My Offer to Those That Would Burn

I sense the winds of change. Two things, apparently unrelated but part of the same movement.

In these past few days my tips have gone up at work. My colleagues have noticed the same thing. You get more tips if you deliver to certain areas. It's not necessarily related to wealth. Essex is the best county, the London SW's the best area. But this increase has been across the board. It's a temporal variation rather than a spatial one. It's like it's Christmas. In fact, I've taken more in tips these last two days than I did over the whole of Christmas and New Year 2013.

The other thing, perhaps a bit more certain that my reading of the tipping runes, is that online some beautiful children of the future - reaching out as forward tastes begin to enter them - have been talking to me about money burning.

Anyway, ever the optimist, I take these events to mean that a time of waste and sacrifice is approaching. We might be picking up a wave of resonance from the Big Burn back on 23/08/1994. It's unconsciously directing us toward offering up our currency for no reward. This, my friends, is a crack in the logic of capitalism.

My offer to you then, is that I'll help you burn your money.

What this help consists of is tricky to specify. I can talk beforehand with you about how you're going to perform your burning, and about when to burn. If you want me present (and I really hope you do), I'll travel to you at my own expense. If you feel comfortable to do so, I can recite a mantra with you and suggest words that you might say yourself at the moment of burning. You might be surprised how compelled you feel to say something meaningful when you burn. If you like, I can bring with me some items that will help set the scene - a burning bowl, a beeswax candle, the Staff for the casting of a circle. I can't guarantee that I can also burn. That will depend. The right time for your burning, might not coincide with the right time for my burning. So much depends upon one's situation - not only in the literal sense of whether one has money to burn, but also in how the world and its events fits around each individual's burning. I give you my solemn word that I will respect your right to privacy. I'm an advocate for money burning, but I promise not to say anything about your burning without your permission. I won't pester you for your permission either.

I'm not for a second saying that you need me at your money burning. You don't. But what I have learned from my own burnings is that if you pay attention to the circumstances of the ritual and the ritual itself, the intensity of the experience is amplified. This amplification also occurs when others are involved as both witnesses and/or participants. I really want to develop these ideas with you, so that together we can find a form of ritual that helps us understand - and fully experience - what it means to burn money. An intellectual understanding of destroying currency is just the visible light in a wide spectrum of money burning radiation.

When the founder of Soft Machine, Kevin Ayers, was found dead in February 2013, there was a note beside his bed. Its thought to have been a title idea for a song, or part of a lyric. It said;

"You can't shine if you don't burn."

Email me. Don't leave it. Do it now.

(Nearly) First View of Museum Des Geldes I & II

These catalogues arrived a month apart. I hadn't realized there were two of them and so initially ordered the wrong one. They're quite expensive costing around £30 each especially when, like me, one can't speak or read German. I made this 'first view' video with the intention of sticking it at the end of an essay I'm writing. But writing-wise things have taken a different turn so I'm not going to use it like that.

I didn't want to waste it, though. I know watching it would have been useful to me before I spent my £60. Plus, I'm keen to make a bit more use of video etc on my blog. And the 'first view' thing has worked for me as a viewer on some of the weird music I like, so this serves a bit of an experiment to see if it works for obscure foreign language art-money catalogues.

Rear Cover of Museum Of Money I Dusseldorf 1978 & my translation

Vom Opferritual bis zur Tauschwirtschaft

Vom Labyrinth bis zur Börse

vom Altar bis zum Bankschalter

Von der Grabkammer bis zum Safe

Von der Kaurischnecke bis zur Scheckkarte

Vom Schlachtfest bis zum Sparschwein

Von der Großen Mutter bis zur Emanzipation der Frau

Von der Höhle bis zum Museum

Vom fetisch bis zum Kunstwerk

From Sacrificial Ritual to the Exchange Economy
From Labyrinth to Stock Market
From the Altar to the Bank Counter
From the Tomb to the Safe
From Cowrie Shell to Bank Card
From Ceremonial Slaughter to Piggy Bank
From the Great Mother to the Emancipation of Women
From the Cave to the Museum
From Fetish to Artwork

Rear Cover of Museum Des Geldes I Dusseldorf 1978