230PM The frantic headlong rush. Christmas shoppers packed to the gunwales into capsule delivery systems for the short, but tortuous, muted journey home. Afternoon drinkers eye parcels with a mixture of rueful guilt and low-key despair. Back to the sacred pint. Christmas spirit in optic, bottle and beer pump. Ex-lovers looking suspiciously at each other as they give away body language tells that would lose them key hands at poker. Romantic roulette. Wrapping paper which will lie unused jostles with today's Metro as I spy the messianic artist caught in a schizoid reverie; great bloke, his psychoses harm no one, not for him voices compelling to wound or kill, just a gentle connection to an unseen god.
345PM Pulse slow and even as lives begin to slow to a rhythm that neither upsets nor panics; bus drivers make sure elderly commuters make it to the pavement with their precious cargo. A smile as a giggly teenager thanks me for letting her off in front of me. Season's niceties? No, just old fashioned manners.
458PM Opaque windows from pate making occludes the frozen landscape. Gaia is warming a tad as I anticipate another locomotive trip south east. John Martyn soothes through his strangled and pained paean to Sapphire. I wait for her patiently. She's coming in on time. No riptide, black ice or avalanche. Coming in on time. Thanks John, you are missed.
(Dedicated to the memories of my father and Iain David Macgeachy (John Martyn)) Happy Christmas to you all, wherever or whoever you may be.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
The 3 Rs: Rhetoric, rhetoric, rhetoric
In the UK, a proud tradition of trades unions, wage protectionism, co-operatives, social welfare and free at the point of entry universal healthcare is now under threat from creeping privatisation and a rolling back of the frontiers of the state. In other words, social Darwinism taken to the the Frederich Von Hayek or worse, Robert Nosick level. This writer is all for individual freedom and as such would describe myself as an anarcho syndicalist or at worst a disaffected and non-doctrinal Marxist. But I do feel models of polity are required. The (supposed) real politik of David Cameron (and his supplicant Liberal Democrat coallition partners) and his over reliance on the miracle of hyper capitalism (and if truth be told libertarianism taken to the nth degree if he could get away with it) are a palpable concern. Welfare "reforms" which threaten to return us to an almost workhouse-driven system with unemployment benefit claimants being compelled to work for their bottom line reminds me of a pre-Jarrow march 1910 Britain. In the north east and Scotland, which saw some of the worst excesses of late stage capitalism and swingeing industrial cuts and closures, communities decimated by coal mine closures and mass industrial redundancies have yet to recover from Thatcher's purges of the 1980s. The "special relationship" wrought with the US (helmed by ex-liberal and bullwark against the McCarthy commitee Ronald Reagan) saw right wing policy makers looking to The States for enlightenment and offered only Polaris missiles and communist arse-kicking paranoia. I realise this is reductionism and only a tincture of the whole picture, but for the benefits of brevity I'm using a broad brush stroke here. The fact is that right wing thinkers and future policy makers, eg Keith Joseph, a future member of Thatcher's cabinet, started looking to America during the electricity black outs of 1977, when unions held a balance of bargaining power and the powers that be wanted, effectively to emasculate said bodies. When New York was hobbled with power cuts and black outs, various individuals formulated ways and means to carry this forward. Thatcher did the same, 7 years later with the coalminers of Britain, allied by Anglo-American union buster, Ian MacGregor. A year of painful reprisals against striking miners, scab labour employed and "flying pickets" criminalised, it was all over for the trades unions of Britain.
Even now these changes rung 30+ years ago are felt throughout the UK. Only defence, fuelled by paranoia is a growth industry. The Rail and Maritime Transport union is one of the very few with real teeth. They can effectively bargain, because they can with mass walk outs shut down the transport networks. The only bullwark against creeping wage slashing and further privatisation. Now we have the austerity measures in the form of welfare budget pruning, educational opportunities only for those that can afford the fees set by the universities themselves (another measure introduced via The Browne Report, under the previous Labour administration) that all stem directly from the sub prime mortgage scandal started, almost virally in the US. Our banking system was bailed out to the tune of billions for the basic greed and veniality of some speculators preying on the dreams of the poor. Now before you think that the thrust of this polemic is an outright critique of the people of The US, think again, as I am merely addressing the policies of a few affecting the lives of the many. That said, the yellow press in both countries helps to engender and spread the validation of these principles and political aims and the supine public often consume it, believe it and do nothing. The divide and conquer media hegemonic forces that Gramsci warned of are the secret weapon in the hyper capitalists' armoury. Once you have the press spewing out your spurious notions you've all but won. But, I digress, optimism in such a climate is indeed highly difficult and hope is almost a dangerous notion to incubate. We need more, not less actions. More, non-anonymous protest, more heads above the parapet instead of leaking useless information that amounts to already-known facts and tittle-tattle worthy of the tabloid gossip columns. Take on Big Pharma, for example. Sign petitions. Vote in every election, even if it's just to spoil the ballot paper. Get involved in your local credit union, trades union or worker's co-op. Start a campaign for something you actually give a stuff about. Don't consume mind numbing visual opiates and obssess over trivia. Get out on the streets. See what the so-called (and I hasten to use this term as it's an insult to humanity) lower echelons are doing and how the most vulnerable are affected by the current regime(s).
The very term "underclass" is an invention of the British right wing media, ignore the words "big society" as well. It's just another attempt to wrest power and money from state bodies and put it into the arms of amateurs and charities. The National Health Service can't be run by fund raising PR gurus, it is there to treat patients, not customers and we as well to remember that. The Second World War was fought to defeat Fascism and to keep our respective countries free of tyranny. In the wake of that war, under the Beveridge Report and under the Labour adminstration of Clement Attlee we were given the gift of an NHS and a welfare system that is currently under threat from a government and mindset that encourages poverty and the kicking into the margins the poor and dissenters. See the hysterical state response to the largely peaceful recent student protests, which saw Jody McIntyre, a 20 year old wheelchair user with Cerebral Palsy pulled out of his chair and dragged across tarmac by police. Only one such example of, on the one hand state control, whilst the other hand takes monies from the welfare and education pot to pay for defence of the realm. A few daubs of paint tossed at an outmoded royal does not a revolution make. Gil Scott Heron was right: "The revolution will not be televised" nor will it come about without a framework and a coherent alternative. That is the crux. It's all very well carping and tossing word grenades at the prevailing power super structure, taking to the streets with banners and chanting long-dead dreams through a megaphone. What is being offered as replacement? That, readers is where you and I come in.
Even now these changes rung 30+ years ago are felt throughout the UK. Only defence, fuelled by paranoia is a growth industry. The Rail and Maritime Transport union is one of the very few with real teeth. They can effectively bargain, because they can with mass walk outs shut down the transport networks. The only bullwark against creeping wage slashing and further privatisation. Now we have the austerity measures in the form of welfare budget pruning, educational opportunities only for those that can afford the fees set by the universities themselves (another measure introduced via The Browne Report, under the previous Labour administration) that all stem directly from the sub prime mortgage scandal started, almost virally in the US. Our banking system was bailed out to the tune of billions for the basic greed and veniality of some speculators preying on the dreams of the poor. Now before you think that the thrust of this polemic is an outright critique of the people of The US, think again, as I am merely addressing the policies of a few affecting the lives of the many. That said, the yellow press in both countries helps to engender and spread the validation of these principles and political aims and the supine public often consume it, believe it and do nothing. The divide and conquer media hegemonic forces that Gramsci warned of are the secret weapon in the hyper capitalists' armoury. Once you have the press spewing out your spurious notions you've all but won. But, I digress, optimism in such a climate is indeed highly difficult and hope is almost a dangerous notion to incubate. We need more, not less actions. More, non-anonymous protest, more heads above the parapet instead of leaking useless information that amounts to already-known facts and tittle-tattle worthy of the tabloid gossip columns. Take on Big Pharma, for example. Sign petitions. Vote in every election, even if it's just to spoil the ballot paper. Get involved in your local credit union, trades union or worker's co-op. Start a campaign for something you actually give a stuff about. Don't consume mind numbing visual opiates and obssess over trivia. Get out on the streets. See what the so-called (and I hasten to use this term as it's an insult to humanity) lower echelons are doing and how the most vulnerable are affected by the current regime(s).
