Because You’re Worth (sh)It.

We build the world in our own image. See it as a scary place and it will be, see it as a gentle giving place and it will be. See it as a place where you need to grab as much money as you can to survive, and it will be. Rich or poor, this is where we are. We want more money because we want more stuff, and we want more stuff because 3 minutes in every 15 we’re being told we do. TV ads are for specific products most of which we’ll never buy but the general message is there’s stuff out there we all want to buy. It’s not always been like this. Go back seventy years and it was very different. There were picture ads in newspapers for tumble dryers and lawn mowers with a splash price from the local hardware shop along with all sorts of everyday things. They simply acted as a reminder of where to go when your old one was wearing out. You glanced and moved on in a fraction of a second. There were no glossy magazines and BBC radio and TV were ad-less. The level of wanting was centred on replacing broken stuff with a little new extravagance now and then. With no TV we had the time to learn to make and mend things with pride. Wages weren’t great. My first job in 1964 paid £20 a week, which was fine. Now on average we watch over half an hour solid ads a day plus magazines and radio and our level of wanting stuff is massively higher. Not scratchy black and white line drawing ads, full on audio/visual masterpieces of desire. We drool for a new smart phone, an iPad, a bigger TV, a laptop that all absorb our time like a giant sponge. Our level of wanting knows no bounds; even the rich want more. Wanting has become a veil of unhappy distraction punctured only by the brief moments of a new purchase. And we have precious little time for rewarding activities that build self worth; we’re either earning it or spending it and wishing we had more. It seems from abundance we have created a misery of not having enough and shackled ourselves to profiteering and time wasting. This is the world we have created in our own image. But on the bright side Comet’s selling a Sony Viao 15” laptop for £100 pounds off in the post Christmas sale.

The NRA Solution.

As much as I don’t like making fun of the criminally insane I’d like to analyse the logic of the NRA. So they put a ‘good’ gunman in every school. I calculate there must be around sixty thousand schools in the US so sixty thousand highly trained guys must be on high alert, fingers on triggers 6 hours a day 5 days a week 30 weeks a year to be there that one day in 7.5 million man/days per year to stop one guy causing carnage in a school, and who is likely to take the good gunman out first with a high powered assault rifle with telescopic sights and silencer. This constant state of threat will, in a small percentage of these noble defenders, cause them to become terminally bored after 427 days of futile vigilance and not see the bad gunman coming. And another small percentage say 0.05%, will become terminally paranoid and, given their love of shooting guns, will themselves run amuck in their own classrooms. 0.05% by the way would be 30 insane highly trained fully armed gunmen in schools. To stop the possibility of a tragedy happening it will be prudent if not essential to supply a second good gunman to watch the first. That should fix it and as a by-product help unemployment stats, and if one good gunman was in a bullet proof shelter while the other one patrolled it would stop a bad gunman taking out the good gunmen first with a high powered assault rifle with telescopic sights and silencer. That really would provide for all eventualities. Oh no wait. That would leave the good patrolling gunman on his own so if he became terminally paranoid whilst on patrol there would be no one there to stop him! OK that’s easily fixed. So there needs to be three highly trained fully armed gunmen per school, that’s 180,000 in total, two patrolling together while one stands guard in a bullet proof shelter. Finally we have a solution. And if we do find we need a fourth highly trained fully armed gunmen to watch the gunman on his own in the bullet proof shelter we’ll know exactly what to do. So the NRA aren’t so dumb after all. They’ve thought it through.

Hopi Red Hair.

Apparently there’s an old Hopi story that says at the end of the old Mayan calendar ie 20-12-2012 a new one will begin where humans will be given the “realisation that they create their own reality.” Now the wonder of words is we can put them in any order, like a ‘pink elephant foxtrotting superstar’ and just like that we can imagine a pink elephant complete with tutu dancing to rapturous applause. In a sense we created a reality of it. This facility has brought us all sorts of creative wonders from the wheel to the internal combustion engine. But it doesn’t stop there. I can create an internal reality of you, of your internal reality, of what I deserve, what I need, whether I’m better or worse, worthy or unworthy. The list is endless. And all this we create 24/7 to build a complex internal reality that guides our feelings and actions. It’s thus not unfair to say we create our own reality and mostly without realising it. We even cherish our creations as in how well we know ourselves and others and our ability to predict and/or deceive the world. So this realisation is going to be a lot more far-reaching than we might imagine. It will define that the only true reality is ‘out there’ and leave us naked in our acceptance of it. I seriously wonder what of ‘ourselves’ will be left. So much will go and the majority of it will be found to have been an encumbrance. And what’s left will be heart, our spirit of being. Not to be rich, but champions of our heart’s achievement, not to be powerful but in service to external reality, not to be shy, depressed or repressed, envious or disdainful but pleasing to our heart in what we find and do. We will find a freedom we would have not thought possible and an efficiency and effectiveness we would have not thought possible. We will find that possessions bought, sold and owned are the creation of our own reality and that the best violin will naturally fall to the best player who will know its quality most. We will not know self-importance, only that everything is. We will have no concerns for past and future except for what the heart has lost and planning to support the heart’s direction. What we know will be at the beck and call of curiosity. Teachers will be the purveyors of questions not knowledge because questions come first, experience second and knowledge last. We will be free to be wondrous excited. And today my hair is red.

Newtown Shootings.

By all accounts I am a pleasant chap, father and previously son. I guarantee I will not shoot anyone. But that hasn’t stopped me and my sons at one time or another hating our parents as ‘agents of the state’ and its unspoken social norms. I guess that’s fairly normal and in most cases we’re given enough latitude to find ourselves, our self as a unique social, loving animal being. I also sense I have matured two quite different identities: One the social and one the individual. I feel lucky that for me these two largely overlap and neither one inhibits the other much so both have been free to develop benignly. I can easily imagine this not being the case, where an overwhelming social identity will suppress the individual and the individual more visceral identity will react antisocially.

This ‘final straw’ can be as ferocious as a camel as you break its back. Somewhere in the individual a switch is thrown. And somewhere in the individual the switch can find its way back to find genuine remorse for what’s been done.

In my youth there was little television, little wealth and the desire for it, and for fame and celebrity. Today we are far more the watchers and admirers of these things. The young are in a sense parented by screens on all sides and their parents also. The combination can be a feeling that within our social humanity there is nothing, no one that isn’t an agent of the state. Parents, media, the news, even much of the care professions seem in collusion to suppress the natural individual self, the only true sanity one has. And all, if you displease them, will call it insanity. It becomes a fracturing conundrum, a personal war with the universal zeitgeist. Parents and social institutions genuinely ask, “What more can we do?” They don’t understand that it’s an infection we all carry but only a few develop symptoms, so in an effort to help we crowd round their bed infecting them further.

If there’s ‘a cure’ I suggest it’s quite the reverse. Someone in danger of causing much social harm could be driven out into a deserted wild place with water, shelter and provisions and if possible a horse and left alone. They could be visited by someone robust and mature after 3 days and then weekly for two maybe three weeks, a sort of decontamination period. No help, no therapy, no contact. And at not much cost either.

The Trappings of Power.

I wonder if the inventor of this phrase was aware of its double meaning. Even the use of the word ‘trappings’ rather than ‘traps’ more accurately describes the ever increasing self induced entanglements that divert one from a happy life. Every quarter at the moment is showing me the profound poverty of the rich and powerful. From the celebrities in the jungle in rapture over a choc ice to the opulence of multi billionaires in New York rich enough to buy the government a single message is being fashioned. That the latter have a huge impediment to being happy fulfilled human beings. Straightforward logic suggests that if something as simple as an ice cream can leave one satisfied the acquisition of power and wealth that leaves one always wanting more must be essentially and profoundly unfulfilling. It only leads to a growing state of dissatisfaction as anyone serving the majority of these people will attest. Dissatisfaction or the adaptation to being permanently unfulfilled, being the ambient property of our elite, actively percolates our society until fulfilment is un-catered for; a forgotten menu option. The fulfilment of learning is replaced by the dissatisfaction of being told, the fulfilment of teaching is replaced by the dissatisfaction of indoctrination, the fulfilment of creativity is replaced by a repetitive career, the fulfilling contribution of work is replaced by the dissatisfaction of drudgery and even the fulfilment of purchase is replaced by the dissatisfaction of induced limitless acquisitiveness. Evidence of this percolation is everywhere; dissatisfaction and unfulfilment are everywhere. Yet the celebs in the jungle were fulfilled in ways our society has ceased to offer us and they came away with an unforgettably rewarding experience. Middlesonmouse graduated with a First in Maths. His fellow graduate’s first year salary as an actuary was £35k. He wasn’t tempted by a well-paid career and tried teaching (horrendous) and now runs his own company taking a ridiculously small salary and acquiring a skill set to fill a book because he loves learning new stuff and meeting new challenges. He’s a happy fulfilled chip off the old block. There is still hope if you choose it.

Ranting Rand changes Land.

Though I’m heartened that the immorality of rich US Republicans can now be the subject of a BBC4/Open University documentary it doesn’t help redress the problem. The rich control the government, the government legislates and the legislation favours the rich. This state of affairs is the outcome of US economists and Republicans following the philosophies of Ayn Rand, a bourgeois Russian Jewess who had a hard time at the hands of the Bolshevik Revolution. Smarting from being caught in the middle (class) she travelled to America and found a vibrant ‘working’ country free of both an aristocracy and communism. She rationalised what she found into ‘Objectivism’ based on ‘rational self interest’ and the pursuit of one’s own happiness. Like Margaret Thatcher she was the daughter of a reasonably successful shopkeeper and this philosophy sits well with that working/middleclass life. One has enough resources to buy and sell and one’s profitability lays squarely on one’s own effort and nous. It must be tempting to see the whole of society as a broad spectrum of happy shopkeepers from Wal-Mart to street vendors in one long purchasing food chain. It’s as appealing as a summer’s day in the Hamptons, and to be fair America in 1925 was still full of opportunity. So how has it all gone wrong? In 1957 Rand wrote ‘Atlas Shrugged’, a fictional novel in which the creative energetic (rich) class of America, the Wal-Marts, literally shrugged off the weight of the poor and went to live in the mountains to create a prosperous free-market economy while the remaining poor went into terminal decline. Vitriol was heaped on this Enid Blyton tale but it sold 25 million copies and became the bible of the Republicans. I assume it was motivated by her transplanted hatred for the Russian Bolsheviks who ruined her middleclass life but in a strange corollary of fate it turned into a justification for America’s elite to see themselves as Tsarist. Greed is good, the poor are feckless etc. There are two flaws in Rand’s Objectivism. People aren’t rational in their pursuit of self-interest and not everyone is a shopkeeper. The poor can’t afford to buy stock and the rich can rig the market. So in 2012 America has pivoted on the writings of one immigrant into a close approximation of Tsarist Russia, and we all know what happened to them.

