EPISODE 12: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR REVEALS SOME PERSONAL HISTORY.

Welcome to my blog. I am delighted you have joined us. This week's topic is my early life.

I was talking to my brother today on the phone and I asked him about two childhood incidents that I’ve been meaning to speak to him about for many years. The first occurred when I was, well I don’t know how old I was, between 6 and 9 I guess. For some reason he and I were sent to a place in Broadstairs. It must have been some sort of camp for boys but we were in dormitories, not tents. There was a boy there, deaf and dumb I believe, who frightened me. That’s all I recall. And that he wore pyjamas. (But so did we all.) My brother, who is older than me by 3 years, remembered that we went to Broadstairs, didn’t like it, and grumbled so much that we were fetched home. Why we went or where it was, he didn’t know.

The second incident occurred in North Cheam, Surrey. The night before the house had been burgled and my mother seemed particularly annoyed that the burglar had eaten a banana and left the skin on the sofa. The next day my brother and I went to play in Nonsuch Park which was close to the house. It was very foggy. After a while a man approached us. I don’t know what happened but at some time my brother pushed the man and told me to run, which I did. When I got home, my parents were talking to the police about the burglary and they told me not to interrupt them. When the police had gone, I was allowed to speak. Today I asked my brother what had happened in the woods but he had no idea what I was talking about. I strongly advise you that if your parents are alive and there’s anything you think you may want to know more about one day, ask now, because when they go they take much of your memory with them.

I read somewhere, (probably in a book about brain research and children which I should go and find and cite properly) that the memory we have up to 18 months old is a sort of patterning, laying down tracks sort of memory, the specific events of which we can’t remember, and the memory after 18 months which is specific. Personally I can recall fuck-all about being under 11. Or maybe more than fuck-all, but not a lot.

I was born in Leeds, perhaps Bramley, in December 1952. According to my birth certificate I was born in Mount Carmel Nursing Home, although recently I tried to trace it and couldn’t find it. There’s a picture somewhere, unless I’ve lost it, of my mother with me in the local newspaper because I was the first baby born in the Home. My mother told me I was actually the second but the first kid was poorly and Polish so they picked me instead and I was especially baptized by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds, Bishop Heenan. This last event being significant to my mother who was a devout Catholic whereas my Dad was a forced convert. I was the youngest and last of five with one brother and three sisters, the eldest of whom died in 1996(?), the same year as both my parents.

We left Leeds and moved South when I was about 7 or 8. I don’t remember anything about the time in Leeds except perhaps one day running home from school because I didn’t want to use the school toilets. In Cheam I went to St. Cecelia’s until I was expelled for throwing a stone over a fence and not owning up. I was then moved to a school near Guildford called St. Peter’s, run by a priest called Father Freed who more than once caned me for things I hadn’t done. Cunt. There I discovered I was good at sport, especially football. I remember also mentally torturing some kid one day at school and feeling very very sick afterwards. I was a tall strong boy with a bad temper alongside an attractive nature which usually made me popular or a leader. I passed my 11+ and then became fodder for the Jesuits of Wimbledon College – even bigger cunts.

My mother was the headmistress of Infant Schools and later a lecturer in Education at a teacher’s training college. My father was an Oxford graduate, had fought in the 2^nd World War, and was a Civil Servant in the Home Office. Once a year, perhaps, we went to the theatre in London. I remember seeing Noddy and Brian Rix farces. The first two films I saw, apart from the silent movies show by my father at home, were Whistle Down the Wind and GI Blues – probably in 1961.

I was very fond of my grandparents and my great Aunt Bobbie, all of whom lived in Colchester. Staying with them was a treat. Also when they visited they gave us money, sometimes ten shillings. I’m a grandfather myself now. I usually cry when I think about the past. I’m not really sure why.

The one thing I can thank the Jesuits for is teaching me to abhor the catholic church and its religion. It’s difficult to understand how my gentle parents could allow the priests to be so merciless with their punishments. I arrived at the school a year younger than normal and was put in a class called Figures One. Only at the end of the first term, when I was put down into Figures Two, did I realize that I’d been in the top stream of three. Later I returned to the top stream and tried to learn Latin and Greek alongside the more usual arts and humanities.

