Art as Gift

I have worked on some Trickster material recently, and dug out an unread copy of Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde which I have started reading (having bought it about a year ago).

I also have a copy of The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World , (sometimes subtitled The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property) a book about art as gift rather than commodity. (half read).

If you don't have time to read lots, try listening to 20 minutes of a radio interview with him, to get a glimpse of the work.


Apparently his current work-in-progress has the title Cultural Commons.

You could also look at Cultural Commons where Lewis Hyde did the guest blog for July...
Look at these other names for Tricksters, Fools, Clowns, etc.

Father's Day, apparently...

My son just wished me a Happy Father's Day - having spent his evening with real flamenco music etc.

Lovely to hear from him anyway, but who knew that today counted? Not me. Apparently in Oz it does...

In the US & UK I believe they did this (recently invented) festival on June 18th. Whatever.

After all, on the 'pataphysical calendar, they call today 24 Phalle 133 de l'Ere Pataphysique.

Clock times differ, calendars differ - I just enjoy hearing that he has had some fun - especially when my own little world seems a bit short of that. Last night I had a few laughs (and drinks) and creative plotting with my friend Mr Jules - and today I have a hangover, and find myself slightly in the doghouse.

Mad about the books

With my love of reading, long life, tendency to hang out in libraries wherever I go, delight in the detective challenge of research, and tactile pleasure in books (I used to randomly search old bookshops with my dad at the weekend) – I ended up working in a library, with access to The Stacks (soon to move into another building – sigh) and functioning as an unofficial Archivist/Researcher for the Forum I spend most my free time in, at the Maybe Logic Academy.

One of my fellow students there sent me this link to ‘hot library smut’ (pictures of some of the finest libraries on the planet). I used to sit in the old British Library Reading Room with the ghosts of Darwin, Karl Marx, and so many others…thinking that the high dome got made to allow room for the ‘great thoughts’ hovering over people’s heads.

The link came from an intriguing blog called The Nonist. I roamed on from there to a wonderful essay on Arranging Books by Colour...which included this:


My library is, to borrow from Georges Perec, "a sum of books constituted by a non-professional reader for his own pleasure and daily use." Perec's definition comes from a wonderful essay of his titled, "Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One's Books", and includes such other quotables as "The problem of the library is shown to be twofold: a problem of space first of all, then a problem of order." I am well aware of both.

I remember how Penguin paperbacks had colour coded covers, in my childhood, and later I came across one German publisher, whose name escapes me, who used a spectrum of rainbow covers, and the shelves looked quite beautiful in the bookshops. Perec, however, liked the idea of books getting brought together that would not normally sit alongside each other.


The central issue, as Perec warms us, is that "None of these classifications systems is satisfactory by itself," and he is right. But one idea from his list, "ordering by colour," seems to be gathering a small following of late, particularly among the visually-inclined.

Great Googlie-Mooglie

(spoken:)Man...You know I've been enjoyin' things that kings and queens will never have!In fact kings and queens can never get 'm.And they don't even know about it!And good times? Mmmmmmmmm-mmh!!

(sung:)I have had my fun, if I never get well no more
I have had my fun, if I never get well no more
Oh my health is fadin' on me, oh yes I'm goin' down slow

(spoken:)Now looka here...I did not say I was a millionaire...But I said I have spent more money than a millionaire!Cause if I had kept all my money that I'd already spent,I would've been a millionaire a looong time ago...And women? Great Googlie-Mooglie!!

(sung:)Please write my mother, tell her the shape I'm in
Please write my mother, tell her the shape I'm in
Tell her to pray for me, forgive me for my sin

Howlin' Wolf - Going down Slow

Anarchy rules, OK?

I love getting to report good stuff. NoFit State excelled themselves this time. Apparently they won the Cavalcade (street parade) in Edinburgh with the best float.

