Crazy Zen Beat Hipsters – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Rich said we were ‘crazy, Zen, Beat hipsters’ and we didn’t give a fuck. I wrote him a poem and Tim made it into a song. It sent chills down my back to hear my words put into a song.

It was a silly throwaway poem that I wrote in ten minutes – really nowt but doggerel. But I kind of like it. It’s fun.

Thanks Rich. Thanks Tim.

We’re all crazy Zen Beat hipsters, aren’t we?

But then we’re all pretty ordinary nobodies – Jack Kerouac, Roy Harper, Zoot Horn Rollo, Picasso, Captain Beefheart, William Burroughs, Attila the Hun, Gandhi, Hitler, and my Dad.

Maybe we just want to be noticed? We are ordinary guys. Maybe we want to make sense of what it was about? Maybe we want to make things better?

We invented wars and invasions; complete with genocides and so many atrocities we can’t even record them all. We created fashions and styles and tried to capture life and describe it. We have sometimes tried to right wrongs. But maybe we just wanted to be special and we were all fumbling about in the dark, playing with our demons and trying to make a world we could be happy living in.

So many of us just want to feel important, believe we are important, think we deserve so much more than anybody else. None of us do.

If only we had been loved and praised enough all our lives. We’re all so insecure.

3.11.01

 

Happiness is security and not having to worry.

3.11.01

The Punks come to visit – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Happiness is security and not having to worry.

3.11.01

 

So the kids came round to my house, a great horde of them. There was a loud knock on my door early one evening. I opened it. There was a bunch of them all excited and boisterous. All the long hair and flares had gone. They now all had short hair, spiked up into points with brylcream. They had tight jeans. One of them had spray-painted his shoes with silver paint (He has since gone on to become a lawyer). There were a lot of razor-blades, rips and safety pins.

“Right you boring old fart!” one of them said, with a big grin, “we’ve come to play you some real music!”

I let them in. They had some a plastic bag of tinnies with them. We put the Hi-Fi on loud and I passed the deck over to them so I could sit back and listen. They played me Clash, Sex Pistols, Damned and Stranglers. I listened.

It was loud. It was fast. It was angry and violent. I didn’t know if I quite liked it on that first hearing. It felt raw and unsophisticated. It grew on me. I liked their passion and enthusiasm! I loved the way they had found a style that they could lay claim to. I loved the energy and anger of Punk!

The house rocked. They sprawled over the furniture. We drank beer and talked excitedly. They came out with their new phrases. Everything was boring! You could never trust an old hippie like me! This was the new world! This was anarchy! This was New Wave! I was now officially a boring old fart! But there was fun and a respect. I was now the old guard. They were taking over. I’m not sure that this was exactly the type of relationship that the school would be looking to foster, but it felt right to me.

It seemed that overnight I had become a dinosaur! These new kids were cutting a new path through the wilderness. I was the other side of the generation gap. But they came round to share it with me! That felt good.

At least I wasn’t considered to be completely lost and down with the likes of Max Bygraves, Val Doonican and Harry Secombe. They had some respect. I still had a little credibility! After all, I had introduced them to Roy Harper, Bod Dylan, Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart and the Doors.

Later on, in the holidays, my wild Punks came round to help me decorate the house. There must have been a dozen of them. Liz went away with the kids and we cranked the music up and chucked the paint on, making short work of it and having a ball. The whole house was a party for three days.

They were very keen but not too proficient at painting. I found myself having to tidy up a lot of their sloppy work. You see, that’s what comes with age and maturity – you become fussier.

Us teachers have to set an example!

11.11.01

 

Gandhi and Martin Luther King both had a vision of a new world that wasn’t exclusive. It was for everyone. They both set about putting their energies into building that vision of a harmonious, multiracial world, despite the seeming futility involved in even attempting something so impossible. They both took on hugely enshrined establishments that were so set in concrete that it looked as if they could never crumble. Yet the British Raj and South African white supremacists were both defeated and shown up for the evils they were.

Mandela and Gandhi were extraordinary. They both refused to let their emotions lead them down a road of violence and revenge. They sought to oppose regimes that they believed were wrong, in ways that revealed their enemies for the monsters they were, without resorting to hate and division. They were threatened, beaten but never bowed. If ever men stood as examples of what it was to be a man, to be a human being, then it was epitomised in these two.

If ever a person needed a role model then they could not be bettered.

3.11.01

 

Happiness is hope.