My 14^th year seems to have been a formative one in terms of my character and interests. I’m not really sure what happened. I fell in love with the sister of a friend of mine. Her name was Katy Kirby. Blond with a snub nose. Although I had 3 sisters I’d been to all boys schools for the previous 3-4 years and when girls came into my life I found out I had zero self-confidence and a crippling shyness, especially towards any I found attractive. I used to cycle five miles to Katy’s house just to stand outside and wish I had the nerve to ask her out. Ultimately I got a friend to pretend to be me and to my amazement she agreed to go to a film with me. When the day came I couldn’t think of a single word to say to her and so didn’t speak. We saw the film and went home. That was it.

At the same time I began to write a diary, thousands of words a day, and read Russian novels, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Solzhenitsyn, et cetera, and then Hesse, Mann, Laing, Jung, and others. Looking at myself, I saw myself as divided, multipersonalitied, dislocated.

At night sometimes I’d find myself being stolen from my body and dragged by black pigs towards the window as they tried to steal my soul. I’d fight to save myself and wake-up terrified.

Then what happened?

Come back next week.

EPISODE ELEVEN; IN WHICH THE PLOT RE-EMERGES AND BARRY LONG IS PRAISED AGAIN.

Welcome to my blog. Without you it withers.

For the most part this blog is meant to reflect a writer’s life as he enters a phase of success. This phase, which like the Age of Aquarius is either a bit delayed or not all that’s it was cracked-up to be, is taking some time to manifest and at the moment looks very much like the previous stage that consisted of occasionally sending stuff off into the ether only to have it evaporate or somehow disappoint. For example this blog; even when it gets read no-one leaves a comment. My Writers and Artists Yearbook promised me abuse but I’ve not even had that. Then my finely crafted 600 word article on Dying in Avalonia – it’s been published so where’s the response to my invitation to communicate with me on these highly important and relevant matters?

This week I’ve spent writing just under 6,000 words of my novel ‘Sad Sam.’ This is a book that I wrote 13,000 words of some time last year and then sort of forgot about. Recently when I saw that a publisher was asking for material, I sent him a whole bunch of stuff and that added the uncorrected Sad Sam as an afterthought. Within a couple of days I discovered that he wasn’t a ‘real’ publisher but wanted to turn my novel into an ebook when I completed it. This, of course, I could do myself, as I so nearly have with Boggy Starless. But would I? Not any time soon, that’s the truth.

Is there any money in an ebook? 99% not? Why bother then? Because you never know, because this guy might have some marketing energy that I don’t, because I’m overly moved by someone actually liking what I’ve done. (If he still does when the rest of it is created.) My supposed aim is to earn a living through writing and I saw myself writing articles rather than punting another novel. But

Writing a novel can be the most fun. I was nervous last Sunday when I began to read the first six chapters; what if I had no feeling for the story or couldn’t think where to go with it? Last year I had a vision of the plot but that’s all gone now. I decided that I’d try a new way of working and instead of making it up as I went along I’d take a more Fritz-like approach and plan it as best I could. In fact I’ve done exactly as I’ve always done, focusing on the scene I’m writing while jotting down ideas, lines, plots, for the future as they occur to me. It takes me a whole day to come up with a 1,000 words so the 6,000 I’ve knocked-up is quite satisfying.

One useful tip Fritz gives is to always ‘have somewhere to go.’ To finish the day with a good sense of what’s coming next is very relaxing because it is bugger sitting there in the morning waiting for the story to unfold itself.

Talking of stories…I’m so thoroughly peeved with this whole Politicians-Press-Police obsession of the politicians and the press. How much self-important self-serving sanctimonious shit can these people talk? Yes, deleting messages from that poor child’s phone was sick and stupid. Did the guy that did it realize the implications of what he was doing? Probably not. And why did he do it? Because he wanted paying. Who paid him? You did, I did. Who is killing innocent people in Libya? You are, I am. Who is allowing the ‘bankers’ to rape the fruits of your labour? You are, I am. Et cetera.

Sorry for that rhetorical impulse. There’s a religious preacher within me: all I need now is religion. My inner American, Jack, he’s the one for laying down the law – as we will see in a moment. Last week I promised two visions of the future, mine and his. We’ll start with me, of course.

