Confusion Begone.

Last night a BBC4 film about a chap who’s composed an eight hour music performance for an audience on beds. Where rave music’s designed to give an endorphin rush this is designed to loosen one’s hyper mind to the possibilities of, well? I mean this is difficult. Lets say you live a fast, stressed, productive lifestyle with job, childcare, cooking, places to go, mortgage to pay etc. Lets call it the rat race; treading the fine line between living on the streets and mental exhaustion. And someone says, “It can all go away”, and you say, ‘yeh right, talk is cheap’. Then Max Richter’s ‘Sleep’, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qzlb/max-richters-sleep somehow makes it a real possibility. All music is composed, or designed to elicit a response. Also music works works at an almost autonomic level as a language of vibration way deeper than our created language of words. Words and their usage come from our conscious mind where vibrations, made and received bodily, bypass it. But music can convey ego from the almost vicious imagination of Stravinsky to the dreams of Debussy. Max, a skilled composer, wanted to conjure an earth like ego that repeats and evolves to some unfathomable plan governed by unfathomable rules, neither random or prescribed. What he’s created is an anathema to our conscious mind, boring, repetitive, tuneless, monotonous. Our conscious almost screams, ‘you’re not playing by my rules!’ But one feels relaxed, understood, connected. It’s bravery of the highest order to insult the listeners consciousness by ignoring it. But, though it won’t rival Beyoncé, it might rank high in the download charts. We don’t want the rat race and all its exhaustion, fear, duplicity and unfairness. This brief sojourn into egocentricity, like all others before it, is coming to an end. Thanks Max and well done.

Boris’s Balanced Confusion.

Watched the four parter on Celebrity. Sickening dinnertime watching. The century begins with the paparazzi feeding us with puerile, largely fictitious gossip about stars, like Venus getting out of a limo showing her nickers. I doubt upskirting, there you go, isn’t in my spell checker’s lexicon. They make £000s per pic. The stars life is corrupted by 000000s of us paying good money to prey on them. Paris Hilton, no doubt upstaged as a child by her parent’s hotel chain, makes a career out of it as consolation. She earns $00000s. Others with picturesque bodies follow suit. Now I don’t know if it’s my own personal bitterness but hulks rarely have a philosophical temperament and big boobs do not an intellectual make. Don’t get me wrong, bodies are beautiful, but mine, at any age, would not be chosen for its muscular looks. So by 2010 the public focus was on celebrities who, with a few exceptions, needed zip up shoes and a PA to remember their name. They earned $0000 which seemed to give them a divine rite to have an opinion. And that opinion was, “fun, sex, drink and social media. And there began the ‘me-too’ Love Island generation where countless shows could promote perfectly ordinary big boobed muscular hunks to celebrity status and also earn $0000s by having a million followers eager to vicariously share their humdrum ordinary lives. That earned them even more by casually slipping in that they’d just bought a Marks and Spencer’s jumper, and how lovely it was to have sex in. And got so drunk they threw up all over it and had to buy another one. $catching. And then it was 2016 and the final act in this comedy of egocentricity. Certain politicians renown for their vane egoistic temperament found it was the perfect time to rise. Social media had found its new kings. They could say any damn fool thing and it be perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist where, ‘if it’s my opinion it must be true.’ Now in 2021 Trump is playing out his last days ‘phoning a friend’ like on HW2BaM while Boris is busy polishing his Brexit turd. And who comes out of this unholy mess on top? Who are the British public cheering on louder than any politician, influencer or social media star? A twenty year old footballer who’s known childhood poverty, who’s struggled from those humble beginnings to achieve excellence, who speaks simply and true. This, hopefully, is the true beginning of the 2020’s.

Balanced Confusion.