3.11.01

 

Medgar Evers, Steven Biko, Ann Franck, Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, plus countless others of all races and cultures, all genders, all colours, all religions, all creeds, they will live on as beacons, while the Hitlers, Stalins, Pol Pots and countless other dictators, torturers and criminals should be reviled forever.

3.11.01

 

Happiness is building that better world.

3.11.01

the bi-polar ape.

Posted on by Opher

Safar sent this through to me and I found it very thought-provoking. We are indeed bipolar chimps. We are capable of such violence and become incited so easily. I worry. We’re a danger to the whole planet. I wish we could be more like bonobos.

Teenage rebellion – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

My teens were a time of conflict. It was a time when I started becoming an individual. I was fast developing my own philosophy on life, thinking about the big issues and my place in the world, what I stood for and what I stood against. It was coupled with a strong urge to break free from the confines of my family.

I knew that my Mum and Dad loved me. There was never any doubt about that. They gave me unconditional love and care. They did not insist on great contributions to the housework or try to influence my views. I was very lazy. I had almost complete autonomy with my room. I lived in my own universe.

In 1965, inspired by the film ‘The Knack’ I painted my room white, including the mirror and all furniture. I put brackets on my walls so that I could display my albums. My parents weren’t particularly enamoured, particularly the mirror and furniture, but didn’t seem to mind too much. My mum even bought me a white bedspread to match. My life revolved around girls, friends, hair, clothes and music.

I had lots of freedom. At fifteen I was allowed to spend the summer hitchhiking around France with my sixteen year-old friend Foss. At sixteen they allowed me a motorbike, despite all their fears about me killing myself. At sixteen, I was allowed to go out to parties to the early morning and pubs to drink. My liberty was almost without limits.

While I was dabbling with morality and the wonders of the infinite, developing strong attitudes towards pacifism and animal welfare, they listened and didn’t argue too much. I was passionate and I think they were intrigued. They tolerated my girlfriends and turned a blind eye to the happenings in the privacy of my room. I was able to bring girls and friends in at will. The only frustration was my music, which I liked to play loud, was sometimes met with bellows of ‘Turn it down!!’ but even that was generally tolerated. My friends were made welcome and fed. My house became the focus for gatherings.

My conflict was with school and my appearance created a series of confrontations. I was constantly being sent home for infringements of the dress-code, hair and beard. It was a game I enjoyed playing.

My father saw education as the panacea to a perfect life. Education brought access to jobs. Jobs meant money. Money bought your life-style. Education was the answer. Education had been denied my father. He was bright but had been prevented from going to Grammar School because his family claimed that they could not afford the uniform and needed him to leave school and get a job.

Dad valued education and he wanted those opportunities for me. They sent me to a private primary school and scrimped and scraped to keep me there. The fact that they couldn’t afford a proper one and sent me to a Mickey Mouse establishment was by the way. They did what they thought was best.

So there I was, at the age of sixteen, with opportunities and freedom. Did I appreciate them? No. I enjoyed the social life, hanging round with friends and chatting up the girls. I was no trouble in class but only did the bare minimum to escape retribution. I was in conflict with the hierarchy at the school who viewed me as a rebellious nuisance. A view that was totally justified. I was standing up for my rights. For me Kerouac made more sense than any career.

My father took a more long-term view than me. My behaviour confounded him. As he saw it, I was actively damaging my future.

Having a good time was OK. He’d done his share of rebellion, smoking drinking and hanging out with the ladies. He could understand that. What he couldn’t understand was why I was growing my hair and wearing clothes that put me in conflict with school and ruined my education in the process. In his eyes I was busy burning the bridges that he’d have given anything to build. It did not make sense to him. He thought that my idealism was something I’d grow out of. The hair and clothes were fashion statements that would rapidly become redundant as next year’s business-manipulated whims created a new set of fashion. He did not see a cultural aspect to any of it. This wasn’t culture. This wasn’t philosophical. This was fashion. Fashion changed. We weren’t a new generation founding new values rejecting the ancient rat-race values he lived by. We were just doing what teenagers always did and pandering to current styles and attitudes.

In my mind I was not a young sixteen year-old kid, I was part of a unique new counter-culture. We rejected religion, politics and all the old world stood for. Nothing like this had ever happened before. We were forging new aesthetics, breaking away from the old traditions and attitudes. This was the modern world. We wanted rid of all that claustrophobic cultural baggage. A knife had come down and severed us from all the old ways. It wasn’t fashion. It was something much bigger than that. I was sixteen and I thought I knew it all.

