of gluttony, when he laid out the seven ‘deadly’ or ‘cardinal’ sins. Building on St. Paul’s condemnation of those who treat their bellies as ‘God’, he defined that Sin as being more than merely eating too much. For Gregory, the contagion resided in the eater’s thoughts, as much as his actions:

    the glutton eats before he is hungry and continues to eat when he is no longer hungry; he craves costly and gratuitously sophisticated dishes; he eats too much and with excessive eagerness; he seeks not sustenance, but pleasure; he becomes the slave of his stomach and his palate.[viii]

    Breaking any taboo, however, tends to exert a fascination, and wealth and prestige are often expressed in conspicuous consumption. Thus, while gluttony was considered the ‘mother of all sins’, the medieval European nobility revelled in excess, enjoying stupendous, Bacchanalian banquets, memorably evoked by the sixteenth-century French writer François Rabelais in his tales of Gargantua and Pantagruel (c. 1532-64). Folk ambivalence towards orthodox theology is revealed in the popularity of a fictional land of fantastical abundance called ‘the Land of Cockaigne’. Herman Pleij reveals:

    Everyone living at the end of the Middle Ages had heard of Cockaigne at one time or another. It was a country, tucked away in some remote corner of the globe, where ideal living conditions prevailed … food and drink appeared spontaneously in the form of grilled fish, roast geese and rivers of wine … One could even reside in meat, fish, game, fowl, or pastry, for another feature of Cockaigne was its edible architecture.[ix]

    The reach of the myth of Cockaigne attests to a yearning for a sensuality in food consumption which the deadening moral schema prohibited: the reach of the mortal Sin of Gluttony failed to accommodate what is simultaneously a pleasurable and necessary activity. The early modern period witnessed an ideological shift that continues to govern our understanding.

    Mainly due to improvements in agriculture and the discovery of New World crops, by the late eighteenth century a rising bourgeoisie could enjoy the privilege of plenty, with wealth diffused more widely across society. Previously the nobility’s social superiority could be expressed in gargantuan banquets, but, for that style of eating to impress, hungry onlookers are required. How could consumption remain conspicuous? The answer lay in increasing the demands made upon chefs to innovate. New dishes became increasingly complex, a process accelerated by accumulated culinary knowledge in recipe books. The emphasis turned to quality, mainly dependent on human ingenuity, rather than largesse. The introduction to one French recipe book from 1674 signals the shift in fashion:

    Nowadays it is not the prodigious overflowing of dishes, the abundance of ragoûts and gallimaufries, the extraordinary piles of meat … in which it seems that nature and artifice have been entirely exhausted in the satisfaction of the senses, which is the most palpable object of our delicacy of taste. It is rather the exquisite choice of meats, the finesse with which they are seasoned, the courtesy and neatness with which they are served, their proportionate relationship to the number of people, and finally the general order of things which essentially contribute to the goodness and elegance of a meal.[x]

    According to Stephen Mennell this newly discovered sense of delicacy implies ‘a degree of restraint too, in so far as it involves discrimination and selection, the rejection as well as the acceptance of certain foods or combinations of foods, guided at least as much by social proprieties as by individual fancies.’[xi] The trend for more varied and delicate ragoûts predictably spread from elite circles to the burgeoning bourgeoisie. What was crucial, however, to upending the private banquets of the ancien regime was the French Revolution, which established the public restaurant as the location for fine dining, par excellence.

    The word ‘gastronomy’ seems to have first appeared in 1801 as the title of a poem b Joseph Berchoux.[xii] It was rapidly adopted in both France and Britain to designate ‘the art and science of delicate eating.’ The meaning of ‘gastronome’ overlaps with the older terms ‘epicure,’ and ‘gourmand,’ as well as the newer one ‘gourmet.’ Both ‘epicure’ and ‘gourmand’ had formerly pejorative meanings close to ‘glutton’ – applied to those who ate greedily and to excess. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, ‘epicure’ had acquired a more positive meaning in English as ‘one who cultivates a refined taste for the pleasure of the table; one who is choice and dainty in eating and drinking.’[xiii]

    In France, the word ‘gourmand’ had the same favourable sense and was used by the first ever restaurant critic Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynière as the title for his series of restaurant reviews: Almanachs des Gourmands (1803-12). In contrast, today English writers commonly draw a distinction between a ‘gourmand’, which has the same negative connotation as ‘glutton’, and a ‘gourmet’, who is considered a person with a refined palate. But as Mennell notes, ‘gastronome’ differs from all the other terms in one key respect: a gastronome is generally understood as a person who not only cultivates his own ‘refined tastes for the pleasure of the table’ but also, ‘helps to cultivate other people’s too.’[xiv]

    The first restaurant critic, Grimod – a dispossessed noble who held democracy in contempt – was alive to the possibility that he could be attacked for being a glutton, asserting: ‘Let it be said that of all the Deadly Sins that mankind may commit the fifth appears to be the one that least troubles his conscience and causes him the least remorse.’[xv] He grapples with the challenge of altering the understanding of the term:

    If the Dictionary of the Academy is to be believed, gourmand is a synonym for glutton or greedy, as gourmandise is for gluttony. In our opinion this definition is inexact; the words gluttony and greed should be reserved for the characterisation of intemperance and insatiability, while the word gourmand has, in polite society, a much more favourable interpretation, one might say a nobler one altogether.[xvi]

