Hit Squads Target Corbynites.

As we speak, well OK we’re not actually speaking but as we would if we were, thousands of Corbynites are being disappeared from the streets and held in West Ham’s new ground under police protection for the foreseeable future. The opposition front bench are signing rub-out notices on anyone foolish enough to vote for JC. OMG he’s not the second coming is he? Well you might think so judging by the Mugabe-esc tactics of his own party. Lucky for him we don’t stock polonium 210 in this country. It feels reminiscent of the fear and anger of the moneychangers in the Temple, the end of the world as they know it; a politician that listens, considers and responds. They after all inhabit the world of listen, ignore and spin some guff till they lose interest. This is about the constituents of power, its component parts. Take parties, policies and collective responsibility. These are forged in committee and disseminated to voters via maximum persuasiveness. JC is not a backroom plotter nor is his thoughtful language persuasive as we’ve come to understand the word. Take ‘on message’ bluster and the dismissal of pertinent questions and facts. Here again JC’s stile of listening and putting forward considered answers and views utterly fails to fulfil expectations. No, when his party’s collective responsibility will be to pull the rug from under him he won’t last five minutes. But people at large love his style and his views and hate being deceived by bluster and dissembling rhetoric. Last evening I watched a documentary on the West Indian cricket team led by the mild bespectacled Clive Lloyd during the 70’s. Through the years of his captaincy they began as underdogs and grew to dominate world cricket. No bluster, no rhetoric, no backroom committees, they just did with honesty what was necessary to succeed and grew in well-justified belief. This is what the English people are hearing in Jeremy Corbyn, the voice of genuine leadership, but I doubt the Labour Party is that astute. 

Automated results

Inadequate Policing.

I read somewhere of a woman in danger of being raped in her own home in Cleveland or some place in the US phoning the police. She was told “the police no longer work weekends due to the cuts.” One nil for rapists. When pondering Calais I’ve often wondered, a) how immigrants get the 5,000 euros for the journey and, b) why England? If they get here they’ll be lucky to get subsistence wages and even luckier to get government help. That’s hardly a case for economic migration. I suspect like the woman in Cleveland they want safety. Even the ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais is a safe place compared to where they’ve left. They are not economic migrants nor political asylum seekers, they’re safety seekers and England with its population of law abiding disorganised mongrels seems a good bet. So Calais is a symptom of inadequate policing. Not police state policing but the policing of fairness, safety and well-being. It’s also testament to humanity’s desire for these above all else even to the point of dying under a train. In the face of them the ideologies of greed, power and religious supremacy have little credence, accept to those indebted to them. So here’s a solution. A million airdropped leaflets over Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.

“A MESSAGE FROM EUROPE- For centuries we have fought and are still fighting many battles against religious, political and economic tyrants. Slowly and through many rebellions and deaths we have curbed their power to provide fairness, safety and well-being for everyone. This is your desire for your own country and within your gift. Achieve what we have achieved and there will be no need to come here and endure the perilous journey. Good luck, we’re on your side. It’s possible.” 

My Oldest Friend.

The oldest friend I still know intimately is my guitar. Not the same one but a procession like a long multiple train journey, nine of which I still have. They follow my sixty-year procession through skiffle, classical and jazz, through gentle and more recently upbeat. But this is about how rather than what. I wasn’t a natural performer, not your born front man, I didn’t know that connection. Like many introvert folk singers I hid somewhere between the song and the audience not really connecting with either. It was a quite lonely place with only myself for company, up there exposed yet hidden in some protective cloak of invisibility. I got a clap and that helped but I knew it was a consolation prize. Slowly through mastering the technicals I found space to play the song, to let it flow through without obstruction. But churning covers out to order wasn’t enough. I found songs I wanted to connect to and began affairs with them. I began to build the confidence to be their lover, to build a mutuality, to sing them in the moment as lovers do. That connection was made. Then the greater challenge, to be exposed; to perform this love making in public. Performance and acting are often mistaken to be forms of duplicity. Some are but true performance is real. Only true feeling will illicit true feeling. Through clowning I began to venture into the innocence of the moment that connects us all. There are countless elsewheres to get lost in but only one moment that we are all in together, this one. That’s the power of it. So finally I’m beginning to glimpse a way of being, a way of showing heart through music. It’s taken a long time and is easier for some but this has been my process. I suspect Robert Downey Junior knows it well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1crxmBTxRlM

Spirit Camp 2015: Maryettamouse.

