For recent articles, please see past & current issues of From Dusk 2 Dawn (www.fd2d.com).

19 September 2010

Defending the 'Decadent Romantics': a retort

I've read a small number of attacks on our (and by 'our', I mean Steven, Nathan and my own) title of the 'Decadent Romantics', mainly borne through a mixture of ignorance on termonology and lack of research into the Brothellian Movement, and so I feel compelled to defend the term and explain what it represents.

The Romantic era (mid 18th Century - mid 19th) was a golden age of radical ideas, naturalism and revolution. The Decadents (late 19th Century), now regarded as the transition between Romantics and Modernists, were those who valued artifice and aestheticism over naturalism, adopting Gautier's infamous slogan 'L'art pour l'art', (art for art's sake) as their bohemian creed.

We, the Decadent Romantics, are three extraordinarily different wordsmiths, but use the term 'Decadent' in retaliation to those who fail to recognise the importance of aestheticism in the modern world, and call ourselves 'Romantics' as we share the same desire to save England from the bland, banal, corporate mess of post-modernism. Not only do we forgive those who come to our nomadic 'study' or the 'Poetry Brothel' with purely aesthetic motives, we encourage it! Each show should be seen as gateways to such ideals; a gateway held open by the unflinching support of the Brothellian Brotherhood and, indeed, Brothellian Movement as a whole.

So if you feel the need to criticise, dear critics, please acquaint yourselves with this knowledge. I'm sure it will help soothe the pain of ignorance, hopefully repelling embarrassment in the process.

12 December 2009

The Inhuman Waste

Lines written on the top floor of 17a/b Cank Street

What are clothes?  Why do women spend so much time looking for them?  Are their clothes insufficient?  Do they fall apart after a year?  No, of course not.  Then why is it, in this modern culture, that they feel compelled to constantly search for them?  A leopard can never change his spots, but a woman can change her shirt, skirt or scarf whenever she has the money.  Does she really believe the clothes will change her?  Can a new pair of shoes make or break her?  In the eyes of society, perhaps, but why is this?  Is society really as materialistic as her?  Of course it is!  Why?  Because it's made up of people just like her.

And men, men!  What do we long for?  Gratification through sex, sport and technology, (hopefully not all together).  I fail to understand my own gender sometimes, expecially with the current blu-ray infatuation.  Who cares if the picture/sound quality is twice as good?  If it was good enough before, why spend thousands of pounds on making it better?  Why change it?  The same need, the same force which drives women to sniff out useless, new clothes: greed.  It's the attitude of "we already have, but still want more". 

I despise this materialistic society.  The capitalist cannibals block every turn - I see them as clearly now as I did several years ago.  They were disguised as children then, but now, now I see them for what they really are; now I can see the truth.  These children, our children, have grown fat with needless over-consumption.  Our children have become the capitalist cannibals, preying on the weak in order to survive.  We must stop this materialistic mindset; we must starve the chldren,

...metaphorically, of course.