In Barry Long’s book, written I remind you, in 1985, he forecasts there will be a time when “the ‘democratic’ media, now being able to cast around the whole world instantaneously for problems and unhappiness, will seem to run into a goldmine of both…Significantly, wherever the media reporters go in the world, conditions and unhappiness there will get worse. But no-one will notice this for everyone will think that it is the events making the news. But it will be the news making the events.”   

He then makes a number of other prophecies including the rise of terrorism, the world-wide coverage of civil disturbance including the showing of army and official para-military brutality against civilian populations in the name of maintaining law and order, natural disasters and economic collapse. Meanwhile the news and entertainment industries will become as one and the only entertainment, the only excitement, will be the bad news. Shortly after that we’ll be so depressed that we’ll blow ourselves up.

Actually the last sentence isn’t quite what he said but reporting him accurately means copying out the whole bloody book and I’m not doing that. Read it, ‘Ridding Yourself of Unhappiness.’ Why not?

Hi, I’m Jack and I’ve been given less than 100 words to put forward a positive view about the future. Here it is.

Let us create an ENLIGHTENED PLANETARY CIVILIZATION.

What do you think? No, don’t tell me, especially if your reaction is negative. Let me ask you this, which you can reply to, “What are you doing to create an enlightened civilization?”

Sorry, I didn’t quite hear you.

EPISODE TEN; IN WHICH THE AUTHOR INVITES DAVID CAMERON TO LISTEN TO BARRY LONG.

 Welcome to my blog. Your visitation is important to me.

Is the revolution coming? This morning I was listening to the Rolling Stones ‘Street Fighting Man’ while listening to the news and contemplating the notion of Avalonia. Since sacrificing my television as a gesture towards my writing career, thereby loosing Al-Jazeera and Russian TV News, my world has shrunk to that provided by the BBC news or the Latest Headline button on my laptop. Today the British media, parochial at the best of times, is obsessed by the News of the World and the far from mortal crime of hacking into people’s phone calls which, I suggest, isn’t a lot different from using a pair of binoculars or  taking pictures from a mile away.

I suppose I should be too old by now to remain puzzled by how it is that anyone could possibly be surprised by corruption in high places, nevertheless I am. Since I was 14 or 15 it has struck me as self-evident that the rich exploit the poor and the powerful abuse the powerless and everyone lies to everyone, so while I accept most of the supposed outrage  is consciously faux it would seem that out there in the nation the purblind are in the majority or how else could they respond to the financial crises by voting in the lackeys  of the very fatcats who are screwing them while wetting themselves over the marriage of two golden pussies dressed in fineries stolen off the backs of the people cheering them?

Last year, the so called parliamentary scandals; this year the global banking conspiracy and the exposed corruption of the press and the police: what else do you need to see through the emperor’s clothes of government? Maybe the knowledge that much of the heroin and hash arriving in this country from Afghanistan is brought over by the very heroes The News of the World conned you into supporting with your golden hearts and empty pockets would help you unzip the last veil.

When I was 15 it was 1968 so I had a lot of help in understanding the ways of a world that many of us wanted nothing to do with. For some this meant armed insurrection and street fighting men (and women), for others, for me, ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ was the message we received and the action/non-action we took. (As I said it before, what was so wrong about Love and Peace – apart from the realizing of it?) Of course many of my generation are dead and I doubt whether the names of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert are known to our siblings who probably see hippies as idealistic dreamers (which we were) or down and out hedgers, which we never intended to be. Playpower, universal love and brother/sisterhood, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll – for fuck’s sake we just wanted to enjoy our lives. When the revolution comes, which it will, unless there’s a drastic change of zeitgeist or an outbreak of global Mandelaism, it won’t come with flowers in the hair or with a vision of happiness fuelling the party, but like the Arab Spring it will begin with anger channelled into peaceful protest and finish only when the arms dealers have found more lucrative fields to destroy.  