Greater than Jimmy.

Thanks to J and S Mice for my education re the critically damaged people of our society. They’re both miners dedicated to extricating the living bodies of women and children from crushing social pressure at a coalface where the pit props are being systematically stolen by the management. Where, if there’s a collapse, a problem is solved by the suffocating burial of thousands. Graphic enough? A huge percentage of presenting psychological problems of the young and not so young people can be traced to childhood sexual abuse. Jimmy Savill is not a gross unique example; he’s the tip of the unspoken norm. It stems from men in and subjugated by positions of power. Perhaps that was a bit too low key so in case you missed it, “SUBJUGATED BY.” As the three of us met on a Person Centres therapy course we subscribe to the individual having a visceral need for empathy and unconditional love, and functioning best when all the elements of our perception, beliefs and actions are congruent. Set these needs against what is supplied to a person who assumes a position of power, deference, distance, fear etc, it’s clear that the position leaves these primary needs unmet and subjugates the holder to ‘it’s’ requirements. Thus subjugated the holder will try to meet their needs as a human being in other ways. They must maintain their outward persona whilst also covertly attempt to satisfy their more visceral human needs. What better way than to use the power dynamic between adult and youngster and what better way to gain entry to the visceral than sexual intimacy? The dynamic of child sex abuse. The child of course reacts differently. He/she is introduced to sexual intimacy in the wolf’s clothing of a predatory being desperately trying to satisfy their own depletion from being subjugated, which the child has no way of understanding. This potent cocktail of sex, power and repression will play out in a thousand different ways. I’m tempted to say the sexual element in isolation is the least damaging but of course it’s not in isolation. Nevertheless the subjugation, neediness, repression and personal incongruity purveyed by one human being to another is for me the greater crime. And lest we heap all our vitriol on Jimmy Savill lets remember that subjugation, neediness, repression and personal incongruity are at play in all our power based interactions. And as the pit props are removed one by one by the powerful the whole edifice of our power based ant hill will collapse if we don’t recognise that power subjugates all its power holders into being less than the glorious human beings they were meant to be.

Seven Fruit Cakes & Life.

So an all day Saturday Playback Theatre rehearsal with seven variations on a fruit cake recipe. One of the joys of rehearsal is we have to provide our own stories to enact: In a performance we’d use stories from the audience. Mouse A tells of her holiday with her three-year-old son and eighty year old mother. Fraught with possibilities before they start Mouse A finds at the Luton check-in that her passport is still in Sheffield. She realises her only option is to return home with child, which in itself is an echo of the upcoming frustrations of the festive season almost upon us. Mother, the proud survivor of eighty Christmas dinners, a war and the commonwealth, is less daunted. She bristles to the front and demands that their party, part octogenarian part baby, be allowed on as ‘speedy boarders’ in the hope a hearty run up will overcome this minor diplomatic problem. The check in lady offers up a friendly paw for her to speak to. Mouse A confirms firmly, “We’re not speedy boarders mother, we’ll just have to go home, you get on the plane.” Baby, as babies do, responds personally to the emotion and begins to cry. Mother responding to the crushing realisation that Winston Churchill and several million others died in vane if English people can’t even leave their own country is incensed to the core and begins shouting, “I’m senile, I’m senile.” “No you’re not mother, just get on the plane.” “Well only if she lets me be a speedy boarder!” “Oh please let her be a speedy boarder!!” Mouse B then tells of a walking holiday with a friend who needed to pee often, a frequent curse of the small bladdered as Mouthermouse will attest. Unfortunately friend mouse’s mobile was in her back pocket and must have blipped out like a bar of soap from a firm grasp somewhere along their first day’s walk. At her insistence the second and third days walks were spent revisiting all the possible first day’s pee stop venues in the hope of finding it. To no avail. Mouse B explains this and other factors did not endear her to her slow walking, slightly stupid, overly demanding and cloyingly gushy companion. A few weeks later she gets a phone call. “I got my phone back! You were such lovely company how about a walking holiday in India next year?” Noooooooooooo!! So re-enacting these and other stories was the joyous five-hour traffic of our stage. Twas a fiine time.

The Cleaner.

Mothermouse decides we need a cleaner. But that’s not easy. First off we must not appear disgusting and second we must appear so franticly busy doing other things we just don’t have time. God forbid we should come across as lazy arses happily living in the Woodseats equivalent of a bush-tucker trial. This is made worse by not being able to find whatever is incubating flies in the kitchen. I can only assume some deceased cat present is lurking behind something, but luckily she didn’t find it. Anyway appearing frantically busy isn’t easy. It has to be something selfless, socially useful. Like origami won’t cut it unless it’s a three story hanging basket for charity. I mean there’s something deeply disgusting about appearing to live a dissolute Downton life style in a Sheffield suburban semi. So we power dress, which for us, seeing as it’s ten in the morning, means losing the dressing gowns asap. But preparations for her arrival began days before. Off to Sainsbury’s to purchase what cleaning products we should have if we actually did clean. Anxiety rises as we tackle a steep learning curve and do a frantic pre-clean the evening before her arrival. She arrives with a vacuum cleaner the size of a Russian tank and spurns our old mop as worn out and my new Vax steam cleaner as a homosexual’s knick-knack. “In my cauntree we owenly yuzeh sulphuric aceed and petrol driven apylances” she tells us; beads of Slovakian sweat dripping from her face. I can hear my unconscious translating this as, “The Inglis, they live like lazy pig dogs.” I feel my mouth opening to explain, via a hastily fashioned blatant lie, that, but for the depression caused by our heartfelt concerns over the plight of Mongolian orphans, we’d be as spit-spot as Mary Poppins. I calm down and rationalise that if it wasn’t for us dispensing our largess she and her three fatherless children would be out on the street, possibly in Mongolia, and that it’s only the laziness of the hapless rich that allows the industry of the less fortunate to bear fruit. I wash my own cup up and, feeling I’ve done my bit, decide to run out to Chatsworth to buy a piece of meat for the weekend.

Progress I don't Think.

Wow there’s so much going on these days. I mean not in politics etc, that’s the same old same old, but in the understanding of our condition as human organisms. Microbiology is proving even down to the cellular level we consist of nested spheres of perceptual interactive consciousness; that in a sense how we perceive our life is echoed in each cell of our body. The book, “Why people get ill” quotes numerous studies that show this empirically but now microbiology is adding the mechanical evidence. One might even say all illness is psychosomatic. Darren Brown recently proved in his TV program that allowing the unconscious to believe a cure was being given was sufficient for the organism as a whole to ‘cure’ itself. Information recently levered out of drug companies under the freedom of information act of unpublished trials shows the drug to rely almost totally on the placebo effect. But importantly this mind/body interaction is the domain of the unconscious, not the conscious mind; we can’t consciously ‘think’ ourselves better. Even the mind/body dichotomy itself may be a misnomer. It’s more likely the organism is completely integrated where the ‘mind’ extends through the autonomic and nervous systems right down to each and every cell. For sure our conscious mind, or to put it another way, the bit where our mind is aware of itself is puny compared with the complex functionality required for governing the whole organism. What we are conscious of is just the post-checking of what’s already in process against longer-term objectives. My unconscious ‘sticks the tennis racket there’ because consciously ‘I want to win the game.’ So becoming well has much to do with what we consciously aren’t aware of. Enter NLP and hypnosis, and the precision of Ericksonian language. The unconscious is very literal and present. It doesn’t comprehend the negative, the future/past, or fancy conceptual language. But now there appears to be an update on these that goes under prosaic title of ‘Muscle Testing.’ The therapist tests the muscle reaction of an outstretched arm to test the unconscious response to questions and suggestions; no trance state, nothing. There’s a convincing demonstration on You Tube. So imagine a future where your doctor tests your arm and offers a remedy to your unconscious and off you go healing yourself. No drugs, injections or anything; unless of course you have a broken arm.

Hail Helen the Swan.

Look away now if you don’t spend your Sat&Sun evenings watching, “I’m a Celeb on X Factor get me out of Match of the Day, Garry.” Well it appears God in the form of the GBP is hard at work. We’ve let Ella go which really pissed off the judges and proves Big G will always confound our expectations, and kept in Rylan in the hidden hope that if he wins he’ll actually explode with emotion, wail loud enough to usher in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and drown Essex in a flood of day-glow orange tears. And we’ve kept punishing Helen with Bush-tucker trials until she’s finally experienced the greatest joy of her life so far. She shunned words and hugs of encouragement, didn’t mention ‘doing her best’ and engaged grim determination for the first time ever, and won twelve stars! Mothermouse did a dance and we both shed a tear of joy with her and her camp-mates, who would finally eat a meal of wallaby elbows after days of her failures and their hungers. To witness someone re-writing their script of constant failure by a huge success is a profound delight. It proves Mothermouse’s quote that “reality always wins” over our puny programming. It’s why I still get a lump in my throat when I hear, “a swan? Me a swan?” So lets all sing together the hymn to self-actualisation. “I’m not such an ugly duckling with feathers all stubby and brown. In fact in the words of me as a bird, chlick, the best in town. Chlick the best, chlick chlick, the best, chlick chlick the best in town.” Feels good doesn’t it. Oh and Man U and Chelsea lost.

