Swallow

Nick Kershaw is giving his riffs - an '80s throwback, and I'm zooming down the A12, a road forsaken by the pantheon of Gods, trying to air-guitar Kershaw's track, because the radio won't pick up anything else in that part of the country and it's all a bit depressing. It reminded me of an ex-boyfriend, and at that moment, I missed him, but it didn't last long, thankfully, and I went back to my normal state of being glad we have gone our separate ways.

I was amazed at this pang - what, exactly was I missing? Possibly his spontaneity, his sense of fun, his boundary-less perception of the world? That his child-like view of the world meant that it was still all out there, the world having as much appeal as it had the first day he opened his eyes. An unquenchable hunger - thirst - to reach out and grab what ever attracted his fleeting attention, even if it ripped the flesh from him.

I was also amazed at the sense of nostalgia that was hankered for around the table earlier in the evening. How they pined and crooned for bakelite, and wept with dismay at the anonymity of the the iPhone, and the general detriment of tactile sensuousness in today's electronic commodities. Out with rubberised phone jackets, in with gloss black, a touch of chrome. Desecration. Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? Richard Hamilton, 1956. Obviously as much a concern now as then - or more so in these post-apocalyptic days of green issues, ethically sourced organic food, global gold prices rocketing and flooding of Chinese imports. I rarely feel nostalgia, but for others, it's a state of continual yearning. Someone around the table had questioned this human need for objects - behind the consumerism, the leisure shopping, the snobbery of objects, the staving off of boredom, new toys and illusions of higher efficacy in the kitchen... just what is this addictive desire to own all this stuff?

Whatever it is, Reverend Billy doesn't agree. More factually, wiki/Reverend_Billy_and_the_Church_of_Life_After_Shopping is radically anti-consumerist, part of the wider field of wiki/Culture_jamming, where subversion and intervention of first world gluttonist tendencies are the order of the day, and don't we know it? Culture jamming is so much a part of our everyday lives: Banksy; for those of you who go way back... the Adidas logo being turned into a cannabis leaf 'Adinuf', or even the Ronald MacDonald scandal and the reinterpretation of this character. Whether it's visual art intervention, a political stance on serious social issues, or getting on your bicycle www.critical-mass... It's the silver bullet for consumerism. laurakeeble.com/down-the-aisle: She comments on High Church cultural values of our High Street and the irrevocable bond, the insatiable desire, that is consumerism (and we all thought it was sex, which is a submissive tool to the desire for ownership). She and Reverend Billy are singing off the same hymn sheet.

Around the table, we had been talking about Sudjic's 'The Language of Things', Reviewed by Julian Dibbell, in the Daily Telegraph, he also reviews alongside Walker's 'I'm With The Brand' (intended irony here, these link to Amazon). Dibbell points out Walkers' "murketing" as the space between seller and sold-to: the subversion (diversion, re-routing) of objects: he cites black youths in NY wearing Timberland boots "as a ghetto fashion statement", the intention of the original object lost through re-contextualisation and given new meaning. No more than foxes moving in inner city spaces; the destruction of the rain forests as MacDonalds provides food for the masses, turning the world into a dustbowl, it seems to me that Timberland becomes emblematic of all of this.

We're very familiar here in the UK with beltless youths walking around with their jeans hanging off their butts. I wonder how many of them realise that look was appropriated from inmates of the American jail system: your belt is taken off you in case you hang yourself; you lose weight, and your clothes start hanging from a frame that was once first-world-fed fois-gras plump. Or Tiffany&Co jewellery. Us ladies love that stuff - you're familiar with the chain and heart tag: 'I'm so rich I have my jewellery in a safety-deposit box, and I'll wear the security chain' as the status symbol. The irony that those who wear this stuff could never afford Tiffany leaves me confused as to whether I should laugh or cry. 

Subversion is a natural inclination: we hanker for the things we can't have, like the stereotype of a typist forever grooming her nails; bucking the system. Culture jamming by the individual voice and en mass, the power of the consumer is actually in telling the producer what their product really means by what use they put it to. I use my Tiffany to chain my worthless crock of a bicycle to the nearest lamppost, it's certainly strong enough to do the job and no-one can steal my freedom. That's design to me: even if the product does or doesn't fit the intended use, I'll use it for whatever I want; if the product doesn't say what I want it to about me, I'll change it till it does, but that's a fine art.

Now, where did I leave my handbag?

How to be an Idiot

I've got my book on my lap and the cat has curled up, she's in for the long haul, and it's late in the evening. I thought I'd peruse iPlayer and see if there was something light to watch, and landed on www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/Justice_A_Citizens_Guide_to_the_21st_Century, presented by Michael J Sandel, a very unassuming man, deeply committed to Justice, in philosophical, political, practical terms. Incidentally, he's an American Jew, grew up in Los Angeles, and this in itself provides an interesting biographical framework. Not the light viewing I was looking for, but how enlightening.

The book was still in my lap. Deyan Sudjic, blogger for the Guardian www.guardian.co.uk/profile/deyansudjic and Director of the Design Museum, London : The Language of Things (Penguin, 2008) is a really entertaining writer - from his personal experience and pleasure in designed objects, to decoding the cultural, economic, social, class, and gender values of the DNA of objects, he makes for fascinating reading about the designed world around us. He opens with a comment on the redundancy and obsolescence of consumer goods, and the social values that these imbue - the Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver 'have my mates around and be a domestic goddess / blokest with the mostest'. The trendy demographic of the audience that was Delia Smith's, when we all used to cohabit.

Sudjic makes the hamster wheel point eloquently: desirable object, imbues identity of family values combines with latest in technology. My mother was considering a Thermomix, rolling in at £1100 or thereabouts, but this machine facilitates the likes of molecular gastronomy a la Heston Blumenthal (don't we love him, he's so cute) but I'm glad the innocuous-looking machine hasn't appeared in her kitchen. It would be a pain to calibrate but it does make bechamel sauce in 3 minutes. Anyway, make more money, buy more toasters (toys/idols of family values), less time at home, built in redundancy, replace, go out and get more money... but he says it with style. Why didn't I quote him? I tore that page out earlier today and gave it to a friend who will sellotape it back in when she reads the book after me.

Anyway, back to the box. Sandel is in conversation with a Greek philosopher and a Greek sociologist, and they're standing in a street - a casual conversation but also also the most democratically owned space the the world. At one point, Sandel is talking to another Greek philosopher, but they're sitting in a grove of olive trees. The ongoing debate in my head about religion vs philosophy rages, but to put that aside...

They're discussing Aristotle - his life, work, the culture that he lived in, and the concepts and ideals that Aristotle handed down - it's obvious that there is little difference between these men's understandings of Aristotle as an academic entity, and morals, beliefs and a way of living that is part of their cultural heritage and understanding that is much a part of their daily life as Tescos' is for me. Here's the point - I had already started to destroy the book in my lap by tearing out the page, the damaging of a book, an object we value, generally, but the temporal nature of television communicated a new way of articulating for me a huge bugbear: how to be an adult.

An idiot, in Athenian Democracy, is a person concerned with the private, and a citizen concerned with the public : recognising that we are all political beings; public duty; and that character and virtue come from participation in civic life, coming to maturity in guiding public opinion. Although we are shaped by a national politic, the ideas of community, personal accountability and responsibility and participation are strong in my mind - how, as an adult, citizens are made through education - and although some are well educated, they still act like idiots with a gross disregard for their community.

I'm not talking about graffiti or teenagers on street corners, but it could easily go that way. Well, they were invited...