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28.3.09

Is April the cruellest month? I really don't think so.

So what’s new? The financial scam continues with the collapse of various off shore mis-trust funds and disbelief that Gordon Brown wants to throw even more of our money (which we don’t have) at the pin-striped ones. His entire instinct is to preserve a financial system that has at its very core inequality, greed and corruption. Of course it was Brown for the last decade who proposed and supported ever looser control of the London Stock Exchange and off shore mis-trusts. It was Brown the tin-pot chancellor who continued the Thatcher Project that lead to Wall St demanding the same loosening of controls as was happening in London. From Chile to Bonn he’s gadding about the G20 trying to broker a deal to save the system. But soon Gordon, you will be gone-gone to that happy land of memoir deals and expensive after dinner speeches-the sooner the better.
A golden opportunity exists to curb the excesses of Capitalism with some good old Socialist sticking plaster. Getting rid of the off shore tax havens. Capping executive pay. Changing the entire bonus system to rewards for long term secure investment practice. Getting rid of hedge funds. Public Work Investment. Re-nationalisation of key resources like the public utilities and the bloody railways…on the other hand don’t get me going on about the railways!

Alternatively we could always have a revolution, get rid of the entire financial system and turn the planet into one large eco-village where we all sit round squeezing in regular meditation between ruminatively chewing bamboo shoots and practicing yoga and crafts. It’s great stuff… bamboo.

What else? The Red Riding Trilogy! David Peace, bastard son of James Ellroy, I salute you you Yarkshire weirdo. Great TV. Great books. Read em. Dig him.

‘Funny Games’- Michael Hannekke’s strange film that made me very angry-was that the point? Being manipulated into an awareness of complicity with what is happening on-screen?

Reading ‘The Kiterunner’ by Khaled Hosseini. Beautifully written and heartbreaking.

Listening to ‘Low’ by David Bowie-a 1976 album which I’m rediscovering. Superb.

To my one and only blog follower I salute you O wise and foresightful friend. This is for you.




AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL


Hewn from granite
I was inlaid with copper
and silver and gold.
Lapis Lazuli my eyes
and burnished well,
till shining in the morning sun
I glowed and hummed.

A mystery wind blowing
through a conch shell.

A sound like gathering
or
redemption.

A sound more like ‘blown’ than ‘moan.’

Something running through.
Something bidding life.

Like the bloods headlong rush
or the river folding itself
to a conclusion after much
slow, flowing thought.
I’ve seen the Eden do this
with my own eyes!

The blowing heightened
once or twice.
As when I held my sons,
naked and smeared
with their mother’s blood
shivering in the immensity
of their new life.

For a moment it seemed
eternity pulled up her skirts
and said:
‘Man, in this second
you are alive for once!
Feel the power of NOW!

See through, over, into.
See the truth of the child.
Feel the miracle in your fingernails.

Feel it brush against your skin!’

And then you...
You took me to the deepest well,
I cast a bucket for a crock of gold
and you said:
‘Look! Look how deep the heart goes!
It is limitless really!’

And in the moment of falling.
Of letting go.
I was gathered up.
And in the moment of trusting,
I was loved so much.
And in the moment of saying:
‘Yes! I’ll take this life.
This one!
Its birth, its struggle
its countless breaths.
Its footsteps.
Its becoming and befriending.
Its shrinking from the light.
Its tears and weight
of so much fear.
Its heartbreak and its love.’

In that moment of NOW.

A life is stretched from these
small boundaried cairns.
Stertched against the canopy of infinity.
It is made to see it is not one thing
but the many brought to one.
A radiant point of NOW
that whispers:
‘THIS IS ALL!
THIS IS IT!
THIS IS EVERYTHING!
AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL!

A Man Dreams of Spring

;-)>

I am sexed-up by these spring winds
Unslaked like a gagged wolf beneath
A moon white as bone while women
Of all nations hang on or are flung
In the folds and puckers of my
all-conquering member

10.3.09

The Case for Electoral Reform

Oh no it's politics again! Sorry, I really am but JESUS CHRIST! It really is time to get this rag tag bunch of bandits out of our parliament. This clucking brood of chancers, these oh so clubbable back slapping, brown nosing, jeering and cheering, pseudo alpha male, dominator fantasists. This pin striped and shirted bunch of clowns. These greedy talentless bombasts and their cunning little plans and focus groups and new politics initiatives and new communities initiatives and health advice and our children this and that and edu-my-arse-cation and how green are my politics and new new new shiny new Labour.
Phew! Needed to get that off my chest, cheers.

