Sunday 5 February 2017

TAZ - Hakim Bey(Creep)

Recently I revisited Hakim Bey's TAZ album that he did with Bill Laswell. I'd heard it on the radio in the 90s. Even local Melbourne fanzines had big write ups on the book and cd. He was some kind of modern day cult figure with his feet in anarchistic and post-situationist camps. I remember thinking he was a bit didactic but had a couple of good things to say about modern life. The TAZ record contained Bey reading excerpts from his book, of the same name, over Laswell's world muzak. So I listened to it last week and it really got my goat. Within the first 10 minutes I thought this guy's philosophy really opens itself up to normalising some dodgy shit ie. paedophilia and incest. Then as I kept listening I was convinced this guy had spent his whole life studying radical movements, anarchism, esoteric history, secret societies and whatever else so he could justify paedophillia. The entire cd became very creepy (not in a good way). I was thinking 'Am I just reading too much into it?' So I went online to see what he was on about. Right there on the interweb was a lot of chatter about Paedophillia and Bey who is also known as Peter Lamborn Wilson. He'd allegedly written for a Paedophile journal etc. etc. Its funny though because I felt so guilty and disgusted after listening to TAZ and some of Wilson's lectures on youtube but back in my early 20s I don't think I ever felt guilty reading William S Burroughs. Another weird thing is that Bey goes on and on about many figures in secret and forgotten history and calls them creeps......the irony.

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