The very term "underclass" is an invention of the British right wing media, ignore the words "big society" as well. It's just another attempt to wrest power and money from state bodies and put it into the arms of amateurs and charities. The National Health Service can't be run by fund raising PR gurus, it is there to treat patients, not customers and we as well to remember that. The Second World War was fought to defeat Fascism and to keep our respective countries free of tyranny. In the wake of that war, under the Beveridge Report and under the Labour adminstration of Clement Attlee we were given the gift of an NHS and a welfare system that is currently under threat from a government and mindset that encourages poverty and the kicking into the margins the poor and dissenters. See the hysterical state response to the largely peaceful recent student protests, which saw Jody McIntyre, a 20 year old wheelchair user with Cerebral Palsy pulled out of his chair and dragged across tarmac by police. Only one such example of, on the one hand state control, whilst the other hand takes monies from the welfare and education pot to pay for defence of the realm. A few daubs of paint tossed at an outmoded royal does not a revolution make. Gil Scott Heron was right: "The revolution will not be televised" nor will it come about without a framework and a coherent alternative. That is the crux. It's all very well carping and tossing word grenades at the prevailing power super structure, taking to the streets with banners and chanting long-dead dreams through a megaphone. What is being offered as replacement? That, readers is where you and I come in.
Monday, December 13, 2010
More from "14 Cages"
Skull to skull dialogue.
Desperation was the imprimatur, it was your means of breaking through from one reality to the next. Perhaps a moment of divine madness; William S Burroughs in one ear and Frankie Howerd in the other, fighting for space in the pre-frontal cortex. Perhaps inspired art installation as nervous breakdown, a manifestation of the fast-twitch hyper-kinesis of the febrile Now. You lie on the floor,
holding onto to what seemed like a spinning globe as all stimuli was overloading itself into a tightly packed analogue. Your tired 4 square inches of consciousness. The synapses misfiring. You capitulate to the madness then awake to a blank sheet. The sun seeped through grey glass as you raise yourself to your feet. Too many days spent in the hyper-real. The room empty of the TV, radio and laptop is now a place of sanctuary, peace, silence. The chasm you have stepped into is one that was entirely necessary. Desperation is the agent of change. You mouth this as you open the windows to the combustion of traffic and the omnipresent deliveries to the supermarket next door. The conveyer belt of commerce never sleeps. Your reality remains behind the double glaze as curtains are hastily closed and ears blocked with foam capsules. You allow the gloom to swallow you; conscious thought a string of remembered playing cards and the tarot deck of fatalism. Other people's coping stategies becoming your credo. The silence envelopes. And the desperation begins to tear the thin membrane between you and the purely imagined. Desperation becomes the orison. Muscle memory strikes the keys and you compose a difficult doxology. 508AM. Life lived outwith the text is worthless, you decide as the flickering VDU illuminates all that is required. It's only then that you notice the headline: “Actor dies onstage: the gods of drama have their sport” Mocking. You now realise that this is the limbo they spoke of. No Hell in capitation. Only purgatory in marginal lower case. Holding onto that skull was a case in point. But in any case you have broken through to the next reality and it appears that is varies not too greatly from the last. You continue to compose, write and fret over each line. Your hands the soft hands of the indoor life. The pale alabaster of the scribe. You smile as you get used to being dead in one sense and alive in another. This business is a strange one right enough...You neatly tap a tattoo, a small sonnet and a miniscule haiku, you are pleased that the words continue to flow even after the heart has ceased its rhythm. The brain is still active. Your new nether corpus continues to sing:
I chant anew, another day;
More of the same in the afterlife,
Adventures in purgatory?
Limbo seems no different,
I still see the sun come up,
But no longer have to place shades,
On tired eyes,
No longer does the migrane knife
Twist in the skull.
The new being is much the same,
I still get easily bored and frustrated,
But no one hears my words,
Only I see them,
Wraith presence in my infernal machine.
You sense a smiling at the sonnet, the haiku writes itself:
You seem to have defeated,
The space 'tween here and the Other,
And in so doing: Persist!
Desperation was the imprimatur, it was your means of breaking through from one reality to the next. Perhaps a moment of divine madness; William S Burroughs in one ear and Frankie Howerd in the other, fighting for space in the pre-frontal cortex. Perhaps inspired art installation as nervous breakdown, a manifestation of the fast-twitch hyper-kinesis of the febrile Now. You lie on the floor,
holding onto to what seemed like a spinning globe as all stimuli was overloading itself into a tightly packed analogue. Your tired 4 square inches of consciousness. The synapses misfiring. You capitulate to the madness then awake to a blank sheet. The sun seeped through grey glass as you raise yourself to your feet. Too many days spent in the hyper-real. The room empty of the TV, radio and laptop is now a place of sanctuary, peace, silence. The chasm you have stepped into is one that was entirely necessary. Desperation is the agent of change. You mouth this as you open the windows to the combustion of traffic and the omnipresent deliveries to the supermarket next door. The conveyer belt of commerce never sleeps. Your reality remains behind the double glaze as curtains are hastily closed and ears blocked with foam capsules. You allow the gloom to swallow you; conscious thought a string of remembered playing cards and the tarot deck of fatalism. Other people's coping stategies becoming your credo. The silence envelopes. And the desperation begins to tear the thin membrane between you and the purely imagined. Desperation becomes the orison. Muscle memory strikes the keys and you compose a difficult doxology. 508AM. Life lived outwith the text is worthless, you decide as the flickering VDU illuminates all that is required. It's only then that you notice the headline: “Actor dies onstage: the gods of drama have their sport” Mocking. You now realise that this is the limbo they spoke of. No Hell in capitation. Only purgatory in marginal lower case. Holding onto that skull was a case in point. But in any case you have broken through to the next reality and it appears that is varies not too greatly from the last. You continue to compose, write and fret over each line. Your hands the soft hands of the indoor life. The pale alabaster of the scribe. You smile as you get used to being dead in one sense and alive in another. This business is a strange one right enough...You neatly tap a tattoo, a small sonnet and a miniscule haiku, you are pleased that the words continue to flow even after the heart has ceased its rhythm. The brain is still active. Your new nether corpus continues to sing:
I chant anew, another day;
More of the same in the afterlife,
Adventures in purgatory?
Limbo seems no different,
I still see the sun come up,
But no longer have to place shades,
On tired eyes,
No longer does the migrane knife
Twist in the skull.
The new being is much the same,
I still get easily bored and frustrated,
But no one hears my words,
Only I see them,
Wraith presence in my infernal machine.
You sense a smiling at the sonnet, the haiku writes itself:
You seem to have defeated,
The space 'tween here and the Other,
And in so doing: Persist!
Extract From "14 Cages"
The Tea Ritual.
You're making tea again;
Another useful Sunday chore,
Keeping the metaphors from the door,
And I keeping writing lines you'll never read.
I'm drinking tea again;
Another little ritual we have,
Another way of grabbing moments;
Of silence between moments of silence,
The science of avoidance?
And we're having wine again;
Another way to numb us,
And get the mood between us,
Raised somehow,
However futile.
You're making tea again;
Another useful Sunday chore,
Keeping the metaphors from the door,
And I keeping writing lines you'll never read.
I'm drinking tea again;
Another little ritual we have,
Another way of grabbing moments;
Of silence between moments of silence,
The science of avoidance?
And we're having wine again;
Another way to numb us,
And get the mood between us,
Raised somehow,
However futile.
Fragments of past, present and future
(*Some vernacular Scots is used here, just a wee note of caution...)
Some musing from the past to the future and then back to the febrile present….Part One...
Stepney Soap Suds

