Will Self on Question Time

I know I should be shouting about the album (omfg CDs arrived today, look sweeet) but I had to digress because I can’t get this moment of moral clarity out of my head, from last night’s Question Time: it needs transcribing. They were debating one of the killers of Jamie Bulger. Amid a hawkish, invasive majority view (particularly depraved from Carol Vordermort, who has revealed herself to be an angry, ill-informed sponge for sub-Melanie Phillips Daily Mail fear-isms)…

…amid all that, Will Self said this:

“But there’s something weird, isn’t there, in the kind of British collective imagination about child killers, because there’s a presumption that these boys, who were 10 years old at the time of the crime, must be more evil than an adult killer. Is that what people are thinking? Are they all thinking: “Wow, they must be super evil?” You know, let’s turn it round the other way and just float the weird, strange idea that they maybe didn’t really know what they were doing. People who read the transcriptions of the case at the time and heard these boys’ testimonies heard very, very confused 10-year-old children talking about something.

So people talk in terms of the killers of Jamie Bulger as if they were some kind of Mengele figures, some kind of incredibly evil people: what a frightening thought that they might not have been evil at all.

And even to talk about as you do and as people here – and even I caught Shirley [Williams] saying it in terms of ‘murder’; ‘murder’ is ‘malice of forethought’, I read the transcriptions of the Bulger trial and there was no real evidence of malice of forethought in their crime.”

Can you help?

Hey hey, I hope you’re well. I don’t normally post music-related mail outs here but it’s not like I put out a record every day, so here’s the ‘call for help’ email I just sent to my mailing list. If you can do anything, email chris@christt.com.

Obviously in my house it’s album time: LOVE IS NOT RESCUE is out in 2 weeks, the ‘Nintendo’ single is out to download on Monday and my UK tour starts this weekend. But before life goes nuts, this is an extra email to ask for your support – please can you help me spread the word about all of this mess? There are a few simple things that you could do if you feel like it that will make a real difference:

1. Just talk about it. You know, if you’re coming to a gig or like the album, or if you don’t. Every time you mention it online or to your friends, or stick the CD on when there’s people around, or discuss it on a forum or add a song to a Spotify playlist, you’re doing me a big favour. Promo means nothing compared to real people connecting other real people to the music they’re into.

2. if you’re going to buy LOVE IS NOT RESCUE and come to a gig, please pre-order the music and buy tickets in advance.

you can get ‘Nintendo’ from 7Digital here:
http://www.7digital.com/artists/chris-t-t/nintendo/
or get the exclusive 4 track iTunes EP version of ‘Nintendo’ here:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/preorder/nintendo-ep/id358476472

and links to UK tour tickets are here: http://christt.com
it’s ace, most gigs on this tour are doing much better than the last few tours and a couple may even sell out, so thank you very much if you’ve already bought tickets. I promise I WILL NOT go back to the same cities and play the same album again later on. This is your only chance to hear LOVE IS NOT RESCUE in this format in these towns.

3. Please don’t illegally download or fileshare it. I know it’s been leaked and is out there, it’s easy, God I know, weirdly I even feel guilty for asking. But please don’t. Go and buy the motherfucker and maybe I’ll be able to make some more.

4. Tell me your favourite loo. Seriously, if you follow me on Twitter you’ll know I’m tweeting photos of every loo I go in (!) in museums, houses, venues, wherever. I’m using the hashtag #loo2010. So what’s the best loo near you? If I can get there, I’ll snap it with a credit for the tip-off. And one day you’ll be in a big coffeetable picture book.

5. Posters and flyers. We’re sending out beautiful golden A2 posters & flyers this weekend to lovely people around the UK who always help me by sticking them up in record shops, cafes, wherever. Do you want to join us? You’ll get as few or many posters/flyers as you need. Just reply or email chris@christt.com – with your postal address – and we’ll send you a pack. Thank you so much.

