{"id":14698,"date":"2014-12-24T09:49:19","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T14:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=14698"},"modified":"2014-12-24T09:49:19","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T14:49:19","slug":"consumer-poem-for-the-occasion-a-global-love-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2014\/12\/consumer-poem-for-the-occasion-a-global-love-bomb.html","title":{"rendered":"Consumer Poem for the Occasion: A Global Love Bomb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The wisdom of the words, the wit of the montage &#8212; to say nothing of the pitch-perfect narration &#8212; make &#8220;True Love in the Impossible Emporium&#8221; a media keeper for this holiday season and all the ones to come.<br \/>\n<center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jjt2avUOiGo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><center><strong>Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox.<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The poem, which begins like this, is liable to cure the cynic in me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>True Love in the Impossible Emporium<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Searching the aisles for the right kind of birdseed<br \/>\nTo feed my inner nightingale,<br \/>\nI wandered the shelves of an outlandish store<br \/>\nFilled with customers chasing their own tail.<\/p>\n<p>The store&#8217;s speciality was impossible objects,<br \/>\nSuch as tins of rainbow paint,<br \/>\nAnd four-dimensional sprocket holes<br \/>\nThe sight of which made you feel faint.<\/p>\n<p>There were devil&#8217;s forks in the cutlery section,<br \/>\nEach prong was an optical illusion,<br \/>\nSo that morsels of food eluded forked stabs,<br \/>\nLeaving consumers in hungry confusion . . .<\/p>\n<p>The stairs to the different departments ascended<br \/>\nAnd descended in a continuous loop<br \/>\nMeaning customers climbed forever, getting no nearer<br \/>\nTo the free bowls of mock turtle soup,<\/p>\n<p>Or to the tin-cans that produced instant laughter<br \/>\nOr the horse-feathers, as used by Groucho Marx,<br \/>\nOr to the edible gravestones for cheering up cemeteries,<br \/>\nAnd the invisible coins for an inaudible jukebox.<\/p>\n<p>There were blacked-out mirrors that helped you<br \/>\nTo ignore the irrelevancies of life;<br \/>\nTheir non-reflectivity forbade self-absorption,<br \/>\nThe source of man\u2019s endless strife.<\/p>\n<p>Every item in stock was designed to unsettle,<br \/>\nTo undermine reality\u2019s status quo;<br \/>\nShoplifters were encouraged to help themselves<br \/>\nBy a Tannoy urging, \u2018Ready, steady, go!\u2019 . . . <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/jjt2avUOiGo\">Click to watch and listen.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The wisdom of the words, the wit of the montage &#8212; to say nothing of the pitch-perfect narration &#8212; make &#8220;True Love in the Impossible Emporium&#8221; a media keeper for this holiday season and all the ones to come. Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. The poem, which begins like this, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-literature","8":"category-media","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/True-Love-in-the-Impossible-Emporium.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-3P4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14698"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14710,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14698\/revisions\/14710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}