A Grand Don't Come For Free:My One Thousandth Blog.

Two thousand, three hundred and twenty three days ago, on Monday 8th February 2016, I wrote (and posted) my first ever blog. Today, Sunday 19th June 2022, I am writing (and posting) my one thousandth. Quite a lot has happened in that time.

When I first wrote I didn't need to wear glasses, I didn't have a beard (see photo at the bottom of this piece to see how I've aged), we hadn't had the referendum on EU membership (though it was looming) and we certainly hadn't got Brexit done (we still haven't - not really), David Cameron was the PM, and Barack Obama was the President of the United States. Most us had never even heard the words 'coronavirus' or 'Covid' let alone lived through a pandemic and a series of lockdowns.

The spectre of the ghastly Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister that had loomed so long came to pass like a slow motion car crash and has remained a disaster since day one - as it will until they drag him from Downing Street. Division and discord have dominated the last six and a half years and, because of that, I have written often about those subjects.

But, in that first ever blog, as well as writing that I'd be "sharing rants about politics, religion, ideologies and other ways humans organise their lives in the 21st century", I also wrote that I was "not sure what exactly I'm going to write about on here but chances are music, art and walking will feature prominently" - and so they have.

My series of 34 (and running) Kakistocracy blogs about this governement's negligence, incompetence, corruption, dishonesty, and criminality has felt, to me, like something I have had to do to stop myself exploding with rage but when I write about music, walking, and art - as well as cinema and theatre - it is with a passion for life and I hope that comes through in the writing.

I'm far from a perfect writer but I do believe I am better than average and sometimes I become upset when people don't read or react to my blogs - especially ones I feel very passionate about. I have to remind myself that people have lives, jobs, kids, and other interests. They're very busy and I write a lot so I can't expect people to read them all.

Mind you, if you haven't read a single one by now then please remind me why we are still friends when you have had six years to support this creative venture and have chosen not to do so? 

I only half-joke. For years before I started this blog, and continuing now, there has been a small group of people telling me I should write a book some time. Sadly, it's not that easy. It takes time and it costs money and, ideally, you need somebody to publish it. With blogs, anyone can have a go and though I'd flirted with the idea for a while it wasn't until Damon, of all people, suggested I start one and sent me a link to this website that the idea took hold.

I expect he just wanted me to stop ranting and raving and going on on Facebook (how did that work out?) but, nevertheless, I thank him for finding an outlet for my words. Some of the proudest moments in this blogging 'career' have been the times people have told me they've cried reading my writing. Alex told me she cried reading a thing I wrote about migrant children in Calais, Cheryl told me she cried reading an account of a Broken Social Scene gig in the aftermath of the massacre at the Ariana Grande gig, and my mum told me she cried when I finally plucked up the courage to write a piece about my brother, Steven, who died aged 22 in 1999.

Since I've been writing this, I've lost both my nan, Hazel, and one of my oldest and best friends Bugsy. Both were sad - of course - but though I expected my nan to die, Bugsy was just fifty-one and there were periods before and after his death when life felt unbearably unfair and there were periods when I lost track of my self and fell into a sea of booze fuelled self-pity.

That's something I've done, on occasions, throughout much of my adult life and it's not something I'm proud of. I console myself that unlike another friend I've lost (he didn't die, I just couldn't bear to be around his hatred and violence any longer) I take most of it out on myself instead of others. But, still, it's not ideal.

I like the version of myself that arranges walks, sets quizzes, phones his friends, remembers their birthdays, and, yes, writes blogs a lot more than I like the version of myself that sits in Wetherspoons pubs staring into space and posts ugly remarks on social media.

I've always struggled with anxiety and at times that moves towards, and even into, depression. I've never been fully suicidal but I have had lots of, far too much, experience of suicidal ideation (checking the spelling on that on Google I am directed straight to the Samaritans!). Right now, I feel pretty happy with life - I had a lovely walk and tasty curry with good company yesterday and this coming week I'm heading off to north Wales to go on holiday with Michelle and Evie, but I know that the black dog is a very persistent mutt and will no doubt be back when he's hungry enough.