Best Festival Float - No 46 - NoFit State Circus - ImMortal
Runner up - No 21 - Tempo Musical Productions
Best Community Float - No 55 - Edinburgh Chinese Community
Runner up - No 75 - Bo'ness Children's Fair Festival
Best Commercial Float - No 81 - The Edinburgh Dungeon
Best Speciality Unit - No 33 - Mirage Arabic Dancers
Best Walking Group - No 36 - Jump - Martial Arts Comedy

I find this particularly satisfying, after last year - as Ali says in the newsletter/blog:

Another prize for NoFit State
We are pleased to announce that we just won the best float in the Edinburgh Cavalcade ( Lord Mayors parade) This represents a huge victory as last year the company were removed from the parade by riot police after trying to join the back of the procession without officially entering. The publicity must have been good as the opening shows at the Fringe were all sold out.

heh heh

Review in The Herald
Review in The Guardian

For a longer discussion of what NoFit State attempts to do; and some context on New Circus, try Jeni Williams' article for New Welsh Review, issue 68, 2005 - "Circus with Heart"

Give Peace a Chance

I can't believe that after all these years I still have to mark the humans' report cards as 'could do better'. Oh yeh, I know - if I can't even keep peace in my own life, what chance do we have in the Middle East, where tribes have fought since the Old Testament times. I wouldn't mind, but they also managed to impose their god (cause of most of the fighting) on the rest of us. Yeh, yeh, right "All gods are mythical, except yours, huh". How many One True God's did you say existed? Next time you hear a sports person say God helped them, or Bush say 'God's on our side' or whatever - do me a favour - just replace 'God' with Zeus, or Apollo, or something. Apologies to all the gentle, peaceful, true believers out there.

Anger and depression alternate at my own stupidity and that of the whole human race. Despair may arise from internal chemical imbalances, external relationship imbalances, environmental stresses, national/racial/territorial issues, financial stresses and strains, etc.

Right now I find myself humming Lennon (as I often do when trying to cheer myself through glum periods) - jaunty tunes and miserable words (oh, and for those too young to remember - a really anguished scream or two):

Somehow the wires got crossed
Communication's lost
Can't even get you on the telephone
Just got to shout about it
I'm losing you
I'm losing you

Or:

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink
I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No,no,no.

I'm so tired I don't know what to do
I'm so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you would do

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind

I'm so tired, I'm feeling so upset
Although I'm so tired I'll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid git.

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
(mumbling)

Mobile Library

Well, the time finally arrived, and I find myself in the middle of moving the library into its temporary accomodation. You may well ask why the new library didn't get built first, so we could move straight in...

What Cardiff needs (apparently) is more shopping and less parking...(they plan to knock down the current library, several multi-storey carparks, shops, post office, Toys 'R Us, etc - to put up a John Lewis arcade).

So we move into some breeze blocks (and the old Welsh National Opera rehearsal building) - and patiently wait until 2008/9 for our 'state-of-the-art library' to get built in the carpark of the Marriott Hotel... (sigh)
The regulars suffer most...we have always formed a safe haven for the poor, the mad, the old, the ill, the unemployed (as well as the students, housewives, researchers, etc) - and this month of turmoil has displaced everyone's routines.

It does seem a shame that so many people now see us as irrelevant (see Love Libraries campaign). Why buy books, read them once, and clutter up your home with them gathering dust?

I love libraries because I chose the dangerous and impoverished path of the 'artist' so I have always believed that (to misquote The Furry Freak Brothers) "Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."

His Bobness

A day off from work, and at 2:30 I suddenly remember that the timezones mean that Dylan's doing his radio programme on XMRadio - Deep Tracks - on the internet.

3 Day's Free Trial and I dive in for the second half hour...ending with "Dry your Eyes" by The Streets. I don't know if I can subscribe just for one hour per week, but I enjoyed hearing our Bob online as a DJ - with his dreams, schemes and themes - this week 'Eyes' next week 'Dogs'.

After the extraordinary autobiography, Chronicles, shorn of name-dropping or vanity, full of a muso's dreams, reflections, memories, etc. I love seeing and hearing him moving on. Some days I feel real old, so to hear my peer group still growing and changing helps a lot.

Stupidly, I got all frugal last time Bob came through Cardiff a few months ago, and told myself I didn't need a hit. (sigh). Anyway, we have Modern Times to look forward to - I put in my pre-order already. Amazon [click the link above] offer a video clip of a complete performance of "Cold Irons Bound" which may demonstrate to the unconvinced what a tight band he plays with. Fantastic!

Big Wide World

I have tried to diversify from just hanging out in one intelligent forum - and go to My Space, and Tribe, and a couple of other online forums - but it feels like trying to befriend (or at least care about) everyone at a rock concert. I can't do it. I have enough trouble acting nice to one new person met in a bar. So much of the online social networking arises from a younger crowd, anyway, so the games of 'You've Been Framed' self-videoing do not remind me of when I reached that same age as film and sound recording seemed hard and expensive back then - the brief air guitar in front of the mirror phase can now get passed to posterity.

