Strange button in our Swedish hire-car. It didn't work.
Strange button in our Swedish hire-car. It didn't work.
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Button
Strange button in our Swedish hire-car. It didn't work.
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Matt Rees Interview
Just a quick post to point out an interview I did with Matt Rees, about writing and publishing and the like.
You'll find it here.
You'll find it here.
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Godless Brighton: The Verdict
Evangelical Christians are descending on Brighton. But have they got their work cut out? From the Brighton Argus website:
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Good luck with that, Reverend Archie Coates!
Good luck with that, Reverend Archie Coates!
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South Park creators animate Alan Watts
A meeting of minds, if ever I saw one.
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Sign Outside an Art Exhibition:
(from the Bridget Riley exhibition at the Walker in Liverpool)
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Turning The Place Over
In Liverpool a couple of weeks ago a friend took me to see this amazing thing:
This is Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson, and it's fantastic. What makes it even better is that it genuinely is made from an abandoned Yates' Wine Lodge down a backstreet, and it just sits there churning away, ignored by most of the city.
This is Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson, and it's fantastic. What makes it even better is that it genuinely is made from an abandoned Yates' Wine Lodge down a backstreet, and it just sits there churning away, ignored by most of the city.
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The Trickster and Julian Assange
Tricksters usually live in myth, but occasionally they occur in real life. Timothy Leary was probably the best example of a 20th Century Trickster. Now we have a 21st Century candidate for the role - Julian Assange, the public face of Wikileaks.
A Trickster, such as Loki, Hermes, Prometheus or Coyote, is a transformative spirit who disobeys normal rules and the social order. They steal knowledge from the Gods and give it to man. They are mischievous ‘situation inverters’, fundamentally ambiguous characters who dwell in the boundaries and bend or break the social order. Their sacred side is often balanced by a profane or sexually transgressive reputation, something that Assange has now gained following Interpol’s warrant regarding Swedish rape allegations.
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Of course, it helps that he looks like a Trickster. Assange has an otherworldly air, like an Antipodean version of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth. He has the sort of hair that wouldn’t look out of place in the Matrix movies. If Tom Hiddleston had dropped out of the role of Loki in Marvel’s forthcoming Thor movie, Assange would make a great replacement.
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I didn’t spot Assange’s Trickster role at first. The actions of Tricksters are ambiguous and mischievous, and given my personal set of prejudices and baggage I saw what Assange and Wikileaks do as overwhelmingly positive. This was a mistake on my part, because the outcome of a Trickster’s actions is not the point of their behaviour. They just overturn, and what new scenario this produces is not their concern.
My favourite Trickster story shows this very clearly, I think. It concerns Edshu, a Nigerian Trickster God. One day, Edshu walked down the road in the middle of the village wearing a hat that was blue on one side and red on the other. “Did you see that God in the blue hat?” asked a villager from one side of the road. “Don’t be stupid”, replied his neighbour on the other side of the road, “He wore a red hat.” This difference of opinion soon turned into an argument, which then turned into a fight.
What makes this story so perfectly ambiguous is that there are two different versions, with very different endings. In one, the villagers realise their mistake and learn an important point about their limited perspective. In the other, the fight escalates and the villagers end up killing each other. Neither version can be said to be the ‘correct’ one, just as neither outcome could be said to be the Trickster’s aim. He simply acts as he does for his own amusement, and the responsibility for the outcome falls to the ability of the population to understand what they’ve been shown.
Julian Assange makes, I think, a damn good Trickster.
A Trickster, such as Loki, Hermes, Prometheus or Coyote, is a transformative spirit who disobeys normal rules and the social order. They steal knowledge from the Gods and give it to man. They are mischievous ‘situation inverters’, fundamentally ambiguous characters who dwell in the boundaries and bend or break the social order. Their sacred side is often balanced by a profane or sexually transgressive reputation, something that Assange has now gained following Interpol’s warrant regarding Swedish rape allegations.
Of course, it helps that he looks like a Trickster. Assange has an otherworldly air, like an Antipodean version of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth. He has the sort of hair that wouldn’t look out of place in the Matrix movies. If Tom Hiddleston had dropped out of the role of Loki in Marvel’s forthcoming Thor movie, Assange would make a great replacement.
I didn’t spot Assange’s Trickster role at first. The actions of Tricksters are ambiguous and mischievous, and given my personal set of prejudices and baggage I saw what Assange and Wikileaks do as overwhelmingly positive. This was a mistake on my part, because the outcome of a Trickster’s actions is not the point of their behaviour. They just overturn, and what new scenario this produces is not their concern.
My favourite Trickster story shows this very clearly, I think. It concerns Edshu, a Nigerian Trickster God. One day, Edshu walked down the road in the middle of the village wearing a hat that was blue on one side and red on the other. “Did you see that God in the blue hat?” asked a villager from one side of the road. “Don’t be stupid”, replied his neighbour on the other side of the road, “He wore a red hat.” This difference of opinion soon turned into an argument, which then turned into a fight.
What makes this story so perfectly ambiguous is that there are two different versions, with very different endings. In one, the villagers realise their mistake and learn an important point about their limited perspective. In the other, the fight escalates and the villagers end up killing each other. Neither version can be said to be the ‘correct’ one, just as neither outcome could be said to be the Trickster’s aim. He simply acts as he does for his own amusement, and the responsibility for the outcome falls to the ability of the population to understand what they’ve been shown.
Julian Assange makes, I think, a damn good Trickster.
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Image From My Daughter
My 10-year-old daughter has been experimenting with photo editing software and has just emailed me the following.
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Really, I could write an essay about it, but instead I'll just allow you to meet it on your own terms. Suffice to say that it has a remarkable ability to cause your train of thought to stall and your mind stop. A number of Zen Koans looked decidedly half-arsed in comparison.
I am very proud.
Really, I could write an essay about it, but instead I'll just allow you to meet it on your own terms. Suffice to say that it has a remarkable ability to cause your train of thought to stall and your mind stop. A number of Zen Koans looked decidedly half-arsed in comparison.
I am very proud.
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Brian Barritt Versus The Grim Reaper
Brian Barritt died this morning at around 6am.He was 76.
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When I first met Brian, nearly 15 years ago, he showed me the following passage from Tim Leary’s Confessions of a Hope Fiend. This was written in 1971:
"Brian is ancient but not old […] He has put as many drugs as possible into his body for thirty-six years and is obscenely healthy, diabolically wealthy, and looks about twenty. He intends to maintain this state for an indefinite period.He is not going to die; they will have to kill him."
“He is not going to die; they will have to kill him…”That’s quite a way to describe someone. The ‘ancient but not old’ description seemed as apt when I met him in the 90s as it must have in 1971. It still seemed pretty accurate in 2011. In this context the ‘they will have to kill him comment’ felt something more than flippant.There was a Rasputin air about Brian.You couldn’t rule anything out. It is hard to accept that someone like that has gone.Of course, knowing Brian, it’s entirely possible that he died a few months ago, but he just kept going in order to freak out the doctors.
Rasputin was a challenge for the Grim Reaper, of course.He was poisoned, shot, stabbed and beaten, but still needed to be drowned before he let go of life. Brian’s last six months were equally absurd and the Grim Reaper had to go all out to make a dent in him. His medical records became ludicrous: three blocked arteries, advanced melanoma, hep A, hep B, kidney cists, a heart attack, skin cancer, angina, TB (TB!) some gout and brain cancer. Nothing to affect his sense of humour, of course, but it was enough.This wasn’t the first time he died, but it will be the last.