Canterbury: home of the scene and the stuff of my daymares. Some block had nearly stabbed me there in 1987 and I'd never forgotten that, despite the wonderment-inducing music that flowed like mercury from there throughout the 60s and 70s and beyond. Anyway, here I was tipping back the black stuff in The 3 Tuns and looking for a fight. No...I got some Jock pumping my mitt and rabbiting about Aberdeen. Teuchter as the Glasgow folks have it. I scoffed my pint and steak pie and me, Neil and Gordo exited with Paulo in tow. More drink and food to follow. I ended tearing into a Geordie teacher lassie as Neil and Gordo caberet-ed it up with some block out of Coldplay's brother. Summer of 2002. Out on the batter again and loving it. The 3 idiots abroad, circumnavigating the old U of K Glasgow to Newcastle in a horseshoe of arcane geometric intent. Bothwell services gave way to Carlisle as Neil and I ripped into a gross of McEwen's red death. 15 cans and counting. Gordo played a nightmare selection of Abba and Easy Rider in rotation. Morecambe. Oxford. Brighton. Canterbury. Kent coast. Cambridge and The Fenlands. Up to Newcastle for the dregs of the journey. Dregs being the operative as Neil had morphed into O'Toole and I'd kegged on about a stone of Full English cardiac case brekkies and several gallons of the black watter. Gordo still radiated the boxer he was, eyes bright behind the rakish broken bugle. Sound fellows on the road without plan or portfolio. Came in on budget too.
Hatfield and The North: the signage of signages. Love to see it. Love to hear them play too. Sinclair, Miller, Stewart and Pyle. What an outfit!
Fol deRol runs and we're back in the ovum of old Scotia, piling down Ashton Lane and noising up the hoi polloi and arrivistes alike. McAuley was in tow by now: poor wee Valentino Marc, too fine for this old world of ours. RIP Marc, RIP old son. I can hear your laughter from 2002 echoing down the blower as we rapped into the long nights. I wouldn't have finished the book without you, mate.
Back to the East End on the bullshit PR trail, faking fashion with the maximum twattage that I could muster. Fooled 'em 'cept myself. Back home, tail between. Max anger. Many a night with pencil in mitt, pouring whisky-scorn onto the petty page. And now...well, it's a right laugh looking back at the seemingly random collisions that were synergies without an anchor. Interconnectedness of all humanity, despite Witchfinder Dawkins and his bloodless eyes and unpoetic imagination. I take that back, his poetry is synaptic as opposed to romantic, misunderstood Magus? Who cares, eh? Pass the port…

