The Most Beautiful Passage on Sexual Intercourse in Literature

I'm not talking those half-arsed passages on sex, because when it comes down to it every poem you ever read is about sex. I'm talking about a passage that is explicitly about sex, and dwells on nothing but the ins and outs (pun fully intended, because I'm a fucking funny guy) and an abstract response to it.

It's in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera. Now, not only did this book inspire the album title to one of my favourite albums ever, (Soviet Kitsch, by Regina Spektor) but it also opens by pondering upon the concept of eternal return, and Nietzsche.

Seriously, how fucking swell is that?

But yes, this passage really struck a chord with me. Ultimately it's about the concept of infinity more than sex itself, but regardless I find it magical that the two concepts can actually be intertwined in any sense. Although thinking that, Bright Star by Keats is almost exactly that, in a more pervy fashion; Keats wants to be eternally 'pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast', which is, y'know, cool and stuff. But it's no Kundera. It's a very laddish poem though, credit to him, but wanting to spend eternity with your head in a nice pair of tits isn't quite the highbrow literary prestige Keats earned after the Odes, nor indeed in Kundera's magical passage which I shall show now.

"Darkness attracted him as much as light. He knew that these days turning out the light before making love was considered laughable, and so he always left a small lamp burning over the bed. At the moment he penetrated Sabina, however, he closed his eyes. The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. That darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us. (Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!) And at the moment he felt pleasure suffusing his body, Franz himself disintegrated and dissolved into the infinity of his darkness, himself becoming infinite. But the larger a man grows in his own inner darkness, the more his outer form diminishes. A man with closed eyes is a wreck of a man. Then, Sabina found the sight of Franz distasteful, and to avoid looking at him she too closed her eyes. But for her, darkness did not mean infinity; for her, it meant a disagreement with what she saw, the negation of what was seen, the refusal to see."

Magical, absolutely magical. The idea that infinity can be found really inspired me; I once wrote a poem about how to be free and infinite is just to close one's eyes. But it's truly beautiful. It's translated from Czech so Michael Heim probably deserves credit too for the magnificent flow of the sentence beginning 'that darkness was pure, perfect...'; it's poetry in prose. Pure poetry. The only time I've found such poetry in prose is in the beginning of Lolita, by Nabokov, which is simply unrivalled.

This blog post hasn't really been much about sex, so for that I apologise. I guess you could say that it's really just a helpful metaphor to let you know a little more about me:

Pseudo-intellectual, rants about literature and the sex is always underwhelming.

But if you've read this far - here, have a hypothetical cookie. Don't worry, not one I hypothetically baked, because even my hypothetical cookies would no doubt taste like hypothetical shit. Alright, lay off, ok? This is my blog post.

I guess seeing as this was supposedly about sex I should probably end it on a high, but writing this has made me feel pretty good so I'm not going to bother giving you any pleasure out of this and just end it abruptly, with myself satisfied.

Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is prose at its finest. And yes, if you're looking for infinity - just close your eyes!

"Cold Roses" by Ryan Adams & the Cardinals

 

I don't know how to begin this review. Should I do a crude introduction detailing that this is the first post I have ever made on this shiny new (oh christ, I always revert to the same cliched expressions in my writing) blog in painfully and tediously self-aware terms? Should I just dive into this review as if you've been reading my music writing forever and a day (OHFUCKINGHELLIRONICCLICHEHE'SSOFUCKINGFUNNY) and actually start talking about the superfluous music contained within? Yeah actually that would probably have been best.

Forget I ever wrote that paragraph.

It's scary how brilliant Ryan Adams is. That's not a popular opinion from outside of his devoted fanbase. Because he writes too many albums or something. Whatever, it's not obvious to me amongst the certain quality, some  intangible majesty, that is evident from even his worst music. I reckon the guy's a fuckin' genius. And seriously I was banging your mother the other night and she was totally with me so keep listening.