Bug free Screen Life.

Helen Flanagan intrigues me. (I’m a Celeb get me out of Here) She has a history of panic attacks and keeps failing the bush tucker trials. She ran out of yesterday’s trial before the release of the first mealworm. The GBP keep voting for her, the other celebs are going hungry and even the show crew are pissed their lavish preparations aren’t being used. She seems to be suffering from the other PTSD, Pre Traumatic Stress Disorder, a form of debilitating narcissism. It seems to me to come from the confluence of two factors. One, the modern idea “you must learn to love yourself first”, and two, the invention of electro-gadgets, phones, iPads, TVs and the like, that offer a semblance of life without the real experience of it. One learns unilateral omnipotence whilst at the same time acquiring no real world capabilities. Helen is very likeable but personality doesn’t cut it when you’re sandwiched between hungry people and their food supply. Her camp mates kindness, understanding and support go unnoticed because she’s already far kinder, understanding and supportive of herself and their challenges to her zero abilities are deemed ‘insensitive’. She is constantly “doing her best” but only for herself, not for her camp mates. Though delightful she doesn’t comprehend the systemic nature of the group. It’s a cocktail of beliefs that allow every man to be an island, which makes an enjoyable, fulfilling life impossible. It’s a dramatic example of being incapable of translating her knowing of the program ‘on screen’ into the reality of being there. “Sure I could beat David Hay in a fist fight, I’ve watched him on TV haven’t I”. My criticism is not of her but her beliefs. It’s not important because of her but for all the youngsters who feel they’ve found the key to life, the universe and everything when they’ve mastered the remote. Sorry but in real life the skill set for using electro-gadgets is insignificantly small.

I’m an MP get me.

Nadine Dorries is in the jungle, and the Great British Public are up in arms that tax payers money is being wasted on a woman who’s taken her nose off the Westminster grindstone for a fortnight. Remember ‘thinking’ people? It’s what we used to do before we started just assimilating received ideas. Should we be indignant that a functionary in the ‘they’ class is taking time out to expose themselves as a human being and undermining the insularity our democracy is based on? God forbid we should be exposed to David Cameron retching over a dirty sink or shaking at the sight of an unpayable gas bill. But Nadine has plunged and the GBP has bush-tuckered her like the alien we think she is. Interestingly we seem to vote to make the weakest stronger. We let off the one’s we think will cope admirably and put our hopes behind the squealers for their little successes. Yes it’s vindictive but with an underlying purpose to it. It’s not just looking for the survival of the fittest, we’ll root for the plucky terrier just a much as the muscular poodle. No seriously, poodles can be really solid dogs without the silly haircuts. But anyway MP Nadine has been an exception. So it seems the GBP will do anything to maintain the other-ness of our parliamentarians. We don’t want to play an active part in the directing of our future, we’d rather leave it to ‘them’ and when one of ‘them’ has the temerity to say I’m just an ordinary person with hang-ups, delusions and frailties like everyone else we accuse her of publicity seeking, responsibility shirking and generally not being the alien we would like them to be. Sure she’s not perfect but she’ll be a better MP for doing it than sitting on her arse for two weeks in the Commons. She might be making us and David uncomfortable but she just might help to break down the divisions we find it so comfortable to maintain.

City Death.

Therapy Today’s article on stress in the City is hardly newsworthy, we can imagine it all too easily; the seven day weeks, sixteen hour days, dog eat dog environment, the massive pay cheques and constant threat of instant dismissal. Therapists to this toxic environment know well the feelings of anxiety, depression, self-loathing and loss of control, the eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse it induces. The writer describes financial institutions as psychopathic, training and rewarding individuals in the ways of psychopathy. He describes a perfect storm where individuals have no free time for personal relationships, where nothing other than work stress is an acceptable personal admission, and where nothing less than a complete obedience to the faith of profit is acceptable. One is cut off, corralled and there’s no way out. More importantly these positions of great financial power are being pursued exclusively by this form of mutant human being. They may not have green heads but they exhibit a less than human awareness. Though obviously completely human they can’t address the full panoply of their basic humanity, which then permeates the whole of our ‘money culture.’ Where money was invented and is useful as a means of exchange, by acquiring a value in and of itself, it is being drained from society at large by those trained to have a pathological desire for it. Our continuing financial difficulties are largely due to society being drained of money to provide its useful exchange function. The writer as therapist though is not a moral guardian and can only offer coping strategies. I can only suggest workers in banks and other financial institutions act together to take control of their lives and workplace as a matter of personal urgency to re-balance their lifestyle: Fewer hours, more cooperation, more awareness and a broader view of their personal and professional objectives. Using money to make money is a variation on an oxymoron. Money is a means of exchange to service the endeavours of our labours; to use it as a means to itself is an intellectual absurdity.

The Irredeemables.

Who is willing to come forward to say they were sodomised as a child by Michael Gove? Please, sacrifice yourself for the sake of the country. It seems where paedophilia is the irredeemable flavour of the month shafting every child in the kingdom is government policy. Just when you thought the damage Gove has done to our education system couldn’t be surpassed he manages to do it. The new GCSE’s are to treat arts subjects as second-class citizens. Unbelievable. Immediately a band of prominent artists, musicians, dramatists and writers are up in arms at this philistine attitude. But maybe they’re missing the point. Most if not all subjects in school are arts subjects. Maths is classed as an art; you get a BA not a BSc, English also. History and geography when you get past memorising the dates and capitals are based on creative enquiry and interpretation. Surely the intended demarcation is between creative thinking and simple learning. Simple learners are happy to be compliant cogs where creative thinkers aren’t. Simple learners buy what is suggested, creative thinkers buy only what they want. The arts complete a person in a way that learning does not. In fact without them education becomes just the training of sheep. Our leaders of every description can barely do more than walk, talk and shake hands in a business suit. They can’t sing, draw, dance, and only write in convolutions. They’re just super sheep. So now thanks to Gove we will have sheep training sheep to do sheep jobs lead by super sheep. Interestingly many forms of therapy are based on the arts, painting, drama, dance etc and none on, well being sheepish. And now important men are being implicated in child abuse in North Wales. I have to say it doesn’t come as a surprise given the massive amount of suppression required to perform their roles.

Oh Dear.

Just to prove the Stiffmouse Blog is actually written live-

OK so I’m out with my mate Paul, all ears no mouth right, but a far superior drinker than I am. We doscus, wel I disvcuss occurancies since oout lart meeting. I wonder whether to engage my spell checker  but decide the truth isd better mispelst. It rains and fue to an umbrellaa misdfunction fomd pourseves in the company of a black gut off his head on  chewing some shuit. He lights up a dubie, only in the Vine, and in place of conversation makes hasnd jestures. Of dep significance. Our eyes connect and he is saying somethinf as foreign to him as it is to me but it’s true. And that’s all I’m interestred in, you know, the truth. We talk in inter[planeary space. Three undergrad footaball supporters join us in consciousness, wonder what the fucxkf is going on and leave to plasyt pool. Only in the Vine. The black guys eyes pick on me a knowing but he elavesin a funk of something elsde. Jeez I’m pissed, but tthat’s alright. It’s funny. OK bthqat’sd it Stiffmpouse isd goiong to bed. Wenjoy your life3 it’s the only one you have. \I’ll be better tomorrow. Bod bless.

The Choir.

Watched ‘The Choir’, fabulous. Goes to show life is far better meeting challenges than sitting on your status quo. Quite made my heart weep with joy seeing all that delight generated by meeting them. But tell me, why do men move like they’ve never had sex in their life? I mean I’m no different but it intrigues me. We move like puppets. You can see our brains going, “So I move my knee to the right, oh right, OK now my left arm to a horizontal position, oh God and now my head round AND smile, no, no it’s all too much!” It’s not that with practice we could do it quicker it’s that this is our body we’re talking about. It can actually move itself very effectively without intervention from ‘head’ office. Burn your finger and it’s out of there before the e-mail about the forthcoming meeting regarding digit retraction has landed in a top floor in-tray let alone been discussed and a highly politicised memo passed back to the brachialis muscle in the forearm. But there’s probably a suspicion in all of us that to not go through this laborious process would lead to either collapsing in a heap on the floor or running naked through the streets shouting, “My mother was a sprout!” Abandon doesn’t work like that. Head office can still maintain an overview whilst leaving the lower floors to do a splendid job on their own. Everyone knows we do a better job than some muppet in the boardroom. But the inculcation of these management structures into our psyche is evident everywhere. “What on earth could my knee, or God forbid, my genitals, tell me about managing my personal corporate situation? Even my internal organs couldn’t grasp the complex decision making necessary to run this organisation!” We need to get a management consultant in. “Sir, may I call you Sir, you fail to realise you have an exceptional workforce using its best efforts every moment to support your company. Your constant interventions from above to control all their hard work is its single most damaging factor. Every single member of your workforce is best given the freedom to do what they do supremely well. All they need from you is good working conditions and to be listened to when they’re over worked.” Of course management says, “That’s all very well for him to say, he doesn’t have my responsibility to the share holders to think about.” What bloody share holders!? “Well there’s my family, neighbours, that person over there who’s looking at me, the woman on the train this morning who may have thought I had insufficient deodorant on, they’re endless.” And then to save the day Gareth Malone appears, da da didlly da de da, “Why not form a workplace choir?” Fabulous idea Gareth!

Lead into Gold.