    It was, however, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (d. 1826), a bachelor lawyer of a more democratic persuasion than Grimod, who most clearly distinguished gastronomy from the medieval concept of gluttony. In the opinion of Balzac, Brillat-Savarin’s La Physiologie du gout was a work of literature beside which that of Grimod’s was ‘too much of a pot-pourri.’[xvii] Even Grimod, upon reading his contemporary’s work, magnanimously observed: ‘Beside him I am no more than a kitchen skivvy.’[xviii] Brillat-Savarin’s Gourmandism was ‘an impassioned, reasoned and habitual preference for everything which gratifies the organs of taste.’ Importantly, he distinguished this from excessive eating and drinking, arguing that gourmandism is ‘the enemy of excess; indigestion and drunkenness are offences which render the offender liable to be struck off the rolls.’[xix] Brillat-Savarin embraced the sensual pleasure of food, beyond sufficiency, arguing it ‘is one of the privileges of mankind to eat without being hungry and drink without being thirsty.’[xx]

    This appears to be a refutation of Gregory’s definition of the mortal sin, where ‘the glutton eats before he is hungry and continues to eat when he is no longer hungry’, repudiating Gregory’s conviction that drawing ‘pleasure’ as opposed to ‘sustenance’ from food is gluttonous. This, Brillat-Savarin contended, showed ‘implicit obedience to the commands of the Creator, who, when He ordered us to eat in order to live, gave us the inducement of appetite, the encouragement of savour, and the reward of pleasure.’[xxi]

    Brillat-Savarin’s book has been in print every year since publication in 1826 and his bon mots remain staples in gastronomic literature. He can be credited with altering our understanding of gluttony and liberating sensual appreciation of food from the grip of the dualistic philosophy of the medieval Church. But Brillat-Savarin left an inaccurate picture of French food, which became a global hit.

    The meat-heavy diet promoted by the early gastronomes is still equated, misleadingly, with traditional French rustic fare. In fact, Fernand Braudel writes: ‘the diet of peasants, that is the vast majority of the population, had nothing in common with the cookery books written for the rich.’ Peasants, the great bulk of the French population (and beyond) until the mid-twentieth century, might eat meat in the form of salted pork just once a week [xxii]: traditional French fare is basically soup and bread.

    Nevertheless, aristocratic ‘French’ food went viral as the ultimate expression of privilege far beyond France. The great chef Auguste Escoffier (d. 1935) boasted: ‘I have ‘sown’ two thousand chefs all around the world … Think of them as so many seeds planted in virgin soils.’[xxiii] It became the dominant idiom in Western elite cooking over the course of the nineteenth century and France remains the pre-eminent gastronomic destination. An implicit appeal of that cuisine, expressed in restaurant dining, is the impression of aristocratic sophistication, an aura maintained to the present day, where otherwise plebeian patrons are addressed as ‘sir’ and ‘madame’ by besuited waiters.

    The extensive use of French words in English-language gastronomic discourse (notably cuisine, chef, and even bon appetit!) accentuates divisions between the diets of rich (many of them with a command of the French language) and poor. Working class communities often lack a vocabulary to talk about ‘posh’ food. One’s upbringing generally exerts an influence throughout life, as Pierre Bourdieu remarks: ‘[I]t is probably in tastes in food that one would find the strongest and most indelible mark of infant learning, the lessons which longest withstand the distancing or collapse of the native world and most durably maintain nostalgia for it.’[xxiv] Thus, altering patterns of consumption, as Jamie Oliver discovered, is no simple matter, but the prevailing appetite, especially for meat, is causing untold damage to the planet.

    A diet based on plants – whether undertaken for ethical, health or environmental reasons – is still viewed as the poor gastronomic relation, and as even involving a drudgery that campaigns like ‘Meat-free Mondays’ may actually compound. Moreover, high-profile gastronomes – especially celebrity chefs – maintain a food tradition that is mistakenly viewed as timeless.

    Leaving aside the burning issue of climate change, explosive growth in human population from just 1.5 billion in 1900 to over 7 billion today is exacting a terrible price on many wild animals, which are rapidly losing habitats. A recent comparison of global populations of domesticated animals and wild animals reveals that humans and their livestock now account for an astonishing 96% of the total mammal biomass on planet Earth.[xxv] Animal agriculture, including the expansion of monoculture agriculture for feedstuffs is the leading culprit: close to 70 percent of the planet’s agricultural land is used for animal pasture alone,[xxvi] while barely half of the world’s cropland is to devoted to food for direct human consumption.[xxvii]

    Most people would hesitate before eating an endangered species, such as a rare songbird like the ortolan, but recognition that the lifecycles of livestock are largely responsible for these extinctions is less commonly acknowledged. To bring about what The Lancet describes as the ‘Great Food Transformation,’[xxviii] involving a substantial reduction in meat consumption, a new generation of gastronomes must instil new tastes. A vast array of edible plants, both wild and domesticated, are available at a far lower environmental price. These can form the basis of a new gastronomy that will not demand blindfolds to avoid the shame.

    [i] Pascal Ory, ‘Gastronomy’ in Nora Pierre (editor) Realms of Memory: The

    Construction of the French Past, Volume II, Traditions. Translated by Arthur

    Goldhammer. New York, Columbia University Press, 1997, p.444

    [ii] Michael Paterniti, ‘The Last Meal, June 27th, 2008, Esquire, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a4642/the-last-meal-0598/, accessed 8/4/19.

    [iii] Dale Berning Sawa, ‘Deadly appetite: 10 animals we are eating into extinction’, April 3rd, 2019, The Guardian,  https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/03/deadly-appetite-10-animals-we-are-eating-into-extinction?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco&fbclid=IwAR3xEteCZyEb-qgIoeAG7S3LcPn-4qnzeWrK-lEOftEzq9Cpx520U4vYTQk, accessed 11/4/19.