Maryettamouse was chopping prayer sticks when Billmouse and I joined her. She asked for guidance but I suggested she work it out herself. If there’s one thing I can’t stand about Spirit Camp it’s helpful advice. It’s like every time I do something a queue of people form behind me with suggestions, “Perhaps you could….” or, “You might want to try…..” and their variants. NO, FUCK OFF, GO AWAY, LEAVE ME ALONE! So Maryettamouse didn’t get any from me other than a bit later on saying pick wood with straight grain and no knots. Anyway we chatted. Her face had the beauty of honesty rather than the bland sugary looks of a model, designed to be memorable rather than flattering. Later we smiled in passing. During the dance my eyes of their own accord were drawn to Maryettamouse, her purposeful truthful elegance. After it I commented, “You walk backwards strongly.” Oddly she knew what I meant and added it was walking forwards that was her difficulty. After my song performance rather than the usual ‘loved your song’ she said ‘that was so you’ like she knew me.

The following day I hesitantly said, “I think we have a special relationship” not knowing the response I might get. She leapt in the air like an electric shock and agreed with a beautiful smile, “yes!” We both knew but not the basis or origin of it. It’s strange when this happens. Easily explained but only with explanations that carry no weight. We never met again. I hope you have found Stiffmouse and read this. With love for your future. 

Spirit Camp 2015: Voice.

I sang a song. It went well, at least I remembered the words, which is always a bonus. The following day a woman asked if I could sing it to her again. I said I thought it wasn’t possible because the guy with the guitar had gone home. Later it turned out he hadn’t so I asked if I could sit and play for a while. Getting me, the woman and the guitar together seemed almost impossible amongst the chaos of packing up day, but when I looked up she was there sitting next to me. I played the song and by the end she was in floods of tears. It was my own song and special to me. She asked if I could play it again. At this point I began to wonder if I had acquired a nutter but I sang the last verse again. Through her tears she explained, “Yesterday I didn’t know why I was crying but now I do. You have connected me again.” She gesticulated to her body, her belly. “I thought I had lost it, I might never feel it again.” I felt for her tears. “No my tears are joyful not sad. Crying is like a car wash, you know.” We smiled. Now I don’t want to appear mercenary but I wrote that line down to use later. Too good to miss. We parted, she wanting a CD if I made one, and me with a renewed wanting to make one. For me this had become a recurring theme over the ten days, how in the most unforeseen and delicate ways we connect by heart. 

Spirit Camp 2015: Traps.

All is not well in spirit world. You know when you walk into a department store, say for perfume or electronics, a helpful smiling sales operative will gladly assist your purchasing. In their breezy pleasant way they will point out the virtues of their offerings as if helping you step ever closer to a future nirvana where all is nice and good. And 15% off. Their care for you is of course motivated by their own income and career prospects. With the Head of rugs and soft furnishing soon up for grabs they’re keen to show willing and turn a profit. In quiet moments with friends they will show the reverse of the coin. The pay is shit, their manager is a bully and head office is a bunch of OCD shysters who’ve lost the heart for good retailing This of course doesn’t happen in spirit world where all is already nice and good. So picture a happy go lucky seventy-year-old teenager on the bottom rung, a dog soldier with nowhere lower to go and no vested interest in becoming employee of the year and a junket to Arizona HQ. He might at some below-stairs meeting express a negative response to the management’s latest motivational initiative by saying, “Get the fuck out of my brain!” and be immediately tempted to apologise to his colleagues for his outburst. He needn’t have worried. One by one here and there in this way and that people thanked him. There was overwork, there was bullying, that too many rules and initiatives were losing the heart of retailing. Truth from the heart is a beautiful, poignant and precious thing. It’s the means by which our spirits connect and is un-ruled by mercenary thoughts of influence and manipulation. It’s what the Indians knew and what spirit camp should be about. It’s not about nice and good, status and influence, it’s about heart.