what's so funny 'bout peas, gloves and multiple identity?

CAVEAT EMPTOR etc, cont. pg. 93

a few brave souls have breached a certain subject recently, and it seems appropriate to post this in answer to them, but also for those other very few folks who might be interested.

in 1997 tor hereabouts, I was involved with the phenomenon (and truly, it deserves this appellation) known under many names, chief of which are/were antiorp/integer/netochka nezvanova. there were others. part of that project directly and indirectly and in several other ways addressed the whole notion of identity, and in many cases, "online" identity as it was becoming known. far too in-depth for a post such as this, it nevertheless, at its termination or more correctly, fizzling out, left a few stones unturned, at least as far as I was concerned.  "Simply Superior" was a name taken from that project, by the way.

and so, and indeed, following on from the grand tradition of The Hafler Trio and their references to such things beginning in 1981-82, and still not actually investigated properly (or - perish the thought - understood!) Simply Superior, I decided in my lack of wisdom, should Carry On Up The Identity. oo, errr, missus.

so: on its inception, 7 people were given passwords and authority to act on social media through Simply Superior accounts. over time, a few people dropped out, but some remain, and some passed on these credentials to others. these people in most cases do not even know each other, and for some of them, what I write here will actually come as news. this means that anything you might see within the confines of those domains (if they warrant such terminology) may or may not be written or posted by one of no less than *at least* 7 people (that I know of). and this is exactly as it should be; these posts will be, from time to time, "challenging" to me and just about anyone else. I am glad that it is so. quite a few have given me pause for thought in the most healthy of ways. some are silly. and this is just as important. some demonstrate principles I might not agree with but nevertheless encourage other perspectives I believe valuable to at least temporarily entertain. and some are working hypotheses that may or may not stand up to scrutiny.

all of this is directly related to the very spirit which led to initiating Simply Superior in the first place.

this means, gentle reader, that if you take umbrage or wish to know more about some snippet posted under the SS moniker, or indeed, which to check validity, all email addresses are handled alone by that flesh suit masquerading as a person labelled A.M.McKenzie, and everything else is, well, putting it kindly, a collective emanation.

so if you need to know, ask a policeman's son directly. if you would rather believe that everything that goes under a particular name is from the same individual, then please continue to do so in good health.

be seeing you.

p.s. the antiorp/integer/netochka nezvanova archive is for sale. get in touch if interested.

shameless pouring from empty into the void.

https://simplysuperior.bandcamp.com/album/polar-regions

yes, those fun-loving pranksters from the North return again with a smile, and song and a cheery wave. long-unavailable and full of deceased people. yours to delight in once more!

https://simplysuperior.bandcamp.com/album/spiral

more than 16 hours of deleterious and sometimes revelatory nonsense. or is it? YOU decide!

now is not just a three-letter word.

Now is an even better time than ever for Conversational Complementation Counseling - bookings made in the month of April 25% off! 50% off bookings of 4 or more sessions! whoo! and so on.

be kind and spread the word in whichever way you can

entrance here:

http://simplysuperior.org/CCC/

opinions here:

https://simplysuperior.org/testimonials.php

authentic inauthenticity. with added number.

this image is a version of the new (or recent) h3o seal, used for physical visual works. it was constructed using a modified version of a script called 'phags-pa. it reads (top to bottom) "h - 3 - o." more of this sort of thing will be forthcoming. purchases will be possible. this stems from a great interest and now prolonged and intensive research into and practice of Tibetan calligraphy and scripts. please contact if you have any interest in this.

restoration comedy, history, no mystery.

in these time of the re-arrangement of the past to suit present or imagined agendas, please witness some photographs from a session that you may have seen before, albeit the best photo of the batch (not reproduced here). in the book about The Dreamachine by John Geiger, you will see half of the first photograph, and although I may have my eyes closed (how inappropriate for a Dreamachine photograph!) and am squinting in the rest due to the unnaturally sunny day in Jolly Olde Brighton, it is hard not to posit that *someone* edited Your Friend and Humble Narrator out, as has happened many times in the recent past. all photos by the (then) Paula P-Orridge. proof that nastiness was not always in such abundance.