111-Tri-Chloroethane

He was at it again. Pub after pub traversed chasing women in optics, bottles, cans and draught as the man says. I stared at his Old Testament mugshot profile and had a quiet smile to myself. We had done 20 pubs in an hour and my speed was wearing off. I trained it home to Bayswater, stopping off at Jodie ODs for a late night ramble about contemporary Irish golfers and Winston Churchill's lamentably poor judgement. Good end to a enervating eve. Bed before 3 was a comparitive victory for the McCann laddie in The Griffin, The Smoke....
McCann had made his usual sharp exit after soliloquising about wine, women, golf and song. Timed it perfectly. The tube to Queensway at just the right moment, doors closing, coda to the night before I could argue the case for late night Turkish shakedowns in gambling dens, or the casino for a bog standard burger. 1130pm and McCann of The Errors is off at Plumpton. Wish he would curtail the white stuff, as he is getting faster with age; time running backwards as his ageless coupon has morphed from 45 year old Alan Moore Magus into 25 year old fresh faced jokey, blokey bookie's journeyman. An enigma of shapeshifting intensity and good black humour.
Here's me at 3am, downing sour lager and eyeing the local skirt with a wary countenance and slightly bulging midriff. Good living. My promotion's a dead cert. DS McVey is a fitted marking, no doubt. McCann is mired in DC hell and gives not a jot of concern. He's too frantic to actually work at my pace. I do the paperwork, he lifts the tickets. Job done. Still, he lifted a boy at Hoxton for punting eccies and some other shite; still got the steel required to do this undercover lark. Hard in that soft outer. Fast fists and no damage done.
There he was: McCann. Glasgow's finest export, tipping back my duty-free scottish grain and rabbiting about Padraig Harrington. Lovely lad, but mad as the hatter. Always took the proverbial biscuit, dropping in at will and giving me heartburn laughter as he rambled through his routine, eyes ablaze with manic life and love. I sat in my opiated state, arthritis abating as the Diamorphine McCann lifted from the office weaving waves of relief through my wracked corpus. God bless the Scotsman, he was a good 'un. He exited at 2, taking a Brinsley MacNamara play with him, "A Glorious Uncertainty" How apposite!
Jodie OD was an old warhorse of some repute: papped off the force for hitting a so-called superior officer and refusing to climb down from his personal mountain to apologise. He'd come over from Tipp and loved the London liberation of early 60s Notting Hill blue beat, Ska and Irish folk. He'd knocked about the hippie fringes and ended up being at the epicentre of Ronnie Laing's Tavistock experiments. Sound bloke. Like a Magus gone to seed. Massive white mane and beard. Moorcock's Elric's Dad. That sort. Loved Jodie. He'd given me back-up over an altercation with an IRA laddie in Bayswater and I'd never, ever forgotten. I'd always get him that extra dosage as and when required, without his even asking. His eyes would telegraph pain and I'd be off and running. Nick a good dealer and pinch a tincture of his stash of opiates for Jodie. As long as it was 'script quality, my quid was in. Good night sweet Magus. I smell Tippex in the landing of my buliding, those kids from Laddy Grove buzzing away at it for a cheap hit. I sighed a tad as I opened the door to my sad wee apartment and clocked Ginger on the couch. She'd crashed and was making snuffling noises, whilst Hawkwind oozed out of my old Linn bins. Space Ritual on replay.Happy days.

A Fly in Aspic
The drones. Always hammering away at the backbrain. Primal fear drummed into my wiped mental slate. Patinas of shifting realities competing for attention. The drones. It was coming: the end point, in a heavily quilted sense. I was being suffocated in white noise and cotton wool-mouthed I raised my eyes to the strip lighting as the DMT took effect. I was acceding to the madness. Capitulating to the reassuring voices as they played my favoured choices over a huge invisible rig in the hidden wall speakers...And now I was belting along Old Street, my years at Porton Down and elsewhere a memory frag replayed when conscious of the body heat of the local constabulary invading my icebox existence as fringe player on the East End intelligence circuit. Who was I anyway? A fictive self, created by The Outfit for none other than the amusement of the trapeze artist falling without safety net humour of my faceless handlers? Or was I still being filmed by Chris Petit or Stewart Home for some Situationist event, played out over a vast endless looping slowed-down movie of my ever-shifting lives?
The Rev and The Errors looked at McGhee pound down Old Street as they laughed at his shuffling gait and aching trainered feet awkwardly make their way back to his bed-sitter nether-hell. The joke was on him for a change as they lit imaginary cigars and wound their way into some crap boozer or other for the search for intelligent life in this domain. The grey reaches were in danger of swallowing up their last reserves of Caledonian humour sparks and The Errors' endless cabaret of bullshit was wearing him out. The Rev merely was after birdage and pints or 12. Expense accounts would cover another day on the lash, then results would have to rear their ugly mugs. 2 dealers in a fortnight was smallest of the small ales. Hitting the 4-0 and not getting promo was not putting DCs McVey and McCann off; they couldn’t care less as the money merely kept them in booze and books, whilst the occasional arrest kept bored bosses off their seconded backs. Bottom feeders. Flies in aspic. McCann laughed as he tipped a 150-1 shot in the 330 at Kempton. McVey knew now why he was dubbed The Errors; he revelled in his incompetence as a means of perpetuating personal mythos. That and the fact that his speed habit was the talk of the canteen culture at both The Met and up the road in Grampian. Flies in fucking aspic...
Trouble Follows in Dark Pints