I have to remember not to feed the incorrigible cur. Not encourage him. Part of the reason I write is to help exorcise these demons but I also write to celebrate all that good is in life. For me, much of that is when I manage to get out with my friends for walks in either the countryside or the city, chatting away, stopping for a beer or two, enjoying a curry, and mucking about on the train.

Nearly 10% of all my blogs have been about walking and some of the walks (I think of the two recent Welsh weekends in Llangollen and Chepstow, an Itchen stroll from Eastleigh to Winchester, and my Magnificent Seven cemetery trilogy though there are many more I could include) really do lift my spirits like almost nothing else.

I say almost nothing else because one thing that lifts them even more is spending time with my god-daughter Evie who is the most wonderful, clever, funny, cute, and curious little girl. Despite being an out and out heathen (and proudly writing about that) I was overwhelmed with joy and happiness when Michelle asked me to become her godfather and I can't wait to see her again. Which I will do - very soon.

Despite my anxiety, I've always been like that. I look forward to meeting people and I look forward to doing things. I'd like to say that every day I wake up hopeful but the picture is a bit fuzzier than that. I somehow managed to not get too down during the worst of the pandemic and that is, I think, because my friends, most of them, were brilliant and so were my parents. 

Mum rang every morning during the worst of it and we talked, sometimes for well over an hour, about subjects we'd never touched on before. I felt I got to know her better than I had ever been able to. When Ian suggested we do a weekly, or twice weekly, quiz that, too, was a great way of staying in touch with friends as well as making new ones.

As with my daily music 'challenges', the quizzes had a finite life span but they were both fun, and crucial to keeping the mental welfare up, while they happened. Though Covid remains, the pandemic era is pretty much over and the idea of returning to lockdowns seems almost impossible (not least because who'd trust this government to oversee one?) and life is getting back to normal.

That's good - but also not so good. It's good to be able to go out and meet people in person, to travel, to go to art galleries, theatres, and cinemas again but 'normal'? Normal didn't seem so great before the pandemic. Increasing numbers of homeless people on the streets, increased use of food banks, an epidemic of loneliness and self-medication, and a self-serving government who would turn the UK into a dictatorship if they could get away with it.

That's not the normal I want and it's not the future I want. Gandhi said "be the change you want to see in the world" and, for me, those words are timeless. I can't change the world but I can try and change how I react to it. I can try and bring joy to those that deserve it (almost everyone) via my walks and my words and if that's not enough, if that doesn't work, at least I've tried.

As I move on into my fifties, my own mortality becomes an ever more present concern and, with that, one can't help about thinking what kind of legacy, or to be pretentious - footprint, one has left on the world. Mine's a fairly light one, no fame, no business success, no wife, no kids, and, as such, will most likely be blown away in the gentlest of breezes but I guess that's not that important.

We only get one life each and mine has been a process of learning and trying to improve. Writing these words, self-indulgent though they may be, helps me with that process. So I'll carry on doing them. Who knows. Maybe in another six or seven years, I'll be writing about my two thousandth blog.

In the meantime, thanks to each and every one of you for reading them, for commenting on them, for sharing them, or for just being there for me. It means a lot.

I'll Keep It With Mine:The Terror:Infamy.

"You live in two worlds but are home in neither. You are a sparrow in a swallow's nest"

A dead body falls out of a coffin at a funeral, a tongue is bitten off, someone comitts hara-kiri, a woman undergoes a traumatic birth, a man has a disturbing hallucination regarding the loose thread in his suit jacket, someone gets frostbite, a man is stranded in an icy lake in North Dakota, and another man tells a story about punching a tuna in the face.

With episode titles as promising as All the Demons are Still in Hell, The Weak are Meat, and Shatter Like a Pearl, The Terror:Infamy (BBC2/iPlayer, created by Alexander Woo and Max Borenstein with Ridley Scott occasionally warming the Executive Producer's chair) is as grotesque as it is often surreal but what it's not, at least until the last few episodes when the ante is impressively increased, is particularly scary. Or particularly gripping. The first series of The Terror had me hooked from the start but this one (which is neither a sequel nor a prequel and, in fact, has none of the same characters - all the two series share is a story of people in dire circumstances being preyed on by a force beyond their understanding) is much more of a slow burner.