I hope that’s cool, most of all, come and say hello if we’re in the same room. See you out there.
Chris xxx

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Ponyo: subtitles vs. dubbing

With foreign films I guess the assumption is always to watch the subtitled version, not the dubbed version. But with animation I’m only just now realising this is dead wrong. Late to the party, I know. My logic has always been: I want to hear the ‘original’ voices and follow the script on the subtitles, not listen to a bunch of jobbing Hollywood b-listers chew microphones through some kind of Disney-ised, morally compromised script?

But now I’m forced into a rethink, thanks to a conversation with a spectacularly well-informed barman in the upstairs coffee shop at the Duke Of York’s in Brighton. They have posters up for the new Studio Ghibli animation Ponyo, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, which opens in two weeks. It’s profoundly exciting news for anyone into Ghibli animation, and will hopefully rebuild my faith in the studio after the disaster of Tales From Earthsea, where Miyazaki’s inexperienced son Goro was given the film of Ursula Le Guin’s classic pioneering fantasy novels, after Dad had chased them for years. Goro fucked it up big-time.

We’re in happier days now though: the Duke Of York’s will screen both the dubbed and subtitled versions at different times. Mainly, they’ll show the dubbed version earlier in the day, for the kids, then show the subtitled version for artier wonks. It’s part of the Picturehouse chain, so hopefully a bunch of decent arthouse cinemas around the UK will do the same. So anyway, I’d assumed I’d pootle along to the subtitled screening like a grown-up.

Until the fella behind the bar made a couple of powerful counter-intuitive points that have stuck with me: first, if we’re watching a magnificently animated masterpiece, why on earth do we decide to miss out on bits, because our eyes need to frantically read across the bottom of the screen? Secondly – and here’s where the real revelation is – he pointed out that Studio Ghibli aren’t exactly using quality actors for their original Japanese voiceovers. No, of course they hire whoever’s a big name in J-pop or whoever won a national reality show to be their name ‘voiceover’ artists.

Then, funnily enough, when it comes to the North American dub, because the movies are still treated as quality, foreign, perhaps even arthouse product, the talent that’s hired tends to be from the ‘proper’ end of the scale. Primarily this sweetly bourgeois misconception of art versus populism is a measure of just how we can mis-perceive any non-Hollywood films, compared to how they’re seen at home.

We think of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle as arty masterpieces. Yet that doesn’t mean we should be fooled into thinking they’re anything other than huge mainstream blockbusters in Japan. Until Titanic came along, Princess Mononoke was the biggest grossing film in Japanese history. It’s a bit like novelist Haruki Murakami being venerated in the west in highbrow, psychedelic magic-realism terms, when his hip romance Norwegian Wood was such as massive bestseller in Japan he had to leave the country to escape the celebrity. The sexier non-magical books of his are read like classy chick-lit over there. (OK, maybe that’s pushing it but you get my point.)

So for Miyazaki’s Ponyo, the English dub stars Cate Blanchett and Tina Fey, as well as, gulp, a Jonas brother and one of the Cyrus clan (Noah, not Miley). And even these two American teen pop stars are, if anything, appropriate, consistent choices for the younger roles.

The final argument is the experience. Despite Miyazaki being arguably my favourite living filmmaker, I’ve never seen a Studio Ghibli animation in the cinema. So sayeth the man behind the counter filling the coffee mug: first go see the dub, immerse yourself in the spectacular animation and enjoy the story. Then either go back to the cinema to see the subtitled version, or purchase that version on DVD.

Ponyo may not be Miyazaki’s greatest work, largely because it’s apparently aimed at a younger audience than the last few, making a return to the innocence of My Neighbor Totoro. However I hope it’ll still blow my mind. The film is an expression of the director’s obsession with the sea, which he’s apparently personally hand-animated himself, without any CGI. My God. I need to ignore the devil in the details and treat myself.

(a version of this entry was published in the Morning Star this week)

2010

Happy new year, I hope it’s a good one for you.

I wonder if in 2010 we’ll collectively react against digital media (or at least the social networking bits of it) and reclaim face-to-face friendships and physical media, especially with the playing field duly levelled. One of the first obvious things one noticed going online yesterday was the number of people who used Jan 1st as an opportunity to take a break from Tweeting or reduce their Facebook presence. The first widget I saw being touted was the new app that assists your complete virtual suicide, carefully removing you from Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and the rest. The link is here (lovely noose logo). Facebook have taken it seriously enough that they’re trying to lock out the link. Tempting, right?