Politics? From POLIS which is the Glaswegian for POLICE or the Greek word meaning State or city. POLITICKUS thus meaning the affairs of state. The Latin POLITICUS and the wonderful French POLITIQUE which must be the politics of the boutique.

But yes how did the 'affairs of state' become such a club for chumps and pole climbers? Where did it all, as it were, go so very wrong?

My take on this is that politics is doomed from the start because the very people drawn to political power are those with the least appropriate character to have it. At my boarding school (Yes damn your eyes!) if the system broke to the extent that we all ended up with an extra half hour in bed there would always be some oily little creep who would alert the powers that be to their inadvertent charity and order would be re-imposed. There you see your future politician.
In 'The Republic' Plato addresses the issue by forcing the 'guardians' to live communal lives of material asceticism to prevent greed and corruption but as he also advocates lying to the population whenever appropriate so we cannot find solace in his fuzzy headed, body-hating, republic of anally fixated toga wearers.

But this first past the post cobblers really does give the lie to democracy. We need some form of Proportional Representation now. Shiny Nude Labour promised a serious look at it years ago but like most promises made by Mr Blur...

No there's just no way to square this circle-the people least suited to leadership are the people most strongly drawn to it. But yet! But yet! I am beginning to suspect albeit slowly and with some minor reservations that when I look at Barack Obama, I may be looking at true greatness.

1.3.09

The Surveillance Society/Bicycles/The Magick of We

The last few years have seen an unprecedented assault on the liberties we all take for granted in a democratic society. The rights to equal justice before the law, Habeas Corpus, the illegality of torture, freedom of speech and thought, the right to peaceful protest. These are all rights that our forbears have fought and in many cases died for, they were not given but have had to be wrenched from the governing structures of history. In the name of the 'War on Terror' these rights are being taken away wholesale and right now is the time to shout Enough!
The Convention on Modern Liberty is the latest attempt to halt this erosion by the political classes. Please give it your support by visiting www.modernliberty.net/
Like climate change this issue is everybody's responsibility and the time to act is now. The erosion of the earth's natural resources and the erosion of our rights are two tributaries of the same corrosive river.

I will soon be posting a video on YouTube featuring a performance of my song 'The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.' Stay tuned for more info!

Now bicycles...

I love bicycles. Yes, actually love them. I have three bikes and use one of them on a daily basis for shopping, travel to and from work and of course for fun. They all even have names- Miles E Ter, Peat Bog, and Mini Me! I know, I know it's absurd, I clearly suffer from chronic cyclephilia. The philosopher Ivan Illyich wrote a prescient book in the seventies called 'Tools of Conviviality'. In that book he draws conclusions between machines and tools that alienate us from each other and from our environment and those that do the opposite, bring us closer, encourage engagement. The car as a dirty dangerous bullying consumer of space and the bike as a simple, beautiful, clean construction for moving comfortably and efficiently from A to B. What after all, is a 4 wheel drive monstrosity other than an embodiment of fear realised in sheet steel? With the advent of portable music players now we can cycle and read audiobooks or listen to music or get into some brilliant podcasts. I am crazy about Stephen Fry's podcast or Radio 4's 'In our Time'. Podcasts provide a great opportunity for expanding our awareness and all can be had from the saddle.

POEM FOR MARCH (This is dedicated to lovers everywhere. It is so easy for 'the magick of we to become the taken for granted of we. So re-member the magick!)

THE MAGICK OF WE



I have called you.
Keened out an orgastic hymn.
Played the coxcomb and strut
the boards of the known universe.
Turned and whirled in the dust.

I have known a sacred moment
of dissolving Self.
Swimming in your dark eyes,
slate-smoked and soft as new baked bread.
Is this love?
Is this love?

To trust such passion and
abdicate reactions based on fear.

To be called so fiercely
to heart’s account.

To breathe ‘I love’
with every outgoing
and ‘I am loved’
with every inhalation.

To be so enchanted
moment to moment.

Caught in the amber of a dream.

Carver was right:
To find ourselves beloved
upon this earth.
To be so loved.
That is what we seek.