    [iv] George Monbiot, ‘Insectageddon: farming is more catastrophic than climate breakdown’, October, 20th, 2017, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/insectageddon-farming-catastrophe-climate-breakdown-insect-populations, accessed 11/4/19.

    [v] Aviad Kleinberg, Deadly Sins – A Very Partial List, translated from Hebrew by

    Susan Emanuel in collaboration with the author, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2008,  p.81.

    [vi] Phil. 3.18-19, New International Version.

    [vii] John K. Ryan, The Confessions of St. Augustine, New York Doubleday: New York, 1960, p.83.

    [viii] Kleinberg, 2008, p.6.

    [ix] Hermann Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life.

    Translated by Diane Webb, New York, Columbia University Press, 1997, p.3.

    [x] L’art de bien Traiter, L.S.R., 1674 quoted in Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, Oxford, Blackwell, 1985, pp.73-74.

    [xi] Mennell, 1985, p.274.

    [xii] Ibid, p.266.

    [xiii] Ibid, p.268.

    [xiv] Ibid, p.268.

    [xv] Giles MacDonogh, A Palate in Revolution: Grimod de la Reyniere and the

    Almanach des Gourmands. London, Robin Clarke, 1987, p.186.

    [xvi] Ibid, p.187.

    [xvii] Ibid, p.108.

    [xviii] Ibid, p.166.

    [xix] Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste. Translated from French

    by Tome Jaine. London, Folio Society, 2008, p112.

    [xx] Ibid, p.183.

    [xxi] Ibid, p.112.

    [xxii] Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible: Civilisation and Capitalism 15th-18th Century: Volume 1, Translated from French by Sian Reynolds, London Phoenix Press, p.187.

    [xxiii] Ory, 1997 p.444.

    [xxiv] Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. Translated from French by Richard Nice. London, Routledge Press, 2010, p.71.

    [xxv] Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo, ‘The biomass distribution on Earth’, PNAS June 19, 2018 115 (25) 6506-6511, https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506, accessed 8/4/19.

    [xxvi] Gaelle Gourmellon, ‘Peak Meat Production Strains Land and Water Resources’ Worldwatch Institute, August 26th, 2014, http://www.worldwatch.org/peak-meat-production-strains-land-and-water-resources-1 accessed 6/5/19.

    [xxvii] Brad Plumer, ‘How much of the world’s cropland is actually used to grow food?’ Vox, December 16th, 2014. https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed, accessed 6/5/19.

    [xxviii] Prof Walter Willett et al, Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems, January, 2019. The Lancet.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31788-4/fulltext?utm_campaign=tleat19&utm_source=HPfeature’, accessed 8/4/19.

  • A Confederacy of Vegetables

    St. Helens University agronomy department was not the stuff of which headlines are made, but as a professor of horticultural science, he knew that his recent discovery, and the terrifying message he was entrusted to deliver, had to reach people with maximum impact. There was no time for academic papers. It had to be hammered into the public consciousness, or it could be fatal. More than individually fatal, it could have horrible consequences for the entire world.

    When did he first know? He remembered being fascinated with the thought of communicating with other beings as his scientific mind started to develop.

    At primary school there was a teacher who encouraged his talking to plants and he listened to her theories on how plants responded even though the rest of the class thought she was a nutter.

    And there was that short story in Playboy magazine, read surreptitiously in his teenage years, behind a locked door having worn out the fantasy of the photographs. It was a story of a man who experimented with talking to plants.  It was pure fiction of course, but Wynam had always remembered the repetitive, eventually fatal line the plant researcher, scientist and adulterer had used while giving his wife a tour of his laboratory: ‘contrary to popular belief.’

    The scientist’s wife shot him and his alluring female assistant, saying: ‘Contrary to popular belief, dear, daisies do tell.’

    When Wynam’s university studies in horticultural science called for a speciality, his became the psychology of plants. First, because no one knew much about it then and what was known amounted to folk tales and urban myths and outside the mainstream of science, so it left the playing field open for him. Second, since plants played such an important part in world welfare, he felt he could make a scientific contribution to benefit all mankind, but really he wanted to do something that would be remembered, that would make a difference. He often daydreamed of being pictured on a postage stamp.

    This discovery about which he had to tell the world was pressing on Wynam’s mind to the point of migraine. He faced the most difficult trial of his entire career in presenting his plea to the university hierarchy, and it was centred precisely on the premise of communicating with plants. Except Wynam now knew it was more than a premise. He had proof.

    It wasn’t until just last summer that his efforts in plant communication became focussed, and that happened only when he started learning more about his late parents.

    It was just after his Aunt Clothilde had died and he had to clear out her house that he discovered an old leather suitcase laid flat in a corner of the loft filled with his parents’ diaries, papers and ephemera. He had never felt the need to ask about his parents and she had never volunteered.

    It was Aunt Clotilde, his mum’s spinster sister, who saw to Wynam’s rearing after Mr and Mrs O’Nion’s untimely deaths. There were no photos of them around the house as Wynam was growing up, so these ancient artefacts Wynam was unfolding and reading were like discovering a lost civilisation, except that this civilisation had begat him.

    ‘Mum. Dad,’ Wynam tried the words aloud as he sat in Clothilde’s old sitting room surrounded by the chaff of their life. He was entranced by what he had discovered about his parents in a single container and by what they thought and how they acted. There was no overall blueprint for their lifestyle, but it was starting to form in Wynam’s mind as ‘Hippies Gone Back to Nature’ the more he read.