Beyond that, watching last year’s resurgence of vinyl releases, maybe the closer we get to an entirely digitised culture, the more people will react against it and produce works in the older ways? Maybe tupperware didn’t kill pottery after all? – though let’s see what happens to the book industry (bringing up the rear), before jumping to conclusions. It is hugely important that we don’t run straight back into the arms of the same old physical/analogue media moguls.

The best thing that could happen in UK politics in 2010 would be a hung parliament. Maybe we’ll even get two elections this year, as they wriggle and stumble their way towards their new paradigm. I think a hung parliament would be the best outcome for everyone, all of us, regardless of party politics, because we need a period of non-majority, to allow the whole infrastructure of government to shake off the moronity.

First, a hung parliament kick-starts the process of re-empowering parliament itself. MPs will be held to account like never before – but beyond that they need their responsibility and actual job back – giving individual MPs greater authority on scrutiny of government and the opportunity to vote on their conscience. Secondly a hung parliament will make politics itself more exciting, just when we need it to be. Every issue would be closely fought and, with MPs empowered, that in turn re-engages us as constituents to push our own MP’s vote in a certain direction. Thirdly a hung parliament will be especially ace if the Greens get a couple of MPs. Don’t scoff, it’s genuinely possible – the bookies have Caroline Lucas as the favourite in Brighton now and that chap up in Norwich is also doing great work. Over the past few weeks the Tory-led council down here badly damaged their chances of competing still by totally fucking up their reaction to the snowfall. Finally I think a hung parliament will also disempower the evil bastards running the corporate media in the UK. Or maybe it won’t but in my head the wider spread the democatised power, the harder it is for them to own it.

Power shifts away from the centre and back towards us, while social media shifts from away from leisure and entertainment geekery, towards properly useful mainstream toolage. Over-optimistic as usual.

my Best Of The Year lists

ALBUMS
1. PJ Harvey & John Parish – A Woman A Man Walked By
2. Decemberists – The Hazards Of Love
3. Jay-Z – The Blueprint III
4. Jon Boden – Songs From The Floodplain
5. Future Of The Left – Last Night I Saved Her From Vampires (live)
6. Jamie Cullum – The Pursuit
7. Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You
8. Converge – Axe To Fall
9. Mos Def – The Ecstatic
10. Various – Dark Was The Night
(excluding things I played on – so Jim Bob’s amazing album Goffam – and albums on Xtra Mile)

TRACKS
1. Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – ‘Empire State Of Mind’
2. Jamie Cullum – ‘Don’t Stop The Music’
3. Lady Gaga – ‘Poker Face’
4. Cheryl Cole & Will.I.Am – ‘3 Words’
5. Future Of The Left – ‘The Best Laid Plans’ (live)
6. Broken Family Band – ‘John Belushi’ (as played on final tour)
7. Graham Coxon – ‘Sorrow’s Army’
8. Black Eyed Peas – ‘I Gotta Feelin’
9. Miley Cyrus – ‘Party In The USA’
10. Hockey – ‘Too Fake’

(also: Tom Williams & The Boat – ‘Too Slow’ but I played on it)

GIGS (IN THE AUDIENCE)
1. Carter USM perform ’30 Something’ & ‘101Damnations’ – Brixton Academy, London
2. PJ Harvey & John Parish – Stubbs, Austin & Corn Exchange, Brighton
3. Frank Turner – Shepherds Bush Empire, London
4. Richard Herring ‘Hitler Moustache’ – The Three And Ten, Brighton
5. Jay-Z – Alexandra Palace, London
6. Decemberists perform ‘Hazards Of Love’ – Stubbs, Austin
7. The Broken Family Band – The Garage, London & Jericho Tavern, Oxford
8. Local Natives – Bike Shop, Austin
9. Foals – All Tomorrow’s Parties, Minehead
10. Seashell Radio – Hotel Utah, San Francisco
11. Something Beginning With L – The Park, Bletchley
12. Skunk Anansie – Concorde 2, Brighton
Honorable mentions: Sandra & The Memory Machine (solo), Shellac, Mary Epworth, Throwing Muses, Men Diamler & Clayton Blizzard, Graham Coxon Power Acoustic Ensemble, Tom Williams & The Boat, Collings & Herrin Live Podcast.

the right kind of tired.