There’s a section in Cosmic Trigger where Tim Leary tells Robert Anton Wilson that he should meet Brian Barritt.I only met Bob Wilson once, but I was struck by how much he reminded me of Brian – the only person that has ever done so. It was something in the wit, and something in the humour. The big difference between them, though, was that they were on the opposite sides of the health scale.Bob was struck down with polio in his youth, and suffered medically because of this for the rest of his life.This suffering made him a compassionate, understanding soul and a natural Buddhist. I have never found anyone who knew him who had a bad word to say about him.Brian on the other hand was overflowing with vitality. He was Pan incarnate. He just smelt like trouble. To quote Leary again, “Brian is an English Untouchable. His shadow falling across the path of the middle class is enough to contaminate twenty lives. He is highly toxic. He wasn’t sent to Coventry, he was born there.”This isn’t to say that there was a cruel or malevolent side to Brian; if he had a bad bone in his body I never saw it.He was just so overly alive that it shocked people, I think.
It’s hard to accept that he has gone. But then, it’s equally hard to accept that he ever existed. Everything about him was implausible. Adventure and incident followed him like love-sick puppies. The synchronicities that clung to him were so absurd that no rational philosophy could survive in his company.He was many things, was Brian; a soldier, a sailor, a krautrocker, a drug dealer, a writer, an artist, a convict, a traveller, an evacuee – but always, and in everything, he was an explorer.
I thought I’d make a list of some of the things that I learnt from him over the years:
- If you step off the path and head out into the woods, you will no longer be able to see where you are going and hence you will never get bored.
- Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder.
- Pronoia is the irrational belief that somewhere, unknown forces are conspiring in secret to ensure that everything works out brilliantly and that you all have a marvellous time.
- If you don’t see the humour in something, you haven’t seen the truth of it either.
- Follow the synchronicities.
- It’s never difficult to say whether something is art or not. If you cannot tire of looking at a picture, then it is art.
- If an undertaking is ultimately fruitless, but produces 1000 epiphanies along the way, then you have not ended up with nothing.You’ve ended up with 1000 epiphanies.
- You don’t see the light; the light sees you.
This is the last photo I took of Brian - on Jan 20th, so it is possibly the last picture of him.It freaked us all out a little, for it was so far removed from the atmosphere in the room when we took it.We were all just mucking around, really, and being daft with his radiotherapy mask. We weren’t prepared for this Giotto-like golden grace.
Brian Barritt, Nov 29th 1934 – Jan 30th 2011. The Grim Reaper claims the result for himself, but Brian Barritt won on points.
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The Soviet Union Won The Space Race
Today is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space. To celebrate, the BBC has put online an essay that asks ‘What if the Soviet Union had won the Space Race’? It's a nice little piece that celebrates the genius of the USA – although perhaps not in the way the author intended.
By any reasonable assessment, the Russians won the space race. They sent the first satellite into orbit.They sent the first living creature into space, and then the first man human being. They performed the first spacewalk. They sent the first satellites to the moon, and were the first to map its dark side. They sent the first satellite that landed on the moon, and the first that brought back samples of moon rocks.For any practical, useful milestone you can imagine, the Russians beat the Americans in the exploration of our immediate space, hands down.
America suffered what is now called its ‘Sputnik moment’. All Sputnik was was a transmitter in a small metal globe. It did nothing but broadcast a constant ‘bip-bip-bip’ as it travelled across the sky. A transmitter going ‘bip-bip-bip’ should not concern anyone, least of all a mighty superpower.But the problem was not on the practical level, it was in the realm of ideas. A communist nation had put Sputnik into space and communism was understood to be an inferior ideology, one which certainly couldn’t achieve anything that capitalism was unable to do.
But if there is a genius to America, then it is in this realm of belief and ideas.The race had been lost?Then reimagine it, redefine it, create an even bigger race - one which truly understands what inspires people. Then sell this this new goal to the whole world, and sell it so completely that 50 years later the BBC would be asking ‘What if the Russians had won the Space Race?'
The Americans understood that the one thing that could capture people’s imagination more that Yuri Gagarin’s amazing heroism would be men actually standing on the moon and hitting golf balls about. The sight of men driving pointlessly around the moon in a little moon car would appeal on such a profound human level that all the earlier achievements – the useful, amazing, real achievements – would be forgotten. And so, despite the suicidal danger, unbelievable costs and lack of any practical reason for what they were doing, they put men on the moon, hit golf balls about, drove around in a little moon car, and acted for all the world like that been the goal all along. And we've accepted it, haven't we? We never question this definition of victory in the Space Race. That fact, I think, is the real genius of the American mind.
There is an irony here; America went to the moon to prove the superiority of the American system, one based on rugged individualism rather than a powerful state. To do so however took a massively funded governmental operation, while the success of the Russian operation was almost solely due to the individual genius of one man, Sergey Korolyov. It was Korolyov’s death in 1966 which ended the era of Russian space achievement, not the ‘defeat’ in the ‘Space Race’ in 1969.
This is not to undermine the brilliance of the Apollo programme, of course. It is still mankind’s greatest achievement – even if it was an insane, ludicrous folly. It brought back the ‘Earthrise’ and ‘Blue Marble’ photographs that had such a profound impact on how we understand ourselves. But Yuri Gagarin that won the space race, and today is the day for remembering that.
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Brian Barritt Remembered
I'm doing a talk on The Books of Brian Barritt on June 11th, as part of the Brighton Book Festival. For more details, here's the website.
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I'll have more to say about this soon, no doubt, but it struck me as a good excuse to gather together links to many of the various ways the Old Goat has been remembered online.
Here's the list:
Den Brown has produced two, hour long radio shows about Brian's life and work over at RadioJoy.co.uk
He also wrote this obituary for Brian in the Guardian.
David Ball has written an obituary for Revolve magazine, that should appear shortly.
This was my obit in the Independent.
And a post I wrote here the morning he died.
I have no idea what this is about.
Have I missed anything? No doubt I have, so please let me know and I'll update the list.
I'll have more to say about this soon, no doubt, but it struck me as a good excuse to gather together links to many of the various ways the Old Goat has been remembered online.
Here's the list:
Den Brown has produced two, hour long radio shows about Brian's life and work over at RadioJoy.co.uk
He also wrote this obituary for Brian in the Guardian.
David Ball has written an obituary for Revolve magazine, that should appear shortly.
This was my obit in the Independent.
And a post I wrote here the morning he died.
I have no idea what this is about.
Have I missed anything? No doubt I have, so please let me know and I'll update the list.
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Illuminatus! vs Atlas Shrugged
As has been widely noted, the twenty-first century is strange, worrying and makes very little sense. Help is at hand, however, because the late twentieth century produced two huge novels which shed light on our current predicament. These two books are polar opposites, yet oddly similar - opposed twins, in other words, like Cain and Abel.
Both novels are ridiculously long. Both were largely ignored by the literary and educational establishments, due to their unmistakable whiff of madness (This fear of insanity is, of course, why the literary and educational establishments always miss out on all the good stuff.) They have both, however, found a devoted readership, been hailed as life changing, and have remained in print since publication. Between them, they explain much of our current twenty-first century world, from the underground anarchism of Anonymous and the shift from hierarchies to networks, to the Tea Party and neo-conservative hijack of American politics and the massive shift in wealth distribution towards the super rich.
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These two books are, of course Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy (Co-written with Robert Shea, who I'm rudely leaving out of the picture in order to portray a false RAW/Rand dichotomy).
But - which is which? Fear not, the following guide will explain all:
Both novels are ridiculously long. Both were largely ignored by the literary and educational establishments, due to their unmistakable whiff of madness (This fear of insanity is, of course, why the literary and educational establishments always miss out on all the good stuff.) They have both, however, found a devoted readership, been hailed as life changing, and have remained in print since publication. Between them, they explain much of our current twenty-first century world, from the underground anarchism of Anonymous and the shift from hierarchies to networks, to the Tea Party and neo-conservative hijack of American politics and the massive shift in wealth distribution towards the super rich.