I don't think I should just blame my age though. Just as tv news exposed my whole generation to a close-up view of other life-styles and events on the planet, so these later generations have both the tv and the internet - plus they don't only see the newscasts selected for our instruction by 'authorities and experts and journalists', but can make their own...

How many cute videos of someone's cat falling over, or of wild and crazy kids doing ultimate pogo stick, or whatever can you watch? Parallel to cctv recording a great deal of our street life, more and more cameras (on phones, etc) observe and record the world from every angle. In sports, cameras end up in helmets, cricket stumps, helicopters and air balloons, they can zoom in and out, and then the editing suite can cut and paste and interactive tv can offer you all the camera-shots that previously they only saw in the production gallery, etc.

The recursive nature of people taking pictures of people taking pictures, and the sensation that more and more of the world can get played back, seems to have changed quite a lot of our perceptions of the world...unfortunately, the ability to forget and move on may disappear. The Big Brother fear of surveillance and reality video 'evidence' gets balanced by the self-publicising aspect, and the photoshop FX thing - don't believe everything you see...

Not Just Me, then....

I had a Google alert today, for one of the other "Toby Philpott"s that I have come across on the Web and his Liberal Legend blog. I believe he could have studied or taught at Durham University when I happened to pass through for a British Juggling Convention in the 90s, possibly the closest we got to meeting. He then spent some time as a small business advisor in China, and ran for Parliament on the Lib-Dem ticket.

I know these things thanks to Google, which I have almost swamped with my web activity, my Star Wars connection, etc. I usually have the top ten hits at least.

I know of a third Toby, rather younger, who took some photos of a bluebell wood for his local paper.

Maybe only three of us...not as prolific as Dave Gorman...

Still, maybe bibliophilia runs in the family - I came across this entry in a library website:

BRISTOL gloucestershire Philpott's Circulating Library 1802 [John Philpott]

More about Reg - and the love of circus

Just received a couple of other photos taken by Nic Ellis of West Australian newspapers...

An obituary appeared in the UK on Wednesday 26th July - in The Guardian. Read obituary here.

Reg's son Jo has also set up a free access bulletin board for stories, contacts, reminiscences, etc. you can find that here.

Death of a clown

Sad to hear today that Reg Bolton has died.

I worked with Reg during the late 70s, as he (like me) saw the positively therapeutic aspect of circus skills for all levels of ability. He remained focused on community projects, and first steps, and fun.

I would like to extend my sympathy to Annie, Jo and Sophie...

Although Reg had moved to Australia a while ago, he still travelled the globe encouraging new circus projects. For instance, he met up with Ali from NoFit State here at CircElation.

"damn everything but the circus!
...damn everything that is grim, dull
motionless, unrisking, inward turning,
damn everything that won't get into the circle,
that won't enjoy,
that won't throw its heart into the tension,
surprise, fear and delight
of the circus,
the round world
the full existence...
damn everything but the circus!"

e.e.cummings

Almost Unbelievable!

It does amuse me that I mingle with such a wide range of people, from variations on New Age True Believers (I mostly avoid the traditionally religious) to truly cynical sceptical hard-liners.

My own position probably appears near the extreme of disbelief. I do understand why people who cannot even consider psychic phenomena, or homeopathy, or Near Death Experiences can appear just as rigid and dogmatic as the apparently gullible people they oppose, and I guess I don’t feel quite so certain as many of them that nothing ‘strange’ ever really happens. Still, I would far prefer a conversation with Penn and Teller, or James Randi or even Martin Gardner than with someone who claims psychic powers of any kind.

After all, magicians and actors have explored how to make humans experience or imagine things that have not actually occurred in their ‘real life’ situation – so they seem perfectly qualified for sceptical research and testing.

Martin Gardner may have some attitudes I don’t agree with, but his columns of magic and mathematics in Scientific American kept me enthralled in my youth, fascinated by (say) flexagons or the concept of a googol (yup, the founders spelt it wrong...).


Randi may seem a bit bumptious, but I tend to agree with his analysis of most psychic activities. If I leave open a small window of opportunity for ‘the unexplained’ it does not come from a secret yearning that ‘strange powers’ prove true, but merely from a sense of fairness.

So, in the Maybe Logic Forum I chat to people who might well have some investment in magick, astrology, kabbalistic numerology, unusual healing systems, etc – and try (and often fail) to avoid angering them with my blunt, childlike questions…"how would that work?"

