Posts by Creon Upton
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
My votes for list of finalists:
Coskriedictory (funny how so much lobbying on behalf of one set of "human rights" tends to be at the expense of another -- a cruder and far less clever example than David's originals)
Robust (funny how this is always the adjective du jour to describe the coming changes and convince us that the latest unbelievable cock-up won't happen again)
Encrapt (Boss (aside to secretary): Christ, make sure you encrapt that in the minutes)
-
I remember taking a taxi from Lyttelton to the square with Zita and Rachel, and the entire trip consisted of a voluble and carefully referenced exegetical debate over which was better, Hallelujah All The Way Home or Bird Dog.
I guess we were fairly liquored, but the trip seemed to take, seriously, like two minutes. And as we got out of the cab we looked at each other and said in unison, as the thought concomitantly came to us: “God, that guy must’ve thought we were real pretentious dicks.”
While the opening chords of Bird Dog (the needle still scratchingly settling into place) have got to remain a particular moment in NZ music history, these days I’m happy to concede that the earlier, rawer, more challenging and diverse album is the winner.
I spent a lot of time with dead-shit people,
So I could learn to read and write.
I still move within those circles….On reflection, that directness lasts better than the slightly more abstruse
If there’s poison in your cup,
Well, you’ve picked your tree, now bark it upwhich really appealed to my younger self.
I’d never have thought that pop lyrics might actually stay with me as far as the grave, but they will, they will.
And if this is a conversation about what we couldn’t get enough of at a certain, critical period of our adolescence, probably around the time we were learning to smoke, for me it was early Verlaines.
And dickishness aside, yes, goddamit, when I was a bewildered child, it was good for me to see these folks, who didn’t look too different from me, writing about a world I knew (__the dirty midnight drunk walk, fucken know-it-all pub talk__); who I could look at on stage and feel startled by, who made me think, made me dance, made me say to my mate: “Hey, you’ve got to listen to this.”
Cheers Graeme et al..
-
Craig, yes, I was taking the piss.
But boy, your threat to eviscerate me had me pretty nervous nonetheless, and it made me realise again that responding to (what one perceives as) absurdity with elaborate counter-absurdity is a dangerous bloody rhetorical game. (And it's also kind of lazy.)
Everyone's seeming understandably tetchy, and I'm gonna bow out for a while (cos I'm busy, and cos I've said more than my share, and cos I've drained my limited reserves of knowledge or thoughtfulness), but I'd really like to see those with the stomach and patience for it to keep up an unpleasant but possibly useful conversation.
And Kowhai: it means "Get Off Your Friggin High Horse". (Not you, of course....)
(I think that's the first time in my life I've used an f-word succedaneum; I must be feeling conciliatory.)
-
Though, if the five year olds are 'Pakeha', then your analogy is pretty simplistic.
Here comes the death ray.....
-
To get really wanky, Sara, modernism was merely a new phase of romanticism and shouldn't be aligned with structuralism, which was, in itself, the real revolution: what's called 'poststructuralism' was, in my view, simply the necessary advancement of that.
And in my happier moments I tend to agree with you about the possibility of new, sign-conscious (if you will) ways of looking at ourselves. This morning, for example, I found myself feeling quite optimistic. But then I forgot the cardinal rule of Public Address (don't read Finn's posts) and got depressed again.
I think Hone Harawera is the living embodiment of sexying the treaty. Quite seriously: his attitude to being an MP has been one of actually demonstrating rangatiratanga in action. And he's pretty goddam sexy.
-
Kyle, I wasn't talking "for" anyone: I was taking the piss out of your absurd inability to look at the way in which you're looking at things. Eg. I understand what you mean when you say that how Pakeha view them is a concern for Tuhoe, but you're wrong. The concern for Tuhoe in this respect, I think, is that they're surrounded by people who for some reason are disposed to think of them as they apparently do, and it's incomprehensible, sad and infuriating.
Close your eyes, Kyle, and imagine that you find upon opening them that your home has become my-little-pony-land, and you're tongue has just been surgically removed by a five year old child, and however long you stay there you are expected to play horsie all day, and, while you may procreate, your offspring are equally born without tongues, and your five year old captors never grow up. And then imagine the ways in which you might find yourself expressing your intelligence and humanity.