These two books are, of course Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy (Co-written with Robert Shea, who I'm rudely leaving out of the picture in order to portray a false RAW/Rand dichotomy).
But - which is which? Fear not, the following guide will explain all:
Illuminatus!  | Atlas Shrugged  |
Opening line: “It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton.” | Opening line: “Who is John Galt?” |
804 pages | 1184 pages. |
Superficially a sci-fi tinged mystery novel, but really the philosophy of Discordianism in fictional form. | Superficially a sci-fi tinged mystery novel, but really the philosophy of Objectivism in fictional form. |
Views the world through the metaphor of the Greek Goddess Eris. | Views the world through the metaphor of the Greek Titan Atlas. |
Has been known to turn previously sane readers into paranoid schizophrenics. | Has been known to turn previously sane readers into sociopaths. |
Portrays hierarchical systems abstracted to the point of absurdity, although some readers find that absurdity plausible. | Portrays individual liberty abstracted to the point of absurdity, although some readers find that absurdity plausible. |
Written by a sane man who believed he was insane. | Written by an insane woman who believed she was sane. |
Portrays powerful men as utterly deluded about their influence on world history. | Portrays powerful men as utterly pivotal due to their influence on world history. |
Characters who lack a sense of empathy and connection find sex devoid of meaning. | Characters who lack a sense of self-interest and purpose find sex devoid of meaning. |
Author never makes things simple for his readers. | Author never makes things difficult for her readers. |
Has the ability to make those who haven’t read it bemused. | Has the ability to make those who haven’t read it extremely angry. |
Completely unfilmable. | Completely unfilmable (see the 2011 film Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 for more details) |
Portrays the powerful elite in ways utterly removed from how the powerful elite actual act. | Portrays the proletariat in ways utterly removed from how the proletariat actual act. |
Views government as dangerous and deluded. | Views government as dangerous and parasitical. |
Author is so extreme that they were at one point accused of being an undercover CIA agent working to discredit conspiracy theories. | Author is so extreme that they were at one point accused of being a Soviet sleeper agent working to discredit capitalism. |
At one point, a character fucks a giant apple. | No-one fucks any apples. |
Considers an individual’s belief that their personal philosophy is the only true philosophy to be the cause of all the confusion, misery and problems in the world. | Considers the author’s personal philosophy to be the only true philosophy. |
It is seemingly impossible to find anyone who knew the author who has a bad word to say about him. | *shudder* |
(Students of bias may wish to note that, whilst at least one review of my novel The Brandy of the Damned noted the influence of Robert Anton Wilson, no review of any of my books has yet mentioned influence from Ayn Rand.)
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Interactive Fiction
I've been experimenting with interactive fiction. If you're wondering what interactive fiction is like, click here and read my short story First Against The Floor.
Actually, that's a terrible title for a story, isn't it? Hmmm. Don't be surprised if it's called something else tomorrow.
It's written using inklewriter. If you want a bit more background, head over to my other blog, Books Vs Apps, and find out more.
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Readers of The Brandy of the Damned will recognise a certain character in First Against The Floor, or whatever it ends up being called tomorrow.
Actually, that's a terrible title for a story, isn't it? Hmmm. Don't be surprised if it's called something else tomorrow.
It's written using inklewriter. If you want a bit more background, head over to my other blog, Books Vs Apps, and find out more.
Readers of The Brandy of the Damned will recognise a certain character in First Against The Floor, or whatever it ends up being called tomorrow.
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A Writing Name
What has happened to my poor name? It has been replaced with an unfortunate Scrabble hand. I have adopted an initials-based 'writing name,' but why?
The timing is odd as well, because I used my normal name for my first book. A writer's name is his or her best asset in the quest to build a readership, so it is not something that is generally tossed away for a lark. So, why have I done just that?
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| A book apparently written by John Higgs |
On a practical level, it's the global Amazon era. When I wrote I Have America Surrounded, 'John Higgs' was a unique writer name, but times change and the amount of authors has increased exponentially. New John Higgs' arrived on the scene, such as the one who writes about Dealing With Danger, and old John Higgs' who are long out of print but still remembered by second hand book dealers have returned to the shelves.
This trend looks like it will only increase. Wrapping yourself in as unique a moniker as possible will become increasingly important. If you're in this for the long game, it will be better to go for it sooner rather than later. Already swinish writers have started adopting names like 'James A Patterson' or 'Nora A Roberts.' It won't be long until writers start trying to brand themselves with tag-like names such as WRiTR or S7EV3N K!nG, and you don't want to be changing your name in that climate.
Then there are the personal reasons. I know a number of people who have adopted new names at some point in their lives (As the blogger Tom Jackson pointed out, almost everyone involved with my publishers The Big Hand appears to be either dead, fictitious or using a made-up name). This can happen for a number of reasons, but it is often linked to a shift in the psyche, from being an individual that looks externally for validation to becoming someone who validates themselves.
For me, however, there was the fact that I had an excess of middle names which I've always ignored or denied. Having extra middle names may be normal in the Bullingdon Club, but I grew up as a free-school-dinners kid in a North Wales comprehensive where extra middle names were an embarrassment which needed to be hidden. My mum told me that she was completely blameless in the matter, and that the excess of names was my dad's idea. My dad died when I was three and hence was never able to explain himself, but apparently his reasoning was that it would look good "if I went into business." Which throws up the horrifying possibility that I could have been raised by someone who thought it would be good for me to "go into business."
*shudder*
Anyway, after decades of spurning this gift of extraneous names I suddenly realised that they are now exactly what I need, a unique and Amazon-proof identity. For the first time, they look great. True, they don't look that great written normally - JMR Higgs - because it starts all big and shouty and then trails off suddenly. It is better in a URL - jmrhiggs.com - but what really matters is what it looks like on a book cover, in capitals in Franchise font. And here, it looks pretty damn good.
So, I guess belated thanks are due. Thanks Dad!
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Drowned and Knighted at the Summer Solstice
Last week was the Summer Solstice. I spent the night in the fields around Stonehenge being drowned by persistent rain with occasional freakish cloudbursts for variety. Curled up in a foetus-like position, in order to shelter as much as my body as possible under my umbrella, I swigged rum from a plastic Dr. Pepper bottle and whiled away the hours trying to work out why, after 5000 years, no-one has got round to sticking the roof on the damn henge yet.Most of my Big Hand colleagues decided to retreat to the warmth of their vehicles, but I took the view that it was important to stick it out. I was there to keep vigil through those black hours while we are turned away from the sun, so that was what I would do. And during those long, sodden, dark hours many questions flitted across my mind, the most common being "What the hell am I doing here?"
What was I doing there? I wasn't there to worship the sun. Don't get me wrong, I like the sun. It's not as cool as the moon or anything, but it's pretty damn great. If it had a volume control it would be awesome. But generally I don't go around worshipping stuff because I can't worship on cue. Can other people worship on cue? Is it a skill they have which I lack? I've long been suspicious that most people are putting it on.
So what was I doing there? The only answer I had to that was, well, it's what people do. It's what people have always done, for 5000 years: They visit Stonehenge on the solstices. That's about the one certainty we have. Everyone you know, every building, every political movement, every body of knowledge, every town, every eco-system, every economy, the language you speak - they are all in a constant state of flux and will change massively and unpredictably over your lifetime. Yet people will always travel to Stonehenge on the Solstices.
