Pages 9 and 10

women as delicate flowers, to be fucked, screwed, abused, raped and ruined, so perverted are the logics, the floor has become a primarily male domain.
Who's afraid of what?
Where are the women?
MARION, BARBARA, MARY, LISA, JOY, SARAH, JANE, SALLY, ANNE, KATE, JUDY.
What force holds us from breaking those definitions? What do we really have to lose? Or gain? Right?

She stands awkward, peering at the dance floor, the men perform their sexual right. She leaps to the centre of the floor arms thrown high, she is alone out there in a sexual ocean. High tide. She is alone because she did not wait to be asked, told, fucked, screwed, abused, raped, ruined.
She snatches the microphone from the stage.
"Where are the women? Why this masculine battle-field? Always seen before."
The other women protect their social-virginity.
MARION, BARBARA, MARY, LISA, JOY, SARAH, JANE, SALLY, ANNE, KATE, JUDY.
"Tormented. Rachel. Anne. Bronwen. Carole. Sister where are you?"
Another system to break open. We are all responsible.

The audience are the people and the people are the voice that no entertainer can silence, the people want what no band can offer; self.

The people are the people and the people are the voice that no politician can silence, the people want what no government can offer; self.

The people want self, the right to self, the self that springs from something deeper than these sounds, these movements, theses social moments. The people want self that is life, unparalleled free, life with no definition, no degree, no future, the real no future of a now that is safe to exist in, the catatonic right of the individual, the raising point of real hope. Because we can do it for ourselves, ourselves, we can do it. In the clammy revelry of those hours at the Roxy something of those selves is exposed. No fear. No shame. No false dignity. No future. We all die here together. Empty. Dissolute. Dead.

From here we begin to live.

The fear created by the press and T.V. has led to an almost total silencing of the more extreme voices of punk. Those that are able to play, in the few clubs prepared to promote punk, swing more and more to the safe centre-line between punk and pop, new wave.
New wave is mutant, dead, a complacent snowflake on a summer's day.
New wave crept in on the wave of publicity that followed punk, but in no way does it reflect punk values, it is nothing but a continuation of prescribed and commercial musical traditions, it has no philosophy except SUCK.
To step outside prescribed standards of dress, attitude behaviour etc.etc.etc. requires a degree of conviction. Not all punks are extroverts, in fact the majority that I know are quite the reverse. To publicly sport outfits guaranteed to attract derision, if not open attack, is more than an idle game. It is a desire to confront that draws the spaceman from the capsule to confront a new self and a new planet. No process can be final, it's semantically out, practically out. If the future is'nt clear it's because we have'nt come to it yet. It does come, tomorrow.

It is six years to 1984.

Outside on the wet London pavement we air our discontent. It is one o'clock and everywhere's closing down for the night and this is 1977. We vow the next time we won't pay, it s our music, why should we, the audience and the performer pay ior it. We write graffiti on the Roxy wall to let them know that we are still alive, even if we are cold. "Is it real?"
"Are you real?"
"Does it matter?"
"Is it alright really?"
NO. It ain't all right. For four days after the gig I lay in bed covered in bruises, scratches and doubt. To demonstrate my trust I have almost burnt myeelf out. Ten days later I still feel weak and in two days we do it all again, not at the Roxy, they won't have us again, but we'll do it somewhere else and this time we'll ask more, more of self and more of other..........
"Come on you fuckers."
Demand a greater energy.
"Come on you fuckers."
Search out a clearer vision.
"Come on. Come on. Come on."
Because we're learning. We're learning to fight and we're learning what to fight for, because we're not happy about what's offered us and we're not happy about what we can offer ourselves.
We did'nt get paid at the Roxy because we broke their speaker cabinet.
Now. Retake. Rephrase.
We did'nt get paid at the Roxy because they switched us off.
Right?
There ain't no future, at least there ain't no future while they can get away with eating our dinners. Cash or crucifixion was'nt it? Well sometime that's all got to change.
O.K. I can buy a future from the management. O.K. I can lick arse with the man who elbowed me for working hard to make his club less like a cemetery. I don't know whether it's possible, but I dream of taking it all away from him. It's ours. Right?
And if that's not possible? If that ain't the future? I'll opt for the only real that I've ever been able to trust; feel; the feel inside this flesh, me, I, the grip on cold mornings, desolation, disillusion, when I wake, the cruel landscape, but I'll take it if I have to.
They're selling solid gold safety pin ear drops in fashionable London jewellers.
Who bought Dean's crashed limousine?
I'll wake in my own sweat.
Did Monroe leave the light on?
I am determined that the next move be mine.
They wheel the body from the morgue.
Memories?
Yes, I have them. The sighing arms of the mallow and the tansy, the angelica and the rose. They are turned away before they form, it's all so fast.
I reach away from the solace that I have sought for self, burn away the passages so neatly cut in this cerebral jungle. I sit, a simple idiot, before you. I ask not that you let me die upon the sidewalk, my death is yours, we are so deeply bound, each a part of the other.
Can you destroy this moment?

Penny Rimbaud
London. Oct.77

This website was originally produced by Southern Records in the 2000s. It has been reconstructed as part of http://theartofcrass.uk