Company. Sometimes the only factor between you and the hereafter. Even when you're dead inside, as I was when I took the film that sealed the fate of a certain politician, it was company that swooped in on wings of intervention and prevented the certain demise of a certain Ivan Anthony McGhee. MI5 spooks may come and go, but the cabaret of friendships goes on forever. Moorcock had been impressed by my snaps and touch of the poet about me, but reckoned I was too close to the negative muse of Downing Street and the scandal sheets to be of any use to even myself. He was right of course. Sad case McGhee. Still trying at nearly 60 to be in on the action and all that rotten stuff. I was finished. It was 2010 and I reckoned 4 years would see me out this world, with maybe a few billion fellow psychonauts with me. It was an end in itself my life and the recession-ridden UK I had come back to from LA was a nightmare of Pre-War grey. I felt like I had skipped a generation and was back in my grandfather's Highlander forelock-tugging Cromarty croft. Subsistence economy and paying through the nose for it.
My nose was twitching as The Rev and his mate, Sean of The Errors came into The Electricity Showrooms; a pair of doom prophets from up the road in anarchy riven Scotia. The Caledonian invasion had started and this pair were prime movers. Errors tipped me a cheeky wink and The Rev blinked kinetically and shyly smiled. I merely shrugged and tipped another expensive Czech lager down the thrapple and sighed. The Rev was over like the proverbial shot as Errors jemmied a laugh out of the heavily pierced barman and tossed his mane provocatively. Big bleeding poseur out of the west of Caledonia. The Rev on the other hand was too low-key for his own good. And a sly fox too. Camera at the ready I snapped Errors as he trailed The Rev with a pair of whiskies and pints of Guinness. The terrible twosome. The gallows humour in the air I asked after my old pal Alec up in Glasgow. Errors snorted and slapped my back heartily with the air of a sideshow bare knuckle boy as The Rev tried to prise out info about Jodie OD. I balked as two twenties were pressed into my open mitt. Errors had a roll of dough that would land an elephant. He gave me the blue vulpine eyes and got in close. Circling the corpse. He was mild enough to be really intimidating. Loud voice/soft voice. The Rev disappeared to the bogs to look for tuppeny dealers as The Errors continued his soft soap hard talk. I sighed again and tipped the dregs of the lager. Errors shrugged said nothing and pressed another twenty into my jacket pocket. Invasion of personal space: a favourite tactic of the psychopath. He cracked his knuckles and plainly stated "Three minutes Ivan, 3 mins" as he followed The Rev into the bogs. I'd known that Garry the Bong was in there flogging cheap grass and poor speed. I'd had a lucky escape as I exited at some lick. Pair of shits. Undercover and on expenses. Still, they'd let me off. Result.
Quite obvious, really!

I am crazy. Good family. Oxford main chance. But no, shoot yersel' in the foot, wee man!. What shite! I was a 22 year old dude in an unusual academic setting. I mean, these dudes thought Gerry Rafferty was fucking American! Jesus! What rot...all the time thinking of poor Sean Sheridan; dead at 36, my uncle's best mate and a good mentor o' mine...
Then Floyd kicks in with its bad-time blues and all is forgotten. Bourgeoisie boys giving us the way forward, saloon bar leftist, as Geldof wearily put it. Easy for the cunt to say that; pumping Paula Yates and getting plenty wedge for his miniscule role in The Wall. Us mere dole cunts were panting in the boy's wake. I'd seen him with The Boomtown Rats in The Glasgow Apollo in '82 and was non-plussed. Fuck...I'd hated Hawkwind and Marillion and my pathetic hippie credentials were pretty much shredded. It took John Leckie in '89 to lift me out of my ghetto mentality as regards working class hippies. There were plenty in Paisley; all good guys to a person... I still love those hazy days, my asthma precluding any searching drug quests. Bless us all...we fucking tried!
Oxford Hazing

Fountain of Salamacis creeps out of massive speakers as Vol. Con and I down pints and wrestle with the existential horror of essay deadlines whilst keeping a weather eye on the ladies. Dipso-wide bhoys floating on a sea of prog and Guinnesses. Vol. Con makes a quip about my straggly barnet, saying I was becoming a white Rasta, and why didn't I go the whole hog and get some dreads? I choked on the ruby red pint and burst a gut laughing. Vol. Con's Van Cleef gimlet eyes drilled into my backbrain as he eyed me winking at all and sundry. A rare talent: comedian and sentinel. His large ivory mitts twisting a roll-up and rubbing sensual fingers down his jet black strides, his brows fast twitching a telegraph of libidinous intent. Two lassies entered our pub tutorial snug and gave us a barely-concealed look of pig-tail tugging coquettish come on. We winked a smug glint of Gaelic pride and downed our pints. Another day at the chalk face.
A 1000 Names, all of them wrong...
Free aether. Solar energy assails my pellucid Gaelic skin as me and The Rev traverse more of the forgotten and erased, trying to compose a homage that neither stoops to conquer nor soft soaps; a difficult doxology. Old Lady Time is never kind to the navel gazers. Quickly we rush through over an hour of footage and I tootle off for an early bath. I'd prefigured Ayrshire so wrong: my childhood experiences and expectations were the right ones, the adult mindset of educated scoffing was well wide of the mark. Ayrshire both confirmed a belief and sullied a political mapping. People were interconnected in so many ways that my stolid Stalinism Lite was worthy of trashing. And I did. My childhood was a glorious time of wonder, even into so-called adolescence. Burns had burned his way into my consciousness, despite my opinions to the contrary. So had the sun-dappled landscape and deep topography: an all-round day of wonderment.