Many won't have the patience to get to the end. We begin on Terminal Island in San Pedro, California just before World War II. The small Japanese-American fishing community is home to Chester Nakayama (Derek Mio) and his parents Henry (Shingo Usami) and Asako (Naoko Mori). Henry's fallen in love with, and impregnated, a pretty young Mexican girl called Luz Ojeda (Cristina Rodio) and in the paranoid atmosphere of post-Pearl Harbor USA that's a dangerous thing for him to have done.

 

Stories of bakemono (shape shifting creatures in Japanese folklore, dismissed as "old country stuff" by the younger Japanese-Americans) are already in the air but it's a very slow build up and in the first few episodes there are more hints, than sightings, of preternatural happenings. Lots of omens and warnings before people start mysteriously dying or going blind.

The Japanese citizens are, under Executive Order 9066, removed from Terminal Island and put in an internment camp while those who are American citizens, like Chester, either move to Los Angeles or sign up for active service with the US Army. Chester finds himself sent to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands to work as a translator, leaving him estranged from Luz (which saddens him) and his parents (which does not).

It's not just on issues regarding the old country stuff (which he thinks should have been left behind on the other side of the Pacific) where Chester and his father Henry find disagreement. Henry never seems to leave, or have any desire to leave, Terminal Island. As one of the few Japanese there to own a car, he's a big fish in a small pond and he proudly drives his Packard around the island to prove it.

Chester sees a bigger world and wants a slice of it. But could the mysterious Yuko Tanabe (Kiki Sukezane) be holding him back from that? Or could she hold the key that will unlock the world of possibility for Chester and Luz? Certainly, she appears to be possessed by something and the scenes in which she features, with quicksand and frankly disturbing masks, tend to be the eeriest of all.

While the Nakayamas wrestle with the supernatural, they and others are forced to live a meagre existence in an internment camp that is ruled with an iron fist by Major Bowen (there can't be a single item of scenery that was not chewed up and spat out by C. Thomas Howell in this role) who threatens his charges, or inmates, with indefinite imprisonment for perceived treason.

Some of the internees, naturally, retaliate and the chief insurrectionist is Ken Uehara (Chris Naoki Lee) who's in a relationship with Chester's friend Amy Yoshida (Miki Ishikawa). This storyline plays very much second fiddle to that of Chester and Luz and that's (a) fine because it's a little less interesting but also (b) something of a pity because Ishikawa is a better actor than the somewhat wooden Mio.

To begin with, he's so stiff in his acting it's hard to warm to him but once he's been the victim of multiple very unpleasant travails you find yourself at least wanting to believe him. Even rooting for him. Like almost everyone else in The Terror:Infamy, even babies, Chester is visited upon by a litany of indignities but, to begin with, the moodiness (and squeamishness) does not cross over into tension or empathy.

There are nice cars, smart suits, a wise elder in the form of George Takei's Yamato-san and a ludicrously over the top bullying boss in Stan Grichuk (Teach Grant). There's echoes of the film Carrie, there's some stuff about the idea of the camera as a soul stealing weapon, and there's also, running the risk of cliche, a lot of suicide. 

But it's not until halfway through, probably later, that the whole thing starts to make any sense and even then it's hard to be totally sure what is happening at all times - which at least puts us, the audience, on a level with most of the characters. When Chester returns from active service The Terror:Infamy does, eventually - and you really have to put a shift in, become genuinely chilling and truly moving. 

When, early in the series, Chester's mother Asako says to him "life is hard, you cannot do it without family" he can have no idea of the depth of meaning those words convey. By the end of ten episodes, nobody will have any doubt about the importance of them. In a drama whose themes include internment and redemption, it seems only right to say that enduring all the pain was worth it in the end.

The Power Of 'Dreams'?:Dream Machine at the Woolwich Works.

I don't even believe in God so I suppose it was always unlikely I would see the face of God in a sensory experience in a former Woolwich market space. Or indeed anywhere else for that matter. But, having attended Dream Machine at the Woolwich Works, I can now confirm that unlike one other visitor I did not see the face of God.