I then appear like one of those hard-line sceptics for whom no proof of ‘supernatural events’ would suffice.

For me it mostly seems like a matter of definition – just as ‘UFO’ originally stood for something Unknown flying, and turned into the shorthand for ‘alien spaceship’ – so I have little trouble hearing about things I can’t explain, and I feel little need to try to find an explanation – especially a glib one. I’ll stick with ‘unknown’ and ‘unexplained’ and 'outside my own experience' without adding a woo-woo of significance to those phrases.

I may not agree with Martin Gardner's critique of (say) General Semantics, and I may not feel as adamantly materialistic as the PSICOP gang, but my sympathies still lie with those who suspect that the bulk of ‘mysteries’ don’t seem very mysterious, really, to a sharp brain and an experienced eye.

William James seems like a role-model for feeling intrigued by the possibilities, while remaining sceptical of the improbable. Much of the dispute can get resolved if we perceive that the placebo effect may explain (say) homeopathy, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss it out of hand – indeed, anything that makes people feel better deserves study. Check out Stanley Krippner’s comments here

The amazing thing is that there is a history of sleight of hand in shamanism, and sometimes the sleight of hand is used for very benign purposes

In fact, my fascination with the imagination, the placebo, and the search for anything effective, etc led me to NLP and General Semantics and other things that Gardner might well dismiss. In a world where many people and most media prefer the 'exciting' interpretation to the dull one I understand some people's urge to over-compensate the other way. For all the Crop Circle books I can only find one Round in Circles: Poltergeists, Pranksters, and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers.

In honour of fellow sceptics and secularists, I have added a link to Chris Hughes’ blog H'edification for the H'iggerant

No Time to Think

I have stumbled slightly in the last few weeks, and my cheerfulness has lapsed. I have always attempted to cheer people up and cheer people on (including myself) but sometimes the sheer glum gloom of everday life (and what people have made of it) still grinds me down. (sigh)

Escape into watching a great, sporting and skilful game of football does not seem like an option - even with the claim that you see it as a meditation on spheres.

I have spent more time dozing or day-dreaming recently, as I find it pretty therapeutic. One of my greatest role-models (although we hardly work in the same sort of fields) remains Bucky Fuller. Some of that comes from his remarkable cheerfulness and optimism about 'humanity', and some from a hunch play, and a love of the very forms that he claims lie at the root of 'Universe'.

I found this on p122 of Martin Pawley’s lucid little book on Bucky.
The brilliant manner in which Fuller fused the development of a revolutionary structural system, the geodesic dome, out of a combination of many hundreds of paper and cardboard geometrical models that were ostensibly intended to be analogical aids for a system of thought, deserves careful consideration. Perhaps the best explanation of it is offered by his 1989 biographer Lloyd Steven Sieden.

'Thinking is sorting experiences’, writes Sieden at the beginning of his exposition of Fuller’s approach, ‘Separating the huge set of experiences that are irrelevant from the very small set of experiences that are relevant’. But irrelevant material itself falls into two categories, and Fuller believed that imagining thought as a transparent sphere helped him to see a way of distinguishing between them. He visualized a situation in which all irrelevant experiences that were too small and too frequently occurring were inside the imaginary sphere, and all those that were too large and too infrequently occurring could be regarded as outside it.
The way Fuller imaged the thinking process, the surface of the imaginary sphere itself would then only consist of relevant experiences, or thoughts. He then wondered how many relevant experiences it would take to establish the ‘insideness’ and ‘outsideness’ necessary to create a sphere of thoughts. His answer was that while any two experiences could be joined by a line, it too three to fix their relationship – a concept perhaps not dissimilar to the journalistic principle that it takes three events to make a trend. This point Fuller diagramatized by drawing a triangle. But to establish a sphere containing ‘insideness’ and outsideness’ something robust enough to be called a thought, was impossible using flat triangles on paper, because the triangle had no integral space-enclosing depth. Three-dimensional structure, in thought as in geometry, could only be achieved by plotting in a fourth experience. The resulting three-dimensional model, a three-sided pyramid, or tetrahedron, Fuller came to believe, was the true geometrical model of a thought. It consisted of four points, or experiences, which in turn generated six sides, or relationships.

My son contacted me to see if I had ever got through ‘Synergetics’ which I have to admit to not having tackled seriously. You can find it online at that link.