OK this obviously appeals on many levels not least to one who's Mothermouse has been globe trotting this last fortnight. But the object of this mock-up book cover is to test audience reaction to the idea of a Stiffmouse Compilation in book form. Being not plagued by self-doubt, in fact being rather more prone to self-aggrandisement I’m quite used to seeing my sow’s ears as a Dolche and Gabana handbag, so I want to get a more disinterested view from the many, well ~20 readers of my blog before I camp out in Hodder & Stoughton’s foyer. Answers out of 10 can be submitted in Facebook comments. Please enter the first number that comes to mind. Disregard subsequent considered additions and subtractions on the basis of me being jolly nice chap and easily disappointed or a misguided self-opinionated twat who you’ve always hated and can’t resist this glorious opportunity to put the boot in. These will not do. It’s purely whether you think a commuter from Surbiton to Charring Cross will enjoy it. PS, it should read “by Stiffmouse”. Silly mistake there, rather gives the game away.

Shaky Scouse Guy.

(note to self)
Backstage at the X Factor Christopher Maloney is ushered into a dimly lit room. “Sit down Chris”, a voice from the slanted light of a desk lamp. “You heard those comments?” Chris nods. “Gary doesn’t get it, you need to listen.” Chris trembles slightly, mouth a little open. “You started with that wobbly microphone remember, that was genius. This guys going to be shite, we’ll have a good laugh at this one and bam, you slayed them with the voice. You confounded their expectation, a nice guy and he can sing as well, right?” He nods again. “And now all these comment because that’s all you are, a nice guy with a voice. But you don’t want to not be a nice guy do you?” Chris shakes his head. “No, because your image of a nice guy is shit. ‘Oh look it’s our Christopher on the TV, isn’t he doin’ well, he’s a lovely fella, he’ll lick your shoes if you ask ‘im.’” The voice pauses. “You’re a ferry singer. Go back to Liverpool and dine out on meeting Gary Barlow.” Chris breathes deep and opens his mouth to... “Forget it I’m talking. Singers don’t choose their stage, the stage chooses them and at the moment the Rotterdam ferry lounge’s little semicircle playing to bored passengers looking at their watches and getting pissed is choosing you. But you don’t want that do you? Chris, body language isn’t scratching your arse means you’re randy, it emanates like a light from every movement and what we’re getting is, ‘I desperately want to please you’, yes? We’re pissed, talking, eating crisps, looking at the time and still ‘I desperately want to please you.’ That’s how ferry singers are, it’s their job, that’s their stage. You get me? Now correct me if I’m wrong,” the voice rises, “ but the X Factor fucking stage is no fucking ferry lounge, is it?” Chris begins to wobble; his mouth opens a little more. “Nice guys haven’t drawn a line that says this is who I am. They can’t because nice doesn’t include the hero, the warrior, the man who doesn’t want to please you; he wants to please himself, which happens to include giving you pleasure. Yes? The nice man runs after his wife, ‘Would you like a cup of tea dear?’ The warrior grabs her firm, draws her to him looking deep into her eyes and gives her the gentlest kiss, barely touches her lips. And you want to make us a fucking cup of tea, on the X Factor fucking stage!? You understand me?” Chris’s mouth won’t open any further, he smiles. “And don’t give me that boyish charm, it won’t wash. I know for a guy like you it’s bloody difficult but you’re going to have to go out there and show your naked pleasure in doing it, doing what you want on your stage and, from a place you’ll struggle to find, draw that audience to you, eye to eye and give it the gentlest kiss. Jesus Christ, Michael Buble got it straight away!”

This time Maybe?

Is it me or is something going on? I mean I’ve been wrong before, you know, wishful thinking and stuff. And then this evenings ‘Have I got News for You’ with Conrad Black being ripped to shreds by a thousand barbs, sitting there like Jaba the Hut smirking at all humanity, proof if it were needed he has no blood left to bleed. But that’s just the latest thing. A two year sentence for inhuman care-home workers, a documentary on Donald Trump’s sociopathic inhuman bullying, Jimmy Saville being turned in his year-old grave, and even the BBC genuflecting on its part in their favourite uncle’s fiddling about, as in the Who’s double album, Tommy, that blew me away in ’69. A trader being prosecuted for losing £1.5 billion trying to save the bank that he “love as his family”, a ‘Thinking Aloud’ mental health radio program about thoughtless harassment in the workplace. Then enter Darren Brown as a media suicide bomber, well almost. His premise is to take one individual through the ‘reality’ of Armageddon hoping to show his uncaring drift away from humanity can be reversed. This individual began an average, intelligent couch potato uninterested in the finer points of compassion, heroism and real affection. The program follows his horrific journey courtesy of explosions, gory makeup and actors. It’s difficult to watch because he is not an actor; he’s real like us, affected like we would be, scared, confused and interested in his own survival. He shows little outward emotion, no easily readable facial expressions, no glib lines of dialogue. This is really happening to him. And that’s the end of part 1. So is there a confluence occurring? As we wake and sleep are there creative forces aligning themselves behind some thrust to reinstate humanity? Might the amorphous desires of the flower power sixties be reprising itself in a more structured muscular form? Is woolly liberalism being replaced by the concrete findings of neuroscience, sociology and psychology? Or will it take some real armageddon to wake us up to it? I don’t know, I’ve been wrong before.

Hot News.

Forget the US election, this is momentous. A couple of years ago our smart ginger cat, Britney, worked out how to feed herself from the ‘Cup of Plenty’, the mug we use to dole out dry cat food and which often has a bit left in it. One terrible day I watched Dave, our black cat with one eye, the only thing that differentiates him from Cocky Black Cat who doesn’t live here but plagued us all until we fitted an electronic cat flap, eat that asshole! Where was I, that sentence has gone on too long. Oh yes Dave watched in awe as Britney dispense herself morsel after morsel from the Cup of Plenty by paw dipping. After she left he crept towards it, sat by it and waited. And waited, and nothing! Not a single morsel leapt out for him to eat. I’ve never seen a cat so dejected. Dave’s heaven is a constant, moment by moment supply of food and being already 6-7 kilos he’s not going to get that any time soon. Seeing this heaven tantalisingly dangled in front of him and then cruelly wrenched away must have been terrible. Months later Betty also learned the magic of the Cup of Plenty while Dave could only barge into our ankles as we walked about the kitchen. But he must have been watching, taking mental notes of cause and effect, studying techniques. And today I can announce that Dave now has a GCSE in paw dipping. Parents amongst you will recognise the swelling breast of pride one feels at moments like this. Our Dave, who’d a thought it, paw dipping. I briefly considered banishing the cup but even Dave’s not going to get fat one morsel at a time. But if he learns Betty’s later technique of knocking the whole blood lot off the worktop onto the floor, well that’s another matter.

A Necessary Dream.

I give my card to the assistant to the secretary of Donald Trump. “Department of Sociopathic Affairs?” she enquires. “Head of” I say importantly, “Tim Seaglitz.” “Government?” she enquires again. “Yep. “What is this regarding?” “We’re beginning a study of the special characteristics required to be a successful entrepreneur. It’s a new initiative to kick start us out of this slump. I hear it’s straight from Obama. And who has them more than Mr Trump,” I smile. I get the shrug off, leave my card and wait. A week or so later I get a meeting, Mr Trump will see me for fifteen minutes the day after next. I enter, smile, we shake hands and I sit down. “Sociopathic Affairs?” he opens, “Sounds ominous.” I laugh, “I’m a research psychologist. Everything we do sounds ominous. We’ve the only office I know where the sign says, ‘You do have to be crazy to work here.’” This shmoozing goes on. The only purpose of this meeting is to get the door open a little further. It’s agreed we can have a further session for me to identify his special characteristics. After three sessions my notebook is full and I have everything on my voice recorder, ‘for reference.’ Back in the office I convene a meeting, me, my boss and three other eminent psychologist, professors from Harvard, Stanford and MIT. I hand out my transcripts with various responses sharpied to save time. There’s a silence. Jim from MIT breaks it. “You’re making a case for Trump being a sociopath?” “Well what do you think, what do you all think?” “Well take away the name and this person is hundred percent sociopath.” I look at Michael. “True, no doubt about it.” “Dangerous?” I ask. They nod. I conclude, “So four eminent psychologist would give evidence as expert witnesses that Donald Trump is a sociopath right?” They nod again rather reluctantly. “So what do we do?” As you can guess this is a long story so I’ll cut to the chase. We put in an application to have Trump questioned with a view to having him sectioned. He had his layers crawling all over us but this wasn’t a legal matter it was mental health. We had him pulled in for appraisal, he went ballistic and he ended up in a straight jacket, that’s right a straight jacket! It took three male nurses and a shot of sedative to get him in it. Well the media had a field day, “Trump diagnosed insane”, and I was 24/7 trying to put them right. Sure he was mentally ill but it was a condition brought on by years of being a wealthy oligarch. It can happen to anybody, possibly everybody put in that position. Suddenly these powerful people in finance, commerce and politics were being judged on whether they were sane or not, not how much power and money they had. And I and other psychologists and psychoanalyst had the professional expertise to diagnose it. The lawyers were powerless, the movers and fixers in management couldn’t get a handle on it, in fact they were more interested in going into therapy to prove they were sane than saving their bosses. Of course they came out of therapy with something they weren’t expecting; like personal growth you know. I tell you in one year this whole thing advanced the human race more than inventing the wheel. There are now more people in care institutions than there are in prison. Even Trump’s responding to treatment but I don’t think they’ll ever let him out.

Weekend Musings.