Some musing from the past to the future and then back to the febrile present….Part One...
Stepney Soap Suds

Canterbury: home of the scene and the stuff of my daymares. Some block had nearly stabbed me there in 1987 and I'd never forgotten that, despite the wonderment-inducing music that flowed like mercury from there throughout the 60s and 70s and beyond. Anyway, here I was tipping back the black stuff in The 3 Tuns and looking for a fight. No...I got some Jock pumping my mitt and rabbiting about Aberdeen. Teuchter as the Glasgow folks have it. I scoffed my pint and steak pie and me, Neil and Gordo exited with Paulo in tow. More drink and food to follow. I ended tearing into a Geordie teacher lassie as Neil and Gordo caberet-ed it up with some block out of Coldplay's brother. Summer of 2002. Out on the batter again and loving it. The 3 idiots abroad, circumnavigating the old U of K Glasgow to Newcastle in a horseshoe of arcane geometric intent. Bothwell services gave way to Carlisle as Neil and I ripped into a gross of McEwen's red death. 15 cans and counting. Gordo played a nightmare selection of Abba and Easy Rider in rotation. Morecambe. Oxford. Brighton. Canterbury. Kent coast. Cambridge and The Fenlands. Up to Newcastle for the dregs of the journey. Dregs being the operative as Neil had morphed into O'Toole and I'd kegged on about a stone of Full English cardiac case brekkies and several gallons of the black watter. Gordo still radiated the boxer he was, eyes bright behind the rakish broken bugle. Sound fellows on the road without plan or portfolio. Came in on budget too.
Hatfield and The North: the signage of signages. Love to see it. Love to hear them play too. Sinclair, Miller, Stewart and Pyle. What an outfit!
Fol deRol runs and we're back in the ovum of old Scotia, piling down Ashton Lane and noising up the hoi polloi and arrivistes alike. McAuley was in tow by now: poor wee Valentino Marc, too fine for this old world of ours. RIP Marc, RIP old son. I can hear your laughter from 2002 echoing down the blower as we rapped into the long nights. I wouldn't have finished the book without you, mate.
Back to the East End on the bullshit PR trail, faking fashion with the maximum twattage that I could muster. Fooled 'em 'cept myself. Back home, tail between. Max anger. Many a night with pencil in mitt, pouring whisky-scorn onto the petty page. And now...well, it's a right laugh looking back at the seemingly random collisions that were synergies without an anchor. Interconnectedness of all humanity, despite Witchfinder Dawkins and his bloodless eyes and unpoetic imagination. I take that back, his poetry is synaptic as opposed to romantic, misunderstood Magus? Who cares, eh? Pass the port…

111-Tri-Chloroethane

He was at it again. Pub after pub traversed chasing women in optics, bottles, cans and draught as the man says. I stared at his Old Testament mugshot profile and had a quiet smile to myself. We had done 20 pubs in an hour and my speed was wearing off. I trained it home to Bayswater, stopping off at Jodie ODs for a late night ramble about contemporary Irish golfers and Winston Churchill's lamentably poor judgement. Good end to a enervating eve. Bed before 3 was a comparitive victory for the McCann laddie in The Griffin, The Smoke....
McCann had made his usual sharp exit after soliloquising about wine, women, golf and song. Timed it perfectly. The tube to Queensway at just the right moment, doors closing, coda to the night before I could argue the case for late night Turkish shakedowns in gambling dens, or the casino for a bog standard burger. 1130pm and McCann of The Errors is off at Plumpton. Wish he would curtail the white stuff, as he is getting faster with age; time running backwards as his ageless coupon has morphed from 45 year old Alan Moore Magus into 25 year old fresh faced jokey, blokey bookie's journeyman. An enigma of shapeshifting intensity and good black humour.
Here's me at 3am, downing sour lager and eyeing the local skirt with a wary countenance and slightly bulging midriff. Good living. My promotion's a dead cert. DS McVey is a fitted marking, no doubt. McCann is mired in DC hell and gives not a jot of concern. He's too frantic to actually work at my pace. I do the paperwork, he lifts the tickets. Job done. Still, he lifted a boy at Hoxton for punting eccies and some other shite; still got the steel required to do this undercover lark. Hard in that soft outer. Fast fists and no damage done.
There he was: McCann. Glasgow's finest export, tipping back my duty-free scottish grain and rabbiting about Padraig Harrington. Lovely lad, but mad as the hatter. Always took the proverbial biscuit, dropping in at will and giving me heartburn laughter as he rambled through his routine, eyes ablaze with manic life and love. I sat in my opiated state, arthritis abating as the Diamorphine McCann lifted from the office weaving waves of relief through my wracked corpus. God bless the Scotsman, he was a good 'un. He exited at 2, taking a Brinsley MacNamara play with him, "A Glorious Uncertainty" How apposite!
Jodie OD was an old warhorse of some repute: papped off the force for hitting a so-called superior officer and refusing to climb down from his personal mountain to apologise. He'd come over from Tipp and loved the London liberation of early 60s Notting Hill blue beat, Ska and Irish folk. He'd knocked about the hippie fringes and ended up being at the epicentre of Ronnie Laing's Tavistock experiments. Sound bloke. Like a Magus gone to seed. Massive white mane and beard. Moorcock's Elric's Dad. That sort. Loved Jodie. He'd given me back-up over an altercation with an IRA laddie in Bayswater and I'd never, ever forgotten. I'd always get him that extra dosage as and when required, without his even asking. His eyes would telegraph pain and I'd be off and running. Nick a good dealer and pinch a tincture of his stash of opiates for Jodie. As long as it was 'script quality, my quid was in. Good night sweet Magus. I smell Tippex in the landing of my buliding, those kids from Laddy Grove buzzing away at it for a cheap hit. I sighed a tad as I opened the door to my sad wee apartment and clocked Ginger on the couch. She'd crashed and was making snuffling noises, whilst Hawkwind oozed out of my old Linn bins. Space Ritual on replay.Happy days.