    Wynam had been pretty much on his own since his parents, medieval history academics, died horribly in an accident during a recreation of the Battle of Evesham when he was seven. It was noted at the funeral service that Wynam’s father, as Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, had actually died one year earlier than was historically accurate. Or, that’s the story he was told at their funeral.

    Not that Wynam and his parents were ever that close in his seven years with them.  He was accidentally their only child and had been left alone with his books much of his early years. If pressed, Wanda and Wilfred would have admitted it was partly because their child’s unusual appearance prompted too many questions, but mostly because a child was a burden on those long weekends away celebrating life.

    So, the heir to the O’Nion name continued his solitary life, resigned to the fact his presence made people uncomfortable, but content with his abilities, his reading and passion for science filling his life. Until now, that is, when this parcel from the past conjured up a new light in his life that would illuminate many unanswered questions.

    Inside the box that smelled faintly like wet on dogs there were research papers on the early forms of the Maypole celebration in England, Greek gods, Pagans and witchcraft; a smallish leather-bound copy  of a book titled ‘Rites Omnia in duos’ that contained ancient hand-written barely legible notes accompanied by some erotic drawings and a few black and white photos. It was the photos that grabbed Wynam’s eye, for there were his Mum and Dad staring back at him over the lost decades in their time capsule tie-dyed shirts and long flower-bedecked hair. There they were again, only this time with different retro dress. As he shuffled through the photos, Wynam noticed a theme – they were all taken outdoors at some sort of rural gathering. Wynam noticed the photos also frequently included a curly headed man referred to as ‘Wheat’ on the back. ‘Wilfred, Wheat and me, Devon 1965’; ‘Wheat and me, ’66; Near Grimslade’, May Day 1967.’

    Wynam  remembered opening a leather-bound A4 journal that apparently had been used by both his mother and father and set about deciphering the hand-written entries.

    They appeared to have been fascinated with Greek and Roman mythology, for there were entries like:

    “Marsyas flayed by Apollo. His skin put up on a pine tree at Celaenae – ritual perpetuated as reviving the life of vegetation in spring.” (his resurrection)

    ref: Persephone/Demeter power of yearly renewal of vegetation. Girl’s virginity taken to bring forth offspring.

    Roman Floriala – 28April- 1 May..sex

    “Mother goddesses mated each year in rituals to ensure the fruitfulness of the ground, essential to the propagation of plants. The Golden Bough, Frazer.

    Fertility of the soil depended on intercourse of women with strangers. Gods bestowed on them favours. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Col Yule”

    Sympathetic magic, as people sought to recreate what they saw in nature, so intercourse in fields they believed help helped to make the earth more fertile. God and goddesses consummate ‘marriage’, symbolic gesture of fertility. Fertility for crops and women and animals.

    Wynam reached inside the old suitcase unconsciously as he read and pulled out an old audio cassette tape. It was Frank Zappa, Absolutely Free and snapped it in Clothilde’s multi-purpose boom box he remembered being always tuned to Radio Four. Now it spit out early Zappa music, not exactly Wynam’s favourite, but he wanted something to break the quiet of the house while he read.

    He was getting a sense now that his parents were more than just flower-power hippies. A pattern was emerging here that they studied ancient rituals that had to do with the fertility of crops; that they were actually researching how humans looked at the universe, their gods, and the crops that gave them life. More than researching, it seemed. Hell, they were living it. Not that medieval history crap he had been told.

    “The life-giving properties of sacrificial blood soaking into soil demonstrated in several ancient rituals globally. Human sacrifice for the good of the crops – also Mindinao (Wild Tribes of Davao District 1913 – Bagobos)”

    Pagan Beltane (English Roodmass), pre-Christian rites of fertility including intercourse, then toned down. Fire. Water. Earth, Air.

    Greenwood Marriages. May Day celebrations. Couples went off to the woods to find branches/Maypoles and spent the night with each other. Maypole phallic symbol representing the seed, spirit of summer, new growth the fertilizing spirit of vegetation; women the earth, the womb.

    Carline – sacrifices, human then animal, then Wicca-men sacrifices. Usually burned. Ashes considered good fertility for soil.

    Agnus Castus anaphrodisiac.

    And a separate untitled journal which was handwritten on the inside:

    Le compte du géant de Bartone

    Fr Vaultier

    On and on, Wynam pored through the notes of his creators building a picture of a human interpretation of the natural cycle very close to his work. The import of it was sinking in when the music in the background took over his consciousness and he heard the lyrics.

    Call any vegetable call it by name
    Call one today when you get off the train
    Call any vegetable and the chances are good
    Aw, the vegetable will respond to you.

    He listened for more.

    Call any vegetable pick up your phone
    Think of a vegetable lonely at home
    Call any vegetable and the chances are good
    That a vegetable will respond to you

    Was that what he heard? Here he had been following a theory and suddenly it hit him.

    No one will know
    If you don’t want to let them know
    No one will know
    ‘less it’s you that might tell them so
    Call and they’ll come to you
    Covered with dew
    Vegetables dream, of responding to you

    There were prophetic words. His research was with the wrong kind of plants.

    Standing there shiny and proud by your side
    Holding your hand while the neighbors decide
    Why is a vegetable something to hide?

    You know a lot of people don’t bother about their friends in thevegetable kingdom. They, they think: what can I say? Some timesthey think: where can I go?

    Thanks Mum. Thanks Dad. Thanks Frank. That’s when I first knew. Frank Zappa told me.