And if you respond by picking pedantic holes in my deliberately ridiculous analogy, I swear, I will send a cyber death ray down to destroy you.
Sara: Interesting project. Um, well, happily I was at high school within the last twenty years and I learned nothing of the treaty.
Off the top of my head I can't help thinking that the general bureaucratisation of "treaty education" has worked against itself. You know, the perception that if you go for a job in Wellington you have to remember some spiel; if you train to be a teacher you need to include this stuff in every essay; resource consent applications need iwi approval (I don't even know if that's true), you know what I mean.
As much as "kiwis" believe in a fair crack of the whatever, they're also deeply resistant to being told what to do, and during the 90s at least treaty stuff became perfunctory and meaningless.
I'll have to think about this some more though.
-
Sara, I think you put it a whole lot better than I did:
And honestly, I don't know that Tuhoe are particularly focussed on changing Jo Pakeha's perceptions. I think they want to change government's perceptions (i.e. they won't be walked over). I think Hikoi has a long tradition. The walking thing is less about getting attention or sympathy than demonstrating commitment in an honourable way. So to characterise the Hikoi as part of a campaign, in the public perception sense is again rather ethnocentric. In my moderate (not minor, not extensive) experience in dealing with Maori who are actively working on Maori issues, they are usually not to focussed on Pakeha at all. They are (usually) just trying to do the best they can for their own at the time. There is even a degree of distrust of Pakeha do-gooders because they see it as our responsibility to sort our shit out and, rather than "helping" them in a paternalistic way, to work on changing our own attitudes, structures etc . Which is what I'm trying to do here.
I hope it's working. I know for one that I'm a million years from sorting my shit out. Seems worth the effort of trying though.
Can't help adding: The cynical side of me always thinks--apropos the much earlier comment about "what is rangatiratanga?"--that its appeal to lefty poststructuralist academics is precisely its beautiful intractibility.
-
Sorry, Sara got in first.
Preaching to the converted mostly, and otherwise bashing our heads against a brick wall methinks.
But there are all sorts posting here, and the various perspectives/facts/insights do push things around a little I find.
-
Malcolm, I don't know the facts/dates of what you refer to, but if you're right it's at least pretty bloody amusing.
Sara: nice post, and I second all your ka pais and kia oras to the morning's posters, especially to binary.heart, who nicely demonstrates the side of activism that is the antithesis of what I referred to last night as the anarcho-narcissist.
That's the very thoughtful side.
And it would be really nice if people of a more "mainstream" mentality at least recognised for a moment the pains others go through when they must communicate in a language/discourse that they don't particularly trust or are fundamentally at odds with.
Which kind of brings me to the only addition I'd make to Sara's post, which I think Kowhai (and possibly others) alluded to earlier, and dubmugga(?) alluded to last night:
All these claims about "Tuhoe" (that, you know, one singular thing) and what "it" was hoping to achieve with the hikoi and how "it" failed because of an apparent PR disaster.
Here's a new catchy acronym for PAS: GOYFHH. (Any ideas?)
My point: Please, at least try to recognise when you don't actually know what the fuck you're talking about.
Not everything in this world is easily reducible to your astoundingly comprehensive conception of reality.
I mean, just for example cos it's on this page:
Any good campaign does analysis of the targets of the campaign, and where they're at. If Tuhoe want to change Pakeha perceptions of Maori, then they have to start with where Pakeha are at, not where they wish Pakeha were on the issues/perceptions.
Sorry, no personal attack here: but that seems to some bloodcurdlingly arrogant.
"Yes, white New Zealand, we realise that you think we're basically ungrateful savages because we cling absurdly to our barbaric culture, but we're here to assure you that we too can wear suits on Sunday and debate policy in a reasonable, restrained manner, just as you do in your parliament house. Afterwards, maybe we can take tea together and then Sara can explain poststructuralism to us so we may enter your fine university system and drop French names and feel ever so clever. Thank you for listening, and have a nice day."
And so on.
-
what about
fuck that little ron mark weasel prick suckholing to the police in an election year. Dudes a ballhead with brown skin and needs to be chased outta town...?
I'd buy it.