If you're going through Hell, keep going

I have had a strange digestive disturbance for a while (strange to me, as indigestion has not troubled me much in my life) and the other day pinged a muscle in my shoulder, so have started feeling sorry for myself. For all my work on 'self' I can still just fall into glumness as easily as the next person (and I really hate 'feeling sorry for myself' - or 'indulging' as Don Juan would put it). Perhaps the paranoids got it right and sinister bad guys have total control and play with us like pawns and puppets. HAARP causes floods and disasters, not Gaia; all the Disney movies groom our children for ritual abuse; Bush intends to start the next world war, using agent provocateurs; I can't remember my indoctrination, abuse, abduction by aliens, but only because they tampered with my memory; Phew. Back to cheerfulness, even if it seems like whistling in the dark.

Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life's a mess
But I'm having a good time

Oo, I've been loving and loving and loving
I'm exhausted from loving so well
I should go to bed
But a voice in my head
Says "Ah, what the hell"

Have a good time
Have a good time
Have a good time
Have a good time

Paranoia strikes deep in the heartland
But I think it's all overdone
Exaggerating this and exaggerating that
They don't have no fun

I don't believe what I read in the papers
They're just out to capture my dime
I ain't worrying
And I ain't scurrying;
I'm having a good time

Have a good time
Have a good time
Have a good time
Have a good time

Maybe I'm laughing my way to disaster
Maybe my race has been run
Maybe I'm blind to the fate of mankind
But what can be done?

So God bless the goods we was given
And God bless the U. S. of A.
And God bless our standard of livin'
Let's keep it that way
And we'll all have a good time

Repeat and fade:
Have a good time
Have a good time
Have a good time
Have a good time

Paul Simon

Passing the hat at the end of the show...

I mostly keep my sub-personalities apart, but any lightweight researcher could easily compile a profile as I spend very little time hiding behind avatars. I never felt the actor's need to hide behind a mask, a different name, etc.

Still, in exceptional circumstances we have to break our own rules. Apart from working as a juggler and circus worker and film puppeteer I have spent much of my life reading. If I had followed through on my school work I might have ended up doing Psychology or Philosophy or Anthropology or something. As the physical jobs of the vaudeville/variety world often appeal to less wordy people than me, it often surprises people to find out just how introverted I act at times.

Anyway, for the last two years I have worked with an amazing group of people in an online forum - the Maybe Logic Academy - mostly under the tutorship of the founder, one of my favourite authors - Robert Anton Wilson - someone it would prove hard to categorise in a few words (or even a few books!)

Suffice to say that I had recently prepared myself for yet another brain-stimulating course with 'Bob' or 'RAW' as we sometimes call him, when I heard he had become very ill. At the age of 74, confined to a wheelchair with Post-Polio Syndrome he has remained cheerful and optimistic to an incredible degree, but it seems as though he may have knocked on Death's Door recently. I don't think he got an answer. However, the course got postponed indefinitely, and now he racks up medical bills that (in spite of his many books still in print) could prove just as crippling. His student group have rallied around, to support and publicise attempts to cover the costs.

He has begun auctioning items on eBay...the first one seems to have done well so far, with bidding up to $500, and if you don't do those kind of Red Nose Day things then you can simply send cash and good wishes to him directly through PayPal - account olgaceline@gmail.com

[UPDATE: 8th July: that link went to Driftless Music's eBay, but Bob has his own profile now, and our latest scam involves inventing our own currency and getting Bob to sign them. For more details on the art/satire/revolutionary aspects of printing your own money see the links here - or dig through RAW's books, which contain quite a lot of commentary on the 'magic' of the Treasury...]

Of course, if you haven't read any of the books (or even heard of him) then you can ignore this, or rush out and start a fun adventure - with his books on everything from conspiracy theory (stuff he covered in the 1970s - 30 years before the f'ing Da Vinci Code) to Quantum Psychology, and essays on libertarianism, economics, James Joyce, etc. Eclectic stuff - all lucidly written and often hilarious.

For more links to the online Academy he set up, to his website, and related fan sites, etc - just go over to the Only Maybe blog which we started a year ago for updating people outside the Academy walls...

Love Libraries

Yet another campaign has started to attempt to make 'libraries' COOOOL...

Love Libraries

- 0 -

Public libraries are on the verge of extinction warn campaigners. How can they be protected for the future?
Actually, many people consider them irrelevant these days, and Councils finding themselves millions of pounds in debt have started closing libraries to save a few thousand. I can't think of anything more short-sighted than that, as a literate, educated and well-informed citizenry makes a healthier and more prosperous country in the long run...