    FIRST CONTACT

    EVOLUTION OF PLANTS ENCOMPASSES MANKIND

    Man has officially made contact with beings from an alien civilisation and they are not pleased with us, Quentin Bartholomew writes.

    In a monumental scientific discovery, a St. Helens University plant scientist has established a method of communicating with plants. Professor Wynam O’Nion has had months of conversations with various vegetables through a device that receives then translates their speech into English. In turn the same device sends English words back in the vegetables’ language.

    That we have made contact, indeed true communication with the ‘Verdure’ as they call themselves, is an established fact. I personally have talked with them and can report they represent a cultured, sensitive race of beings capable of expressing feelings similar to that of man.

    I am fully aware of Pathetic Fallacy, the John Ruskin (1819-1900) originated figure of speech that attributes human feelings to nature. But Professor O’Nion has taken us beyond that fanciful asseveration which provided writers with many profitable pages, to the stage where mankind now faces the reality of speaking directly to what previously were thought to be inanimate, though living, objects. And not only speaking, conversing.

    There is no parisology in talking with the Verdure. They are straightforward, brutally honest, even clever in their speech. And they are pissed off.

    Let me explain. Over the centuries mankind has dealt with its inhumanities to man with shock, shame, then more of the same. The genocide we saw in World War Two, and were shocked and shamed by, we saw in Bosnia, in Africa, in Iraq in later years. Again we were shocked and shamed, but it was more of the same.

    The Verdure want the world to know of another genocide — scientific genocide– medical experiments on the genes of various vegetables which threaten their culture. It is a genuine concern and hurt to the Verdure that we have laboratories working to change the way vegetables flower, react to sunlight, fight disease and insects. A hurt they consider a crime against nature itself. A genocide.

    These are proud vegetables — a race that has a language, culture and history, and has the means to decide its own fate. The Verdure have asked mankind to stop.

    I should mention it is a request with an ‘or else’ at the end of it. One might ask, as I did, what kind of ‘or else’ can a carrot have? How will a beetroot beat you? What threat is a cauliflower to your life? Considerable, once you learn what I have learned.

    The Verdure do have the ability to become toxic –poisonous to humans — if they choose. It is this toxic ability which the Verdure are using as their leverage in this request from us. It’s more power than any other victim of the world’s atrocities ever had, yet the Verdure are asking the world politely for humane treatment. It would be a pathetic fallacy if we did not listen.

  • Musician of the Month – Paul Gilgunn

    Over the past year I developed a musical work reflecting the precarious times we are living through. This composition HERE WE ARE NOW is music for an ensemble of four electric guitars, bass, drums, percussion, and saxophonics. My aim was to produce art with radical import. As well as creating an engaging, innovative, and powerful musical experience, I wanted to explore how co-operation and collective action could happen by drawing musicians from classical, electronica, jazz, and rock music together.

    As a composer and musician I operate across boundaries and systems. My own work spans the peripheries of classical and popular music – primarily, avant-rock, improvised music, and post-minimalist composition – frequently involving cross-disciplinary exchanges with literature, video, video games, and visual art. Rather than being ‘marginal’ in import, these endeavours aim to challenge, empower, enliven, and provoke.

    There is an overlap here with ‘popular modernism’, as Mark Fisher termed it, a deviation from popular culture that challenges the heterogeneity and ideological complicity of mass culture; work that provides a means to engage critically with, and reimagine, the world as we know it.[i] The beneficial social power of art and its ability to spread new ideas are also characteristic of the avant-garde – as originally conceived by Henri de Saint-Simon in 1825.

    After picking up the guitar in the mid-1990s, I experimented with the forms, instruments, and techniques of popular music through performances and recordings. When I returned to study the arts and music in my mid-twenties I came into contact with the work of avant-garde composers and musicians who I felt an affinity with, and who opened up new possibilities for me creatively. By the time I completed my doctoral studies in 2017 I had worked with composers Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, and Jennifer Walshe, and established my own artistic practice, which became the focus of my energies.

    Challenging, engaging, and stimulating art is particularly vital at present, as is co-operative and collective action, drawing upon the interdependence of individuals. Content or cultural diversions that seek to maintain a faltering status quo are surplus to requirements. Many of our current woes – consumerism, environmental disaster, and inequality – are perpetuated and sustained by a neoliberal ideology reigning over late capitalism. This model of economic growth-without-end is impossible and unsustainable, a reality confirmed by a recent and conclusive UN report on the matter.[ii]

    Neoliberal governments prioritise corporate profits and the interests of a tiny minority, to the detriment of the majority, and the planet. It is an ideology that predicates upon competition, individualism, manufactured precarity, and scarcity of resources. This hits the lower- and middle- income strata in particular, through erosion of job security and diminished working conditions (longer hours, stagnant wages), and the privatisation of public resources (land, gas, oil, water, etc.) and services (education, hospitals, housing, and transport). Meanwhile, the personification of ignorance and intolerance occupies the Oval Office in Washington.

    What is the role of the artist in a global scenario where inequality and intolerance are on the rise, and catastrophic climate change appears imminent? Marina Abramović suggests the function of the artist in a disturbed society is to ‘ask the right questions, to open consciousness and elevate the mind.’[iii] That sentiment is echoed in Jennifer Walshe’s work, which is alert and responsible to the present, ‘dedicated to grappling with the times we live in.’[iv] An artist certainly has a responsibility to be aware of, and respond to, the present moment. The Anthropocene we are living through – where humans are the dominant influence upon the environment – is not a dystopia as it may ostensibly appear: the possibility to reimagine and reconfigure the world we live in exists within the human mind.

