Mandrillifesto

WRITTEN BY JOSH RAY – JANUARY 2017 / LEAD IMAGE BY DOM MANDRELL

Emerging out of a bewilderingly chaotic vacuum on the first morning of a “post-rational Britain“, a Mandrill began to stir in the Northampton boroughs. Later that evening, Alan Moore would manifest his “dictatorial baboon in make-up” at Arts Lab Northampton‘s Artmageddon event, announcing the primate’s arrival and declaring Mandrill Law in order to lead the way out of our cultural cul-de-sac.

Meanwhile, in post-rational Britain… pic.twitter.com/REgAKesnAB

— johnhiggs (@johnhiggs) June 24, 2016

But why a Mandrill you may ask? Moore offers up an explanation at Post-Nearly Press…

“We’ve all got our apocalypses in our heads haven’t we? And in times of a political vacuum, that’s when you get monsters emerging. Tyrants. Dictators. So if it’s a cultural vacuum, maybe you can have some sort of totalitarian art fascist emerge. And it would probably be a mandrill. The mandrill is the most beautiful and terrifying thing in creation; a baboon with a devil mask. I saw some footage of a leopard stalking in the long grass, creeping up on a mandrill that was sitting with its back to camera. The leopard must have made a noise. The mandrill suddenly turned round, and you could see the moment when the leopard realised it had made a really huge mistake. The mandrill was after it, with those beautiful blue flashes on its face, the teeth bared. So the dictator I imagined would be a mandrill.”

You can obey the Mandrill over on Facebook, whilst Alan Moore & Joe Brown’s ‘Mandrillifesto’ has now been uploaded to SoundCloud:

MANDRILLIFESTO

MANDRILLIFESTO
In times of national demise, speaking historically,
the mulch of crumpled dream and culture is a laboratory,
that breeds outrageous saviours and monsters without warning;
Cromwell, Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Jeremy Corbyn –
emerging from a broken world to find a hole they can fill,
cometh the moment; cometh the Mandrill.

This greed and gore emporium is not how life was meant to be,
with franchises and fads reheated from a previous century,
and nothing new, a neutered future on the retro record deck,
that’s stuck and endlessly repeating in a firebombed discotheque.
Your TV’s in a coma and you can’t get it to wake up.
What you need is a dictatorial baboon in makeup.

Overstated, aggravated and horrifically mutated,
here to see that you’re berated. What’s the last thing you created?
All those logos on your raiment, brand-name badges of enslavement,
drip-fed passive entertainment. Was this your intended statement?
When you have nowhere left to stand you’ll have to take one.
If there’s no culture in the land then you must make one.
Psychopathic, charismatic, I could go on but don’t need to:
as the higher primate it’s my long-awaited fate to lead you.
You have no choice but me, so please do not suggest so.
Hear now the poetry of my Mandrillifesto!

The light of burning corporations will repaint the sky in grenadine.
There’ll be billions of banners and Art Nouveau butterfly bombers like this world has never seen before.
We’ll march on ugliness and stupidity.
We’ll make loveliness compulsory.

And the roar of our orchestra engines will soar evermore in a glorious annihilating symphony, for the tyranny of beauty is our God-given duty.
Every child at birth is to be issued with a ukulele,
given their own flag and granted absolute and utter sovereignty,
and so long as it’s coloured in nicely and has an old woman on, make their own currency. And we’ll turn every urban address into a dripping Rousseau wilderness, and we’ll keep advancing until there’s nobody not dancing.

We’ll put politics in the pillory,
put the art back in artillery.
We can weaponise wonder
and our voice shall be as thunder.

From times of national demise arise new apes like me,
with, in our leopard-scaring eyes, manifest destiny.
I’ll lead you to a fluorescent utopia if you’ll let me:
love me, worship me, obey me – but never pet me.
If we can’t build a future then we’ll be its human landfill. So…
Cometh the moment, cometh the Mandrill.
(Repeat until indoctrinated)

LEAD IMAGE BY DOM MANDRELL