[UPDATE] oh, what the hell. here is what happened in the book, plus the other photo.

my voice will go with you. most likely.

and LO! the clouds parted, and the dulcet tones of Your Humble Narrator arose for the edification of the Chosen Few.

https://simplysuperior.bandcamp.com

voice material only, much more to be added, all proceeds to the Golden Medical Fund of Bottomless Need.

always at your servile.

not a single purchase.

acquisition is at hand.

for those interested in Brion Gysin and William Burroughs and history:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/283302763035

neither here nor there.

some of the people who read these words will recall a name or two: Khari, Audrey Del Sol, dua42, Kandinskij, and a few others. this is to let you know that the picture above is of this person, who I have very recently learned is now deceased, five years ago. she would absolutely hate that her picture was now public. my feelings are incredibly mixed; I lived with this person for roughly 2.5 years, and we had a child together. this person, er, no - entity, calls up the following in me now:

provocateur privately (not seeking glory for it like so many others) / impossible / a pointed stick / too far (gone) to hold onto / the personification of someone lost in the "in between" / someone with a history which was denied but omnipresent / a social litmus test / sadness seeping from every pore / intelligence destroyed by choices based in imbalance and paranoia / almost there but turning back at the brink of discovery / the futility of the certain / potential dissipated and dissolved into the ether

I will no doubt add to this.

light and dark were all the same to her, so there is no use in asking for her to go towards anything at all.

sorry it took so long, and I really did forgive her. she never will do that for me.

last, but not least, of all, that ends well.

[possibly not final cover, but close.]

https://www.amazon.com/Brion-Gysin-Interviews-P-Orridge-Christopherson/dp/9198324365

this was an enormous effort, thrwarted by many circumstances and obstacles, rescuing these materials from almost certain oblivion, and puzzling out what it all actually was. your friend and humble narrator's first credit as editor. about 28 years from when I first started typing out these rather poor quality recordings until now. my flabber is indeed gasted.

the mill grinds slow, but exceedingly fine, to be sure.

[update May 4, 2018]

still have not seen a copy.

not going gently, into that night of goodness. or similar.

so it seems that prophesy is unavoidable, and that which is done in dark jest is inevitably taken the most seriously. Z'EV, someone I worked with on many projects and for some years, has slipped away, and quite a bit falls from the lip-chamber, escaping as it should have a long time ago.

I first met him when I came to Amsterdam for the first Hafler Trio lectures. he sat in the front row and asked 'tricky' questions. I had wanted to meet him for years. and so I did. he was living close to the Central Station with his then 'partner' Dr. Dorothea Franck, and later we would become Mother Tongue. slowly but surely we saw each other most days and most nights; I did live sound for him so many times I lost count, mixed tapes, remastered cassettes so they could be released on LP, treated tapes so they could be further played around with, composed tracks for him with his material while he lay in bed with the 'flu, and delighted him when he arose, designed promotional material and record covers for him, and a great deal more, generally involving carrying odd-shaped pieces of metal and encountering difficulty with trains. we played Dutch billiards at a bar across the road from where I was living in a squat, very close to the centre of Amsterdam, the name of which I forget because we always referred to it as "The Second Office." we were pretty good. we listened in awe to the production on Neil Diamond's greatest hits. really. Z'EV and Doro were incredibly kind and generous to me in my ridiculous, self-imposed nightmare of a transition period of moving from the UK to Holland. I took his tsing-tsa (Tibetan hand bells) to London to record his composition "Geelgalayah" and they broke in the middle of the session. actually shattered into several pieces, without having being abused in any way. I tried to hide this fact, and he discovered the broken pieces before I had a chance to even try to replace the bells. it is impossible to convey how guilty and terrible I felt.

"Shemesh" A.K.A. "Geelgalayah" score.

I saw Z'EV play many times, mixing, equalising and effecting his sound as part of the performance with him; and on a good night, I swear, there was nobody to touch him. nobody. what is a painful fact is that much of what was amazing either a) did not even record onto tape (the frequencies were so extreme that no cassette on earth would have held them) or b) were so badly recorded as to be useless. no amount of treatment could save them. I tried. really. a few made it through. so bear in mind when you hear his work that much that would completely blow you away is lost forever, and much of what you can hear was many times greater in actuality. it is of course possible to say that about many people, but in Z'EV's case, very much more than just true.