Last week my non-readers would have noted the mention of Barry Long, a now dead Australian teacher of meditation who wrote and lectured extensively on sex, death and unhappiness. In the spiritual field his character and message were uniquely presented and often he seemed to say things that no-one else would be so explicit and blunt about. Even now when I hear his tapes or read his works, I often squirm at some of his statements, particularly about making love or about his being a ‘Master of the West’ ( – actually he says ‘the’ master of the west but I was trying to censor that).

http://www.barrylong.org/images/BL_Pic.jpg

Anyway one of Barry’s most extraordinary books is called ‘Ridding Yourself of Unhappiness.’ Particularly amazing are pages 102-146 in which he describes the beginnings of democracy which he calls ‘the outer god’, the notion inculcated by priests and the like that there is a greater good outside the individual. Democracy, he says, did away with the individual and individual responsibility. Rather than deal with their own happiness the people have chosen to vote for other unhappy people to represent them.

‘Each man through the democratic vote could express his unhappiness by choosing another emotional or unhappy person or party to express his unhappiness for him to other groups of unhappy parties. Then these unhappy parties working unhappily together would produce happiness. That was the hope.’

Interestingly Barry says this was the greatest mistake yet made by ‘the masses’ because at least in previous times when the individual lost power to kings, tyrants, robber barons etc., it was a temporary involuntary surrender whereas now the tyranny of democracy is never ending because when one government ‘falls’ it is replaced by another. Has human happiness increased? Probably not. Has the common weal been shared out more justly than before? Don’t make me laugh.

Having shown the flaw of democracy, the abject self-abrogation of the individual’s power to address his/her own unhappiness, Barry discusses the role of the media in democracy. He begins this by saying:

‘In the democratic way of life man discovered one compensating notion. That was that he(she) was now democratically entitled to criticize and blame others for making him unhappy. This he called the freedom of speech. But really it was a lofty sounding euphemism for the license to pass the buck of unhappiness. Out of this remarkable notion of freedom arose the quintessence of massed irresponsibility and misrepresentation – the unhappy modern newspaper. On behalf of the massed unconsciousness, and in exchange for a few pence a day, the newspapers indiscriminately blamed everything and everyone under the sun (except themselves) for man’s unhappiness – without ever mentioning or pausing to perceive the cause of it.’

On pages 122-131 Barry Long tells David Cameron all he needs to know about his relationship with the press. (Barry wrote this book in 1985.) Initially the politicians used their ‘democratic’ authority to use the press to ‘publish the likes and dislikes of the ruling emotional authority of the day – which of course was the politicians themselves and their self-interests.’ As time passed and the duplicity, stupidity, and ineffectiveness of the politicians became evident, they made a deal with the press by bribing them to keep quiet or portray them in a good light.

“This they did by revealing non-attributable secrets and confidences entrusted to them, which made the headlines (and of course created more unhappiness): and by quietly altering, and failing to alter, the legislative statues to favour the continuance of newspaper irresponsibility without accountability, and giving it a creeping kind of  legality. The politicians by then had two faces: one for the public who did not know them: and one for the press that did.’

And thus the conspiracy of government and press against the people replaced the previous conspiracy of the rulers and the church against the people.

But what happens when conspirators fall-out?  When I was in Goa recently a conspiracy between an Israeli drugs mafia and the Goan police had just been revealed owing to an unpaid bribe resulting in the arrest of one of the Israelis. Two days later a video appeared showing the chief of police receiving pay-offs. For some time the media has picked off politicians. Yesterday Cameron-Clegg and Millie Band spouted platitudes about how the press should be regulated and made responsible. A few journalists may go to gaol, judicial enquiries will pontificate, but in the end while the faces may change the game will continue because the punters need their drugs and the people need their unhappiness.

The game continues, yes, but doesn’t remain the same. So what comes next? John and Jack Heston have different views about this so maybe this is what I’ll address next week, along with making an expedition to Avalonia.

EPISODE NINE: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGES THE MASSIVE DISINTEREST IN HIS BLOG AND PROMISES TO DO BETTER – SOONER OR LATER.

Welcome to the ninth edition of this blog which is intended to give an intimate insight into the life of a struggling writer. Of course the writer would much prefer to drop the ‘struggling’ part of the intent and instead settle for making a record of his successes which, while lacking the drama of adversity overcome, would be a lot more satisfactory than admitting to either the need to struggle or the distaste for having to be involved in ‘a resolute contest’ or to have to make ‘a continued effort to resist force or free oneself from constraint’. A struggle is also defined as ‘a strong effort to continue to breathe, as in the death agony.’ So the writer in me is fighting for his life and this is what you are witnessing.