It’s left me queasy in the stomach and cut-up and physically very knackered but I had a brilliant, totally different day today: up on the steep-sloped Sussex downs, clearing back brush and cutting it down to the roots for the Sussex Wildlife Trust. The company for whom I write charidee fundraising guff organises a staff volunteer day and invited me to get in on some rural hard labour action. Couldn’t resist. The SWT also has more seasoned volunteers who work every week on clearing miles of the valley. So far it’s taken four years. But they regularly chuck groups of slack-handed city corporate types and students up there as well for much needed fresh air. Voluntary? If Michael Caine is going to bang on about national service (pay your taxes mate, contribute properly yourself before you start barking opinions on sorting the kids out) then what about making this kind of environmentally sound contribution a compulsory part of the curriculum? Or the whole curriculum? But, in the words of Ronnie Corbett, I digress. Apparently the staff at Brighton Amex went along with a huge Waitrose picnic hamper, packed beer instead of water, were totally fucked up by lunchtime.

Anyway, the work involved chopping and sawing brush away from its roots, creating huge thorny balls of unhooked plant, roughly the size of a small cottage, then rolling them down to the bottom of the slope like a giant snowball, where they were chucked onto a big bonfire. Basically, since the war and mixymatosis in the 50s, no animals have grazed the southern downs properly. Now the whole thing is becoming a National Park, they’re trying to recapture what downland should be like. First get rid of the overgrown nonsense, then bring the animals back to graze. SWT have their own sheep and cattle already on the job – however apparently regular farmers can get paid to allow their livestock to graze on the downs.

If you know Sussex, we were up behind the white cliffs of Lewes.

While I was there, sawing away, the details of next year’s single, album and tour all got remarkably smoothly ironed out and fell into place during an email conversation between the guys at ITB and Xtra Mile. It was weird because the normal music industry organisational discussions all took place with me joining in on email while actually rolling around in sheep shit and getting thorns in places thorns should never ever go. I even got the iPhone covered in rabbit droppings at one point. Although it was tempting just to stop and concentrate on music things, I would’ve looked a right dick sitting on this gorgeous piece of empty downland tapping away at my phone.

Now, I’m the right kind of tired. Don’t get it very much, certainly not at home. 95% of my life, my brain gets tired by the end of the day but I haven’t really exerted myself. Even on tour, when we’re carrying gear around or performing or what not, it’s not truly heavy exercise – and comes in small doses. But spend a day doing reasonable (not even particularly extreme if I’m honest) physical labour and the kind of tired I feel at the end is so much better, so much healthier and more balanced, it’s a stark reminder the depth of the koyaanisqatsi we find ourselves in most of our days. I don’t watch Hugh Fearnley-Wotsit very often because of how much he loves to eat everything alive. But I hadn’t realised he was behind the land-share project, where people who have spare land let other people make positive use of it. Genius. Let’s connect younger, hipper companies and collectives either to the kind of volunteer projects I sweated on today or, even better, get them involved in sharing land and putting it to good use.

A campfire micro-tour circuit. Create a series of spaces across the country where small gatherings take place through summer to share unamplified music, like tiny miniature folk festivals. Keep them responsible, fewer than 50 people, nothing like an actual festival, and base the whole thing around a campfire. Make it a “between ‘proper’ festival” tour circuit. Include stand-up and storytelling and non-stage theatre… but make it tread lightly, take its litter home and don’t fuck up the land. Could be epic.

So anyway, I got home as inspired as I was cream crackered.

why Vauxhall Astras suck arse

I’m hunting for a new car rental place, ever since Brighton Budget on Lewes Road shut down. It’s sad because they were great lads. I got so regular they used to let me grab a car, drive off, no money or paperwork and I’d pay when I got back days or weeks later. They were a touch, um, UKIP, but never minded me. Much missed to be honest, I got cleared by the Sussex cops to join a gun club with one of them (!) but never found the time to go.