Currently, things that are supposed to be symbols of British stability are on shakey ground. In a few years, the Queen will be dead. The United Kingdom as we know it could be gone if the Scottish so desire. If that happens, the Union flag - so ubiquitous and merry this year, after the National Front spoilt it in the 1970s - would be retired. The Church of England looks set to tear itself apart. The NHS is being sliced up, and the House of Lords is on borrowed time. Yet people will always travel to Stonehenge on the Solstices.
And it's not just British people either, as all the accents you hear there confirm. People come from all over the world. And why not? They are all welcome. They come even though there is nothing there apart from some rocks in a field. There is no entertainment, or amplified music. Their presence demonstrates that 5000 year old fixed points are few and far between. Even Death and Taxes don't really cut it as certainties any more, as Vodaphone's accountants and some of the wilder transhumanists will attest. As fixed points go, we've got the North Star and Stonehenge, and not a lot else.
Finally the sun rose and the rain stopped, and I was knighted by King Arthur in the sunrise ceremony. Yeah, that's right. I suppose some explanation here would help.
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| Arthur and Sodden Knight |
It's clearly a nuts thing to do, but then again, fuck it.
The man wielding the sword, as you can see in the picture, is the Once and Future king himself, King Arthur. Well he certainly looks like he is, anyway. He certainly believes that he is. More importantly, he has spent decades acting like he is, which is some achievement if you think about it. To anyone curious about this strange figure I would thoroughly recommend the revised version of his life story, which is out now and dirt cheap on Kindle. I'm not one for the idea of reincarnation, but if you meet Arthur you'll recognise that he has certain qualities which make him the ideal candidate to wield the Sword of Britain.
My decision to make such a vow came about through the strange psychological processes unleashed when I first printed out a draft of The Brandy of the Damned and showed to another person. Making that vow publicly, in that place, at that time, under that sword, wielded by that man, is about as good a vow-taking as I could muster. Which is the sort of thing that it is worth putting up with some cold and rain in order to claim.
Plus, my kids have taken to calling me Sir Dad, which has got to be a good thing.
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Osbornicide: Why Drunk George Osborne has been killed off
As crazy as this may sound now, when Drunk George launched in May 2011 the real George Osborne was lauded by both Westminster and the press as a strategic genius, a Machiavellian powerhouse and an economic heavyweight. He was none of these things, obviously, but what was interesting was that he almost believed that myth himself. I say almost, because there was doubt there: you could see it in his eyes. He had been raised to believe that he was entitled and worthy of power, and he had continued to rise by being in the right place with the right friends, but deep down he seemed to know that he was not up to the task.
All this made me wonder what he would be like when he was drunk, when those demons would surface, and Drunk George was born.
The character of Drunk George was written as a child, and the comedy came from the disparity between the wide-eyed naivete of this idiot boy-child and the public persona of the real George Osborne. Once the real Osborne's persona descended to something akin to the fake one, however, the joke stopped working. If I'm honest it hasn't really been working for a while now, so it is time to stop.
Huge, huge thanks to the 15,000 people who have been following Drunk George, especially those who retweeted, interacted, favourited and follow-friday'd him. I have many favourite @OsborneDrunk moments - such as The Duck That David Killed, the time he stove David's head in and replaced it with a melon, David's ritual intercourse on the cabinet table with Lord Ashcroft and TV's Kirstie Allsopp and the Drunk George at Leveson interactive adventure. But best of all was the abuse and praise from his followers.
A number of people have said that they thought I made Drunk George too sympathetic, and that he made them feel sorry for the real Osborne. This was intentional, really, because the target was always Osborne's illusion of competence rather than the man himself. Much of the politics on Twitter is aimed at stoking up hate, be that personal or tribal, but this has never made anything better. We do need politicians, but we need ones who combine a political intelligence and competence with an internal moral compass. The ones who can't be bribed, basically. There are politicians like that from around the political spectrum, for example Caroline Lucas, Ken Clarke, Vince Cable and maybe even Ed Miliband. It is the 90% of politicians who are short-termist career gonks, and the genuine lunatics like Gove, that we need to call out.
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| With Mister Flaps, Head of the Office of Budget Responsibility |
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Death and The Batman
Yesterday some nomark shot up a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. You know this, of course, people are talking about nothing else. What makes the whole thing so unthinkable is the shooter's lack of motive or other insane ideology. The story may change over the coming days, but currently it appears that it happened because the limit of this guy's dreams was to put a mask over his mouth and shoot up a Batman film.
The fact that his appearance and weaponry matched the look of the character Bane and Christopher Nolan's aesthetics, and that his behaviour mirrored that of Batman villains, brings to mind the reason why Alan Moore dismisses the modern comic industry. He says that all it produces is "revenge fantasies for the impotent." On a subconscious level the fact that it was a Batman film feels relevant, as if Batman's fictional universe had spilt off the screen and into the real world. There is an unspoken suspicion that this couldn't have happened at, say, a screening of a Spiderman film.
The tragedy brings to mind the other death that lingers around the Dark Knight films, that of Heath Ledger. This caused me to drag out the text below, about Ledger's death, which I wrote a couple of years ago for a (since abandoned) book about the British post-punk band Killing Joke. I'm struck by the reference to the character "wanting to pull others down to his level." I'm still not entirely comfortable that putting it up as a blog is the right thing to do, at a time when all thoughts about the incident should be about the victims. I may still change my mind and take it down. My gut feeling is to put it up now, however, so here we go.
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The Joker first appeared in 1940, in the very first edition of Batman comic. Green haired, white skinned and with a crazy red grin, his appearance was modelled on the Joker in a pack of playing cards. Of all the hundreds of villains in the decades that followed, the Joker became the most prominent and is considered to be Batman’s ‘arch enemy’. Wizard magazine voted him number one in their 100 Greatest Villainsof All Time list. The Joker has changed over the years, however. Although originally a homicidal maniac, the character was softened and spent much of his first few decades as an eccentric prankster thief. This is how he appeared in the 1960’s Batman series, played by Cesar Romero, where he plotted comedy-themed heists such as turning the city’s water supply into jelly. The major turning point for the character, the moment when the silliness was replaced by insanity, chaos and total amorality, was a 1988 comic written by Alan Moore called The Killing Joke.
The character of the Joker, as he has appeared on film, owes everything to The Killing Joke. Tim Burton has spoken of it’s importance to his Batman movies. “I loved The Killing Joke”, he said, “It’s my favourite. It’s the first comic I’ve ever loved.” Heath Ledger, who had not read Batman comics and who wasn’t a fan of comic books, explained that “The Killing Joke was the one that was handed to me. I think it’s going to be the beginning of The Joker.”
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The book gives an origin story for the Joker, an unsuccessful comedian who cannot provide for his pregnant wife. Desperate for money, he agrees to help a criminal gang gain access to a chemical plant. Just before the job, he learns that his wife has died. The raid is then foiled by Batman, who causes him to fall into toxic chemicals that turn his hair green and his skin white. Turned mad by the days events, the heart-broken comedian becomes the insane Joker. Tim Burton based his Joker’s background on parts of this story, but it is only one of a number of origin stories for the character. As the Joker admits himself in The Killing Joke, “Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!” This idea is echoed by Heath Ledger’s Joker, who makes a number of contradictory claims about his past during the film.
The book uses this background to underscore the Joker’s basic argument in the book; that the only difference between a homicidal maniac such as him and the average law-abiding citizen is one bad day. In this it positions the Joker as a dark image of Batman, a character who is also the result of one bad day. Batman is just as insane as he is, argues the Joker, for how else can you explain the behaviour of a man who dresses as a bat? The difference is Batman hasn’t realised that he is mad, and still clings to the belief that he can somehow do good or make a difference. That belief is hubris, argues the Joker. The world is random and meaningless, and the only honest way to relate to it is to embrace this and go insane. To prove this, he kidnaps Commissioner Gordon, and keeps him naked in a cage in a dark, disturbing funfair, guarded by fetish-gear wearing freaks and dwarfs. Gordon is then lead through a twisted fun house where he is presented with naked images of his daughter, who the Joker has shot and paralysed. The Joker believes that Gordon will be sent insane by this ‘one bad day’, but Gordon does not crack and he does not choose to deal with the horror by escaping into madness. Indeed, he insists that the Joker is captured “by the book”, in order to show him that “our way works."