Neither did I see animals (horses specifically) or all of my friends. Or any of my friends. For me it was a solitary experience and I didn't mind that. It would have been nice to have someone close to discuss the experience with but I'd decided to go it alone - as I so often do.

Testimonies on screens after the experience reported that others saw, not unreasonably, the sun or at least lots of orange and that they felt like they were either in a space ship or in the stargate sequence of Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey.

I didn't get that last one but it did at least resonate. I had more a sense of being in a very long tunnel and I saw lots of fractals, lots of shapes, lots of vague interference, and, at one point, a field almost entirely consumed by purple with crosses, Christian crosses in fact, overlaying that purple. I've searched on the Internet and the closest thing I can find to it (above) is not very close at all.

Which I suppose makes sense because Dream Machine is all about interpretation and allowing our minds to do the work for us. I'd taken the 122 bus down to Woolwich, I seem to be there a lot these days, had chips and beans and a can of Coke in the Arsenal Gate Cafe (I seem to be there a lot these days too) and even a chocolate ice cream before killing a bit of a time in the 28c sunshine and entering the 'experience'!

In a very old looking building marked up as a PUBLIC MARKET! You take your shoes off and you hand your phone in (so as not to be distracted as well as, I guess, so you don't take photos - all of these (apart from the ones outside the experience) are nicked from the Internet) and then you enter a large warehouse space.

A young lady explains to us, there's about 25/30 of us in there, how the experience will work and we're each handed a towel in case we need to keep warm (I repeat, it was 28C) and find a face mask on our individual seats. Seats that were quite comfortable but could have been even comfier. I'd have probably fallen asleep if they were but apparently that's allowed and even celebrated as part of the experience.

The idea is that you pop your facemask on your forehead and only pull it down over your eyes if you find the experience a bit too intense. Nobody did. First of all there's a little tester and then there's the real thing. They're much the same. The real thing just lasts a bit longer.

The young assistant guides us through breathing exercises and talks a bit about mindfulness (oh, here we go) and then the lights go down, we close our eyes, and the music of Jon Hopkins starts up. Hopkins has collaborated with Brian Eno and David Holmes (let's ignore Coldplay for now, oops - too late) so you can probably imagine what it's like.

Fairly mid-tempo electronic music that you could, at a push, probably half-assedly dance to. It's not bad but you'd probably not choose to listen to it in many other scenarios. Then the white lights start flickering and our brains add the colour. As I said earlier, for me there was lots of yellow and red and some very intense purple and black. I never felt overwhelmed by the experience but I did quite enjoy it. If anything, it was like waking up in the evening at the back of the Glastonbury dance tent after falling asleep in the afternoon.

Writing in The Guardian, Jonathan Jones said that Dream Machine is "as close to state funded psychedelic drugs as you can get" (all four UK governments have, for some reason, combined to pay for those who want it to have this experience) and talked of this "freaky phenomenon" having a "majestic beauty" but over on theQuietus Robert Barry was |"dying of cringe" at the Brion Gysin inspired novelty and compared it to being "put on hold by an upscale insurance provider"!

I found the middle ground between these two extremes. When the experience is over, maybe fifteen/twenty minutes - you do lose track of time, you're invited into a room full of soft chairs and bean bags where you can talk to the other guests (I didn't), draw what you've just 'seen' (I didn't - but one guest drew something like the image below), or just lie around on a bean bag for a while. That was the option I took because I'm both shy and lazy. It was nice to be given a choice of 'after care' options though they weren't really necessary. Eventually I headed out into the still scorching heat blinking.

There's no reason God wouldn't appear in Woolwich. In fact, if God did exist and is ubiquitous as many of his/her/their believers like to say, then he would definitely appear in Woolwich - and everywhere else too (not just majority Christian countries which seems to happen). But even though God didn't appear in Woolwich, I did and though I may not be God - I am, at least real, and my experience was real as much as it was enjoyable. I jumped on the 122 bus, popped into Sainsburys to buy a couple of bottles of San Miguel, and came home.

The Carnival Is (Not) Over:Hew Locke at Tate Britain.

