Don’t Tase Me, Bro!

This is the first time that I have incorporated a YouTube video into a post on English Dreaming, English Rain. However, it is an important video in terms of reflecting our current culture and I am posting it here despite the fact it has already become an incredibly successful meme. (Thank you to the dozen or so people who took the time to send it me). People often ask me why I bother to write about conspiracies and parapolitics. The truthful answer at its most simple is this: while 95% of all conspiracies are bullshit, the 5% that are not matter.

I have also always said that the 5% should also be an antidote to your passivity. The 5% should make you prepared to do something about those forces that conspire against all of us even if they only conspire to shoot just one man.
The video shows what happens when Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student, does something about what he believes to be a conspiracy. Something as simple and innocuous as asking questions of a politician in a public forum. If I can be forgiven the bad pun, most people find what happens to him shocking, though as a hardened, parapolitical sceptic I am far from surprised.

Once you have seen the video, you can debate whether Meyer is a bit of an arse, but it is clear the only threat he posed was as an annoyance. In my judgement, he was just trying to exercise his mythical First Amendment rights and ask exactly the questions I would want to put to John Kerry. Pranks can be more than just entertainment; they are often a legitimate form of symbolic sabotage to the Empire of Symbols. Given the potential lethality of Tasers, it seems that asking about the Skulls and Bones is now to be considered a crime punishable by possible lethal force.

At least the coverage generated will benefit nascent Meyer’s comedy career. It will also ensure he does not spend too long incarcerated in Alachua County (the type of hellhole jail I have nightmares about visiting if I return to America). Already on t-shirts and destined to be trivialised by being his catchphrase, ‘Don’t Tase me, Bro!’ ought to be a reminder that the last thing those in ever power want are individual citizens asking for straight answers over the conspiracies that can be proven and proven to matter.

‘Don’t Tase me, Bro!’ should also serve as a warning to those in the Con-sensual resistance movement. Unless it can ditch the unproven bullshit and demonstrate the relevance of their research to the wider populace, no-one will be rushing to help them. No one is going to raise a protest when the police Taser them for asking questions about HAARP, the DRA’s Dorchester secrets or the AI component of Magistrand. The end result of allowing those we need to question to make the C-word dirty is going to be that they deliver 50,000-volts of hurt to all us annoyances with even greater ease.

Voodoo Child

Today is usually one of my favourite days in the capital’s calendar – Open House London. However, as I am on a deadline and alone in the city, the usual tour of usually restricted churches, towers and libraries is muted by both time and mood. Trying hard not to wear my grump head, I drift towards Oxford Street before finding my way into the obscurity of Brook Street.

Although I am ostensibly visiting the Handel House Museum, it is not George Frederick who brings me calling today. For while Handel lived at 25 Brook Street some 250 years ago, it was next door at number 23 that Jimi Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham lived between 1968-1970. In a rather fabulous piece of musical pantheism, the worshipers of Handel who now occupy both properties have created a shrine to the guitar god in the rooms of the upstairs flat he used.

Climbing the creaking staircases to the top of 23, I join a small party getting one of the only two public tours given each year. Whether it is coincidence this tour happens in the week marking the anniversary of Hendrix’s death or another nod to Handel mob’s generous pantheism is never made clear. It certainly seems as if some of the other tourists are beyond nostalgia and simple curiosity, deep initiates of some Hendrix boneyard cult on pilgrimage.

As for me, I am here researching for the Hendrix bio-pic script I am still working on. I know the story I want Voodoo Child to tell. How a man once expelled from school for holding hands with his white girlfriend, found the cultural hoodoo side of London in the sixties allowed him to make his syncretic mix of “earth” and “space” music. How the alchemic clash of person and time in the crucible of changed forever the way music is both played and heard. How the musician who best embodied the spirit of his age became lost to its demons.

The desire to tell this myth brings me to 23. Some mad sense that by rubbing against the rooms restored to their 1968 state my imagination will be ignited. Hunting temporal shades, trying to catch a glimpse of another time still echoing forward. Building psychometry.

It is only in the master bedroom the phyiscal traces build to obvious rock star plush. A crimson carpet that swallows your feet; the draped bed that seems a distant cousin of the Great Bed of Ware; Imperial purple curtains and rugs whose intricate designs would cause contemplation even if you were not as drug-addled as Hendrix. It is recreation of exactly the ridiculous boudoir bling expect of a man who could get away with wearing a Hussar’s jacket.

The Pyschic Boy powers kick in, possibly aided by the white woodchip walls (a touch of overpowering authenticity and one that hints Jimi’s Achilles’ heel may have home décor). While everyone else is looking at the unpublished photographs, I get an explosive flash. A room decorated more by empty bottles than Persian rugs, a pea-souper of dope smog, a wasted George Harrison crashing out. Nothing else till I am about to leave, when I get static-riddled burst of a naked Hendrix, drunk or high, fumbling as he tries open the front door.