The director Christopher Nolan described this well, when he discussed the influence of The Killing Joke on his film The Dark Knight, “I definitely feel the influence of "The Killing Joke," not so much in the specifics as in constructing some sense of purpose for an inherently purposeless character. That is to say The Joker is an anarchist. He's dedicated to chaos. He should really have no purpose but I think the underlying belief that Alan Moore got across very clearly is that on some level The Joker wants to pull everybody down to his level and show that he's not an unusual monster and that everyone else can be debased and corrupted like he is.
Alan Moore’s Joker, then, is a figure of chaos, one who’s sanity was snapped by the cosmic joke. Given his book’s name and the fact that it was published in the late 80s, there has been speculation as to what inspired it. To quote the occult blogger Christopher Knowles, “My personal take on Batman: The Killing Joke was that it was Moore's admirable but not-entirely successful attempt to translate the very powerful musical and iconographic energies of the British band, Killing Joke.” Looking at some of the imagery in the book, such as the Joker sat on a throne of mannequins and doll parts, and considering the philosophy espoused by the Joker, it is not hard to see how this conclusion was reached. In the period before Moore's book was written the band used very similar imagery, in particular an evil mannequin character.
Knowles, however, goes further. He points out the similarities between the visual design of Ledger’s Joker to Killing Joke's vocalist Jaz Coleman. In the Hosannas From The Basement of Hell video, for example, Jaz wears his usual white face paint with long, greasy hair very similar to that worn by Ledger. The red ‘glasgow smile’ lipstick Ledger wears, emphasising a knife wound, is similar to that worn by Coleman in, for example, performances like this. The dark energies that Jaz and Killing Joke created, and which Moore funnelled into the Joker via The Killing Joke, were at the heart of the blockbuster film and took as their focus the actor Heath Ledger.
Jaz himself has alluded to this in a number of interviews. Discussing the protective role of his stage make up with the journalist Justin M. Norton in December 2010, he says, “If you don’t take the mask off, you take that world into your own life. Take Heath Ledger, for example. We are well aware of the energies that surround us in Killing Joke and the peculiarities. The mask isn’t for other people’s benefit. It’s for my own protection.”
Heath Ledger died on January 22nd, 2008. It was a major shock; well liked and hugely talented, Ledger was only 28 years old. It took a few weeks before the official cause of death, accidental acute intoxication caused by a combination of prescription drugs, was announced. During those weeks a number of strange stories started circulating, as shocked, grieving people tried to make sense of what had happened. Ledger had finished playing The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight three months earlier, and the persistent rumour was that it was this role had lead to his death. So deeply had the actor emerged himself into this dreadful, evil character, it was said, that he was unable to emerge from it.
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UPDATE
After I posted this yesterday James Kelleher informed me via Twitter that Jack Nicholson was referring to warning Ledger about the sleeping pill Ambien. This, of course, makes far more sense. However it has also been reported that the Aurora killer had died his hair red and told police that he was 'The Joker'. God knows where this can of worms will lead, no doubt there will be further revelations in the days to come.
We have seen plenty of real-world vigilante superheroes springing up, and it appears that we now have a wannabe super-villain equivalent. Which, disturbingly, was exactly how The Joker character was introduced in Nolan's Batman films, as a reaction to the existence of superheroes in the world.
The fact that his appearance and weaponry matched the look of the character Bane and Christopher Nolan's aesthetics, and that his behaviour mirrored that of Batman villains, brings to mind the reason why Alan Moore dismisses the modern comic industry. He says that all it produces is "revenge fantasies for the impotent." On a subconscious level the fact that it was a Batman film feels relevant, as if Batman's fictional universe had spilt off the screen and into the real world. There is an unspoken suspicion that this couldn't have happened at, say, a screening of a Spiderman film.
The tragedy brings to mind the other death that lingers around the Dark Knight films, that of Heath Ledger. This caused me to drag out the text below, about Ledger's death, which I wrote a couple of years ago for a (since abandoned) book about the British post-punk band Killing Joke. I'm struck by the reference to the character "wanting to pull others down to his level." I'm still not entirely comfortable that putting it up as a blog is the right thing to do, at a time when all thoughts about the incident should be about the victims. I may still change my mind and take it down. My gut feeling is to put it up now, however, so here we go.
--
The character of the Joker, as he has appeared on film, owes everything to The Killing Joke. Tim Burton has spoken of it’s importance to his Batman movies. “I loved The Killing Joke”, he said, “It’s my favourite. It’s the first comic I’ve ever loved.” Heath Ledger, who had not read Batman comics and who wasn’t a fan of comic books, explained that “The Killing Joke was the one that was handed to me. I think it’s going to be the beginning of The Joker.”
The book uses this background to underscore the Joker’s basic argument in the book; that the only difference between a homicidal maniac such as him and the average law-abiding citizen is one bad day. In this it positions the Joker as a dark image of Batman, a character who is also the result of one bad day. Batman is just as insane as he is, argues the Joker, for how else can you explain the behaviour of a man who dresses as a bat? The difference is Batman hasn’t realised that he is mad, and still clings to the belief that he can somehow do good or make a difference. That belief is hubris, argues the Joker. The world is random and meaningless, and the only honest way to relate to it is to embrace this and go insane. To prove this, he kidnaps Commissioner Gordon, and keeps him naked in a cage in a dark, disturbing funfair, guarded by fetish-gear wearing freaks and dwarfs. Gordon is then lead through a twisted fun house where he is presented with naked images of his daughter, who the Joker has shot and paralysed. The Joker believes that Gordon will be sent insane by this ‘one bad day’, but Gordon does not crack and he does not choose to deal with the horror by escaping into madness. Indeed, he insists that the Joker is captured “by the book”, in order to show him that “our way works."
The director Christopher Nolan described this well, when he discussed the influence of The Killing Joke on his film The Dark Knight, “I definitely feel the influence of "The Killing Joke," not so much in the specifics as in constructing some sense of purpose for an inherently purposeless character. That is to say The Joker is an anarchist. He's dedicated to chaos. He should really have no purpose but I think the underlying belief that Alan Moore got across very clearly is that on some level The Joker wants to pull everybody down to his level and show that he's not an unusual monster and that everyone else can be debased and corrupted like he is.
Alan Moore’s Joker, then, is a figure of chaos, one who’s sanity was snapped by the cosmic joke. Given his book’s name and the fact that it was published in the late 80s, there has been speculation as to what inspired it. To quote the occult blogger Christopher Knowles, “My personal take on Batman: The Killing Joke was that it was Moore's admirable but not-entirely successful attempt to translate the very powerful musical and iconographic energies of the British band, Killing Joke.” Looking at some of the imagery in the book, such as the Joker sat on a throne of mannequins and doll parts, and considering the philosophy espoused by the Joker, it is not hard to see how this conclusion was reached. In the period before Moore's book was written the band used very similar imagery, in particular an evil mannequin character.