Friday evening with Suzy and Julie, Saturday evening with Antony and Sunday watching doc on Donald Trump. There’s a spectrum! Friday lots of play and disclosure, Saturday stories, referencing and theories, and Sunday a full-blown sectionable psychopathic billionaire. And not forgetting me who, as I vaguely remember saying, am sliding towards femininity. As I said to Antony I see men or masculinity as building layer upon layer of conjecture on top of some essential reality of being. “This is what I know, these are the stories of who I am, these are my theories of everything etc.” Men do this and I do this in their company and it’s essentially boring. There’s a sense in which we are a disconnected cognition trying to build a disconnected cognitive existence. I suspect the male process is self-justification in respect to their mothers where women are processing their covert rivalry with theirs. Born same and born different. Anyway. Oh right yes so anyway then there’s Donald. He is a supreme example of a disconnected cognition who conceives of ‘being’ as controlling his own avatar in a Second Life game where nothing is of consequence except ‘the rules’ of his game. But then we’re all to a ‘normal’ extent in the process of constructing a dictionary of equivalences. In fact most mental health problems are caused by erroneous equivalencies. So I guess in my search for a reality of being I’m losing the need, gradually, for my ingrained self-justification. Maybe one day I’ll be able to shout, “Hello mum, it’s me! Your equal.” And in that there’s an encompassing of the feminine. Maybe similarly women, in their search for a reality of being must overcome the self-doubt induced by their maternal rivalry to find their own solid ground. Maybe. And then there’s Donald again. Disconnected cognition desperately needs confirmation. It can be from scientific proof, an enclave of like minds, or the brutish simplistic surety of a psychopath such as Mr Trump. It’s as if all our power structures are built on and for the ersatz pleasure cognitive disconnection. Plainly human bodies, the currency of the feminine, have no part to play in the schemes of the disconnected. So answer this Donny, “Where did you misplace your reality of being?” With thanks to you all for our wonderful conversations.

Are You Indigenous?

Just watched ‘You’ve been Trumped’, BBC1 10pm Sunday and I’m fucking angry. Clark Kent has left the building! The program is a documentary about Donald Trump’s planned golf complex in the west coast of Scotland. The Trump process on our good old British soil couldn’t be more like the American’s treatment of their own indigenous Indians if it tried. The scheme was thrown out by the Council planners as failing miserably their sustainability guidelines and would also mean the destroying of an important SSI. Trump took it to the Scottish parliament who overruled that decision. Then began a long process of harassment of the local people. Involved in this harassment were the local police assaulting, yes assaulting, and arresting a journalist for no offence other than reporting the situation. They strictly enforced Trumps wishes yet were strangely ‘powerless’ to act on behalf of the locals. Trump’s workers ploughed up a local’s wooden fence on his own land and ‘nothing could be done’ but when the local pulled up a few little red boundary markers the local was prosecuted for causing £15 worth of damage. When another local’s fence was demolished without permission he got a bill for over £2,000 for Trump’s rebuilding of it and again no prosecution for the original vandalism. Trump has now destroyed acres of sand dunes and natural habitat. His figures, on which he sold his idea to the Scottish parliament, are on inspection wildly inaccurate. The local farms and houses he wishes to destroy are typically rural but are described in the context of his wonderful scheme as eyesores, ugly and offensive, the local people, the indigenous people of Scotland, though he didn’t say as much, worthless white trash. What Trump is doing is the equal of the decimation of their own ingenious Indians; a concerted series of ignorant and offensive acts, but for his actions to be sanctioned and supported by the Scottish government and our police is barely credibly and equally offensive. Alix Salmond will be turning in his grave when he gets one. The question Clark Kent is struggling with in a phone box somewhere is, are we losing our fight with the Psychopaths Club, are we becoming an indigenous people?

Toilet Seat Synchronicity.

Our toilet seat won’t stay up. I mean it’s not a bad case, some just fall straight back down. Ours hovers vertical for anything up to several minutes then bang, down it goes. It’s new-ish, from Wickes I think, with an off-set hinge and swivels for adjustment. This might appear a small matter but it’s important. You see having read ‘The Selestine Prophesy’, apologies for the spelling it was a long time ago, I am aware of synchronicity and the abstruse connectivity that underpins our physical existence. And that well honed awareness has allowed me to recognise the true meaning of this apparently insignificant occurrence. The stay-up-ness of your toilet seat indicates who wears the trousers in your house. It’s true. Our old seat would stay up like a soldier, rock steady he was, but this new one, unreliable. This of course means Mothermouse is gaining the upper hand. I’ve suspected it for a while but this is proof. Mothermouse is bidding for the trousers. I’ve been at it a couple of times with a screwdriver adjusting the swivels wondering if the alignment of the hinges is somehow inducing a subtle rotational thrust, adjusting it forward and back, but each time it just won’t stay. It just hovers there waiting till my back’s turned, and bam. I mean how’s your toilet seat? If it won’t stay up, it falls right back down, forget it you’re a doomed man, powerless in your own home. At least I’ve got a fighting chance. And if it sits there comfortably resting against the cistern well done, you has got no worries. (the ‘you has’ is the suggestion of my grammar checker, I’d gone with the more correct ‘you’ve’. I’m wondering if it was programmed by an African American, but I like it, it adds flavour) Where was I? Ah yes, no this is no plumbers misjudgement, not a faulty product; it’s the sign of a condemned man. Sorry that’s it. I read it in the Selestine Prophesy

The Answers.

As societies we’ve known for centuries that power corrupts and introduced democracy to limit its effect. Over those centuries psychopaths have leant to overcome it by forming two psychopathic groups for the public to choose from. It simply becomes a two or three-headed mutation of a one headed dictatorship. Or psychopaths in the non-democratic elite of commerce and the media join together to psychopath-ise government. We must remember that psychopathy is a latent trait in all humans that can become sociopathic under certain circumstances. It is not a personal failing, a rational choice of deception, cruelty or criminality but a creeping change in cognitive processing due to those circumstances. It is not appropriate to lord them then execute them, we need to change the circumstance. It’s as ridiculous as giving a person mind altering drugs then indicting them for believing they’re Napoleon. The real criminality is providing the drugs in the first place. But the fact remains we do need governance. In our current paradigm governance is responsibility is elitism is power is isolation is omniscience. Each follows the other like an inexorable line of elephants. The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters under this paradigm can be easily dismissed as having no leader, no proposals etc. What a bunch of brainless powerless losers. But their underlying phenomenology is so different it produces an unfathomable, confusing and frightening picture. We must surely build a new house before moving out of the old one. But this one is like moving from Downton Abbey into a compact sustainable self-build. OMG! Lets take the elephants one by one. Responsibility is for one’s own functioning not ‘for’ other people. Elitism cannot occur if responsibility is restricted to self-function, ‘how well do (you think) I contribute?’ The mindset of contribution, giving, does not fit with the mindset of power, which is taking, but then most current politicians espouse motivations of giving, supporting and providing without being particularly motivated by them. This is perhaps a result of the next elephant, isolation. Isolation provides fertile ground for misguided conjecture. For example in isolation greed can be appealing, a victimless objective, but with the consistent direct experiencing of its consequences a more realistic view can be maintained. The Wall Street protesters by camping outside its financial institutions are, as best they can, making this happen. To enact a policy of requiring direct experience as illustrated by TV programs like Secret Millionaire and The Shop Floor there would be benefits to governance as well as the personal well-being of all concerned. And finally omniscience. This whole structure is founded on a hierarchy of ‘knowing’, not the knowing of some scientific law but the individual knowing of the individual. This is merely conjecture. Here again the psychopathic tendency needs to be quelled, biffed on the nose. At the beginning of the Iraq war millions of British citizens protested but the government ‘knew’ best. Even without raw factual information the population ‘knew’ better. My proposal would be a new discipline within or adjacent to government tasked to provide independent, unbiased information and analysis to the public and for the public’s response to constitute a percentage, say 50%, of the vote in parliament. In all these things there appears a need for a paradigm shift to counteract the psychopathic clubs emerging at the top of all our major institutions. We need to do something if not for our sake for theirs.

The Psychopath Club.

If you watched the film you’ll notice several things. These two guys are playful, intelligent and selflessly brave. Corporate people may be intelligent but use it along strictly prescribed lines; they have a self-learned blinkered vision highly attuned to hierarchy and the dictates of superiors, and a poor sense of play. Their response to occurrences and ideas outside their blinkered field of view are vehemently dismissed as lies, sick, twisted, cruel, irrelevant, vindictive, even possibly terrorism. Very much like any cult they have a careful mind-changing induction process, a high level of shared referencing within the group, a highly enforced boundary and a mutual perception and rejection of external attacks. This is the perfect home for psychopaths as superbly exposed in the documentary, ‘Enron The Smartest guys in the Room’.
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xIO731MAO4 )
Every characteristic of psychopathic behaviour is incontrovertibly evident in all the key players, and by implication their accountants, lawyers, even the then President Bush. Closer to home I observe my own, hopefully limited propensity for psychopathic thinking. In my internal dialogue about some fractious or fearful event I try to consolidate my own view and undermine the fearful element in a multitude of ways to diminish its presence. I take sides. It becomes quite imaginable in the extreme to solidify my view to such an extent that in stating it I don’t perceive myself to be lying. I could bully without perceiving myself to be brutal, manipulative in order to simply do ‘the right thing’ etc. If then a normal person like myself has the seeds of psychopathic behaviour and our institutions of power are breeding grounds for that behaviour to the point it has become endemic within them by what means can we overcome it or at least limit its effect? Answer to follow.

OMG!

Settle down and watch-

http://www.filmsforaction.org/Watch/The_Yes_Men_Fix_The_World_2009/

If it wasn’t obvious before let me reiterate ‘Psychotic Group Delusion’ or ‘Group Think’ as the CIA term it is rife in government, commerce and the media. It’s never been better exposed than here. What passes as corporate professionalism is a spurious delusion that otherwise sane and cogent men and women are weaned onto in the process of achieving their position. Once there their exclusive entry into their particular sphere of governance ensures the purveyance of their delusion as truth. Anyway just watch.

It’s So Unfair.