Given that Hendrix’s wishes to be buried in England were ignored and his unfinished memorial in Seattle merely a testament to gross exploitation, the restrained way Handel House Museum handle his legacy is a model of how to honour a dead legend. They do not push souvenirs; they do not claim authenticity or offer holy relics. All that is provided is access to the space, some words and an opportunity to push your mind into the past.

Being at 23 Brook Street gives me scenes, but does not develop the narrative. I know now I will have to make the journey to Ladbroke Grove at some point. See if there is anything left in the ghost of the Samarkand Hotel other than the death choke instant burned into the forever. Beyond temporal shades, if anything at the flat brings me closer to Hendrix, it is looking out the window to the city below. London’s magic is something we both have felt.

An Explorer’s Route

Yesterday was the feast of Oshun, Queen of all rivers. Some say all the sweet waters of life come from her tears because she constantly cries; weeping at the knowledge the world is not as beautiful as she knows it could be. Usually honoured with sweet wine, pastries, honey and bronze coins, there seems no better day to travel the water, journeying east to where the Regent’s Canal meets the Thames.

The boat chugs with a rhythmic diesel splutter and leaves its mooring. As we pass Dead Dog Tunnel my mind runs ahead of our four miles per hour speed and I think of the Isle of Dogs. The enigma of its naming dances in the imagination whenever you set out towards it. My mind is awash with Moon Card hounds howling at the towers of Canary Wharf.

To meet the Thames we must fall 86 feet. Our first descent at Hampstead Road Lock sets the pattern. Window drops from towpath to dry stone, then to moss and water slimed wall revealing greened bricks bearing the stamp 1915. It is the same at Hawley Lock and Kentish Town Lock. Wood and iron gates are opened then shut, gears turn, water rushes and foams a boiling white as we descend down.

The boat travels not just through water, but history itself. The first signs come before we have even cleared Hawley Lock. Two-inch grooves have been smoothed into iron by countless years of horses and rope. Elsewhere the turns of fortune are measured in the buildings. Camden Brewery long closed, it brick bones became home to TV-AM. Now that channel is forever dead, phantom static lost to the stars, its egg-adorned ramparts are cracked and rotting while its studios are hijacked by MTV.

We make passage through the patch of St. Pancras where the shanties of Agar Town stood. Now as then, you see what those in London consume most is space. Old buildings are reclaimed. The stones and bricks that once turned their backs to industry of the canal are now forced to embrace it in the form of converted waterfront flats.

Alien species, the hoodoo heritage of being a port flourish in the Camley Street Natural Park. The former Cambridge Street Coal Depot now marsh, meadow and reed bed. Rare tropical grasses mix with hemlock water dropwort and skullcap. The expected herons and moorhens rubbing shoulders with aggressive terrapins.

Travelling under the new Channel Tunnel link, old panels mask new concrete and steel. Tourist glamour as the line to Europe rolls above. It will not be long before the crumbling behemoth of the Great Northern coal depot will be forced to follow the redevelopment path; become yuppy flats with compulsory balconies so small you cannot even put plants on them. Already I envy the coming owners their views – the gas holders’ complex ironwork skeletons are testament to the Victorian ability to grace even choking industry with an element of beauty. Who would not want Battlebridge Basin and the chance to imagine the flicker of Boadicean fire?

We cross over the culverted Fleet, the lost river below us. Currents and flow hidden from the eye, we must soon disappear as well. The boat enters the Islington Tunnel – 960 yards of underworld. Engine echo instead of feet on the ceiling, but the journey through the darkness still feels like hard work. We are reborn in sunlight and enjoy a blue plaque moment, remembering it was at 25 Noel Street that Kenneth killed Joe.

Psychogeography on the water is new and disorientating. The pace does not flag after six miles of concrete. There is no drifting into diversion, only drifting when the engine splutters out and we still inch forward. The push is relentless, the room to manoeuvre set by the bound of the banks. Even at four miles per hour, on the canal our view of London seems to have sped up. This means we lose detail can become but new impressions arise. For the first time I see how violent graffiti blooms in Hackney and Tower Hamlet is rich in crows.

The way ahead takes us under the Fenchurch Street viaduct, under Commercial Road. This is my first ever time below the London start of the A13, key ley of English Hoodoo and as Billy Bragg would have it: ‘The okay road that’s the best.’ (Though others might prefer Jah Wobble’s lyrics proclaiming it: ‘A way of life, a way of death’).