I saw my Dad sitting there every evening, exhausted by his work, consumed by it, with no questioning of the system he was part of, and I knew I did not want to be part of that. I wanted to goof, and have fun, to discover every new way of looking at things. To him I was a crazy kid, sprouting hair from every orifice, looking like a rag-bag, doing crazy stuff and losing sight of the distant horizon – which was a good career. He knew that I was going to be working for forty years of my life and what I did now would determine what that career might be. I had the chance of an education. I was bright. I could go to university. I was blowing my future for things that ultimately did not matter.

For me, career was a dirty word.

“Get your hair cut!”

The fact that I was rejecting the life that he aspired to was an anathema to him. What did I think I was going to do with my life? I was accepted. They were proud of me. It was my behaviour that was being questioned.

But I was sixteen. I was an adult. I knew what I was doing. I knew where I was going. We were building a new world with new values. I was sure of it.

I wanted something simpler and more meaningful than the pursuit of wealth and comfort. This was probably because I had not experienced poverty, war and the drudgery of daily life with family responsibilities.

My Dad and I were from different sides of the spectrum. Life was simple for me and complicated for him. It was so obvious to him that I was deliberately messing up. He was certain that I would grow up to regret what I was doing.

Yet throughout it all, despite the arguments, I received their full backing. The house was beset with rows but my life-style remained untouched. I did what I wanted. There was a string of concerts and parties, the pub, girlfriends and friends. I don’t know if there was any way he could have insisted on anything else, short of throwing me out.

Despite myself, and my priorities, I scraped the necessary examination passes, and, although they weren’t good enough for the universities I’d assumed I would be going to, they were good enough to get to a polytechnic. I muddled through.

Once I’d left to go to college I was completely free. They had no jurisdiction over me. At eighteen years old, there was nothing to moderate or restrict me. The rows ceased. They accepted that I was going to do it my way – right or wrong. I had a home to come back to, they funded me and I got food parcels.

My relationship with my Dad became less fraught.

12.10.01

 

Happiness is freedom to do what you want!

3.11.01

Egypt and religious fundamentalism – photos

Posted on by Opher

Egypt is at war with itself. It is in the midst of civil war. Many of its people want to move into the 21st century with its consumerism and affluence. The religious fanatics want it to stay in the 7th century with conservative values and strict religious laws.

It feels as if it is stuck in the past.

There is much about the modern life and its greed and consumerism that I despise. It is a valueless culture. But there is much about the strict religious fundamentalism with its intolerance that I despise even more.

Egypt has so much poverty and hardship.

Everywhere we went there were armed militia, machine-gun posts and the promise of violence.

Surely there is a middle way?

Poetry – Culture

Posted on by Opher

Culture

 

Culture is rich,

Surrounded with mystery,

A time capsule of history.

 

Culture is a prison,

Binding us in a straitjacket

The conservative’s racket.

 

Culture is art,

Security and order,

Stopping at the border.

 

Culture brings conflict

Intolerance and repression

Conflict and oppression.

 

Culture enriches,

Satisfies the mind,

Expresses the divine.

 

Culture prevents change,

Restricts development

Bolsters the arrogant.

 

Culture is binding

Brings people in harmony

Full of tales and hominy.

 

Culture is intolerant

Locks people in the tribal

Pushing Koran and Bible.

 

Culture is simple

It is also complex

Especially when concerning sex.

 

Opher – 23.8.2020

The vicious cruelty gene – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

One day I will die and all my things will be divided up. Some will go to friends as mementoes. Some will be distributed to the family. Liz will keep some of them. My kids will have some. I will take pleasure in knowing that things will go to people that might get them out from time to time and think of me. I don’t know why that is? It will not matter to me. I shall be dead.

26.10.01

 

Perhaps it is necessary to wield the bomb and bullet and just eradicate all the evil bastards! Get rid of all the genes that breed fascists and torturers in one fell swoop!

It seems so easy!

But that’s frustration talking. Nothing is easy. It is likely that we all have the nasty genes. We all enjoy destruction, we all love cruelty. It is merely that most of us are better at suppressing it, or have never found ourselves in situations that are conducive to our nasty side becoming developed or expressed. But it is latent in us.

We have descended from the people that built Shakespeare’s Globe – but we also descended from the people who designed the pits for cockfighting, bear-baiting and bull-baiting that took place next door to the Globe. We are still the same as the people who organised the rules for blinding the bears, badgers and dogs and ripping their claws out to make the baiting more of a spectacle.