A Fly in Aspic
The drones. Always hammering away at the backbrain. Primal fear drummed into my wiped mental slate. Patinas of shifting realities competing for attention. The drones. It was coming: the end point, in a heavily quilted sense. I was being suffocated in white noise and cotton wool-mouthed I raised my eyes to the strip lighting as the DMT took effect. I was acceding to the madness. Capitulating to the reassuring voices as they played my favoured choices over a huge invisible rig in the hidden wall speakers...And now I was belting along Old Street, my years at Porton Down and elsewhere a memory frag replayed when conscious of the body heat of the local constabulary invading my icebox existence as fringe player on the East End intelligence circuit. Who was I anyway? A fictive self, created by The Outfit for none other than the amusement of the trapeze artist falling without safety net humour of my faceless handlers? Or was I still being filmed by Chris Petit or Stewart Home for some Situationist event, played out over a vast endless looping slowed-down movie of my ever-shifting lives?
The Rev and The Errors looked at McGhee pound down Old Street as they laughed at his shuffling gait and aching trainered feet awkwardly make their way back to his bed-sitter nether-hell. The joke was on him for a change as they lit imaginary cigars and wound their way into some crap boozer or other for the search for intelligent life in this domain. The grey reaches were in danger of swallowing up their last reserves of Caledonian humour sparks and The Errors' endless cabaret of bullshit was wearing him out. The Rev merely was after birdage and pints or 12. Expense accounts would cover another day on the lash, then results would have to rear their ugly mugs. 2 dealers in a fortnight was smallest of the small ales. Hitting the 4-0 and not getting promo was not putting DCs McVey and McCann off; they couldn’t care less as the money merely kept them in booze and books, whilst the occasional arrest kept bored bosses off their seconded backs. Bottom feeders. Flies in aspic. McCann laughed as he tipped a 150-1 shot in the 330 at Kempton. McVey knew now why he was dubbed The Errors; he revelled in his incompetence as a means of perpetuating personal mythos. That and the fact that his speed habit was the talk of the canteen culture at both The Met and up the road in Grampian. Flies in fucking aspic...
Trouble Follows in Dark Pints

Company. Sometimes the only factor between you and the hereafter. Even when you're dead inside, as I was when I took the film that sealed the fate of a certain politician, it was company that swooped in on wings of intervention and prevented the certain demise of a certain Ivan Anthony McGhee. MI5 spooks may come and go, but the cabaret of friendships goes on forever. Moorcock had been impressed by my snaps and touch of the poet about me, but reckoned I was too close to the negative muse of Downing Street and the scandal sheets to be of any use to even myself. He was right of course. Sad case McGhee. Still trying at nearly 60 to be in on the action and all that rotten stuff. I was finished. It was 2010 and I reckoned 4 years would see me out this world, with maybe a few billion fellow psychonauts with me. It was an end in itself my life and the recession-ridden UK I had come back to from LA was a nightmare of Pre-War grey. I felt like I had skipped a generation and was back in my grandfather's Highlander forelock-tugging Cromarty croft. Subsistence economy and paying through the nose for it.
My nose was twitching as The Rev and his mate, Sean of The Errors came into The Electricity Showrooms; a pair of doom prophets from up the road in anarchy riven Scotia. The Caledonian invasion had started and this pair were prime movers. Errors tipped me a cheeky wink and The Rev blinked kinetically and shyly smiled. I merely shrugged and tipped another expensive Czech lager down the thrapple and sighed. The Rev was over like the proverbial shot as Errors jemmied a laugh out of the heavily pierced barman and tossed his mane provocatively. Big bleeding poseur out of the west of Caledonia. The Rev on the other hand was too low-key for his own good. And a sly fox too. Camera at the ready I snapped Errors as he trailed The Rev with a pair of whiskies and pints of Guinness. The terrible twosome. The gallows humour in the air I asked after my old pal Alec up in Glasgow. Errors snorted and slapped my back heartily with the air of a sideshow bare knuckle boy as The Rev tried to prise out info about Jodie OD. I balked as two twenties were pressed into my open mitt. Errors had a roll of dough that would land an elephant. He gave me the blue vulpine eyes and got in close. Circling the corpse. He was mild enough to be really intimidating. Loud voice/soft voice. The Rev disappeared to the bogs to look for tuppeny dealers as The Errors continued his soft soap hard talk. I sighed again and tipped the dregs of the lager. Errors shrugged said nothing and pressed another twenty into my jacket pocket. Invasion of personal space: a favourite tactic of the psychopath. He cracked his knuckles and plainly stated "Three minutes Ivan, 3 mins" as he followed The Rev into the bogs. I'd known that Garry the Bong was in there flogging cheap grass and poor speed. I'd had a lucky escape as I exited at some lick. Pair of shits. Undercover and on expenses. Still, they'd let me off. Result.
Quite obvious, really!

I am crazy. Good family. Oxford main chance. But no, shoot yersel' in the foot, wee man!. What shite! I was a 22 year old dude in an unusual academic setting. I mean, these dudes thought Gerry Rafferty was fucking American! Jesus! What rot...all the time thinking of poor Sean Sheridan; dead at 36, my uncle's best mate and a good mentor o' mine...
Then Floyd kicks in with its bad-time blues and all is forgotten. Bourgeoisie boys giving us the way forward, saloon bar leftist, as Geldof wearily put it. Easy for the cunt to say that; pumping Paula Yates and getting plenty wedge for his miniscule role in The Wall. Us mere dole cunts were panting in the boy's wake. I'd seen him with The Boomtown Rats in The Glasgow Apollo in '82 and was non-plussed. Fuck...I'd hated Hawkwind and Marillion and my pathetic hippie credentials were pretty much shredded. It took John Leckie in '89 to lift me out of my ghetto mentality as regards working class hippies. There were plenty in Paisley; all good guys to a person... I still love those hazy days, my asthma precluding any searching drug quests. Bless us all...we fucking tried!
Oxford Hazing