Breaking into the Limehouse Basin, the narrow line of the canal gives way to a lake of green algae that scrunches and pops as we make our way through it. Like a rampant science fiction experiment, it becalms and slowly consumes all flotsam, making it look like all the boats are beached on a field of clover. The skyline is full of enough strangeness to usually keep me occupied for days. The pyramid-topped incongruity of Canary Wharf dominates, but insane Disney-esque giant Sacred Heart statue atop Our Lady Immaculate and the tower of Hawksmoor’s St. Anne can still be seen when the seemingly relentless, replicating flats pause for breath.

Despite the fact it is Ramsay holding, we pause to enjoy potent gin and tonics at The Narrow. Klaxons blast, barriers come down and the whole road beside us swings. Narrow Street has gone, the ship lock open and there is now nothing between the waters of the canal and Thames except an imaginary line imposed by the mind.

The first river of Albion reached and greeted, it is an explorer’s route homeward. We crawl along the Limehouse Cut – its name like a resonant scar in the landscape – then push north ups the River Lee Navigation before turning into the Hertford Union. Trees swish the water, afternoon sun ricochets off of brick and stone to graze the reflections our boat constantly breaks. Bow has never looked more beautiful.

I am seeing another London. One where the presence of water seems to calm the worst excesses of the city, where it is perfectly normal that Neville Staples of The Specials is opening the St. Barnabas fete. Stopping at Old Ford, I search for herb and chillies to grow while Surreal Girl treats me to an ice cream. She also buys a Lotto ticket – she has seen waterside cottages she wants to buy. The trip gives me my own new lottery dreams to take back west.

Heading back, I try to trap memories with the camera, grabbing good shots of the gas holders’ bones against the ripening pink sky. However, my eye is not quick enough to catch the boat topped with a skull and candles or the best of the flourishing graffiti. At least I glimpse the time shade cameo of Hitchcock, haunting the site of Gainsborough Film Studios, huffing at the building’s latest reincarnation as the obligatory luxury apartments.

The arc of our wake creates hits the bank, waves echoing back in hypnotic patterns that would make Bridget Riley proud. Weariness hits me as climb through the locks towards the fading bustle of Camden’s markets. The boat moored, I am more aware than ever for the blessings of the water, dropping my coppers into the darkness with joy.

Jude Law

London is one of those cities where you can walk a few yards and flow across a divide of money, security and class so deep it would take generations or several violent revolutions to cross any other way. By bon chance, I am an oik who for the next few months at least, is sharing space and views with Russian oligarchs. Yet within seconds I can exchange tranquillity and beauty for a carpet of crushed glass and a soundtrack of K’nann.

Nothing illustrates this better for me than my choice of where to get the papers from on a Sunday morning. With several newsagents equidistant from where I live, I can choose to walk through a council estate or flit up Victorian mews. On one journey I may meet a former child soldier from Somalia, the other Sienna Miller giving an exaggerated performance of being trying to be unobtrusive while waiting on her driver.

My own unwanted brushes with recognition, ennui at the whole notion of celebrity and a very English sense that it is rude to bother someone you do not know while there are about their own business means I would never dream of stopping any of my recognisable neighbours. Even the huge Who geek in me has not been enough to make me ask Billy Piper for an autograph when I have twice bumped into her as she took a Sunday canalside walk. Twist will rage at me for ‘wasted opportunities’ when he reads this, but I would hate to be bothered on my patch. Therefore I use that as my guiding principle when seeing the likes of Louis Theroux or Milos Forman by the water. Their fame and my admiration for their work does not give me a right to talk at them uninvited.

Today I saw Jude Law. Beyond the second or two of starring as I tried to work out where I knew his face from, I ignored him. Feeding the ducks is much more absorbing than watching an actor walking with his child. I paid only paid attention in the first place because seeing a man clearly enjoying the company of his son always gives me a moment glowing joy. It is one of those sights which make the world seem like a good place before regret over not being able to remember my father being like that with me intrudes.

A few hours later I heard that Law had been arrested that afternoon for an attack on a photographer. Allegedly he tried to grab the paparazzi’s camera, shouting only a paedophile would want to take pictures of his children. Whatever happened, it was enough for Law to be arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm and bailed to return to the police station in October. Bizarrely, despite my years as a journalist, I feel immense empathy for Law. Yes you do give up some of your expectations of privacy when your work makes you a recognized face, but you never give up your right as a parent to defend your children.

Being Captain Swing

I find it hard to care about art wank. Art matters. Ideas matters. However, the elitist cliques, feuds, politics and ingrained cultural snobbery of the clever-clever art crowd are just appalling to me. Pointless mystification, naff satire and deconstruction … all so ridiculous, so inane. The one thing I admire about certain pseudo-Situationists though is their construction and use of collective identities. Whether is as Autonomous Astronauts or Luther Blissett, the more our data is mined, the more multiple-use name makes sense as a strategy. In a Web 2.0 world, we might all benefit from being Captain Swing or Taliesin.