Or would be if you actually read this thing. No readers in two weeks! How embarrassing is that? Even my reader in Singapore has given up on me.

For this reason there will be changes in the blog, which you won’t really notice because you’re not here. Until I’ve worked out how to make it more entertaining, more gripping perhaps, I will not actually give up but will take a quiet holiday and talk among my selves. When we’re convinced we have something to sell you we’ll come calling.

Meanwhile we’ll still be here, chattering away internally while the rare sun shines outside.

The plan for today’s blog had been for me to attend a workshop yesterday, on Conscious Death, and then write a review of it for you today. Unfortunately I omitted to book in time and there was no room for me. I heard about the event because my article ‘Exiting Avalonia’ has been published in the free ‘Glastonbury Oracle’ events listing magazine. (As this article was the first product of my reinvigorated writing career I should both note and celebrate the occasion.) I concluded my piece by inviting people to respond with their comments. The only person to do so was advertising the aforementioned workshop at £65 for a 10am-4pm day.

My first reactions were annoyance and disappointment. Where was the praise? And why should I, who paid thousands for his Masters Degree in Death Studies and then gave nerve destroying talks for free to benefit my peers, pay 65 quid to watch some other arsehole do a better job than I may have done?

After more mature reflection I didn’t become less frustrated with the lack of approbation but did remember that since returning from India in February I have become more…and here I search for words…more inclined to put ‘transcending death’ as a major goal, (the major goal?), of my remaining life. Why? Mainly, I suppose, because for all my study I just know I’m missing the point. Probably many points. Of course I don’t know what I mean by transcending death and I don’t know how I would I know that I have achieved my goal. It could be that I already have and/or that there is nothing to transcend. For years now I’ve thought about a statement of Barry Long’s, ‘Death is just a dead body’ and whereas to others it may seem axiomatic to me it has the feeling of a zen koan. Just yesterday I was going for a walk and for one moment I got it – but what I got disappeared immediately.

I wrote my Masters Dissertation, called ‘Learning to Die’, on the work of Stanislav Grof. (I lost my copy when the memory stick broke; should I find a copy I’ll put it on a sidebar of the blog one day – which I guess will be soon after I’ve worked out what a sidebar is and how to put things on it.) His main theme is Transition, i.e. the continuity of consciousness after death. I went to San Francisco to do a five day course with Grof (what an amazing man) that included holotropic breathing sessions (well, one) which are his main tool for inducing alternate states of consciousness (now that LSD is banned) and experiences of death and rebirth.

Holotropic breathing sessions are quite difficult if you’re the sort of person who needs to go to the loo a lot. There you are in a room full of strangers making strange noises, companioned by someone you’ve already decided is a bit weird, lying on your back and breathing deeply into god knows what terrors, and you notice that each time you breathe you need to pee just a little more. Finally you get up, self-consciously stagger off to the toilet, return, lie down, start the breathing again and think ‘bugger it I need to go again.’

So nothing happened to me in my session and the whole process is far too expensive to repeat. If I were a brave soul, which I’m not, I’d go shamanistic in Peru and drop some ayurvesca or take some lethal combination of ketamine and magic mushrooms. And if I had my way, which I might, there would be no posthumous consciousness. My grandfather wanted to be reincarnated as a cabbage. The gods may like creating something out of nothing but rather go the other way and disappear altogether. This had been my expectation, now I’m not so sure and if there’s got to be an afterlife journey then I should like to know how to catch the right boat. (Actually I’d prefer a train, with toilets and I don’t mind sea views if I’m on land.)

Going to the workshop, therefore, seemed a way of reapproaching the subject both intellectually and, perhaps, practically. Some of the ideas appeared to be about the use of Chinese and Indian herbs of healing which, in view of my friends who are dying and of my (small) intention to develop my Chi Kung practise, could have been useful. Also I am forever saying I would like to do stuff, go to talks, courses etc, yet never quite make it. (Even this week I decided to do an Avatar Course in Germany in August, then changed my mind.) I couldn’t quite determine in myself if I would actually do this one and I rang up to force my hand. Too late.

Never mind.