Darren McGarvey – Killing Loki
Here’s some important dialogue between Bram E Gieben and Darren McGarvey about issues of identity and the left and Darren’s decision to kill-off his musical alter-ego Loki with his final album ‘Not Funded By Creative Scotland’.
For full pod notes – and to follow Bram’s brilliant Substack go here.
To buy the album go here.
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Love the album tile.
worth a listen, the business side ae things is pretty sickening to be honest & anytime I pick up a book & see the creative scotland logo I know I’m in for some middle class shite so it goes straight back on the shelf, not that there’s much in the average high street book shop these days which isn’t of the socially approved blander than a rubber band variety, shocking state of affairs, back in the 90s ye hud black sparrow editions ae Bukowski, rebel inc bringing back Hamsun’s Hunger, Richard Brautigan’s stuff, Gordon Legge, Ivor Cutler, all these interesting writers you’d be hard pressed tae find unless ordering online these days, bit shit for younger folk whether students &/or working a job, wanting to write & missing out on such inspiring writers
McGarvey’s description of rap battles sounds awfy like Westminster debates, and about as inclusive (and presumably blades are turned in beforehand in each setting). Where’s the appreciation of The Other in either? Sure, ‘edgy and offensive’ will turn some off.
Having spent a few years among one of Scotland’s underclasses, I’d reject the idea of lumping these in with the working classes (and of course the membranes are semi-permeable, while underclasses and subcultures are typically distinctive). Perhaps institutionalisation is a big cultural factor too, that adds some vertical divisions.
I am sympathetic to McGarvey’s view on gatekeepers, but picking celebrated artists to be the next generation of gatekeepers sounds like a fundamental mistake to me. I was put off by some of his rather sweeping generalisations, a Eurocentrically gender-determinate view of history, and a confused take on woke (which is essentially know your history, something I thought he’d have picked up on through his musical influences).
And isn’t McGarvey’s wife taking the Creative Scotland shilling?
However, the closing statements suggest McGarvey’s political thoughts are developing and worldview expanding, and he makes some useful points throughout. If only our decisive political arena was a ‘bam-free zone’. His decision to kill off his poet persona is surely a step in right direction.
I reckon his poet persona shall return, hopefully he does not end up in Holyrood but the odds are favourable
@mark., I think the theme of the 2024 television McTaggart lectures was social class:
https://watch.thetvfestival.com/mactaggart-collection
and the effects (compromises?) on working-class people who build careers in the creative/media sector. So Darren McGarvey has publicly agonised about not being able to authentically represent the people he once perhaps felt comfortable about representing. Whether MSPs (or MPs) ever represent their constituencies is another question. Nobody elects a rapper (not a put-down). But in folklore, birth-order maybe has a more significant impact on outcomes than social class. And European folklore was once passed down primarily by women, with female agency boosted (until male academics took over, perhaps). The 2024 Reith Lecturer made a similar point about factors contributing towards violence; it was a disappointing series because of what was left out (institutional violence training by the British imperial state, say).
So, perhaps Darren McGarvey is now appreciating what he left out as a poet (rapper/artist etc), none of which he apparently needs to apologise for, as typical among artists (politicians have their own ways of bobbing back, as even Peter Mandelson has somehow managed).
If the careers of artists like McGarvey don’t tend towards Holyrood, where do you see them going? I guess with ditching hereditaries, there’s space in the Lords, hip-to-hip with the Lords Spiritual…
he reminds me of an auld pal ae mine who could also talk the hind legs off a donkey, come to think on it, my granny was also this way & she lived ’til she was 87 so perhaps the secret to longevity is just to keep talking whether anyone is paying attention or not, just keep yapping, why not he’s got a pleasant enough voice & it’s nice when he lets go wie the swears, mair swears frae young Darren is fit ah’d like tae hear
@mark, since you say you find McGarvey’s voice pleasant, I have to say I find it rather whiny. Each to their own.
We should be aware that for many people, hearing aggressive swearing is a prelude to (domestic etc) violence, and there is evidence that swearing alone can cause distress, trauma and developmental harm. To take one sentence out of context:
“Aggressive swearing at nurses causes distress and the nurses interviewed had few effective strategies to deal with it.”
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/swearing-language-life-and-death
For the extent of domestic violence across the UK and its relation to ACEs, the 2024 Reith Lectures are an interesting yet flawed treatment.
But if McGarvey is unconscious of how much his rap battles owe to private school debating in his own country, I guess he has some road to travel yet. Or perhaps how these behaviours are like those of overpopulated rats in a maze, cut off from Nature, where the behaviours of the same animal are markedly different.