Check out the Good Library Blog, for more information...

Star Wars gossip

For those of you who visited because of the Star Wars connection, I thought I'd let you know that I have asked Franki Anderson (Bubo in ROTJ) to come to a convention for the first time.

She has provisionally said yes, (unless work commitments conflict) so you will find her announced for Empire Day (and yes, I will turn up, too).

At last - all you completists may finally get a chance to meet her...please be aware that she is a busy performer and teacher (as you can see if you visit The Empty Space website) and she works all over Europe doing Fool workshops(check out TheaterLabor ArtProductions) - and she does not have the time to answer unsolicited letters about Star Wars sent to the office at The Empty Space so please don't send pictures and autograph requests to her there.

I just love books

Actually, I love information, whether I get it from a person, a movie, a magazine or a book.

Books do seem like extended and co-ordinated information, however. This does mean that a monoculture (The Book) can seriously limit your ability to see how many ways the world manifests, how many different opinions it contains, etc.

I mostly read 'non-fiction' (although that label could seem confusing, when a lot of the stuff in non-fiction actually got made up by the author!) The whole area of what constitutes fiction or non-fiction has slowly become very significant during my lifespan, even though fakery and dissimulation, etc seem as old as the hills.

Our modern dependency on indirect channels for receiving input from the world(rather than direct sensory experience) does leave us vulnerable to manipulation - whether by cunning words, editing or Photoshop.

This does seem a bit of a waffle, but first thoughts and zero drafts often do. Since my friend John Coppinger published his sci-fi novel Tertiary through Lulu I realised I can no longer put off attempting a book - I suspect I could write an autobiography, which combines my attitudes and opinions, and some of the stuff I have learned. Actually, if I added up all the words I have posted in blogs for the last 4-5 years, and all the words I have posted for online courses at the MLA, I have written enough words for several books, so the old daunting prospect of wordage no longer works to put me off.

I like the idea of turning myself into a book, a way of looking at authorship I got from Cocteau, back in the 70s, when I read a hardback copy of Professional Secrets. My hair stood on end and I almost dropped the book when I read this passage from his journals:

You take this book out of your pocket. You read. And if you can read without anything distracting you from what I write, gradually you will feel that I inhabit you, and you will bring me back to life. You will even risk making, unconsciously, one of my gestures, your face will look like my face. Naturally I am speaking to the youth of a time when I shall no longer be here in flesh and blood, when my blood will be mixed with my ink.

That is the whole difference between a book which is only a book and this book which is a person turned into a book. Turned into a book and calling for help so that the spell can be broken and the person reincarnated in the person of the reader. That is the hocus-pocus I ask of you. Understand me. It is not so difficult as it seems at first.

Old Enough

To paraphrase George Carlin: I don’t like people saying that I am getting older – let’s face it, I’m just getting old.

On Tuesday I decided to apply for my bus pass (free travel on buses around Cardiff for the Over-60s). Why not? I almost never use them (don’t like waiting, or having to know what the ‘right money’ is), but I may hop on and off if I don’t have to pay and can just wave a pass.

While doing that I realised I ought to apply for reductions on train fares, too. This seems more of a con, as you have to buy the card that gives you reduced fares (!) They did this to me with the National Express coach card I got when I turned 50 – charge you for the card, so you have to make a certain number of journeys before you break even… Still, for £20 they gave me a Senior Citizen’s railcard, and now I should get 30% off most journeys. First £60 trip (costing £40) will pay for it…so I should get my money’s worth from trains…this year.

Funny in the head

I may wish to take a sabbatical from hanging out with the intelligent crew soon, because of an information overload. Pretty soon we’ll hit the second anniversary of the start of the Maybe Logic Academy. As an ‘early uptaker’ I got to email Robert Anton Wilson (RAW or Bob for short) directly for the first few weeks, as well as take part in several courses with him as tutor. I couldn’t believe my luck. Wouldn’t you like to chat with your favourite author, and perhaps discuss/analyse your favourite book with him/her?

The other members of the MLA (and course participants) have proved an extraordinary group, including a whole spectrum from bright kids to published authors, from therapists to physicists, from artists to musicians, etc. Great company. I never ever had such a club of bright minds to hang around with.