"What I try to do in my work is mix ideas of attraction and ideas of discomfort – colourful and attractive but strangely, scarily, surreal at the same time" - Hew Locke

 

80% correct there, Hew Locke. Hew Locke's The Procession in Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries IS colourful, it is attractive, it is reasonably strange, and it is pretty surreal. But I don't think I'd go quite so far as to describe it as scary and I'm one that spooks pretty easily.

It is, however, quite a visually compelling spectacle and a most enjoyable one to behold. The political points it aims to make can either be taken in or completely ignored but nobody can claim that Locke has not put the hours in with this one.

Locke's looked at the idea of "the procession" in human society and has seen that processions appear everywhere, often at life's most important moments. We get together in processions for reasons of protest, of worship, of celebration, and even of loss. Sometimes we just do it for fun.

He's also, as you can see from the images above, looked at the the history of the Tate itself. The Tate founder, Henry Tate, was a sugar refining magnate and that business opens up all manner of questions about global finance, colonialism, and exploitation as well as how we record these events for history.

Having grown up in Guyana (but born in Edinburgh), Locke would have had plenty of chances to look at how the crumbling colonial architecture of the South American nation reflects the crumbling of colonialism around the world in recent decades and the desire, by some, not to look properly at the history of that era.

That's the serious bit that is reflected in flags, angry masks, plundered riches, and militaristic figures on horseback but you could also just enjoy the carnival dimension of The Procession and, to me, it felt like that was what most visitors on a sunny Sunday in June were doing.

Drummers, trumpeters, banners, strange men in red, little people, fantastical masks, giant turbans, and a man carrying the world on the top of his head. The whole thing seemed quite joyous (as often processions, even sad or angry ones, can) and all that seemed to be lacking was some music.

It'd be great to visit The Procession at night with some music playing (events similar have been held in Tate Britain before) and maybe drinks flowing. It may or may not have been Locke's intention that I should view his art in that way but I feel it's in keeping with the work. We can both celebrate and commemorate at the same time. Hew Locke's work of lunatic craftsmanship proves that.

Human Performance:Parquet Courts @ Brixton Academy.

Oh yes, Parquet Courts are good live. I'd never seen them before and it occurred to me before the gig I'd not really kept up with their recent records so I wasn't 100% sure exactly what to expect. My gig buddies Stu and Pam, however, had done their homework properly and they're people I know I can trust when it comes to music so I thought I'd be alright.

I was more than that. It was a brilliant gig. The set was bookended with the fairly low-key Application/Appartus and Pulcinella (no encore) but, other than that, almost every moment was full on energetic indie-punk-dance with Andrew Savage yelping his vocals from the side of the stage. He's not exactly a mellifluous singer but that's not required with this sort of music.

His voice has more of a friendly authority and the audience lapped it up. Plastic pint pots were flung through the air as were human bodies. Nearly the whole of Brixton Academy was up dancing to tunes like the gorgeous Freebird II, Walking At A Downtown Place, Homo Sapien, and the 73 seconds of almost hardcore thrash Light Up Gold II.

Even slower songs like Human Performance, Mardi Gras Beads, and Just Shadows have an undeniable warmth, edging almost towards country rock before splitting the difference between that and their more obvious influences. Who I'd guess would probably be anyone from Husker Du to Pavement via Gang of Four. Though none of them are worn too obviously and there's clearly a lot more going on than just that.

Marathon of Anger leans more towards The Stone Roses take on funk and sees Austin Brown switch from guitar to keyboard and bassist Sean Yeaton get a chance to go full Mani. Wide Awake and Sympathy Of Life come from a similar place but are unafraid to go pretty much full on disco. Though disco filtered through the likes of The Rapture (it's the cowbell, you know). You're reminded, towards the end of the set when they play the classic and still brilliant Stoned and Starving, just how far they've come.

Sadly missed Los Bitchos as they came on too early but thanks to Warmduscher for support (in Stu's memorable phase, the "disco Butthole Surfers"), thanks to Parquet Courts for simply being ace, and thanks to Pam and Stu for drinks in The Prince Albert before the gig and for making it an all round top night out.