We designed the bullrings and flocked to them in our thousands, to bring the kids and have a family outing full of laughter and excitement, cheering as the animals were jabbed and speared and stabbed and teased or ripped apart before our eyes. The more bellows of pain and gore the better. What a day out for the family!

We are the descendants of those people. I do not think we have changed much in a few hundred years. The Taliban and Isis demonstrated that very clearly.

You can imagine the conversations around the family table a few hundred years ago. ‘Perhaps tomorrow we could go to the execution? I’ve heard they’ve got some new techniques. There are these wicked curved things they use to rip the entrails out and then they burn the guts while they are still attached and to the dirty criminals. I bet that makes the eyes water. More than merely crushing bollocks or pouring molten lead in ears. Then they have these great shire horses that they use to rip their legs and arms off. Bet that makes them scream?’

‘What fun!’

Perhaps we should just do the world a favour and do away with ourselves, slit our own throat, rip our own nails out, poke red hot pins in our own eyes?

Wouldn’t that be fun?

Sometimes, I think that there is something intrinsically wrong with the whole human race and that the world would be better off without us. Then a crisis comes along and there is always a multitude of kind people risking their own lives to help others or rescue an injured animal – every day a million acts of selfless kindness.

13.10.01

 

You can’t put your own aspirations on your kids. I think my Dad gave me a platform on which to build, but my life is nothing like his.

12.10.01

 

How many times have I let people down?

26.10.01

 

I’m guilty of playing the material game. I’ve surrounded myself with possessions, all of which seem important to me. After I am gone they will not be important at all.

Some of my things will be sold, some given to charity and some thrown in the bin where they belong.

26.10.01

A Jaundiced view – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Life rarely goes the way you plan it.

31.10.01

 

I stayed with friends while Liz moved up to Hull with Dylan so we gave up our bedsit. Kathy and Toby were good friends looked after me. They’d quickly escaped from downstairs to move into our little flat. It meant that I did not even have to move. It was only for two weeks. I had to serve out my months’ notice as a technician.

It was towards my last week at work that things started going wrong. I felt so ill. It was like flu but worse. I was so muzzy and weak and was struggling to cope. My pee was coming out brown. No amount of aspirin or paracetamol did any good. But it was my last week and I carried on.

On the final Wednesday it was all too much. I was so ill I could not function. I decided to go to the college doctor to see if he had anything that might get me through the week.

I knocked on the surgery door and walked in. I had not got more than two paces in when he shouted at me.

“Stay there! Do not come any closer!”

That was rather disconcerting but I was too ill to care. I just wanted to curl up and die.

“You have Hepatitis! Yellow jaundice. You are highly contagious.”

He actually got out of his seat behind the desk and edged away from me towards the corner of the surgery.

“I will write you a note.” He scribbled on a bit of paper. “Take this to the nearest hospital and give it to a doctor. Do not – I repeat – do not go near anyone! You are highly contagious.”

He placed the note on the edge of the desk and backed away into the corner of the room.

It was like I had leprosy or plague but I was too ill to give a damn. I wanted to go to bed and be ill. I couldn’t handle all this.

I didn’t ask how I was meant to get to hospital without going near anyone. I didn’t ask anything. I trudged over to the desk, took the note and left. The doctor was almost cowering in the corner of the room. It would have been quite comical if it wasn’t for the fact that I felt so ill. I was beginning to surmise that my condition might be quite serious.

I went to my car and passed one of my colleagues on the way.

“Where are you going?” She asked.

“I’ve got Hepatitis. I’m off to hospital,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said, edging away.

I somehow arrived at the hospital and handed in my note at the reception.

“Go and sit over there in the waiting room and a doctor will see you,” the receptionist explained curtly. I looked round at all the people sitting in the waiting room. Mothers with babies, children. There were hundreds of them.

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “It explains in the note. I have Hepatitis. I am highly contagious. I am not allowed to go near anyone.”

“Well if you don’t sit in the waiting room we can’t see to you.”

I was too ill to argue. I went and sat in the waiting room with all the other people.

After two hours the doctor saw me. He read the note. He looked at the deep yellow whites of my eyes.

“Good heavens,” he exclaimed. “You have Hepatitis. You are highly contagious. Why on Earth did you sit in the waiting room? You should have brought this note straight to me.” He was annoyed.

I was too ill to explain.

“We will have to admit you to an isolation ward straight away. Where have you been working?”

I explained that I was a laboratory technician.

“Do you work with rats?” He asked.

“Yes. I’ve been working in the animal house with about three thousand rats.”

“Good God! That’s even worse. You could have Weil’s disease!”