For my tour I’ve rented a Ford Focus from Brighton Thrifty, paid up-front online. Except when I showed up to collect it, they gave me a Vauxhall Astra. The small print said ‘Ford Focus… or similar’ and I was in a hurry, so I didn’t argue, just took it and hoped for the best. Now I’m sure it is ’similar’ in stature/price-range to a Focus - and I don’t know much about cars beyond driving them – but the Astra is just total clenching shit by comparison to a Ford, regardless of Henry Ford’s nazi history. Fucks me off! All the things wrong are tiny on their own but add up to a fat whole, especially with a lot of driving to do over a period of weeks.

I can’t see the indicators or fuel gauge because they’re obscured by the steering wheel. Add to this the unreliable indicators that sometimes stay on when you think you’ve switched them off, plus a very quiet ‘tick’ and the result? I continually have to scrunch down, every time I accelerate out of a junction, to check whether I’m still indicating or not.

Because I can’t see the fuel gauge I’m habitually using the ‘miles left to empty’ on the digital display menu instead. On the Astra this display menu is incorporated with the CD/radio information but for some unknown godforsaken reason, you can’t switch between items on the menu when the CD or radio is actually on. Why on earth would they do that? Surely that’s extra work for a programmer / electrician to make something palpably worse!?

So I’ve been using the manual mileometer on the dash rather than the shitty digital display to calculate my total trip mileage – which is fairly important on a tour for accounting. But when I left the car unused for a day off, the motherfucker reset itself to zero. I’ll have to ask Thrifty what the overall mileage is when I take this wheelbarrow back.

The seats are another piss-up-a-rope. It’s a 3-door and the front seats fold down and forward easily enough, however to raise them back up to normal again, you have to lean down and pull the lever under the seat to the front as well as the handle on the side. Talk about finnickity, especially when you’re doing it a lot to get gear/people in/out of the car. The seats are an odd shape for the car too, they don’t seem to fit properly, so sometimes they get caught. An utter fucking pain.

The doors are unwieldy, long and low so that even getting in and out is more effortful than the Focus. I have no scientific comparison but it feels like the blindspots are massive compared to the Focus as well. I’m missing people moving in certain places and having to lean around a lot more often.

Initially I liked the tinted rear windows until I realised they’re not tinted enough to actually conceal anything. wtfp.

And the straw that snaps the camel’s cock is, I can’t even fit my guitars in the boot properly. In a Focus, even in a Fiesta, I can squeeze at least the acoustic in the boot, so it is hidden when I park. This tour, both guitars and my borrowed keyboard are having to come into every hotel and can’t be left even for a few minutes because it’s so obvious there’s gear there.

The drink holder (and there’s only one of course – passengers can hold their own fucking coffee) is in the stupidest place I’ve ever seen, right between the seats but really far back so you have to stretch your arm round at a weird double-jointed angle to grab your latte.

Even the fuel cap is pissing me off: it’s an old fashioned loose screw-up one, so you have to put  on the roof while you’re filling up, inevitably resulting in an embarrassing chase across the forecourt if it’s windy and the risk of just losing the little shit. It’s the 21st century and they’ve got the same fuel cap as a 1970s Renault 4.

There’s more, so much more, but I keep forgetting bits. A general point: every time I’ve driven in the USA the car has a digital compass on the dashboard, so you know what direction you’re going in. This massively helps if you’re navigating through a town, even with maps. I don’t want to SatNav and lose all my (already pissingly small) navigational ability, I want to use maps. If cars had a compass in there too, mapreading would be 10x easier… or is that one just me?

So there you go: give the Vauxhall Astra a miss and get the Ford Focus. I’m not being endorsed by Ford, haven’t talked to them or anything (though hi, fancy giving me a free car to drive around Europe in? I’ll shut up about your founder’s fascist past!) but touring solo in a car, you need a haven as well as just an A-To-B device, you need to love it and feel comfortable whatever the scenario. I’ll never knowingly hire an Astra again and if Thrifty – who were otherwise perfectly charming, efficient and good value – can’t guarantee the car I ask for then they’re off the list.

