& lamb-blooded

“But while the Luddites lost their war, their case was always correct. That war was not fought against technology per se—what Lewis Mumford called ‘technics’. Most Luddites operated weaving looms themselves, and were quite comfortable with machinery. What mattered was who controlled it. They were fighting what they called ‘the factory system’—the destruction of lived freedom, and the regimentation of both body and soul. Like the Fen Tigers and the many unnamed people who have stood up against the onward march of dehumanising ‘progress’, General Ludd and his legions were fighting the monster from the desert, and their struggle was existential. If they could see us today, transfixed by our glowing screens, deskilled and dependent on oligarchs for permission to earn, eat and speak, with the factory system gone global and the Earth heating up from its exhaust, they might be permitted a grim smile.”

no matter what you have tomorrow

Perfume began in Mesopotamia as incense offered to the gods to sweeten the smell of animal flesh burned as offerings, and it was used in exorcisms, to heal the sick, and after sexual intercourse. The word’s Latin etymology tells us how it worked: per = through + fumar to smoke. Tossed onto a fire, incense would fill the sky with a smoke otherworldly and magical, which stung the nostrils as if clamorous spirits were clawing their way into the body. Perfumed smoke began with the things of this earth but climbed quickly into the realm of the gods. Atop the famous ziggurat-shaped Tower of Babel, which stretched closer to the gods than mortals could reach, priests lit pyres of incense.