Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Anyone else feel like you've only got so much time to cram in reading, so you might as well spend that time reading a killer novel or history book instead? I mean, I remember nigh on every book I've ever read, but I can't say that 28th July 1994 newsday was a fucking doozy, easily in my Top 300. Keeping abreast of shit is a career unto itself. I know we all have some obligation to inform ourselves of the world's ins and outs, but I'm not entirely sure I want to. I think cutting off your connection to the world, focusing on your family- yours and your own- is usually the beginnings of some kind of lifelong conservatism, but I don't think I'm coming at it from that angle...at least I hope not. Also, I do think everything you read changes your inner-prose (or your writing style if you happen to be a writer), and the way the news is written is so smegging anonymous, so bogged down with the same set of idioms, I feel like I'm actively doing myself harm reading from even the supposedly more inspired broadsheets.

I don’t much like it when a head of state speaks of the dead as heroes. It usually happens because citizens have been sent to war and not come back, which is rather the case with the victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. The attack is part of a war declared on France, but can also be seen in the light of the wars France has got itself involved in: conflicts where its participation isn’t called for, where worse massacres than that at Charlie Hebdo take place every day, several times a day, where our bombardments pile death on death in the hope of saving potentates who feel threatened and are no better than those who threaten them … If Obama had not held Hollande back, he would have gone after Assad in Syria, just as Sarkozy went after Gaddafi in Libya … with the result we’re familiar with.[/quote]

Later is a quote from a personal angle. Roussel knew all the victims well and this made him both angry and sorrowful. He denounced Charb for his recklessness:

[quote="Henri Roussel"]He was the boss. Why did he need to drag the whole team into it? In the first attack on Charlie Hebdo in November 2011, the offices were torched after an issue was called ‘Charia Hebdo’. I quote what I said … in the Obs: ‘I think we’re ignorant and imbeciles who have taken a pointless risk. That’s all. We think we’re invulnerable. For years, decades even, we do provocative things and then one day the provocation comes back at us. It didn’t need to be done.’

It didn’t need to be done, but Charb did it again. A year later, in September 2012, after a provocation that put France’s ambassadors in Muslim countries in a state of siege … I asked Charb in the pages of the Obs: ‘To show, with the caption “Muhammed: A Star is Born”, a naked Muhammed praying, seen from behind, balls dangling and prick dripping, in black and white but with a yellow star on his anus – whatever way you look at it, how is this funny?’

I was sick of it. Charb told a journalist from Le Monde: ‘I have no kids, no wife, I prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees.’ Cavanna, who feared death, wrote when he was Charb’s age: ‘Rather red than dead.’?? The reds are no longer red, the dead are still dead. Everyone has seen Charb’s last cartoon: ‘Still no attacks in France?’ And the jihadist in the cartoon, armed like the one who killed Charb, Tignous, Cabu, Honoré and the others, replies: ‘Wait! We’ve got until the end of January for New Year’s greetings …’ Have you seen Wolinski’s last cartoon? It ends: ‘I dream of returning to Cuba to drink rum, smoke a cigar and dance with the beautif