Amongst the artists I listen to, the common thread is that they all write good songs. And hell if a song is an excellently crafted rock piece with fucking pedal steel and a melody that grabs you by your set of dicks then Ryan Adams writes a lot of good god damn songs, the best of which are contained partially on "Cold Roses"

"Magnolia Mountain", "Easy Plateau", "Sweet Illusions", "Meadowlake Street", "If I Am A Stranger", "Let It Ride", "Cold Roses" and "Mockingbirdsing" stand out as the major jams on these two worthy LPs. Ryan here is channelling a total Deadhead jammin vibe and so it's all awesome and shit. The Cardinals (then powered by these snaky ass little guitar lines by JP Bowersock) are such a kickass electric rock band but then they have this gorgeous pedal steel that seriously improves the songs tenfold without in any way turning them into whiskeyed-up Tenneseese KKK hoedown nonsense in any sort of way. Cindy Cashdollar (who sounds like the offspring of a barbie doll and some jewish dude but obviously must be a RACIST and INBRED if she plays country music) plays beautiful lines on "Easy Plateau" that make seem to float through your ears, careening wonderfully and basically owns all these songs so PAY THE FUCK UP

or illegally download w/e it's 2011 bitches

If any of you like drugs you might dig this because it's good and interesting guitar music but also chilled and nice, full of vibes and hott jamz. Sit down and burn one with this muthafucka and yu made it! However, good songs are good songs and even non-marijuana-smokers (people who r GAY LOLOL!!) can surely enjoy them. These are scarily good here are some responses to certain tracks

"Magnolia Mountain" (when after the worthy as hell instrumental drop it gets back down to basics with just Ryan's guitar and voice singing the haunting stanza of "we burned the cottonfields out in the valley and ended up with nothing but scars. the scars became lessons that we gave to our children after the war.") WOOHOO! Fuck me up the ASS! That's good. He has such an endearingly cracked yet commanding and melodic voice! hoo hoo hot damn that little guitar harmony on "after the war". Now the instruments are back with a great harmony vocal, I must just die and go to heaven. haha religion can't pretend it's true lol sorry guys.

"Sweet Illusions" ("and I ain't got nothin' but love for you now; love, for you, IAAAAEEEEEIIIII can't...") whoa that was a good falsetto!

"Cold Roses" this band are an epic 70s style rock behemoth. I wish more bands brought the wholesome beardy styles of Neil Young & the Grateful Dead into the 21st century. At least without sucking dong thanks, bands covered extensively in Mojo.

"Dance All Night" man, this is an exuberant little track with little elements of bleakness hiding behind its metaphorical window. Cool harmony and harmonica but there's something a *little* off. Maybe the drums sound like dick or something?

Ryan Adams blah blah, gall to release a double album in 2005, he also released two other very very very good albums in that same year, blah blah, Grateful Dead, blah blah blah blah, genius, hero etc.

Whoa I went on for ages I'm off to smoke some more weed

RATING: 9.7833920/10

LINK: http://www.mediafire.com/?g1sx4dlusd2yrg2

A First Blog Post

A blog is in many ways like a woman: it's best to take its virginity as early as possible so that an inevitably underwhelming and unfulfilled lifespan can begin its course.

But seriously, sexism's lame.

Anyway, I've been entrusted with writing the first blog post to this group contribution 'Adventures of a Suburban Street Posse'. I'd like to say it's an honour, but let's be fair - I'm a pretty awesome human being and if I let such petty milestones as these count on my radar, then I'll never fulfil my lifelong ambition of being the first socialist on the moon. Presently I'm questioning exactly where I should be leading this first blog post, although perhaps taking the virginity of a blog is much the same as with a woman, child or Alsatian belonging to a neighbour - destined to be bloody, messy and inevitably leading to enquiries from the police department.

I made a little challenge to myself to see if I could fit two tasteless virginity jokes within the first 2 paragraphs, and now that I have I feel the same mixture of pride and shame that I imagine a Scientist would feel after creating a labrador with penises for ears - sure, it's quite a feat, but it's also kind of just a labrador, with penises for ears, isn't it?

I guess you could say that this is the perfect introduction to my writing, having already compared it to a multi-phallused canine and duly lowered any expectations one might have had to a point of no return; the basement of standards in blog-writing, filled with fuck-awful metaphors and multiple Fritzl children. I'd like to stress that this isn't reflective in any sense of the writing of Jack, who will no doubt be a voice of sense and reason to my multi-cocked-labradors of blog posts. I'll be writing about things that interest me; I'm passionate about politics, literature, philosophy and as we've already covered, disgusting analogies.

I'm a socialist, atheist and lover of poetry so there's lots of boring intellectual stuff for you to look forward to and in lieu of me presenting any intelligent, summarising analogy about my persona, here's a picture of a pen that I balanced on top of its lid once, in a Geography lesson.

Damn, that shit was dope.

Harvey

Jack would like to add: I certainly will not be adding reason to this blog in any shape or form. Also, Kudos for the N.W.A. reference.