Like Question Time but with Nazis in

At first I wasn’t too bothered by the idea that Nick Griffin was going on Question Time. I definitely subscribe to the view that shining a light on the BNP is a better way of showing them to be the plonkers they are, than forcing them into dark corners where it’s easier for them to mislead and shit stir. That they are inveterate liars and myth-makers as a ‘political force’ is without question – even this week the Dick Barnbrook their London Assembly member was discredited in court for lying through his teeth.

But as the furore has unfolded, I’ve realised I made my usual error of drastically over-estimating the forces of reason ranged against the twats. Jack Straw is the big gun rolled out by Labour to face Griffin on QT and this instantly flashed warning lights: Straw is a hesitant, thoughtful speaker (to put it kindly) and - more importantly - he is massively hamstrung by his senior position at the heart of the Labour Party establishment. There will be so much he simply can’t argue with, from that standpoint, while maintaining the balancing act of being their ‘corporate voice’. Anybody who’s watched Question Time recently will know, regardless of how individually gifted or honest the Labour panellist might be, saddled with being that struggling party’s spokesperson, they’re about 85% fucked before opening their mouths. It’s only on the rare issue where the party line isn’t clear or important, that they get a chance to shine a bit and briefly occupy their own ideological space.

So the last thing we need is a Big Gun in that sense: we need a proper hard hitter, one of the brilliant mavericks who can destroy the Griffin but previously wouldn’t’ve gone near him. Of course I’d love to be proved wrong and watch Straw flatten the holocaust-denying Hitler mini-me scumbag. But it’s going to be a rum do. My friend Steve just pointed out we need Galloway, or Dennis Skinner when he wasn’t so frail – though the razor is still sharp, or maybe Jeremy Corbyn, if they’d ever let him remotely near anything media-shaped.

Livingstone would be another choice, possibly the closest remaining to the Labour establishment who could make a real dent. Though I spose Prescott could just twat him. That might win Labour the election in a single punch.

The worst thing – that now feels oddly inevitable to me – will be if the Tories pile in with a useful fighter to show utter derision for Griffin (even smug old Hague could do that) and then they come out as the party that properly challenged the far-right. It would be another swift nail in the coffin and I started to think this afternoon: maybe it’s a put-up job and the Tories jumped onboard with the BBC first, leaving Labour playing catch-up once the gig was booked.

Another warning bell: why didn’t the BBC put the nazis on Any Questions first? Why have they been able to leap straight up to the high-profile TV version, rather than having to prove their mettle on the slightly more highbrow (and less consumed) radio version first? If the BBC was playing straight their newfound ‘involving’ strategy for the BNP, surely they should have had a BNP panellist on Any Questions long before the much higher-risk idea of sticking one of the cunts on the telly?

Anyway, it’s going to be fascinating and possibly horrific. I think still, deep down, I prefer that we give him the rope to hang himself, rather than silencing him to the extent that he can play martyr. But it’s risky.

Foundation & Empire

In Isaac Asimov’s seminal ‘Foundation’ series of sci-fi novels, he postulates the fictional science of ‘psychohistory‘ by which the close observation of mass groups of people – and how they respond to circumstances – can allow you to predict and even manipulate major societal events. The galactic empire is nearing collapse, so a group of visionary scientists set up a Foundation, aiming to manipulate people using their pioneering science, to ultimately reduce the length of the ‘period of chaos’ between the empire collapsing and the rise of the next civilisation.

For a couple of months, it’s kept popping into my head that Google reminds me of the Foundation. Yep, it’s sci-fi, sorry, but think about the overwhelming complexities and depths of data-mining being done at Google right now, as we’re simultaneously on the cusp of monumental shifts in civilisation worldwide. They can track how a disease spreads for example way faster than government medical strategists. You can be damn sure Google are tracking societal trends and responses to major events faster and in more nuanced ways than we can imagine as outsiders. I wonder if they’re getting close to psychohistory.

Also, we’re going to need something to help the survivors rebuild some form of global network, however formal or anarchic.