Z'EV had many stories, and I listened to all of them. this was a man who told me that he had seen The Doors perform before they were signed to a record label, after all, just to give one example. but some of them were somewhat painful. there was a double attitude; on the one hand, his pioneering work was truly neglected, and it was indeed obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that it had been copied wholesale and watered down for great career effect by others. however, on the other, there was an undeniable self-destructive side to him of which I could tell many stories but will not, that he himself revelled in, in a perverse sort of way. this was coupled with a bitterness which while understandable, was also clung to a little too tightly and paraded a little too often for comfort.

Mother Tongue once performed at the AIR Gallery in London; this was to have been a major opportunity to get a financial backer, and big things were going to happen. supposedly. Genesis P-Orridge (as was) videotaped the event, and captured a horrible, ugly, quite unbelievable fight after it between Z'EV and Doro, revealing the side that was desperate to have what "he deserved," and blaming anyone he could when it did not arise as he wished. I truly hope that tape does not exist any more. the "deal" never materialised, and a major breakdown took place which was a very disturbing thing to witness, which we all did for a day or so. so it can be said with certainty that I saw him at both ends of the scale and a great deal of what was in-between.

Your Humble Narrator, Z'EV, Doro Franck = Mother Tongue. photo by Esther Wollheim.

I sat with him and helped him edit his entire history up to that point, which became "One Foot In The Grave" and was his first real release outside the channels he had been 'stuck' in, his first real 'retrospective' and his first CD(s). I was still involved with Touch, and introduced him. I thought he deserved a professional, properly done package of quality to show how incredible some of the work he had done was (and is).  he nearly destroyed this by coming to the appointment to master it all with me and lighting a huge joint. after me strongly suggesting to him that dealing with the presentation of his life's work might be better served with a clear head, he left, and came back the next day. not under the influence.

gradually, I left Amsterdam, and eventually Holland. Z'EV went through a series of ever-more bizarre living situations, including a room which was surrounded by doors, and in someone's office, sleeping under a desk, so that he for the first time in his life worked office hours, I recall him telling me. he helped me understand the Qabalistic/Numerological processes and details so that "I LOVE YOU" (the third, unreleased part of the so-called "Sexual Trilogy") could be finished. (well, it isn't really, but it got to the stage that it could be presented live.) I learned that his hearing had deteriorated somewhat, which is not suprising, given the battering his shell-likes must have taken over the years. this was confirmed when I heard some work where I recognised the signs of top-end hearing loss that I had noticed with a few others that I had worked with, and heard from some mastering engineers that the tapes which Z'EV submitted were quite some work to make useable. but in the end, I think he knew this, and worked with it, and if anyone could make it work, it would have been him. after all, the sound was only a small part of what he was dealing with.

I was always fascinated, and in awe of his written/translations. it is a huge shame and sad reflection that most of it was never published.

3 incredible, extraordinarly potent, transformative and transportational translations. unpublished. (as far as I know)

we planned to do a US tour in 2003. the artwork and an extract from the CD that was to accompany it are here:

http://simplysuperior.org/RANDOM/Z-MT/

and of course, like most of these things, it never happened. the title of the CD came from an actual toast I once heard in a Liverpool bar, and Z'EV truly loved it. it took years between me telling him of it and it getting used. and it didn't, eventually. and now it does. ironic, to be sure.

we also planned to re-release the Mother Tongue record "Open In Obscurity" with extra material on CD. Z'EV had it mastered by a friend of his in the 'states, and the dreaded and now defunct Phonometrography were to re-release it. again, some sort of offence was caused in the communication stream, and this never happened. a sketch for the typography for the sleeve is here:

http://simplysuperior.org/RANDOM/Z-MT/MT-cover.pdf

between this and today, something happened, and it seems I will never know quite what it was. a month or so ago, I wrote to him to invite him to have a conversation as part of the podcast "WWHWW?" the reply was so extreme in its hatred, that I was quite taken aback; I had been aware of some stories floating around, but nothing so savage that would generate such a response. and now, I cannot ask, and I cannot even try to repair any damage, real or imaginary.

I subsequently discovered that he had removed me from his history; Wikipedia page, home page, everything. he is not the first, and possibly not the last, but it is still very odd and unfathomable to me why such things happen, and that the erasure of someone from history is thought to be even possible, let alone desireable.

Z'EV was always someone that you were either 'for' or 'against'. there were no half-measures. principally from his side.