Knowles, however, goes further. He points out the similarities between the visual design of Ledger’s Joker to Killing Joke's vocalist Jaz Coleman. In the Hosannas From The Basement of Hell video, for example, Jaz wears his usual white face paint with long, greasy hair very similar to that worn by Ledger. The red ‘glasgow smile’ lipstick Ledger wears, emphasising a knife wound, is similar to that worn by Coleman in, for example, performances like this. The dark energies that Jaz and Killing Joke created, and which Moore funnelled into the Joker via The Killing Joke, were at the heart of the blockbuster film and took as their focus the actor Heath Ledger.
Jaz himself has alluded to this in a number of interviews. Discussing the protective role of his stage make up with the journalist Justin M. Norton in December 2010, he says, “If you don’t take the mask off, you take that world into your own life. Take Heath Ledger, for example. We are well aware of the energies that surround us in Killing Joke and the peculiarities. The mask isn’t for other people’s benefit. It’s for my own protection.”
Heath Ledger died on January 22nd, 2008. It was a major shock; well liked and hugely talented, Ledger was only 28 years old. It took a few weeks before the official cause of death, accidental acute intoxication caused by a combination of prescription drugs, was announced. During those weeks a number of strange stories started circulating, as shocked, grieving people tried to make sense of what had happened. Ledger had finished playing The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight three months earlier, and the persistent rumour was that it was this role had lead to his death. So deeply had the actor emerged himself into this dreadful, evil character, it was said, that he was unable to emerge from it.
He had given an extraordinary performance. Wally Pfister, the film’s cinematographer, said Ledger seemed “like he was busting blood vessels in his head,” he was so intense. “It was like a séance, where the medium takes on another person and then is so completely drained.” The review in the New Yorker said that "His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss." The role would later earn Ledger an Oscar, only the second time an actor has won posthumously and the first time an Academy acting award was given for the portrayal of a comic book character. Certainly Ledger didn’t seem well afterwards. "Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. ... I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going" he told Sarah Lyall of the New York Times. He admitted to taking a number of sleeping pills, but claimed that they did not help. Michael Caine, who played the butler Alfred, remembered that on set “He was exhausted, I mean he was really tired. I remember saying to him, ‘I’m too old to have the bloody energy to play that part.’ And I thought to myself, I didn’t have the energy when I was his age.” We know now that Ledger had suffered from insomnia for some time before he took on the part, and a number of his friends and colleagues have insisted how much fun he had playing the role. But in the first days and weeks after his death, as people tried to come to terms with this awful, unexpected loss, the idea that his fate had that something about the energies of the Joker, and the depth he immersed himself in them, made a strange sort of sense. A cryptic remark by Jack Nicholson, who had played the Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film, didn’t help.
“Well,” drawled Jack, “I warned him.”
UPDATE
After I posted this yesterday James Kelleher informed me via Twitter that Jack Nicholson was referring to warning Ledger about the sleeping pill Ambien. This, of course, makes far more sense. However it has also been reported that the Aurora killer had died his hair red and told police that he was 'The Joker'. God knows where this can of worms will lead, no doubt there will be further revelations in the days to come.
We have seen plenty of real-world vigilante superheroes springing up, and it appears that we now have a wannabe super-villain equivalent. Which, disturbingly, was exactly how The Joker character was introduced in Nolan's Batman films, as a reaction to the existence of superheroes in the world.
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Albionist: Paradise Is Your Birthright
The following is an essay I wrote a couple of years ago for an art exhibition entitled Albionist: Paradise Is Your Birthright, which attempted to look at modern Britain through the eyes of William Blake. For various reasons the exhibition never happened (not least of which being the death of one of its focal figure), although it will be recreated online this December. This essay will be published then as part of a free ebook, along with an article on William Blake by CJ Stone, a look at the Gog Magog hill figures as art by Flinton Chalk, and an alternative founding myth for these islands by Brian Barritt.
Following Danny Boyle's wonderful Olympic opening ceremony yesterday, however, it seems like a good time to stick this online. For any Brits who in no way consider themselves patriotic but were strangely affected by the ceremony, and for any non-Brits who have found themselves looking at Britain and thinking WTF?, this may be give a bit of perspective.
This is an exhibition of Albionist art. Albionism is the recognition of a spirit.
Don’t be too concerned by that. I know that ‘spirit’ is a loaded word these days. It’s used so casually and in so many different contexts that you can never be sure if it refers to something real. To be clear, when I say ‘spirit’ I am not talking about something real. It is nothing that you could measure or contain, nothing material, nothing that has mass or velocity. It is not available in a range of colours and you cannot have it gift-wrapped. It is something that simply doesn’t exist.
It behaves like it exists, of course. But that’s not the same as actually existing.
And you’ve been influenced by it, and you can recognise it. The people in your home and town, they know it too. People no longer living, and people not yet born, in generations moving away from where you are now in both directions, through hundreds of years, then thousands, all these people would recognise the exact same thing.
As I say, it behaves like it exists, and that’s enough.
Albionism is the recognition of a visionary spirit, a spirit that arises from these islands. It raises us up and, cleverly, it also prevents us from falling into the abyss of nationalism. This may seem contradictory, but it will make sense once you look at the aspects of this spirit.
These are the three aspects of Albionism: it is bawdy, anarchic and accepting.
We’ll look at each of those aspects in turn:
Albionism is a bawdy spirit.
Consider The Miller’s Tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This features a lusty clerk who, desiring to steal a kiss from a carpenter’s wife, is tricked into kissing an arse sticking out of a window. Anyone British who reads this story will recognise this style of humour. It runs through the Carry On films, post-war seaside postcards, Viz Comic, Hogarth and Little Britain. It is lusty, and base, and crude. It is immediately recognisable, the world over, as being very British.
More than 600 years have passed since Chaucer wrote that tale. Why has that sense of humour not been affected by the passing of those years? During that time cities replaced villages, industry replaced agriculture, population exploded, an Empire came and went and the rest of the world was encountered and absorbed. The daily life of the people of these islands was torn up and rewritten time and time again. How, then, is it that this sense of humour remained unscathed? How is it that completely different people living completely different lives produce and react to the same humour? Here we have a sense of humour that transcends centuries, and there is only one linking thread. That is the island it emerged from.
The story of the crucifixion had been around for nearly 2000 years before Eric Idle thought, “you know, it could do with a song. Something cheery, with whistling”. Always Look On The Bright Side of Life is loved throughout the world, but could it have been written anywhere else? Could it have been written by a Frenchmen, or an American, or a Brazilian? It is difficult to imagine a non-Brit writing that song, and if they had it seems likely that the result would have had a very different charm.
Note that these two examples emerge from a sacred narrative, from the act of pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket and the Crucifixion itself. Neither is an attempt to deny the spiritual. Instead, the sacred setting is used as a tool to increase the delight in mockery. It is like drawing a cock on the entrance to a temple, not because you deny the teachings of the temple, but because it’s the funniest possible place to draw a cock.
Bawdiness itself has a similar function. It is a sexual humour, and its targets are the elements of our personalities that are most clearly revealed as absurd by our sex lives. There is a very good reason why most cultures do not find comedy in sex, and that is because sex should not be funny. If you look at what comedy actually is, it is an awareness of ignorance. Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp does not know that there is a banana skin on the pavement where he walks, but we do. Ricky Gervais’ David Brent does not know that dancing in that way is not acceptable in a corporate environment, but we do. Likewise, the characters of bawdy humour, the hectoring fishwives, the terrified scrawny men and the lust-driven lechers, do not see themselves as we see them. The aim of sex is not to be aware of yourself, it is to stop existing. It is for two people to dissolve away and become no-one.
Which is, of course, what makes bawdy humour so inappropriate and hence so funny.
Likewise, spiritual enlightenment promises overwhelming understanding and omniscience. Albionism doesn’t deny that, but it knows that gaining omniscience makes comedy impossible because it removes the necessary ignorance. Luckily, though, we are not enlightened yet. We live in a realm of comedy and music. We’ll be in eternity for long enough but for now at least, arses are funny.