Anyway, I’d been thinking about this stuff then unnervingly last week I read in a Wired piece that Hal Varian, one of the Google top boffs, is a huge fan of Asimov’s Foundation series, so there’s even consciousness to the connection. Cripes.

Then on Friday I went to the launch in Oxford of the Dark Mountain project. I’ll write about it in detail for the Morning Star column this week [updated - link] but basically it’s a new post-eco manifesto and ongoing arts project called ‘Uncivilisation’. It seems to be aiming to connect the culture we make to a post-civilisation reality, instead of tying it to the current structures and heirachies we seem to be obsessed with protecting, despite their desperate lack of worth. So far, so comfortably chiming with my views.

It’s curated by environmental writer, activist and former deputy editor of the Ecologist Paul Kingsnorth and blogger and former BBC journalist Dougald Hine, who I mistakenly called ‘Dougal’ in all my tweets. The launch was an understated affair involving me and Sam Get Cape in the garden round the back of the Isis Tavern. They’d made a limited initial pamphlet run of their Uncivilisation manifesto, which is beautifully presented. The garden was lush in the dusk and the people were bookish and folksy. Oxford folkscene doyenne Tim Healey read poetry, which was all well chosen and thought-provoking.

Oh my fucking god, even as I type this, I’ve smacked into a massive conspiracy theory wall that neatly ties in: Tim Healey is Denis Healey’s son and Denis is a founder member of the Bilderberg Group, the secretive annual global gathering of super-powerful investors and government financial types who are, they say, aiming to improve the world by pooling their expertise. Conspiracy theorists the world over tie them to the Skull & Bones and Illuminati conspiracies. How extraordinarily lame that I didn’t make the connection at the time. And fuck me for not thinking to ask Tim A) what he thought about the Bilderberg Group and B) whether he saw a connection of intention between their efforts and Dark Mountain. Christ on a bike! I’m laughing but I’ve really scared myself. Gotta get on that…

Anyway, (I’d already written this bit, feels a bit passé now…) as Paul and Dougald explained their ideas for the proposed movement, it jolted me back to the Google / Foundation thing and then another image from sci-fi: the artilleryman in War Of The Worlds. The Martians have almost defeated humankind and an artilleryman claims to be building a new civilisation underground. Of course, really he’s just dug a 12 foot hole to hide in. So you’ve got a hopeful and a sceptical response, both from sci-fi. I described these onstage, trying to encourage people to actually do something with the Dark Mountain ideas – but I’m not sure a single person in the room took it in. They seemed to enjoy my songs but nobody particularly connected with anything I said. It felt like literary book-launch schmooze rather than a gathering storm, though that’s no bad thing because people can’t begin to wrap themselves in a manifesto til they’ve actually read it.

Halfway through Get Cape’s excellent set, I clocked I had almost no chance of getting home. It was 11.15pm and I was miles from the centre of Oxford. I walked back alone along the banks of the Isis, past the barges, where there are no lights and bats flew all around me. I couldn’t hurry, despite having no hotel room booked, because I felt spaced out by the event. I love that shit, especially fantasising about the collapse to come – easy when one can’t actually imagine the human suffering involved.

And somehow the first cab that drove by stopped; took me to the Oxford Tube; the bus got diverted along the Bayswater Road in a way that actually made it quicker; I got to Victoria with 2 minutes to spare and made it breathless onto the Brighton train. There’s even another story from that train journey home but that’ll have to wait.

Crazy.

My column got spiked

Over the weekend I wrote my Morning Star column, which this week is about LSD. Then yesterday, for the first time, the editor refused to publish it. 

The subs told me: “Not that we’re anti-drugs or anything, but he reckons you’ve crossed a line by actively, massively advocating the stuff.”  

So I’ve written them something new, which I’ll email in the morning, though it’s probably too late for this week’s copy of the paper.

Meanwhile here’s the column they didn’t want. If you regularly read this blog but not my MS columns, it’s worth remembering this was written for print, not a blog, with their house style in mind (ie. it’s a bit different from most of my blog entries and not so readable onscreen!) and also it might be old hat because I’ve boffed on about this subject here already. But anyway… 

Chris thinks we should all get high.