So I’m reading this ‘Conversations with God’ book and finding it full of omniscient authority that one might expect from an archangel. We’re all entities in clusters in the process of working our own way to omniscience through many lifetimes. I like it as a long view but am quite occupied with the one in hand. As almost an aside whilst talking about sex and how scrummy and beneficial it is and that it’s to be enjoyed wherever the fruit is hanging as it were God drops in that entities must serve many lifetimes as a male before progressing to one’s female lifetimes. That’s like, well in my terms, that’s like a promotion! Well that’s a slap in the face! I mean Christians refer to God as ‘he’ right so what’s going on. I feel stabbed in the back, a victim of son-icide. Chief hom casting his brothers aside as mere apprentice females. That can’t be right. After I calmed down I have to admit there’s a certain ring to it. I mean OK some females aren’t making a great job of it but as a whole, as it were, no smutty illusion intended, they appear connected to a strand of whimmery unavailable to us males. They can glimpse the bigger picture, which truth be told often confuses them, whereas males are content with 35mm slides of mere details that we blow up to immense proportions in order to prove our importance. Yet somehow we have to admit we are the seed drill and they are the field, we’re the moth and..etc. Oh and we’re the muscle and they’re the mouth. Perhaps that’s why while Mouthermouse is away I’ll be having a pint with Suzy on Friday, dancing with Sarah and an assortment of women on Monday, seeing Julie and Suzy for a candle light chat Wednesday, meeting up with Jenny when I can arrange it and hopefully seeing Pam some time and a catch up with Linda. Haven’t seen Linda in ages. I mean I do have male friends but it’s all ‘have you seen my slides?’ and anyway from my industrial experience it’s always a good idea to fraternise with the managers

It’s Kinda Obvious.

Big weekend in British Super Bikes, the showdown where the BSB championship is won or lost. It’s OK this isn’t about pistons.
Two monkeys in an experiment. Man gives both a slice of cucumber, both happy, man gives one cucumber and the other a grape, monkey throws cucumber back at man in disgust. Sound familiar? Oh and the other monkey happily eats the grape. It seems primates have a sense of fairness or to be more precise unfairness. We’re happy to get the grape and pissed off to get the cucumber. This leads to two effects. One, get the grape, and two, retaliate if you don’t. This explains the whole of human history. When all else changes these two themes are constant providing through the centuries the rich, the poor and conflict. From hunter/gatherers to industrial farming, tribes to states, wooden clubs to missiles we appear to have a Caligula complex. To us being either happy to get or pissed off to not get seem the obvious two sides of the same coin, but is that just a quirk of our primate brain? Other animals try to get because they need to survive, but once it’s been decided who’s got the morsel the other just turns to their own preoccupation of getting something else. Try the same experiment with squirrels and you’d get a different result. So we have these two constants throughout the whole of human history, i.e. they’re not about to change soon. But what has changed and continues to is our capacity to get more grapes and to retaliate. The rich have the potential to unbalance world economies and war has the potential to destroy it. It seems only a matter of time before our innate primate sense of unfairness destroys us. While we piddle about with our petty righteous considerations we overlook this deviant primate drive and its repercussions. Back to BSB. On the slow down lap the winner and loser stopped to give each other a hug of mutual affirmation. The winner when asked about riding with the pain of an earlier injury said, “I’m on a real high right now, you could kick me in the nuts and I wouldn’t feel it.” You don’t get that in Formula 1.

Toasters.

George Gideon Oliver Osborne hasn’t a clue. Let me explain in terms of toasters. The UK has say a billion toaster right, enough for all, but a small percentage of the population figure out a way of getting more and more. They stashed them in every available cupboard and cellar, in the attic and loads in the garage and next-doors as well because he’s got a driving ban and his wife went off with her therapist. Anyway over time these few cornered the market in toasters so much so that more and more people had to go without toast and toasted teacakes, which is my favourite. And scones as it happens. So to bridge the toaster deficit George Gideon Oliver Osborne took toasters from the poor arguing they can’t afford bread anyway. He took a few from the stashers but not too many because he didn’t want them leaving the country and take their toasters with them, then we’d really be in trouble. Well the stasher kept stashing and the toaster gap got ever wider. Then one day he hit on an idea. All he had to do was borrow the toasters from the few stashers. He wouldn’t take them like a toaster tax but let them keep ownership whilst distributing their excess toasters to the rest of us so we could all have toast again. They could hold say a thousand, which is enough for any man, and the rest would go into the government toaster bank. They wouldn’t be very happy but they still owned all their toasters, and it’s unlikely they’d leave the country without them. This allowed George Gideon Oliver Osborne to stop borrowing toasters on the open market and still have enough to cover the UK’s needs. And the stashers would only get paid for lending their toasters on the basis of how well the country as a whole was doing which focused their minds on all of us not just their own toaster fetish. 

Learn to Churn.

Tomorrow Mothermouse is going back in time to a land of wooden houses and picket fences, sheep and dairy farms, where even the Earth is still erupting like a youthful cheek: New Zeeland. I will be ever grateful to our NZ ski chalet rep for mercilessly taking the piss out of my pompous English cohort. Skiing is a recreational sport not a sign that one’s antecedents lived in Downton Abbey. Anyway being on my own for three weeks I will turn to music. I decide to internet shop for a new USB audio interface for use with my DAW. A DAW is a computer program that lets one record and manipulate a multitude of audio channels, add reverb, chorus, cut and paste, auto-tune, etc and add anything from a drum track to a full orchestra via a synth controlled by MIDI. So far so much the ultimate creative tool, at least so goes the blurb. Unfortunately this ultimately creative tool is so desirable it seduces even the moderately creative to use it, not to mention those that can’t even use a spoon imaginatively. As a result a pop record can be made in twenty minutes by cutting and pasting a 4:4 bar a hundred times, gargling over it and auto-tuning the result to resemble Three Blind Mice. Add a mildly pornographic video and rap section by a black person using a preschool rhyming dictionary and ca-ching. If only I were a digitised automaton I might enjoy it. But I’m not. Or said equipment used by a twenty something bemoaning the fact he’s still in nappies or is in, out, lost, found, over or under love, a word he has yet to define adequately. I’m not that either. So I sit with my guitar wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do with it now that music has been wormed to the core. It reminds we of meeting a newspaper writer who on asking said he was a ‘churnalist.’ That about sums it up.

The Answer is Now

Many roads have been leading me towards spontaneity recently, not me being good at it but trying to grasp what it is, what it looks and feels like. A little snippet from a book, Conversations with God, the big G saying, “The point I’m trying to make is that when you come to each moment cleanly, without previous thought about it, you can create who you are, rather than re-enact who you once were. Life is a process of creation, and you keep living it as if it were a process of re-enactment.” In Five Rhythms I’m reminded of riding a playful wave of creative choreography, shaping and reshaping in what feels like perfection, on X Factor when Nicole Shertsinger’s face flashed through three discrete expressions in less than a second, and Jessie J singing Domino. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLNwNg6n9k  Though well practiced and highly skilled she’s not performing through thought but being in the uncomplicated momentary joy of a three-year-old. To quote the book again, “Remember you pre-sent this moment (the ‘present’ moment) to your Self because it contains the seed of a tremendous truth”, and by thought I preclude myself from seeing that truth. I’m reminded of Csíkszentmihályi’s observations of ‘Flow’, of the super speed of eye cues in NLP, that so much happens before my clunky thoughts, abstractions, expectations and judgments kick in. So how to get there? Alcohol does it after a fashion but badly, and thinking and learning about it conceptually only gives rise to further conceptualisation or worse creating a cognitive equivalent. My few glimpses of it reveal it to be simply ‘perfect play’, or to make it personal, my perfect self at play. Our problem seems to be that when we achieve it it’s so perfect we tend to overlook it and only notice the ‘fault’ that kicks us back into the ordinary. It’s nice to know the next most popular thing on the internet after porn is cats. Now they do know a thing or two about spontaneity.

Bugger!

As my recent sojourn into hyper domesticity nears its end and Mothermouse is able to donk around the house like Marley’s ghost rather than the heavy thud of an approaching Tyrannosaurus Rex I can look back at multitasking with a balanced view. Men do multitask but under a different heading. We perceive it as multiple overlapping time sub-streams that, by running concurrently with precisely calculated start points, reduce the overall time required for a required set of tasks. For instance when cooking a meal I will note down at the bottom of a sheet of paper the required eating start point above which I write the times required in minutes for each constituent part, peas, chips, sausages etc. then in an adjacent column I calculate their start points relative to the eating start point. I thus place the sausages in the oven at 6.45pm and set a timer for four minutes and then begin the potatoes. I set the timer again for seven minutes to notify me when the peas need to go on and then five minutes, which through the wonder of mathematics equates to the required eating start time. Thusly in the intervening periods I am free to do other things, clean the cat flap, wash up and collect mealtime accoutrements. This isn’t multitasking because I’m only ever doing one thing at a time. Women on the other hand do multitask by considering everything that needs to be done all the time in a frenzy of conflicting necessities. Whilst cooking a similar meal Mothermouse will be considering if the bins need to go out, the cats need water, the two-pound man is getting better, Margaretmouse’s broken metatarsal was indeed less severe than hers and whether to get me a cow onesie for Christmas. (I can’t wait) In a mans world this isn’t true multiple overlapping time sub-streams, it’s frying one’s brain with nonsense that will be done when the time comes and better left to a written list and forgotten about. Yesterday for instance whilst considering nothing more than the job in hand I mended an old watch and set it to the correct time, day of the week, month and phase of the moon, stuck a base on a cup, maintained our electric tin opener and took some rubbish to the tip, which due to government cut is now closed Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Bugger!

Swimming in York.

Today I will be mostly watching the York webcam
http://www.farsondigitalwatercams.com/live-webcams/north/Ouse/York/

It’s one still picture every four seconds is strangely mesmeric. Oh there’s a white van, oh there it’s gone, that sort of thing. What you see today is largely water and a red semicircle which is not the sun rising in a strange place, it’s the top half of a No Parking sign that’s about eight feet above the pavement that’s normally full of tables and chairs and beer drinkers. That’s one hell of a lot of water and for the second time this year. It makes me wonder if all the 3D CGI films aren’t missing a trick. One still every four seconds somehow captures my attention more than super fast high definition. It gives me time to dwell over each image, look around it to see what’s changed. It’s like being informed more by less information, which seems a contradiction. Anyway York is up to its neck so lets hope we have a change in the weather.