Again it seems my right to reply has absconded, just to clarify what seems to have been misinterpreted & was a fairly tongue in cheek comment that seems to have gone down like a lead balloon with certain fowk, I think what I enjoyed about the podcast was the energy & enthusiasm of the speaker, I also enjoy a good swear now & then, I wonder who doesn’t, it seems to me that those who object to supposed ‘bad language’ are merely bullies in the garb of authoritarian protectors of Victorian values. I am not in favour of domestic violence or in fact violence of any kind, that includes the psychological violence inflicted on fowk frae working class/what many would no doubt perceive as being a lower status strata of society, nor do I appreciate such persons being compared to rodents or any other type of animal with whom funnily enough I tend to be on fairly good terms. I have never listened to any of Darren’s rap battles, performance poetry is really not my thing either, I grew up in when the so-called golden age of hip hop held a lot of interest being as it was more underground & far cooler than the gangsterism that became fashionable & big business. I would have thought rap battles might be closer to the flyting that was so popular amongst poets throughout Scottish literary history before writers became such back slappers of one another at least publicly which is simply another aspect of the dishonesty middle class society expects us all to subscribe to, when young Darren breaks into the swears I have to say I find it refreshing, like a fine pint of highland spring direct frae the tap, slainte.
@m., comments have a nesting limit of 5 here. So the fifth indented comments have their Reply button automatically removed. You can still Reply to such comments via email notifications, but they won’t be nested (indented) any more. It’s a fairly standard practice. It’s usually more for usability, readability and restricting the types of to-and-fro that might be tangential (or flamey).
If you want to indicate who you are replying to, I recommend starting your comment with ‘@username’, replacing ‘username’ appropriately. It’s a pretty standard practice used on social media.
Beloved family pets have had whiny voices, it’s not a condemnation. To correct your assumption, I was also saying that private school debaters were also exhibiting behaviour like overpopulated rats in a maze.
Sadly, you haven’t actually addressed the quite reasonable negative reactions that some people will have to aggressive swearing. Your own feelings are not paramount, or actually relevant here. When I mentioned institutionalisation, I was thinking partly about militarisation, and the kinds of training which might cause negative behaviour patterns and trauma. I’m thinking about what Joe Glenton wrote in Veteranhood: Rage and Hope in British Ex-military Life (2021), who is particularly concerned with “white, male, working-class veterans.” (p8)
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/08/02/britains-sexual-abuse-in-iraq/
Of course, aggressive swearing is part of a wider culture of machismo and misogyny. And yes, observe the reactions of family pets (or vulnerable people) to such behaviours.
But you have a different view, and maybe Bella could commission a couple of articles on the place of swearing (aggressive or otherwise) in Scottish culture and politics.
so, it ain’t what you say it’s the way that you say it, thank you for saying in a rather long winded & roundabout way what Bananarama managed to convey in a more concise & aesthetically pleasing way many moons ago
I cannot see how demonising the ‘middle classes’ and middle class things in the way you do will get us anywhere, mainly because it is bollocks and just further entrenchment of the class system.
I saw Loki a few years ago at the very middle class Edinburgh fringe, to a packed audience who no doubt gave him his livelihood. He was good.
@Niemand, I recommend Darren McGarvey’s recent thoughtful reflection on performing such shows in Loki persona:
https://unherd.com/2024/08/stop-flaunting-your-trauma/
something he presumably develops in more detail in his new book on the trauma industrial complex. In search of validation, healing and other rewards, one may fall into the trap of believing in your poetic rendering of yourself, and create problems for others.
I agree with you on class prejudice, by the way.
This was already evident at his show – a real uneasiness to the whole thing. But that was what made it good funnily enough, though has a limited shelf life as an approach. I suppose this is similar to any person who comes through to success from a clearly disadvantaged position, but based on an exposition of that position; like the Asian comedian whose set is all based on being an Asian comedian and thus race and prejudice. It works for a while, can be novel, refreshing and telling, but you cannot really make a long career of it as it potentially reveals serious limitations. At the same time it becomes difficult to break out of it into something new. It suggests to me a problem with placing so much importance on personal identity in the first place – if you *identify* as a put upon, disadvantaged person rather than someone who has simply suffered that, externally, then you become that, internally. How can you then every escape it even when you become successful?
I liked the article, thanks. The point about ‘lived’ experience art, nearly always meaning it is personal trauma-based, never being properly interrogated, is very well made. It has much wider significance as it says the equating of unexamined anecdotal evidence with actual research and resulting evidence is a serious mistake. It is why for some the very term ‘lived experience’ rings alarm bells. I can enjoy the personal odyssey as art, comedy etc but I do not regard it as a very high from of art. You have yo go beyond the personal for that.
it is not bollocks it is the entrenchment of an outdated set of values that is fundamentally dishonest in that it denies humanity by seeking to elevate the idealised WASPish sitcom soap opera type personality above all other folk, all other species & the planet itself, sorry but I’m not sorry, such is the uselessness & harmfulness of such an essentially fascistic ideology that it simply must go
@m., I can broadly get onboard with your rejection of that set of values. But they are not conveniently lumped on any chosen demographic. For example, one could argue that the apparent aspirations of some of the working class are as alien to those of some of the Scottish underclasses as any split in society. This should be apparent by empirical means.
the sooner we get to an intellectual position that recognises all human lives as being of equal & irreplaceable value the better & this value should not be viewed in monetary terms which unfortunately for us all would appear to be the case as of right now
@m., individually we humans are irreplaceable, but collectively we are replaceable, as one generation follows another. And at the planetary scale, humans like any other species are replaceable (though this isn’t the view of humanism or most theisms, I believe). Other species generate value too: it’s what Life does.