Of all the illegal drugs that I think should be legalised – which is all of them – top of my wish list for a Get Out Of Jail Free card would be LSD.

I know when you argue for legalising drugs, you’re supposed to place your argument within the context of accepting that they are fundamentally a Bad Thing. Drugs are bad, m’kay?

I know legalisation or decriminalisation are meant to be presented as a strategic change-of-approach for combating drug use. I also know lots of people have ruined their lives by getting hopelessly addicted to substances, legal or illegal.

But with all that in mind, the point I want to make is: acid is bloody fantastic and, if you haven’t had a go before, I think your life would almost certainly improve if you tried some tomorrow.

What else have you got on? Get home from work and spend dinner time discussing whether Kate should’ve won The Apprentice, or why the nazis got two seats in Europe? Doesn’t sound like much fun to me. Then you’ll probably watch telly.

No access to a dealer? Ask anyone you know in the arts, or your scruffiest friend, or best of all, your kids’ coolest mate, to hook you up.

In one go, you’ll not only score but also your son or daughter will suddenly have fat kudos to spare, once the school rumour mill finds out their parents know how to party.

What you need is a warm summer evening, some trustworthy old friends and a pleasant field. Maybe take a picnic. Don’t try LSD out clubbing though, because you’ll get your head done in.

“Mind expanding” is a clichéd and vilified phrase, yet it is drop-dead accurate, when referring to acid. Apart from what you may get up to while you’re not quite in control – which is itself largely myth – it’s about as dangerous as a cup of coffee.

On acid, I have thought, visualised, smelled, heard and imagined in ways different to those which my mind was/is capable of straight. It’s not in any way a replacement for ‘real’ experience, however it is a powerful, memorable additional experience.

Cocaine is a drug about me, me, me. Marijuana is a drug about doing nothing and eating crisps. Booze is a drug about fighting, crying and kebabs. MDMA (ecstacy) is about hugging people on the dancefloor while the beat goes on.

But I believe LSD is a drug about tapping directly into whatever it is that we channel as creative. So, almost God then. A direct line to the part of our brain we most need more of in our existence.

By the way, sorry if the acronym “LSD” sounds scarily out-of-date and a bit faux-hippie, especially when most kids talk like an episode of The Wire and blow their allowances on ounces of cocaine.

I only started calling it LSD recently because I realised that when you say “acid” in the United States, quite a few people don’t actually know what you’re talking about. I guess the nickname never filtered across the Atlantic properly.

At the end of last year, I got back into acid as a creative tool, after a long, long break and I’ve been working on some improvised (mainly piano and electronic) music under its gorgeous influence, ever since. I set up recording equipment in the living room, get high and play piano or mess around with beats until I get bored and do something else. No idea whether it’s any good – only time will tell – but it’s a lot of fun and I feel that the rest of my creative life has been enrichened by the experiment.

Quite apart from unbanning the stuff, it should probably be on the national curriculum or added to MMR.

Amid the MPs’ expenses scandal, we’re finally beginning to understand the extent to which we, the public, can not know stuff. Conspiracists and engaged sceptics have understood this all along; that assuming huge, grand sleight-of-hand tricks upon the wider public can’t take place because of checks and balances is just poppycock.

So here comes the next layer – that they’re all junkies as well. Those who seek to control our personal behaviour through the making of laws are either rattled out of their minds on expensive whisky, snorting cocaine, or, it turns out, stealing every duck pond they can get their grubby mits on.

Let’s do a substance analysis of all the pipework in the Houses Of Parliament. If they don’t find just the fattest, fuck-off-est proportion of cocaine, I’ll be very surprised.

More than that, it’s a grand addiction to stuff. Material possessions as the mark of status – the classic capitalist fail. You know, the current recession is one of the biggest arguments I can think of for living the life you really want to live. Fuck the law and the fear of poverty; if there’s a thing you want to try or a place you need to visit, you’ve got to just do it.

And if that includes taking a beautiful hallucinogen that will make even just one evening unforgettable, then stop being such a pussy and go for it.