I’ve stopped listening to The Moral Maze for health reasons. Four supposed experts maul over four expert guests towards a conclusion that’s never reached. It’s like Songs of Praise with the hymns sung backwards. And now all news on the Beeb is treading this same path in its quest for balance, one weary confused step at a time. Is the government right or wrong? Are the teachers right or wrong? Should this be that? Every point made by some expert is politely countered by a news caster with a GCSE in woodwork. The assertion that “Picasso used coloured paints” is met with, “But mightn’t he have painted in black and white and it’s been coloured in later?” GCSE pratt fishes out an old black and white photo to prove his point. “But that’s a b&w photo, look Picasso’s in b&W too.” “Yes but colour was only invented in 1945, well after Picasso’s period.” It’s like planting out a raised bed, one carrot and one anti-carrot at a time, every idea planted next to its opposite. Is it the old fascist idea of ruling by mass confusion? And then some nine year old is interviewed, because of course he has a valid view on government policy, and mouths some middle class verbatim about missing his friends and being worried about his own mental health and long term career prospects like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I’m now screaming at the screen like the Last of the Mohicans. If that’s what schooling does fuck it, fuck ‘em all, let him play in a field for a week, poor bastard! And Mohican is correct spell checker, I looked it up. I have not misspelt ‘Chicano’! If I’d wanted to say a person of Mexican descent I would have said so. And why is everyone waiting for ‘more data’? It’s like some spreadsheet’s going to come down from the sky and churn out a definitive answer so that basically I don’t have to think about it. And equally basically I must not make a decision because decisions are bad. If I ever make a decision it will likely be wrong and that’s way worse than doing nothing. I go back to the spell checker for comfort. ‘Chiastic’, Inversion in the second of two parallel phrases.’ OK I don’t understand that but it must be true. ‘Chiasma’, The crossing of the optic nerves from the two eyes at the base of the brain.’ OK, whatever. ‘Chicago’. Oh I know this one so lets try Synonyms. ‘boodle, Michigan, Newmarket, stops, Windy City.’ Who writes this stuff? I try ‘Bollocks’. It’s got to be done. ‘One of the two male reproductive glands that produce spermatozoa and secrete androgens.’ Oh right, must try that next time some twat gives me the benefit of his opinion. ‘she kicked him in the bollocks and got away.’ That’s more like it. At last something I can relate to. And that’s the trouble with data, most of it is boll….x.

The Second Coming.

  

 It’s highly likely if God was contemplating a second coming he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Far less risky to take an old testament approach, pestilence, famine and such like, which leads one to wonder if this is it. Covid and climate change have a far more tangible urgency than anything metaphysical. Feeding thousands on three loaves and a fish sounds more like a promise Boris and Trump might make. No, God would be more Sodom and Gomarrah this time around, cities destroyed by homosexuality. OK that might be the finger of pious men rather than God but no one as far as I know is blaming Covid or climate change on queers. God would be more direct, “You have fucked up, so die”, an approach that, quite rightly, has got our attention. But his infantile creation is still evading the truth of it. ‘We’ll stop using petrol cars and make a billion electric ones instead.’ “No that’s like blaming the homosexuals again! Jesus Christ!! (Yes father?) It’s OK son I’m talking to the crets. You are all consuming too much. Stop it! Consider the lilies of the field. (I tried that one father) Not now. Do they need 100 channels of TV, a car and central heating? No. Each one of you is consuming several thousand times that of even an elephant. There are still elephants right? (There were when I..) Stop it son. I created earth for enjoyment, even your domestic cats and dogs know that. Trees are having a lovely time. See what I mean? And you’re all making the whole place miserable, including yourselves. It’s time you all grew up and figured out what happiness is, what it’s made from, how to build it. But no, you’re all stuck on old fashioned ideas of economy, whatever that is, earning and spending and wanting more. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds up here? (They even make a virtue out of it) I know. [laughing] Mrs God would smite the lot of you if I’d let her. She thinks I’ve been silly waiting this long. So come on guys I’m gagging for a shag!

The Trumpian Civil War.