Albionism is an anarchic spirit.
Anarchy is not chaos. Anarchy is an absence of leaders or authority. Anarchy can produce order, but to do so requires a practical mind. It is what works that matters, not what makes sense.
In their book Blighty Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur spent a year exploring the matter of Britain and came to understand how practicality defined the natural character far more than common sense. At the end of their journey they wished to perform an act to mark its end and, inspired by all the Druids they met along the way, knew that making something up was a reasonable solution when there is a lack of a genuine ritual. In this spirit they headed for the sea, with the aim of making a sacrifice to the waves by throwing in some food. But what food? A bitter argument built up between McArthur, who wished to throw a chicken into the sea, and Lowe, who felt that throwing a chicken into the sea was not the sort of thing he wished to put his name to. The pair became deeply entrenched in these positions and, as their argument became increasingly bitter, a successful outcome seemed unlikely.
Eventually they arrived at the coast and went to buy food from a local Spar. Here they found, shrink-wrapped and all but ignored in the corner of the fridge cabinet, half a roast chicken. This, clearly, was the answer. It was a compromise that made no sense whatsoever, but it was a compromise that they both could accept. Hence, their year long quest ended with the ritual throwing of half a chicken into the sea, and a profound point about the national character was demonstrated.
You can see this at work in much of the British state, a hodgepodge of arcane and unjustifiable institutions that have survived the centuries for no other reason than they (just about) sort of work. The monarchy is a prime example. The notion of a hereditary monarchy is not easy to defend, as much of the rest of the world would be quick to argue. Yet we keep ours for practical reasons, because the alternative is to have a politician as Head of State.
Politicians are largely unaware that they are nothing but middle management, doomed to be swept away by fate and great movements which they neither understand nor control. They believe that they have some form of ‘power’, some form of ‘authority’. This delusion of authority means that those who assume the symbolic role of Head of State infect the idea of their nation with their own dysfunctional ego. On a practical level, we keep the monarchy because we recognise that an idiotic system is better than a cancerous one.
The monarchy showed a deep understanding of the spirit of the nation when they cast off any pretence of power in favour of a purely symbolic existence. They are our pets, and we look after them. And yes, we probably do spend too much money on them, and they can misbehave and we were wrong not to get some of the spare ones neutered, but look at them! Look how funny they are, look at their little faces! You could argue that it is cruel, I suppose, keeping them caged up like that, unable to live a natural life. But they don’t seem to mind, do they? You don’t hear them complain. What we have here is a system that works (provided, of course, that they only people who take it seriously are the tourists).
Keeping the royal cage supported, however, does involve an elaborate system of private schools, private clubs, and the fostering of a pretence of elitism on many thousands of innocent victims. We need to be honest here; this is cruel. These people, who think themselves ‘the upper class’, could have lived and enjoyed genuine, valuable lives instead of the fake, delusional existences we condemn them too.
I don’t claim this system is perfect.
What has this got to do with anarchy? With anarchy, you have to work things out yourself. By denying authority in others you must become responsible for yourself. You have to find a way, and if the only way that works is idiotic it is still the only way that works. Nobody is responsible for you, because nobody has authority over you.
It is this aspect that in part explains the importance of comedy in Albionism. The British way of dealing with a problem, namely by taking the piss and waiting for it to go away, is remarkably effective. Consider the alternative, such as Richard Dawkins’ attempts to attack religion through logic and anger. Dawkins was angered, to take one example, by organised religion’s habit of indoctrinating children through education. As a result of his attacks, however, the monotheists dug in, came out fighting, and now there are many more religious schools operating or planned in this country than before. As a result, he has undone much of the good work achieved by the Monty Python team in The Life of Brian. The tactic of taking the piss and waiting for things to go away is preferred over logic and anger simply because it works better.
In both of these aspects we see a refusal to take seriously any claims by others to have authority over ourselves. This brings us to the third aspect of Albionism.
Albionism is an accepting spirit.
Head out, away from noise and distraction and into the country. See the moors and downs, walk the coastal paths and the woodlands. There is a voice you will hear, when it is quiet enough. A gentle female voice which you will hear time and time again, when you are still.
I’m not making any distinction about “England”, “Scotland” or “Wales” here. These are arbitrary distinctions produced by quirks of history. Different corners of these islands have different personalities, sure, and perhaps this Albionist voice is clearer in some places than others. But you can hear that voice on every part of these islands for every part is wonderful, and enchanted.
Have you heard it? It is perhaps louder in older places, where you are put in the context not of now but of always.
That voice says, “You are welcome.”
It tells you that you are in the right place. This is where you are supposed to be. You are welcome.
And that voice says the same to everyone, it always has and it always will. That voice was heard by the Celtic immigrants when they first arrived in these islands. It was heard by the Angles, the Jutes and the Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans. It was heard by the West Indians, the Indians and the Poles. And yes, not everyone listens and not everyone hears it. Some people shut themselves away in their suburban prisons and hide from it by immersing themselves in the Daily Mail and lashing out whenever they feel joy start to stir within them. But everyone has the potential to hear it, regardless of how tough their lives are or how deprived their backgrounds.
Not everyone understands it, or at least not at first. You can see it this in inner-city grime artists returning from the Glastonbury Festival, aware that something inside them has changed but not having the context to understand exactly what. Sometimes it will take a generation, sometimes even two. But it doesn’t matter how strong the original culture or family is, or how little an individual cares to listen. At some point they will hear, “You are welcome”, and they will feel a connection and they will feel at home. And at that point, they know they are British. The Albionist spirit always wins out.
When Nick Griffin, the leader of the quasi-fascist BNP, appeared on BBC’s Question Time programme he was asked about a series of BNP adverts which featured Winston Churchill. The question was whether these adverts misrepresent Churchill, a renowned fighter of fascists who would have been appalled to be used this way by such a party. But this was the wrong question. What they should have asked him is whether the word ‘British’ in ‘British National Party’ was in any way justifiable. For whatever you think of the British, there is no way, no conceivable way, that they would line up in jackboots and march behind Nick Griffin. There is no-one alive who could put their hand on their heart and swear that this is in any way possible – not even Nick Griffin.
Loyalty to a leader is a temporary thing in these islands, granted for practical reasons when it is necessary. And it is necessary, sometimes, to get things done. National Health Services don’t build themselves, you know. In most circumstances, though, a leader’s self-proclaimed authority is a cause for ridicule. We can live with it because we know that by throwing shit and stones we can prevent ourselves from ever falling for it.
That voice, that understanding that we are welcome and accepted here, is all we need. It is enough to support us and give us confidence. Why would we need an authority over us when we have that? Why indeed would any individual, who hears the same voice, try to claim authority over others? The only answer is that they are deluded, and the only response is to take the piss.
It is a hang-up from World War II, but we are too harsh on the fascists. So they have an overwhelming need to hang out with men with a similar skin colour to themselves? Who are we to judge? Provided they harm none, we should accept them for what they are and respect this desire for the company of similarly-skinned others. Why should they not have special clubs where they can go? We fear their potential for violence, but left alone in their special clubs alongside men with skin just how they like it, would they be so angry? They will always be a small minority, it is true, and they will always be funny with their shiny boots and shiny heads. But surely they are as welcome here as everyone else?
Is this not the famous British sense of “fair play”? When no authority is taken seriously, there is no way to justify one individual getting special treatment over others. And so, we queue. We applaud Pakistan or Sri Lanka when they outclass us at cricket. We create organisations for the greater good, such as the NHS and the BBC, and we feel a deep sense of loss when the capitalists destroy such organisations, such as the Royal Mail or British Rail.