Unlike virtually every other forum I have visited, we mostly communicate in positive .and co-operative terms. Occasionally someone (usually one of the bright kids!) will think we sound smug or complacent and self-congratulatory or like a cult or something and they try to stir things up, but they usually get bewildered by people not reacting blindly or emotionally, but finding their point interesting and worthy of discussion, etc. Sometimes they simply get a calculated dose of sarcasm aimed back at them. Whatever. We all seem to find flame wars boring and childish. In any case, when Bob started the thing his initial guideline (our only rule) came out this way:

"If you cannot achieve tolerance, at least attempt courtesy."


I have felt useful as a librarian, researcher and old hippie – and not only receive at least as much useful information back from others, but have also got drawn into creativity, collaborating with a talented illustrator, maintaining an Academy blog, helping edit the online magazine, etc.

As it happens, I want to get something written for the Solstice edition, and will start another 8 week course with Bob at about the same time, but I really would like to just chill-out with my magic books, and a few ‘toys’, to balance out all that thinking. Antero Alli offered many opportunities to get away from the screen and keyboard with his 8 Circuit course, some of which I couldn’t take up for lack of a studio space, and some I may have merely resisted…but he will run it again in the autumn, and I recommend it unreservedly. As astrology seems like a core interest of his (relatively unusual at MLA, which seems to have more people into Cabbala, Kabbalah, QBL as a grid or gloss) I enquired among fellow students about levels of interest, and asked him if he would consider devising a course for us and Lo! it turns out that such a course has sprung into existence. I like a college where I can influence the curriculum…I probably wouldn’t have dropped out of school if they had listened to me at all, at all…

Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation...
Sam Spade: What do you want me to do - learn to stutter?

Beyond Belief

I do find it hilarious to watch all these documentaries about The Da Vinci Code. So many of these ideas have swirled around my head during the last 30 or so years, that to hear people suddenly discovering them as if new still actually surprises me.

Actually, Angels and Demons comes closer to the Illuminati stories, and other conspiracy theories, that Robert Anton Wilson kicked into touch way back in the 70s. The 60s and 70s saw a huge burst of stories about hidden and alternative histories, from The Morning of the Magicians to The Magus to Illuminatus!, and movies like Capricorn One, quite apart from the JFK and similar assassination tales.

I did a course on Illuminatus! with the author [click to read a review I wrote of that course, called Believe That, and You'll Believe Anything] , and it became clear that he feels as bemused as anyone that he gets credited with starting off the trend to ‘conspiracy beliefs’ when in fact his book clearly satirises people’s tendency to create such stories to make the unknown palatable or explicable or acceptable. Illuminatus! still works for me as a send-up of all the po-faced people who tell you they have found ‘the truth’. Dan’s whole style of mixing fact and fiction so that the reader has to make their own decision as to what to believe appears lifted from Wilson’s work…but pumping up the ‘certainty’ and leaving out the teasers about how we all create our own realities as we go along, and to me that takes away the real value of such writing.

As to ‘threatening the Church’ – well, hardly. I would guess that they employ the ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ principle. This book has got people talking about religion as if it matters. The church has to enjoy that. All their ancient nonsense can get revived yet one more time, for serious discussion.

Personally, I always hoped for a ‘withering away of established religion’ in my lifetime, just as Marx hoped for a ‘withering away of the State’ – but my wish seems as unlikely to manifest as his. Withering away depends on it losing energy to engage or interest people in its history and stories…a trend certainly visible in the UK over the last 40 years…so I would even hint that Dan Brown wrote these books using funds and assistance from the Vatican and the Tourist Boards of Paris and Rome. Well, start a rumour, why not?

Not only does the Catholic Church (and Christianity in general) have a monopoly on unbelievable beliefs already, they have little fear of people resigning due to heretical revelations. None of these ideas seem terribly new to me, and freethinkers (what religious people probably call atheists) don’t see the big issue. I mean, even if someone lives today with the DNA of Jesus in him or her, why should I care? Through his brothers he may well have bloodline descendants. Yes. And. So. What?

As usual, their nonsensical beliefs just don’t add up. If Jesus doesn’t descend from Joseph (being the Son of God, and all, and all), then he doesn’t come from the Royal House of David through all those damned ‘begats’, so you can’t call it a Royal Bloodline. If you think of Jesus as God, but think he passes on blood and DNA just like a human, then apparently we could have ‘gods among us’. If, like me, you suspect the figure of ‘Jesus’ got based on a real person, an ordinary human, but that his importance in human history got accidentally amplified by circumstances, then his leaving descendants seems merely trivial.