    HERE WE ARE NOW uses new sounds and structures in order to open new possibilities. The music is concerned with rhythm, timbre, and volume – instead of conventional harmonic progressions or melody derived from common practice – as a musical means to engage constructs of subjectivity, and expand or alter them through affect, perceptualization, and rhythmic entrainment. This is an evocation of the imagination through a sublime of music; to experience life in its fullness, to reimagine and reconfigure how we are now.

    HERE WE ARE NOW is available as a digital download, limited edition CD, and via online streaming services: https://paulgilgunn.hearnow.com/. For further information on Paul’s work visit: https://gilgunn.org/.

    Paul Gilgunn, image (c) Arturo Byson.

    [i] Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Winchester: Zero Books, 2014, p. 23.

    [ii] Paavo Järvensivu et al., ‘Transformation: the Economy’, Helsinki: BIOS Research Unit, 2019. Available via: https://bios.fi/bios-governance_of_economic_transition.pdf

    [iii] Marina Abramović quoted in Sarah Thorton, 33 Artists in 3 Acts, London: Granta Books, 2014, p. 33.

    [iv] Jennifer Walshe, ‘Notes on Being an Irish Composer’ in The Invisible Art: A Century of Music in Ireland: 1916-2016, edited by Michael Dervan, Dublin: New Ireland, 2016, p. 244.

  • Cassandra’s Cultural Roundabout – May, 2019

    Cassandra’s Cultural Roundabout is a light-hearted take on the cultural scene of Dublin and beyond, containing the odd acerbic note.

    Make Merry

    We know precisely how fine a documentary film maker Sé Merry Doyle is from our experience working with him on his short film, ‘Cassandra Voices – the Hard Copy.’ Sé put two chronically camera-shy characters at ease, while shooting amidst general hilarity, but with a clear idea of what he wanted to achieve in the short time allocated.

    Man about town, Sé Merry Doyle.

    Fittingly, his work is now reaching a wider public through the availability of the Loopline Collection on the IFI’s player. More treasures await, for this is only Volume 1. Mainstream media have predictably drawn attention to unseen U2 footage from the early 1980s, but there is much more than that to enjoy in documentaries that are often hymns to the town he loves so well.

    Sé’s work is simultaneously featuring in an exhibition in Trinity College’s Douglas Hyde Gallery, which also includes Garret Phelan’s new radio station FREE THOUGHT FM, offering the general public an open platform, where all voices will be heard.

    The seemingly indefatigable Sé has a number of projects on the go, having just returned from showing his films at Belgrade’s Irish Festival. We hear rumours of a forthcoming Brexit documentary, exploring comparisons between the ongoing British drama and the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

    His most immediate concern, however, is to finish ‘Hannah and Me’, an account of the life of one of Ireland’s foremost suffragettes of the early twentieth century, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington, seen through the eyes of her granddaughter, Micheline – a doughty fighter for gender equality and justice herself.

    That documentary recreates Hannah’s campaigning journey around the United States in the wake of the summary execution, by a deranged British officer, of her pacifist husband Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, during the 1916 Easter Rising.

    Given Sé’s outstanding record, and the importance of restoring these sadly overlooked characters to the narrative of the state’s independence movement, it is unthinkable that the minimal funding required should not be forthcoming.

    Music in Film

    Myles O’Reilly has single-handedly carved out his own genre of short Irish music films. He now collaborates with many of the big names in the music business, but still seems to find time for what must be labours of love.

    His latest offering ‘Rhob Cunningham Verses the Alps’, follows the impish troubadour, and Cassandra Voices Musician of the Month for February, as he climbs, bare-foot, for seven hours, with a guitar strapped to his back! There awaits a cabin where he plays what must have been a delightful gig. Rhob’s alluring tones and playful guitar harmonises perfectly with Myles’s stirring shots of the Alpine landscape.

    We like the pun on “Verses” in the title, recalling Bruce Chatwin’s account of the aboriginal population of Australia, who believe their ancestors sang the land into existence, writing: ‘In aboriginal belief, an unsung land is a dead land; since if the songs are forgotten, the land itself will die.’

    Chatwin concludes that the Songlines are not necessarily an Australian phenomenon, but universal: ‘the means by which man marked out his territory, and so organized his social life.’ Or, as Rainer Maria Rilke put it: ‘Gesang ist Dasein’ – ‘song is existence’. Unfortunately Rhob was unavailable for comment as his voice is still recovering from the feat of singing the Alps into existence, but we expect to hear from him soon – or his lawyers anyway.

    Album Releases

    Meanwhile April’s Musician of the Month Bartholomew Ryan led his Visionary crew of Loafing Heroes, Giulia Gallina, Jaime McGill and Judith Retzlik, on another tour of Ireland and Portugal this month, following the release of ‘Meandertales’, their sixth album, which mixes distorted fairytales into their dream-folk brew.

    The Loafing Heroes in Concert, Image (c) Daniele Idini

    According to the press release: ‘The band’s vision of entanglement, transformation and subversive joy responds to the technological overload and ecological catastrophe of our troubled times.’ Just prior to the album launch, they put out an outstanding video for the track ‘stairs’, made by the Austrian filmmaker Otwin Bernat, featuring Portuguese, Irish and Brazilian locations. It is now in the running for a number of awards.