Fountain of Salamacis creeps out of massive speakers as Vol. Con and I down pints and wrestle with the existential horror of essay deadlines whilst keeping a weather eye on the ladies. Dipso-wide bhoys floating on a sea of prog and Guinnesses. Vol. Con makes a quip about my straggly barnet, saying I was becoming a white Rasta, and why didn't I go the whole hog and get some dreads? I choked on the ruby red pint and burst a gut laughing. Vol. Con's Van Cleef gimlet eyes drilled into my backbrain as he eyed me winking at all and sundry. A rare talent: comedian and sentinel. His large ivory mitts twisting a roll-up and rubbing sensual fingers down his jet black strides, his brows fast twitching a telegraph of libidinous intent. Two lassies entered our pub tutorial snug and gave us a barely-concealed look of pig-tail tugging coquettish come on. We winked a smug glint of Gaelic pride and downed our pints. Another day at the chalk face.
A 1000 Names, all of them wrong...
Free aether. Solar energy assails my pellucid Gaelic skin as me and The Rev traverse more of the forgotten and erased, trying to compose a homage that neither stoops to conquer nor soft soaps; a difficult doxology. Old Lady Time is never kind to the navel gazers. Quickly we rush through over an hour of footage and I tootle off for an early bath. I'd prefigured Ayrshire so wrong: my childhood experiences and expectations were the right ones, the adult mindset of educated scoffing was well wide of the mark. Ayrshire both confirmed a belief and sullied a political mapping. People were interconnected in so many ways that my stolid Stalinism Lite was worthy of trashing. And I did. My childhood was a glorious time of wonder, even into so-called adolescence. Burns had burned his way into my consciousness, despite my opinions to the contrary. So had the sun-dappled landscape and deep topography: an all-round day of wonderment.

Thursday, December 9, 2010
Liminal Boundaries - video by Joe McKay - thoughts/narration by Psychonaut
A lovely view and take on West Scotland with beautiful shots/video footage from Psychonaut's good mate Joe. Excellent job lads! I hope we can see more from you both in the very near future.
Travel – Vlog 1 – (North Ayrshire) Kilwinning – ‘Liminal Boundaries’ from ersatz artisan on Vimeo.
Travel – Vlog 1 – (North Ayrshire) Kilwinning – ‘Liminal Boundaries’ from ersatz artisan on Vimeo.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Wee Midwinter Hangover (For Gerry Marillion)
The ever dependable weather conversation passes many an awkward minute at the bus stop, in the rail carriage and even amongst cronies well known to you. You smile at the risible soothsaying and quotidian rune casting of amateur forecasters; the same planks that offer betting tips that are still running at Chepstow racetrack. Before the smoking ban, you could punctuate it with a fag or two, curlicues of nicotine insinuating their arcane delights into barrooms and sitting rooms alike. The Caledonian Curse: nae confidence. Drink like a Byronic man on nights oot and then have breakfast time summit conferences about the night afore's doings. Pathetic. Paved and tarred the highways and byways, ushered in the age of the Idiot's Lantern, steam trains, Penicillin, odd Freemasonic Rites, Burnsian metaphors, dimming political influence, Calvinist guilt, the worst wine known to humanity, the fattest punters in Europe, low life expectancy for the unworking working class (as was), and all you can do is batter your head against some crushing expectations as you pickle your remaining few liver cells in the so-called Water of Life...Monday, Jimmy it's Monday...
Ignition Point (Another para-suicidal sonnet)
Keeping the foe at bay,
in all its guises,
trying to keep the mouth shut tight again.
Make a wish as you touch wood,
utter a vain word or two in vague hope,
sink a pint and smile at the detractors,
dying by inches at the footrail of the bar.
Light a candle, imagine the words you utter,
hold more than a ritual thumb-sucking quality,
a coin for a fountain unseen,
a coin tossed for sport,
the mirror lies yet again,
age has not withered,
wisdom however has yet to arrive.
(For RC: Blessings, however secular or futile)
in all its guises,
trying to keep the mouth shut tight again.
Make a wish as you touch wood,
utter a vain word or two in vague hope,
sink a pint and smile at the detractors,
dying by inches at the footrail of the bar.
Light a candle, imagine the words you utter,
hold more than a ritual thumb-sucking quality,
a coin for a fountain unseen,
a coin tossed for sport,
the mirror lies yet again,
age has not withered,
wisdom however has yet to arrive.
(For RC: Blessings, however secular or futile)
Sunday, December 5, 2010
The New Magick (a sonnet of sorts)
It's so easy to look down from a self-appointed umpire's position;
it requires neither empathy nor self-awareness, nor insight.
The magic of the ivory tower of academia,
penning treatise which only reflect mere theory.
The direction is always outward,
never inward,
never reflection,
cold words wrought from a rigid text,
presbyphobia as vision quest.
Words. Mere words.
Spells never cast.
Logic overwhelming raw feeling;
the science of dysfuction.
Mere words...
it requires neither empathy nor self-awareness, nor insight.
The magic of the ivory tower of academia,
penning treatise which only reflect mere theory.
The direction is always outward,
never inward,
never reflection,
cold words wrought from a rigid text,
presbyphobia as vision quest.
Words. Mere words.
Spells never cast.
Logic overwhelming raw feeling;
the science of dysfuction.
Mere words...
Subsumed in Kapital
Drowning in the unreality of the marketer's conversation. All the hallmarks and barbs of late-stage capitalist jargon. The on-your-bike-sonny boy rhetoric of Norman Tebbit, tempered with the opportunist cycloptic eye of the Saatchi money-go-round art machine. I've had enough. I've seen and heard too much. The madness of the market foisted on us in a drip-feed televised, email virus-ed, junkmailed and injected into our unsleeping orbs from 50 foot hyper-kinetic billboards. Is this the "land fit for heroes" that has WW2 veterans out with the begging bowl every November and cheap jack "comedians" like Jim Davidson entertaining the troops engaged in unwinnable foreign wars? Drowning in the unreality of it all, I'm drowning. The midwinter bites pensioners, who either eat or feed themselves as minus 14 temperatures bite Northern Scotland as "welfare experts" of the landed gentry decide to play benefit roulette with the populace.
The so-called paradigm shift so beloved of Post-Modernist thinkers is nothing more than good marketing by photogenic quasi-Marxists casually sipping cocktails in the Garrick Club, whilst manning the barricades for the clenched fist photo-op every Mayday march. Cynical? This is the present, partners...
The so-called paradigm shift so beloved of Post-Modernist thinkers is nothing more than good marketing by photogenic quasi-Marxists casually sipping cocktails in the Garrick Club, whilst manning the barricades for the clenched fist photo-op every Mayday march. Cynical? This is the present, partners...
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