Archive for April, 2011

I wrote the following Manifesto back when we started the society in 2007 as an apologia to Marinetti’s polemic, the futurist’s manifesto of 1909. They were fascists and in love with the machine and violence. As co-founder of the Tea Appreciation Society I prefer to promote the benefits of philosophy, literature, music and art, and sitting down and working out our differences over a cup of tea.

To all our new followers and to all those that have faithfully come before… let us remember, and share our passion brothers and sisters.

Please stand, actually you’re fine where you are… Just make sure you’ve got a brew in your hand and repeat aloud our rousing manifesto.

1. We want to sing the love of tea.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be loose leaf tea, boiled water, a tea pot, a china cup and a biscuit.
3. Literature has up to now magnified idleness, and slumber. We want to exalt these slow movements of ecstasy, feverish boiling of the kettle, the pour, the perilous stir, the rattle and the clink of the spoon.
4. We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by an old beauty: the beauty of tea.
5. Beauty exists only in considered brewing. There is no masterpiece that has an aggressive character. Poetry is not a violent assault on the forces of infusion.
6. We want to glorify peace – the only cure for the world – militarism, patriotism; these destructive gestures kill the beautiful ideas of the human race.
7. We want to visit museums and libraries, encourage philosophy.
8. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work; the revolt, we will rejoice in the baking of bread; the polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern music as we play our ukuleles: the nocturnal vibration of the worms in our compost; our spirits suspended from the clouds by the thread of cup in sleeve tea bags; and the gliding flight of creativity whose propeller sounds like the sipping of enthusiastic tea drinkers.

To your good health.

Shayne House

Co-Founder of the Tea Appreciation Society