    We travelled with The Loafing Heroes all the way to Waterville in Kerry, where they played a concert in Tech Amergin to rapturous acclaim, with not one, but two encores demanded. Sensing it might get ugly, they sensibly acceded to the rising clamour of the audience’s demands, to the bemusement of their impatient driver…

    ‘Forest’, Bartholomew’s spoken-word final song on ‘Meandertales’ is published as a poem in the current edition. He closes with the words:

    never before has there been such an open sea
    never before did I see so many trees
    the endlessness of the forest swallowed up my consciousness
    take me, eat me, drink me, drown me
    we are all strangers now
    we are all tyrants now
    we are all shamans now
    we are all charlatans now
    it’s all good. the animals are here.

    Another Cassandra Voices contributor Anna-Mieke Bishop also launched her first album, ‘Idle Mind, this month. Anna’s outstanding voice and lyrical sensitivity make major success inevitable. Or is that her star already visible in the night sky?

    Another among the new wave of young musical talent demanding our attention, Branwen Kavanagh, C.V.’s Artist of the Month for November, is launching her own new album, in the Unitarian Church with full band in Dublin on Sunday, May 12th.

    Branwen Kavanagh, Image (c) Daniele Idini.

    And Finally…

    The aforementioned hard copy edition – our own labour of love – Cassandra Voices – Volume I, along with the work of photographer-in-chief, Daniele Idini, will be appearing in ‘Social Commons’, a multi-disciplinary exhibition exploring issues experienced by communities, both local and global. We are in the company of May’s Artist of the Month Jota Castro, Áine Ní Chíobháin, Francis Fay, Gillian O Shea, Kate O Shea, Dr Katherine Nolan, Eve Olney, Kathryn Maguire, Siobh McGrane, Sphere 17, A Homeless Hub in Ireland and Durty Words. The launch is happening on May 2nd at 6.30pm in Liberty Hall, Eden Quay, Dublin 1. Bring your dancing shoes!

    Until next time, and do keep us posted on major happenings in Dublin and beyond: admin@cassandravoices.com

  • Cassandra Classics: ‘The Lottery’ (1948) by Shirley Jackson

    At Cassandra Voices we believe in contrasting the original work of our contemporary contributors with accomplished authors from yesteryear. Perennial favourites of such mastery, they appear as fresh and modern as the day they were first published.

    For our May edition we bring you Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’. A short story from 1948, and notorious for provoking the most vehement hate mail of any piece of fiction in the venerable New Yorker’s history. Loyal readers of the magazine went so far as to cancel their subscriptions in protest.

    In Shirley Jackson’s own words,

    Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer—three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch.

    ************************************************************************************

    The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.

    The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play. and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix– the villagers pronounced this name “Dellacroy”–eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.

    Soon the men began to gather. surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother.

    The lottery was conducted–as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program–by Mr. Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him. because he had no children and his wife was a scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called. “Little late today, folks.” The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool. and when Mr. Summers said, “Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?” there was a hesitation before two men. Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter. came forward to hold the box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.

    The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything’s being done.

    The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.

    Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued. had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into he black box. The night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers’ coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves’s barn and another year underfoot in the post office. and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.

    There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were the lists to make up–of heads of families. heads of households in each family. members of each household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory. tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this p3rt of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching. Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans. with one hand resting carelessly on the black box. he seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the Martins.

    Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd. “Clean forgot what day it was,” she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and they both laughed softly. “Thought my old man was out back stacking wood,” Mrs. Hutchinson went on. “and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty- seventh and came a-running.” She dried her hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, “You’re in time, though. They’re still talking away up there.”

    Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her husband and children standing near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and began to make her way through the crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her through: two or three people said. in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, “Here comes your, Missus, Hutchinson,” and “Bill, she made it after all.” Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully. “Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie.” Mrs. Hutchinson said. grinning, “Wouldn’t have me leave m’dishes in the sink, now, would you. Joe?,” and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson’s arrival.

    “Well, now.” Mr. Summers said soberly, “guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work. Anybody ain’t here?”

    “Dunbar.” several people said. “Dunbar. Dunbar.”

    Mr. Summers consulted his list. “Clyde Dunbar.” he said. “That’s right. He’s broke his leg, hasn’t he? Who’s drawing for him?”

    “Me. I guess,” a woman said. and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. “Wife draws for her husband.” Mr. Summers said. “Don’t you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?” Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with an expression of polite interest while Mrs. Dunbar answered.

    “Horace’s not but sixteen yet.” Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. “Guess I gotta fill in for the old man this year.”

    “Right.” Mr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding. Then he asked, “Watson boy drawing this year?”

    A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. “Here,” he said. “I’m drawing for my mother and me.” He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices in the crowd said thin#s like “Good fellow, lack.” and “Glad to see your mother’s got a man to do it.”

    “Well,” Mr. Summers said, “guess that’s everyone. Old Man Warner make it?” “Here,” a voice said. and Mr. Summers nodded.

     

    A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked at the list. “All ready?” he called. “Now, I’ll read the names–heads of families first–and the men come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?”

    The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions: most of them were quiet. wetting their lips. not looking around. Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, “Adams.” A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. “Hi. Steve.” Mr. Summers said. and Mr. Adams said. “Hi. Joe.” They grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd. where he stood a little apart from his family. not looking down at his hand.

    “Allen.” Mr. Summers said. “Anderson. Bentham.”

    “Seems like there’s no time at all between lotteries any more.” Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the back row.

    “Seems like we got through with the last one only last week.”

    “Time sure goes fast,” Mrs. Graves said.

    “Clark. Delacroix”

    “There goes my old man.” Mrs.Delacroix said. She held her breath while her husband went forward.

    “Dunbar,” Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while one of the women said. “Go on. Janey,” and another said, “There she goes.”