I was always 'for' him, even in the dark times. he taught me a huge, actually unquanitifiable amount, which I will never, ever be able to repay. my gratitude will endure.

it is not how I would have wished to have this story end, but that's how it has to be. he would have called everything I have written here "bullshit," but I hope that he would have been wrong about at least most of it, at least this time.




 (if anyone is interested in releasing the two items mentioned here, please get in contact.)

the proxy of agentism, by and for your leave. yes.

and so:

http://www.kontra-musik.com/portfolio/andrew-mckenzie/

like an old wrinkled olive in a basket of strawberries, your friend and humble narrator stands alongside others infinitely more beautiful and vigorous. however, you are entreated, nay, commanded to make use of this page to have organised Simply Superiority descend and envelop streets, houses, and hearts near or even in you, soon.

any excuse. or indeed, none required.

https://simplysuperior.podiant.co/e/3591f68aaa3a1e/

shout it from the rooftops, O fuzzy-headed delighted beings!

the way we were. Amsterdam, 1997 (?)

if you want to get a hat, get a head.

may it please the court:

https://groups.google.com/d/forum/simply-superior---a-magnetic-centre
[answering the question when applying to join is mandatory]

we do hope to have the extreme pleasure of your presence and insight.

all you can eat. consciously, mind you.

"ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the proof of the pudding is under the crust."

a paroxysm of prestidigitation produces the perpendicular product of pulchritudinous (perhaps, particularly parsimonious) perspicacity:

http://simplysuperior.org/NEABTYOH/

please place your paws pleasantly, perceptively and presently in pretty proximate proximity.

promote prodigiously!

pip-pip!

loose lips and wagging tongues for your edification and utilisation.

delight, merriment and general joyousness abound here at Simply Superior Mansions, where we have popped many virtual corks on which we now float, resplendent not only in divergence but in the knowledge that the long-threatened and indeed promised manifestation of Complemation Conversation is now available to those outside these particular walls. please point your electronic apparatus of whatever flavour or persuasion to:

https://simplysuperior.podiant.co/

please spread the tidings far and wide, so that these efforts might illuminate as many dark corners as possible in this particular set of interlocking vales, and benefit and merit both accumulate and disperse. all at the same time. yes.

you are sincerely and profusely thanked for your attention, dear Fuzzy-Headed Personages.

[UPDDATE September 26, 2017]

squeaking with Mark Fell:

https://simplysuperior.podiant.co/e/35850765f429ce/

[UPDATE October 4, 2017]

communications, verbally speaking, from Heiða Eiríksdóttir:

https://simplysuperior.podiant.co/e/358ad8d39dbbda/

*then*, we were 6.

discovered in the debris left from the disaster last year. I even drew the main man himself but was somewhat fanciful regarding the colour of his spacesuit. a taste of things to come, perhaps. presented for entertainment purposes only. maybe.

Andrew Mark Mckenzie, Gosforth Primary School. all his own work.

all the mistakes that's fits we print.

https://datawv.blogspot.com.ee/2017/07/interview-andrew-mckenzie-hafler-trio.html

complete with spelling mistakes, ISO & ASCII mangling, as well as out-of-date-ness. about par for the course. have fun!

last person to leave, please turn the lights off.

with great sadness and regret, the workshop and performance "'''''''" in Sweden has been cancelled, hopefully to be rescheduled at some point either later this year or sometime during next. I feel it to be so strange a situation as regards the fact that this is the third failed attempt to have this manifest in that country. no matter.

sincere thanks to all that expressed interest and all that tried to get this to occur.

oh yes it is.

as predicted (thanks to Aleksas for the link):

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/05/11/527829909/the-mp3-is-officially-dead-according-to-its-creators

The liner notes state clearly that listening on headphones or compressing the recordings on Normally into MP3 format will render the music ineffective. I figured this was bullshit, but my attempts so far have supported this statement.

http://www.brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3188%3Athe-hafler-trio-qnormallyq&catid=13%3Aalbums-and-singles&Itemid=1 

many years ago, I had to read the entire documentation regarding the .mp3 format, as it was just being released. I could see then, that it was 'incorrect' - that is, there were a number of premises about hearing that were not feasible. and so we see that the truth will out. now, do I get anyone understanding one of the chief reasons I do not wish Hafler Trio material on .mp3?

"oh, you are sick!"

just add gout for the perfect picture. and stop telling me it's all in my head. ok? and stop abusing / misinterpreting the word "karma."