For Suzy & Julie.

Spent a lovely evening with two intelligent and honest women kicking therapy around like a game of football. First thing to note is honesty without intelligence and intelligence without honesty suck. Another is that when choosing a therapeutic road it’s worth comparing one’s early experiences with that of its originator. Rogers for example suits those who were unloved as a child, Pearls suits those who spent their early years playing cowboys and Indians on a climbing frame, Freud, those who, though favoured parentally, are as a result disassociated from their fellow siblings and contemporaries, and Jung if you’re prone to fainting and your mother was a loony. The dangers of each ones implicit assumptions are obvious. In a group of Rogerians intent on exposing one’s deeply unloved condition it’s not acceptable to say, “but I was”, it just shows denial and a need for further therapy. Freudians will assume you are merely a specimen and Pearlsians will be perplexed by your inability to don war paint and distaste of muddy puddles. And then there’s the rag-tag of social services. Here again the implicit assumptions of funders, that not being middleclass and the receiver of a comfortably large salary makes one a failure as a human being, and as ‘a successful human being’ they must guard against over providing a sense of worth to those innately unworthy. As a result those providing these services are on the one hand strung up by their testicles, or uterus though testicles is easier to imagine, whilst on the other carrying the combined weight of their clients.

Captain’s Log Supplemental.

I am now operating a laundry, as a web-shopping courier returns driver, Sainsbury’s home delivery service and newspaper boy, all whilst running a restaurant. Where’s Lieutenant Sooloo when you need him or that Sergeant Engine guy who looks after the Lithium crystals? But don’t think I’m over-stretched; I’m dealing with it all like Colonel Hathi. “Oh the aim of our patrol is a question very droll…Come on junior, keep it up two three four.” This is not hysteria I’m just calming down prior to making a supermarket list. And anyway how do I know what we haven’t got; it’s not there. I have enough trouble finding it when it is. It’s like after a break in and the policeman asks, “So what have the thieves taken Mr Mouse?” I DON’T KNOW IT’S NOT THERE! Making a shopping list consists of writing down what I can remember which is basically what I bought the last time so we have three jars of marmalade and no washing up liquid. And as it’s raining you can add proprietor of a rescue home for bored cats to the list. Mercifully we currently have no children at present. Yes they’re old enough to help but gnawing through the vacuum cleaner cable with the vacuum cleaner is not in the long run time saving. Neither is cooking beans etc and converting the lower third into a vitreous enamelled coating to the bottom of the pan. I know they mean well but when your brain is three foot lower than it should be mistakes do happen. Must step onto the transporter and go to planet Sainsbury’s. And don’t give me all those funny looks when I appear in my Storm Trooper outfit, OK I’m doing my best! I return with a prized purchase, two packets each reduced from £7.45 to £3.43, a saving in total of £8 and four pea. Mothermouse informs me that Fairy non-biological washing powder is shit but at least that’s not going to go on the list again till well into the new year. End of Supplemental.

End of Week 1.

I am now making two coffees whilst washing up, closing windows, turning the central heating on and feeding the cats. I am multitasking. It’s nearly midday and I’m not dressed yet but I am multitasking man. I’m still not into pre-planning the minutia of my day, still just doing what’s next but they’re overlapping in a time efficient way. I conclude it’s all down to complexity. If for example I was working on world peace or conversely world domination it would require focus. I couldn’t entertain the distraction of making a sandwich or heaven forbid digging up coal. So it is that society is stratified. We pay the brain not the hands. Maybe that’s because we have two hands and one brain. But even that’s an underestimate, there are far more people with less brain than there are with only one hand, or a broken metatarsal in our case. Sebastian Coe for example could beat the majority of paraplegics whilst having the bare minimum of grey matter. But the money always goes to the brain users even though they would freeze to death without an ample supply of coal. Bring up three kids, do a million things a day and you get nothing: Sit in a boardroom enjoying yourself waiting for your next coffee and bagel and for some unknown reason you get a yearly bonus prize of a digit plus many noughts. Produce a baby you get nothing, produce a widget and you sit on a toilet seat of compressed bank notes. This isn’t a level playing field; it’s like trying to play a game of football on the side of a mountain! This isn’t a retread of Marxism, my only experience of Marxists being they tend to inadvertently spit at you from over enthusiasm; it’s more humanistic economics. We all have a variety of skills and they’re all needed, well mostly, and we love being appreciated for what we can contribute, so aligning contribution with the economics of appreciation as amply demonstrated by X Factor and we might all have a jolly good time. The louder the studio audience applauds the more likely I am to attempt ‘Hit me Baby One More Time.’ No, that’s not a good example.

Ms Mothermouse Regrets.

Mothermouse has broken a metatarsal, not from a night out with Joey Barton but from standing in the garden. This over exuberant standing thus required us to visit A&E equipped with Kindle, magazine, banana and plum. Though the wait for a pot was fairly short an extra sandwich became necessary. The pain from this fracture, I am assured, is nothing short of childbirth. We arrive home with Mothermouse on crutches. Now with one leg incapacitated, the other needed for support and both arms involved in crutch propulsion she is as incapacitated as a three-month-old baby and about as fractious. “Can you make me a coffee?” I oblige, but my first attempt is not sweet enough, my second is too cold, my third too hot. I realise I’m dealing with a new incarnate of Goldilocks. She tells me how difficult it is to have to ask for things. Well it’s not as bloody difficult as running up and down stairs seventeen times to get a cup of coffee just right. Two hours in and I need a lie down. I muse that I myself, in a similar condition, would be happily whistling Yankee Doodle Dandy whilst doing back flips. It’s then I realise I’m not good at caring. I must have been beaten as a child at the first signs of self-pity. If I had a toothache I had to put my foot in boiling water to take my mind off it. OK it was cheaper than buying Paracetamol but it’s made verbalising, “Oh poor you, it must be rotten” as problematic as tattooing a likeness of Mohammed on my forehead. I feel like Meatloaf, “I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that.” Mothermouse disagrees with these priorities. Through having to supply all Mothermouse’s necessities I begin to enter the female mind. The cats don’t have water, the birds need feeding, the curtains have a bit of lining showing, the tomato sauce needs clearing away, a shoe is in the wrong place and tomorrow’s tea needs getting out of the freezer. It’s all very frightening, a never ending knitting wool ball of considerations. I mean as a male I only have one, “What am I going to do next?” If I notice the cats are becoming wizen the next thing to do is supply water. It’s simple, linear and catches most things before they demise, and things that make no difference just don’t appear on the radar. Yes it’s likely someone like me caused the Black Death but my formidably powers of deduction might have also found the cure; it’s horses for roundabouts as they say.

What’s the Time Mr…

“Jeez this is weird.” A man sits by two screens, one GPS and flight data, and the other a pilot camera view. “About five minutes to go.” He’d simulated it tens of time but this was for real. A small man, Mr… paced the room; it was out of his hands now.

The first plane hit and later the second both off centre and near as dam it the right empty floors. Everything kicked off. They could hear the relays from the fire and police departments from several small speakers; they were all responding to plan. Blocks were cordoned off, people were getting out, and firemen were going up to stem the fire. The mood was quite relaxed, all they had to do was wait till it was Jackie’s turn and that could be hours. Then suddenly, “What the fuck, it’s coming down!” Just as planned but way too early the South tower was collapsing.

“Jeez you mother fucking SOB you…” The little man glared at Jackie.

“That’s not me, I haven’t even armed the thing yet. It can’t be!”

“Well it is. What the hell’s gone wrong?””

“I can’t believe it! The fire might blow some thermite but not the whole sequence; it wouldn’t do that. All the fuses are the other side of the building. No something’s triggered the whole sequence.”

Sometime later the North tower went down and the men were none the wiser.

Even to this day no one knows what stray radio signal brought the towers down; it could have been anybody, a kid playing with a remote controlled car. Turn it left and boom, a plan turns to tragedy.

Heading for a Fall.

The same four sat round another table in a northern suburb of Philadelphia to interview a fifth man. Normally cocky this man was nervous.

“So the IRS figure you owe a million and a half, maybe two and at least two of your jobs are under investigation, fraud.” The man, Jackie Jackson, was in no place to argue and anyway these guys were obviously not the IRS. “Demolition must be lucrative.” He shrugged. One of the four read a list of the buildings he had ‘pulled.’ He looked at Jackie, “Impressive.” Jackie thanked him.

“So could you pull say the twin towers?” Jackie’s eyes widened, “well yes or no?”

“Yes sure they’re steel ain’t they.”

“Mr Jackson,” the main guy fixed on Jackie, “this job could wave that IRS bill and your likely prosecutions and pay two million bucks on top. You interested?” Jackie calculated.

“So you must be government, CIA or something, and this is no ordinary job right? Yep I’m interested.”

“Can you prep the buildings with no one noticing? I should tell you lots of the floors are empty now. And your guys, are they good Americans?”

“You got plans?” One of the four spread some large sheets on the table for Jackie to peruse. “Lots of room, that’s good, but there’ll be dust and banging, and it’ll take a lot of time. But why do you want to pull them?”

“All we want from you is can you do it and can you do it on the button when we want?”

Jackie agreed, “and they’ll be empty right?”

“The buildings will be empty and so will the surrounding blocks. We will arrange that. And what might remain as evidence they were pulled?”

“Oh it’s an insurance scam, sure I’ve done, well you probably know about them right. OK well the steel will show Thermite shears, it needs to be cleared up asap. I know a scrap guy does that sort of thing, but he ain’t cheap, but he’s a good American.” Jackie added with a smile. “The Thermite burns like crazy so there’s nothing left of that, and the rest is one great pile of rubble.”

“That’s all we want to know at this stage. And Mr Jackson if any of this gets out you will be prosecuted for tax evasion, insurance fraud and, well you get the picture. And tell your guys that too. We’re not people you can mess with.”

“So when do you want them pulled?” “We’ll tell you that later.”

