“The neoliberal era — the time when, we were repeatedly told, there was no alternative — has been characterised by a massive deterioration of social imagination, an incapacity to even conceive of different ways to work, produce and consume. It’s now clear that, from the start (and with good reason) neoliberalism declared war on this alternative mode of time. It remains tireless in its propagation of resentment against those few fugitives who can still escape the treadmill of debt and endless work, promising to ensure that soon, they too will be condemned to performing interminable, meaningless labour — as if the solution to the current stagnation lay in more work, rather than an escape from the cult of work. If there is to be any kind of future, it will depend on our winning back the uses of time that neoliberalism has sought to close off and make us forget.”

“The problem of ‘tolerance’ (liberalism, laxism, the ‘permissive society’, etc.) takes the same form. The fact that those who were once mortal enemies are now on speaking terms, that the most fiercely opposed ideologies 'enter into dialogue’, that a kind of peaceful coexistence has set in at all levels, that morality is less strict than it was, in no sense signifies some 'humanist’ progress in human relations, a greater understanding of problems or any such airy nonsense. It indicates simply that, since ideologies, opinions, virtues and vices are ultimately merely material for exchange and communication, all contradictory elements are equivalent in the play of signs. Tolerance in this context is no longer either a psychological trait or a virtue: it is a modality of the system itself. It is like the total compatibility and elasticity of the elements of fashion: long skirts and mini-skirts 'tolerate’ each other very well (indeed they signify nothing other than the relationship which holds between them).  Tolerance connotes morally the generalized relativity of functions/ signs, objects/signs, beings/signs, relations/signs, ideas/signs. In fact, we are beyond the opposition between fanaticism and tolerance, as we are beyond that between sincerity and fakery. 'Moral’ tolerance is no greater than it was before. We have simply changed systems; we have moved on to functional compatibility.”

“I’ve always been influenced by the poems Brecht wrote in the late 30s, during the second world war, after everything had been incinerated, all the dreams and values of an entire generation destroyed, and Brecht said, well, it’s a new dark ages … how do people resist in the dark ages? What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems. It’s what ordinary people have to do. You have to love each other. You have to defend each other. You have to fight.”

right inuff ma language is disgraceful ma maw tellt mi ma teacher tellt mi thi doactir tellt mi thi priest tellt mi ma boss tellt mi ma landlady in carrington street tellt mi thi lassie ah tried tay get aff way in 1969 tellt mi sum wee smout thit thoat ah hudny read chomsky tellt mi a calvinist communist thit thoat ah wuz revisionist tellt mi literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi past tellt mi literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi future tellt mi ma wife tellt mi jist-tay-get-inty-this-poem tellt mi ma wainz came hame fray school an tellt mi jist aboot ivry book ah oapnd tellt mi even thi introduction tay thi Scottish National Dictionary tellt mi ach well all livin language is sacred fuck thi lohta thim. (Tom Leonard, 1984)

I dreamed this dream and I still dream of it and I will dream of it sometime again. Everything repeats itself and everything will be reincarnated, and my dreams will be your dreams. There, to one side of us, to one side of the world wave after wave breaks on the shore: there’s a star on the wave, and a man, and a bird, reality and dreams and death – wave after wave.

Dates are irrelevant. I was, I am, I will be. Life is a miracle of miracles, and I kneel before the miracle alone like an orphan,

alone in the mirrors, enclosed in reflections, seas and towns, shining brightly through the smoke. A mother cries and takes her baby on her knee. — Arseny Tarkovsky – “I dreamed this dream and I still dream of it”, translated by Richard McKane