I’d never heard of it but it sounded bad.

Perhaps I was dying.

I explained that my wife was in Hull and I was meant to be going up to Hull in two days when I finished work. Was it possible for me to go up to Hull first before going in to hospital.

“There is no way you can undertake such a journey. You are much too ill. You need to be isolated straight away. You could have a very nasty form of Hepatitis.”

From the way everyone had been acting around me I was beginning to suspect that. But all I wanted to do now was to get to Liz. That was the only thing in my head. I told him I needed to go to Hull.

We had a bit of an argument. He lost his temper with me and handed me discharge papers. He warned me that if I signed them they took no responsibility if I subsequently died.

I discharged myself and left the doctor dousing himself with ethanol.

I caught the next train to Hull and tried to keep away from people. It wasn’t hard. They didn’t seem at all keen to go too near to me. That might had been because I was glowing luminous yellow. It was not a nice yellow. And my eyes were now orangey brown where they should have been white.

I arrived in Hull and got on a bus. The conductor told me where to get off. I’d only been there a few times by car and did not have a clue how to find the place. I asked a local kid where my road was. He was very helpful. He jabbered away in some deep Hull accent something about tennies and bairns and what not. As far as I was concerned it could have been Russian. So I set off in the direction he had pointed.

I found it.

As we had no phone Liz did not know I was coming. She thought I was coming up in two days time.

What she found was a bright yellow husband standing on the doorstep.

“Don’t come any closer!” I said as she stood there.

“What’s the matter?” She stepped back, alarmed.

“I have Hepatitis. I have to go straight to hospital. It’s very contagious. Don’t come near me.”

She could see I was ill. It didn’t need spelling out. My unnatural yellow colour bounced off the walls. We negotiated a way into the house. I had a cup of tea and we set off.

She got the pram and put Dylan in it. We walked to the hospital. It wasn’t too far away. But when we got there they wouldn’t see me because they didn’t have a casualty department. They directed us to the Infirmary on the other side of the city.

We had to get on a bus.

Eventually, we got to the infirmary. They took down my details but because I didn’t have a local GP they couldn’t admit me. I was instructed to go home and get a local GP to take me on.

By the time we got home it was too late. I had another cup of tea and took myself off to bed in the spare room.

The next day Liz went straight down and registered me at the surgery she had already registered with. She explained what the problem was and they arranged to send a doctor round.

The doctor was a Locum. He came and examined me, prodded my stomach, checked my eyes and confirmed it was Hepatitis. He told me to go to bed, take some aspirin and plenty of fluids.

I asked about the baby and Liz.

Yes it was contagious. I was to sleep in a different room and use separate utensils, sheets, flannels etc. That should do it. He would arrange some blood tests to see how I was going.

In London it was life and death, isolation wards and panic. In Hull it was take an aspirin and go to bed.

They’re pretty tough up North, obviously.

I was too weak to argue.

31.10.01

 

So what do you regret most? If you could go back and put it right? If you could relive it with the knowledge of hindsight how would you do it different?

The trouble is that it’s all or nothing. If you change a bit the chances are that you’d end up changing it all.

31.10.01

 

Now Jack Kerouac probably started it all. It wasn’t so much the structure as the journey; not the arriving as much as the doing. He sure did it. He wrote it. He lived it.

He wasn’t the first to search for the meaning of life, and he wasn’t the first to want to goof. He was just the first to put it together that way.

He was the first Messiah of the new age.

The fact that he lost it, messed up with booze and religion and couldn’t handle it. That was incidental.

All heroes are fatally flawed.

31.10.01

Today’s Music to keep me NSae in Isolation – Christy Moore

Posted on by Opher

Christy is another of those singer/songwriters who says something in his songs. I like music with depth and meaning – songs of passion.

Today I’ll be playing Christy Moore:

 

Poetry – Who are the Goons??

Posted on by Opher

Who are the Goons??

 

Who are the goons?

The Zombies?

The mindless men in uniform

Who carry out the tyrant’s will?

 

Who are the thugs

Who follow the orders

To beat and shoot their own people?

 

Who are the torturers,

The Stormtroopers

And snatch squads??

 

The ones who enable the evil?

Who perpetuate fear and terror?

Who enjoy the power?

 

How do they become such heartless goons?

 

Do they think?

Do they feel?

Have they not got minds of their own?

Were they born

Machines of the state?

Or did they just grow mean?

 

Without the goons

Tyranny is powerless.

So who makes the goons?

 

Opher – 17.8.2020