{"id":43042,"date":"2020-11-15T14:08:45","date_gmt":"2020-11-15T19:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=43042"},"modified":"2020-11-15T14:09:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-15T19:09:52","slug":"his-birthday-was-79-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2020\/11\/his-birthday-was-79-years-ago-today.html","title":{"rendered":"His Birthday Was 79 Years Ago Today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

‘He was the Shelley of his age<\/a> and more.’ — Gerard Bellaart<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Heathcote Williams [Photo: JH, 2013]<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Williams was an unstoppable force. Even in death he is unstoppable. His writings, his activism, and his personal example continue to inspire others. At heart, he was a revolutionary. The historian Peter Whitfield placed his work in a \u201cgreat tradition of visionary dissent\u201d stretching from William Blake and John Ruskin to DH Lawrence and David Jones. His poems \u2013 blasting the arms trade, consumerism and the tabloids \u2013 were \u201cwonderfully innocent\u201d and at the same time \u201cwonderfully streetwise\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Heathcote Williams<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I had the privilege of recording Heathcote’s final vinyl LP-cum-CD, “American Porn,”<\/a> at his home in Oxford several years before he died. The poems he read \u2014 “Mr. President,” “The United States of Porn,” “Forbidden Fruit, or The Cybernetic Apple Core,” and “Snuff Films at the White House” \u2014 are in their uncompromising nakedness CT scans of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heathcote Williams was an unstoppable force. Even in death he is unstoppable. His writings, his activism, and his personal example continue to inspire others. At heart, Williams was a revolutionary. The historian Peter Whitfield placed his work in a \u201cgreat tradition of visionary dissent\u201d stretching from William Blake and John Ruskin to DH Lawrence and David Jones. I had the privilege of recording Williams’s final vinyl LP-cum-CD, “American Porn,” at his home in Oxford several years before he died. The poems he read \u2014 “Mr. President,” “The United States of Porn,” “Forbidden Fruit, or The Cybernetic Apple Core,” and “Snuff Films at the White House” \u2014 were in their uncompromising nakedness CT scans of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26353,"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":[19,26,18,4,20,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-books","9":"category-literature","10":"category-main","11":"category-media","12":"category-news","13":"category-political-culture","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/heathcote-williams-photo-copy.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-bce","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43042","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=43042"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43051,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43042\/revisions\/43051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}