    “We’re next.” Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came around from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected a slip of paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hand. turning them over and over nervously Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of paper.

    “Harburt. Hutchinson.”

    “Get up there, Bill,” Mrs. Hutchinson said. and the people near her laughed. “Jones.”

    “They do say,” Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, “that over in the north village the’re talking of giving up the lottery.”

    Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” he added petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.”

    “Some places have already quit lotteries.” Mrs. Adams said.

    “Nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools.” “Martin.” And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. “Overdyke. Percy.”

    “I wish they’d hurry,” Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. “They’re almost through,” her son said.

    “You get ready to run tell Dad,” Mrs. Dunbar said.

    Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and selected a slip from the box. Then he called, “Warner.”

    “Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,” Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd. “Seventy-seventh time.”

    “Watson” The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone said, “Don’t be nervous, Jack,” and Mr. Summers said, “Take your time, son.”

    “Zanini.”

     

    After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers. holding his slip of paper in the air, said, “All right, fellows.” For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened.

    Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saving. “Who is it?,” “Who’s got it?,” “Is it the Dunbars?,” “Is it the Watsons?” Then the voices began to say, “It’s Hutchinson. It’s Bill,” “Bill Hutchinson’s got it.”

    “Go tell your father,” Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.

    People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly. Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers. “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!”

    “Be a good sport, Tessie.” Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, “All of us took the same chance.” “Shut up, Tessie,” Bill Hutchinson said.

    “Well, everyone,” Mr. Summers said, “that was done pretty fast, and now we’ve got to be hurrying a little more to get done in time.” He consulted his next list. “Bill,” he said, “you draw for the Hutchinson family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?”

    “There’s Don and Eva,” Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. “Make them take their chance!”

    “Daughters draw with their husbands’ families, Tessie,” Mr. Summers said gently. “You know that as well as anyone else.”

    “It wasn’t fair,” Tessie said.

    “I guess not, Joe.” Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. “My daughter draws with her husband’s family; that’s only fair. And I’ve got no other family except the kids.”

    “Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it’s you,” Mr. Summers said in explanation, “and as far as drawing for households is concerned, that’s you, too. Right?”

    “Right,” Bill Hutchinson said.

    “How many kids, Bill?” Mr. Summers asked formally. “Three,” Bill Hutchinson said.

    “There’s Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me.”

    “All right, then,” Mr. Summers said. “Harry, you got their tickets back?”

    Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. “Put them in the box, then,” Mr. Summers directed. “Take Bill’s and put it in.”

    “I think we ought to start over,” Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. “I tell you it wasn’t fair. You didn’t give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that.”

    Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box, and he dropped all the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.

    “Listen, everybody,” Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her.

    “Ready, Bill?” Mr. Summers asked. and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance around at his wife and children. nodded.

    “Remember,” Mr. Summers said. “take the slips and keep them folded until each person has taken one. Harry, you help little Dave.” Mr. Graves took the hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him up to the box. “Take a paper out of the box, Davy.” Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box and laughed. “Take just one paper.” Mr. Summers said. “Harry, you hold it for him.” Mr. Graves took the child’s hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist and held it while little Dave stood next to him and looked up at him wonderingly.

    “Nancy next,” Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends breathed heavily as she went forward switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily from the box “Bill, Jr.,” Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face red and his feet overlarge, near knocked the box over as he got a paper out. “Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly. and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.

    “Bill,” Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt around, bringing his hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.

    The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, “I hope it’s not Nancy,” and the sound of the whisper reached the edges of the crowd.

    “It’s not the way it used to be.” Old Man Warner said clearly. “People ain’t the way they used to be.” “All right,” Mr. Summers said. “Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave’s.”

    Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill. Jr.. opened theirs at the same time. and both beamed and laughed. turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads.

    “Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.

    “It’s Tessie,” Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. “Show us her paper. Bill.”

    Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.

    “All right, folks.” Mr. Summers said. “Let’s finish quickly.”

    Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry up.”

    Mr. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said. gasping for breath. “I can’t run at all. You’ll have to go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.”

    The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.

    Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.

    “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

  • Artist of the Month – Jota Castro

    I feel Irish today,
    No decent future, maybe just money and a new distillery
    The new hotel to fuck my view in Dublin 8 is empty
    The enormous student residence is as windy as a Hong Kong typhoon.
    And empty like my pockets.
    How is it possible to live without depression in Dublin 8?
    Rents growing up like young kids
    New lovers prefer Inchicore for survival
    I saw a couple of new Dubs from Yemen
    Laughing in from of a €16 sort-of-pita on Fumbally Lane .
    Dog shit is everywhere and landlords now aren’t building
    Anymore, they prefer selling the risk to young tenters
    Ladies are covering up today like an old bad memory
    The weather hit me like the
    Cultural page of the Irish Times
    And Dalkey economics need to take their fucking Volvos
    And visit reality on the North Side and stop talking about Brexit.
    Living on an island other than Sicily is hard, especially if your rent looks
    Like a Greenwich Village one without the Jazz and Latin vibes
    I read a prick note from a fella working on cultural issues in Ireland that creates
    Anxiety in me.

    How am I supposed to live?
    How am I supposed to fuck?
    How am I supposed to smile?
    We have a fucking bad poet taking care of us,
    And a Minogue fan and Murphy destroying the social fabric of Dublin 8

    The Irish create the 3.0 Proletarian Profile, they are not concerned
    Because money arrives, nothing more
    It is sad, like a Dub
    Empathy is gone
    Love is only there
    And Setanta doesn’t fight any longer.