A Flight of Fancy.

Mel had been briefed, the meeting was ready, and showing a new trick was the best part for any magician.

“So the trick is we fly two scheduled airliners with passengers into two tall buildings,” he paused, “with no loss of life right. Tall order.” The four faces round the table showed no emotion.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. OK, Boston say has fifteen flights an hour, near a hundred thousand passengers a day and this, before it all happens, is just an ordinary day. Right. OK the art of magic is to make things happen while people’s attention is on something else. In this case everybody’s just getting to where they want to go and dealing with passengers, planes and stuff. So a scheduled flight, say TM105 rolls up to Gate 32 empty. It has a passenger list and crew all there on the computers all booked in by phone. No one asks if they’re really there, they just assume people don’t pay for tickets to Miami or where ever and not turn up. So all these not-there people gather at Gate 32 and even the people at Gate 31 don’t think anything of 32 being empty, they walk past empty gates all the time. The pilot of TM105 walks up the tunnel to the boarding desk with an envelope full of tickets and passes them through the reader, they’re now all onboard. If necessary someone checks in some suitcases to make it look real. The baggage handlers stow the baggage, the in-flight meals are delivered and the plane fuelled while the pilot keeps the tower informed. TM105 rolls out and takes off for Miami. So far only two, maybe three people know what’s going on.” The four nod and smile.

“Some time latter TM105 goes off air and reappears as an empty flight to Portland to pick up passengers with your drone plane in the vicinity ready to take its place. OK so far so good, no one will remember anything funny and all that’s left as evidence is computer records and they’re all fine. But what about the lives of these passengers, they have to be real somehow? Have you ever wanted to disappear? I mean screw the wife and kids, I want out, new start, yes? So place an ad, discreet, and interview people, offer 100k and a new identity. You can do that right?” they nod.

“You see relatives of the deceased couldn’t keep up an act but the deceased can and even make a desperate last minute phone call and then that’s it, silence. Who’s really going to check where the mobile call was made from, it’s obvious, from the plane. After it all goes down the ‘deceased’ can’t admit to being part of the biggest scam in history and the relatives will be emotional even if they hate the son of a bitch and collect the insurance money. Any questions?” The four round the table look at each other and begin to applaud. “Then once the buildings are empty they collapse, no one gets hurt and the enemies of the US can get what’s coming to them.” The main man of the four stands up, “And that gentlemen is the plan.”

Tourette’s and Turrets.

9pm a program to form a band from Tourette’s sufferers, 11pm Game of Thrones. The Tourettes were lovely and manageable individually but as one of them said, “get us together and we kick each other off.” True. Addressing six of them together looked like trying to talk to a bunch of football supporters in the throws of watching an invisible match. But they were endlessly surprising and popping with energy. Game of Thrones was remorselessly remorseful and predictable, good and bad and conflict writ large in tooth and claw, drama well suited to one’s 3D high definition home entertainment system. The cast: Drodak- rough, old, honourable, hard consonants stitched together with insignificant vowels. Lantarna- ageing but beautiful and slender wife of Drodak. Slarn- evil white haired, thin-faced prince in impatient waiting. Un-named minion- survivor of the Izon Karkaraks but beheaded for returning safely; killed off so early he barely made the cast list. Bra- sullen, bare-chested swarth, slanty eyebrowed leader of the Swarths from Swarthlandia. Seeani- young, demure, nice tits, tragically betrothed to Bra in exchange for his army by her evil brother, Slarn. The list goes on. Once one’s read the list of character names it’s unnecessary to bother with the seventeen, thousand page novels that the Game of Thrones is based on. It can be summed up in the NLP saying, “If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got.” So bring on the Tourettes. Fak!!! Fat shit!! Nob jockey!! Hit ‘im! Squeak.

A Meeting of Women.

Half an hour before my appointment at Hoopers, Woodseats premier ladies hairdressing salon, I get a phone call from Mothermouse, already seated in said establishment, for a ham and mustard sandwich. I arrive with plate and quartered sandwich to much cooing admiration and marriage proposals. I bask in the attention and kick myself for not realising much earlier in life that delivering a ham and mustard sandwich to a ladies hairdresser would offer such bounty. This is rudely cut short by an ex member of staff arriving with her new baby. A sandwich cannot compete with a baby and I’m left looking at myself in the large ageing mirror whilst everyone plays pass the parcel with the bundle of joy. I attempt to be not bitter and smile weakly at the offspring. I enjoy my monthly visits to this haven of femininity as an Inuit might holiday in the Maldives. Zephyrs of warm air placate my normally arduous life with its constant need of heat and meat and feats of mending. It’s life but not as I know it Cap’n. Conversation is on a level of sun cream and bikinis and the planning of good times with only the odd reference to the pain of child berth and its subsequent repercussions. It’s as if condensing boilers had never been invented, or if they have and go wrong there’s always a handy Inuit to mend it. So here I am, a reindeer in Calcutta, shedding my winter coat like there’s no tomorrow. OK Fred’s terse short-back-and-sides may be half the price but you don’t get a foreign holiday thrown in.

A Meeting of Men.

So I get an invitation to ‘A Meeting of Men’, to ‘become a warrior of the 5th world in power and beauty’, £395, fully catered, an ‘investment in myself and the planets future.’ Quite cheap then. It’s to be lead by Johannes Star Light Carrier Schroeder who I’ve met and observed several times, a nice guy but rather anal. I too easily imagine him in an Austrian house where all things are scrupo clean and arranged parallel or perpendicular to appropriate room boundaries. Being an ex covered-in-mud-and-bruises moto-cross racer and free jazz player this 5th World doesn’t appeal. Where Johannes appears to want to be prepared for our impending social chaos with power and beauty I’ve spent my life welcoming it in. I’ve just watched a doc on the jazz greats where each one searched on the shoulders of their forbears for a greater chaotic connection with some source of being that one player perfectly described as, “This is.” Ornette Coleman for example made a giant chaotic leap into no time, no fixed key or chord structure. To some it’s cacophony but to me it carries the source of some exquisite precarious exploration and energy, quite the opposite of power and beauty. These terms sound nice but I can’t relate to them. Those I admire as holy or wise human beings don’t strive for power and creative artists don’t fundamentally strive for beauty. Both are concerned with something far more exquisite. I find those who strive for power and beauty more prosaic, more fearful of the adventure of chaos. To me all this defines the difference between risk and containment. I played in a Coleman-esc trio a while back and found myself ‘in’ the complete sound, connected with the whole rather than playing my individual part in it. It wasn’t power or beauty; it was connection. So thanks Johannes but you lost me at ‘A Meeting of Men’, I’d far rather go to gay pride where I can be fabulous.


And then along comes Steven Tyler to save me from my mouldy thoughts and who I would gladly pay £395, fully catered, for ‘A Meeting of Men.’ This is his 90-minute interview talking to Opra Winfry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwTTf6B6C8w
He is the best selling US rock star of all time with Aerosmith, a performing monkey, a survivor of eight spells in re-hab, and at 63 still has the open chaotic curiosity of a child. He radiates amazing sexual energy and for me a lightening rod to the divine. I guess it seems plebeian to revere a rock idol as a spiritual guide over someone like Johannes who is dedicated to that role. One on the panel of American Idol with a mouth big enough to take a leg of lamb and the other a quietly spoke Austrian, one who wants to teach and the other who has no intention to. It reminds me of a Rumi saying, “Yesterday I was clever and wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I’m changing myself.” One would think that is a move towards introspection but I believe it’s not that simple. Every moment’s introspection must be preceded by a thousand moments of outro-spection. But it seems totally topsy-turvy to think that too much introspection makes one want to change the world and outro-spection suggests one change oneself. I mean what has doing back flips on stage whilst pitch perfect screaming got to do with wisdom and spirituality? Well every moment of introspection engenders feelings of cleverness that take a thousand moments of harsh reality to eradicate. Too many and you feel fit to teach others in order to change the world. I’m sure Johannes knows what he knows; I just don’t want to be a part of the world he wants to change.

Gospel According to Max.

How old are Rupert Murdock and Max Clifford? 1,000 years, 2,000? Just watched a doc on the origins of Islam. Overlooking its producers spinning out a few sentences into an unknown historian’s 70 minutes of fame a possible truth emerges. That is if truth ever emerges. The Christian Gospels were written around a hundred years after Christ’s death and hammered into a form we know as the Bible by Eusebius for the Roman Emperor Constantine around 330AD. To prevent ‘splitters’ Eusebius discarded and largely destroyed several gospels from Mary and Thomas and others and created a single text to base a single religion on which conveniently also unified his kingdom. Now this Islam program also couldn’t find any written evidence from the time of Mohammed. When he lived the Arabs were busy taking over the Middle East and dispensing with the Christians and Jews. Under strangely similar circumstances the first mention of Mohamed and the Koran occurred some sixty years after his death on coins of the ruler of the time, I forget his name. Here again the ruler appears to have ‘found’ religion at a pretty useful time and possibly promoted Mohamed from an unknown mystic into its prophet. And like the Christian Bible the Koran was created. Questions emerge. Are religions the second hand creations of states to unify their population? Are these holy books the expedient creations of PR consultants like Max Clifford and moulded into Sun editorials by the likes of Rupert Murdock? That is a very shabby thought; I’m sure Jesus and Mohammed were great guys, but I can well imagine the current Max and Rupert of the day getting together, “Guys we can’t sell this as it stands. There has to be a unique selling point. Nobody knows this guy from Adam, we have to give him star billing.” And as there was no X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent at the time they plumped for the next best thing, a prophet, the Son of God or the actual son of Simon Cowell. And it worked. I mean Buddhism took a ‘think for yourself’ approach and look where Tibet is today. I’m sure with a little work the teachings of Mary Whitehouse could be massaged into a decent gospel by Max and extolled in the Sun. Yes, Saint Mary, it’s got a familiar ring to it. So Max and Rupert may not be that old but their profession is.