Trump is sure. There is not one person in the whole USA that is more sure. People who don’t know stuff are unsure and people who do know stuff are also unsure because that knowing includes the realisation there are many things one doesn’t know. That leaves Trump; totally 100% sure in a daunting world. He attracts people who want to be sure but don’t know stuff and haven’t realised there are many things they don’t know. He gives them cast iron surety without question or effort in finding out stuff. He is so sure he is above being challenged and his followers, in following his lead, also become beyond challenge. Any challenge that does occur is thus by definition false and must be expunged. Trump supporters have found the ultimate answer, surety, something we’d all like to find but can’t. We can’t for good reason. We either don’t know enough to be sure or know enough to realise it’s a false concept, one can never be 100% sure. But Trump has proved the immense attraction of feeling sure and the apparent success it can bring, apparent because he has not been at all successful in real world terms. His life has been a litany of failures and abuse. So the scene is set, the ‘sure’ against the majority unsure, but the ‘sure’ have the strength of surety on their side, a feeling they would rather die for than give up. I’m guessing Trump was a frightened youth brought up on high demands heavily policed emotionally, hence his highest fear as an adult is showing his fear and admitting failure. His followers love his fearlessness, which is merely his fear of showing any, and his success, which stems from his fear of admitting failure. So what to do? His followers will be angered by jokes at his and their expense and easily dismiss ‘false’ claims that run counter to their beliefs because they are in a similar state of fear. Difficult. ‘How does your fear give you strength?’ ‘You’re not alone.’ ‘ We are all afraid too.’ ‘Why does Donald looks afraid?’ ‘Would I wise to believe everything you say?’ Phrases like these don’t confront, they puzzle. They induce a question, ‘why are they saying that?’ and questions stimulate a need for an answer. They work in the mind of the listener when alone with no external pressure. Well that’s the best I can come up with.

Devastating Logic.

Last night realised caring for nature, politics and our environment is mostly a middle class concern. It’s led by TV personalities for people with enough money and time to act. They, we, consider it the right thing to do because of education and awareness. All well and good, but. Those who’re struggling to make ends meet, who don’t have the time to think about it or the education and awareness to appreciate our upcoming problems consider it differently. We’re, ‘the one’s who have too much time on our hands, have a bee in our bonnet, are too comfortably off to understand the real practicalities of ordinary life.’ They definitely don’t think, ‘they’re better educated and know more about these things than I do so I’d better listen to them.’ So it all becomes a well intentioned shot in the foot. Have we become the creators of Trump supporters and Brexiteers? A chill descends. Only Greta Thunburg escapes this puritanical umbrella. And the wealthy are no better. They’re so comfortably off and equally uneducated to worry about global warming; they already have an air conditioned chill-out room, home cinema and gym. It’s hard to know what to do for the best. The best I can think of is laugh. We’re not wealthy but comfortable enough to survive Trump and Brexit, and even the pandemic because we’re aware, we think. It’s the unthinking unaware that’ll take the brunt of all these problems. So manya manya manya thickos you brought it on yourselves! You should have thought about it. Tough love I know but someone's got to do it.

Covid Conspiracy

An acquaintance of mine posted on FB a supposed Italian doctor (white coat/Pizzeria accent) warning that Covid19 is a plot to dramatically cull the majority of the human race. “Don’t be tested or get a vaccine jab. You will slowly become ill and die.” Well that’s clear enough. This isn’t the first conspiracy she’s unearthed from the mountain of amazingly useful information on social media, and as a socially concerned citizen she’s been super keen to share it with the rest of us. Luckily we have a filter for such like. But then wouldn’t we all look a bunch of silly billies if Dr. Pizza Express was telling the truth. In 2001 I followed 9/11 in some detail. When ‘Pilots for Truth’ came out saying airliners couldn’t fly those flight paths, civil engineers said no steel building has ever collapsed like that, demolition experts said the buildings ‘were pulled’ and there were surprising amounts of thermite in the debris I began to suspect the official version. Even then I didn’t imagine a conspiracy, at least not a Bond villain hatching a single dastardly plot. Basically humans aren’t that bright. No for me it was a bunch of people who knew what a bunch of other people were going to do each hatching a subplot of their own because it suited them. They then co-opted others because it suited them and so on; a sort of tree structure. Ben Laden hatched the trunk, the Twin towers owner found a way to demolish obsolete buildings and get an eye-watering insurance payout, the Israelis helped because it fingered the Arabs, money men made profits on the info and someone ordered the military techy stuff. They each took care of business. That way everyone of influence in on it didn’t spill on all the others who were in on it: Keep it secret and there’s bound to be a dumb ass not in on it who’ll spill the beans. And as for Covid19 I doubt it’s Dr. Pizza Express. And, just in case he’s right, shock horror, post extinction I wouldn’t want to live in the same world as the low-life scumbags who hatched such a dastardly plot and be slapped on the back by Henry Kissinger, secretly kept alive by the serum extracted from babies, as “one of us.”