Look at the idealised British folk heroes: Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond or Doctor Who. These are all people who are heroes because of their bravery and exceptional skills, not because of any rank or status. They may mix with figures of authority, they may even work for them, but they never lose their anti-establishment grounding. More importantly, they are driven not by personal gain but by the desire to do the right thing, to promote the greater good. If you look at the narratives of other cultures, this is surprisingly rare. American folk heroes, for example, tend to be gangsters or cowboys, men whose focus is their own personal freedom and gain.
This sense of ‘fair play’ and the ‘greater good’ follows naturally from this welcome that requires no authority.
There are those who have tried to deny that voice for their own gain. But no-one has succeeded in drowning it out yet.
Chances are, it will always be there.
Albionism, then, is a bawdy, anarchic, accepting spirit. These aspects, in turn, make it an anti-establishment spirit. But is it also true to say that it is a visionary spirit?
Is it visionary in the sense of William Blake, seeing a tree filled with Angels in Peckham Rye?
Is it visionary in the sense of Francis Crick, suddenly understanding the double helix structure of DNA whilst under the influence of LSD?
Is it visionary in the sense of Doctor Dee, rushing from the counsel of the Virgin Queen to converse with spirits?
Is it visionary in the sense of Dickens, struggling against the injustice of Victorian capitalism yet still able to create something as beautiful as the Ghost of Christmas Present?
Albionism is not about looking up to these visionaries. They have no innate status over us, for all that we may enjoy marvelling at their genius. Albionism is not a request to respect them; it is an invitation to join them. We have no need of authorities to grant access to our Higher Selves, we just need to help each other up. It is no coincidence that this country, which gave the world everything from football to democracy, from the Beatles to the Industrial Revolution, from Shakespeare to Newton, never gave the world a religion (with the possible recent exception of earth spirit-based Wicca.)
Or to put it another way: Look for the Albionist spirit.
Look for it in the green turf Mohican that a protester slapped on the head of a statue of Churchill.
Look for it in the cock of the Cerne Abbas Giant.
Look for it in the foam pie thrown at Rupert Murdoch in parliament.
Look for it in the catchphrase, “They don’t like it up ‘em!”
Look for it in our complete bafflement about the building of Silbury Hill.
Look for it in the Restoration of the Monarchy, after a decade of Cromwell.
Look for it in the Beatles making a TV film to be shown to the whole nation on Boxing Day 1967, and coming up with Magical Mystery Tour.
Look for it in safety pin through the Queen’s nose on Sex Pistols’ record sleeves. Look for it when Jeremy Paxman patronised Dizzee Rascal on Newsnight and Dizzee just sampled the whole thing and used it as part of his Glastonbury set.
Look for it in the Blitz spirit, and the insistence that Hitler only had one ball.
Look for it and you will find it everywhere. Look for it until you are saturated in it and until you can see it running through your history, culture and the ruts of your own brain like the words running through the length of a stick of Blackpool rock.
Look for it amongst the content of this exhibition.
And then remember, it doesn’t exist.
I was very clear about that at the start. This is not something that is objectively real.
Then look at it again, and ask yourself what it is that you are looking at.
Now you can answer that question for yourself:
Is Albionism a visionary spirit?
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The Brandy of the Damned update
The Brandy of the Damned is now available as a very handsome paperback. It is available from all good bookshops that are called Amazon.
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It will set you back £8.99 but if you're a member of Goodreads, you may be able to snaffle a copy for free - there's a giveaway there that ends on Sept 10th.
![The Brandy of the Damned by J.M.R. Higgs]( "The Brandy of the Damned by J.M.R. Higgs")
Enter to winReviewers are calling it "Wonderfully unhinged", "delightfully skewed", "increasingly mesmerising" and so forth. I particularly like this review from CJ Stone, where he, er, compares it to the Marquis De Sade. (If anyone wants a review copy, of course, just shout - there are paperbacks and ebooks available).
I'm also appearing at the Windsor Bookswap at Waterstones Windsor on October 18th - more about that in due course!
It will set you back £8.99 but if you're a member of Goodreads, you may be able to snaffle a copy for free - there's a giveaway there that ends on Sept 10th.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Brandy of the Damned
by J.M.R. Higgs
Giveaway ends September 10, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
I'm also appearing at the Windsor Bookswap at Waterstones Windsor on October 18th - more about that in due course!
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KLF essay in Darklore Volume 7
Darklore volume 7 is now available, and it's a goody. It contains much that is exquisitely strange and disturbing from writers including Mike Jay, Robert Schoch, Mark Pesce, Blair Mackensie Blake, Cat Vincent and Greg Taylor. Full details can be found here.
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This collection has something of a theme of the blurring boundaries between the real and the imagined, which if you've read The Brandy of the Damned you'll know is something of an interest of mine. My contribution is a 7000 word essay concerning the influence of Robert Anton Wilson on the British rave band The KLF, entitled From Operation Mindfuck to The White Room. It includes this freaky-as-all-hell illustration by Isoban.
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The essay as adapted from a book I wrote earlier in the year called KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money. That book was intended as a response to the burning of a million quid on the isle of Jura by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It is a story about Discordianism, Dada, Situationists, Alan Moore, Ken Campbell, Robert Anton Wilson and the alchemical properties of Doctor Who.
Now I won't lie; it very quickly turned into a very strange book and it troubles me. The original plan was to put it out around now but at the moment I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it. I'm toying with the idea of only printing five copies that you can't buy, but which you can borrow. In this network era when everything is available to anyone - or it's not available to anyone - that seems strangely appropriate for a book about The KLF.
I don't have to make a decision for a few weeks, however, when it returns from its final copy edit. On the one hand I want it out as a record of the influence Robert Anton Wilson had here in the UK, because I'm very fond of Robert Anton Wilson. On the other hand, I would do much better shelving it to concentrate on the new novel that will be finished by the end of the year, The First Church on the Moon, because that is turning into something truly peachy.
So, we'll see.
Whatever happens I'm not going to burn it, though. That would be crazy.
In completely unrelated news, I'm appearing at Waterstones' in Windsor on Thursday evening, alongside Niven Govinden, and more details can be found here.
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This collection has something of a theme of the blurring boundaries between the real and the imagined, which if you've read The Brandy of the Damned you'll know is something of an interest of mine. My contribution is a 7000 word essay concerning the influence of Robert Anton Wilson on the British rave band The KLF, entitled From Operation Mindfuck to The White Room. It includes this freaky-as-all-hell illustration by Isoban.
The essay as adapted from a book I wrote earlier in the year called KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money. That book was intended as a response to the burning of a million quid on the isle of Jura by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. It is a story about Discordianism, Dada, Situationists, Alan Moore, Ken Campbell, Robert Anton Wilson and the alchemical properties of Doctor Who.
Now I won't lie; it very quickly turned into a very strange book and it troubles me. The original plan was to put it out around now but at the moment I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it. I'm toying with the idea of only printing five copies that you can't buy, but which you can borrow. In this network era when everything is available to anyone - or it's not available to anyone - that seems strangely appropriate for a book about The KLF.
I don't have to make a decision for a few weeks, however, when it returns from its final copy edit. On the one hand I want it out as a record of the influence Robert Anton Wilson had here in the UK, because I'm very fond of Robert Anton Wilson. On the other hand, I would do much better shelving it to concentrate on the new novel that will be finished by the end of the year, The First Church on the Moon, because that is turning into something truly peachy.
So, we'll see.
Whatever happens I'm not going to burn it, though. That would be crazy.
In completely unrelated news, I'm appearing at Waterstones' in Windsor on Thursday evening, alongside Niven Govinden, and more details can be found here.
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