Still, the renewed interest in Art may seem worthwhile, even if people get sent up a few blind alleys…even the renewed interest in reading…

...from The Sublime...to The Ridiculous

Towel Day

I hope you all have your towels with you (or at least know where you left it) for Towel Day.



Woke up yesterday, on my day off, with the third cold of the year, and slept away my free time. Now back at work, but with the familiar spaced-out feeling, and cotton-wool brain.

I could never get the hang of Thursdays...

"mourning never ends..."

Family and Friends

I had a wonderful couple of weeks with my daughter (Yolande Philpott) and granddaughter, Matilda, visiting. Great to catch up with Ray and Franki again. Nice to see Nicole and John at the weekend, and other performers and creatives.

Speaking of which, my sister just sent a press cutting about my niece, Jo Dacombe, who just designed a bridge for Belper Parks Nature Reserve - over Coppice Brook. You can see her here, with an appreciative member of the public.

You can't share everything

I admit I have listened to, and watched live, Bob Dylan since my youth.

Just today one of my younger friends said "Bob Dylan? Oh yeh, the 'Blowing in the Wind' guy".

I can't believe that the 'folk singer' thing still hangs around him. I know he gets no radio play, and if you don't own the albums you won't hear him, but did they miss Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde? Maybe they don't even know about Blood on the Tracks. He had his ups and downs creatively over the decades, but maybe young people just don't get Time Out of Mind...and as for Love and Theft with his most recent band, well, I can't even put it in a category of contemporary music, but it cheers me up just to hear it.

Can't convert the people who just don't like his voice. Even when I say, well, think of him as a poet and songwriter, and listen to other people interpret him...

My partner (younger than me) didn't even know that Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower" came from Dylan's pen...or "Wheels on Fire" (music for Ab Fab). What can you do? (sigh)

So what a delight to hear KT Tunstall doing beautiful renditions of the first two tracks of Blood on the Tracks for the Talking Bob Dylan Blues tribute concert. Fantastic stuff! Tangled Up in Blue, and Simple Twist of Fate versions to die for. Actually, I felt quite touched by Robyn Hitckcock's take on Not Dark Yet, as well.

Apart from that I felt fairly disappointed. A bunch of old folkies, perpetuating the 'Blowing In the Wind' myth, as though he had never abandoned them 40 years ago. And, I guess, the readings from his autobiography Chronicles did put him back in the folk spectrum, when he talked of the power of those old, honed songs, and why he felt the urge to take them up and run with them...for the modern age.

Worth yet another sleepless night to catch the repeat on tv so late in the night...(I don't have a working video machine no more...) but, as ever, I preferred the young folks. And I really couldn't work out why Roy Harper chose "When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease" as his second song...except that he always was unpredictable, to say the least...and that seemed to have nothing to do with folk, protest, the USA or anything in particular for a Tribute Concert to Bob. Hey ho.

It Rocks!

I just got introduced to an online rock station from Canada - 94.9 The Rock - Killer Classics and The New Rock -which I have enjoyed while doing my 'homework' for the intensive course I got involved in with the Maybe Logic Academy...with Antero Alli getting us away from our screens and keyboards, and even (as tonight) when at the computer I have played with pictures rather than words. I even ended up chatting with the DJ (Hi Ozz, I haven't forgotten about the pix!)

The cards I have made up of the 8 Circuit Model (Leary/Wilson/Alli) still look a little clunky, and square, as I would cut around things with scissors, and make the shapes more organic, but I don't have time and patience (and software) to lassoo outlines, and change transparencies, etc...Apologies to all artists and photographers whose work I have sampled from the web...it's just a small experiment to go with our course work...to try to visualise the circuits...

So they remain sketches, and work-in-progress, but I enjoy 'em. Regular visitors may notice I have changed my First Circuit picture today...

Not just me then

If you got tired of pictures of me, I thought I would post up a happy picture from Barcelona last year.

Julie has gone to the Pyrenees on a vision quest this weekend, but I battle on with my various roles and functions, and can only hope she enjoys herself (mobile phones not encouraged at the retreat).

Happy daze.

Too many hats

As I came out of the library today, I noticed two posters (relating to my other faces) on our noticeboard, and realised what a busy life I do lead. The Circus poster for ImMortal reminds me that I will attend a board meeting for NoFit State tomorrow (Good Friday to you Christians), having found some places to advertise their local gig online - then return to work in the library on Saturday - then go to Newport to meet some Star Wars fans on Sunday.

No wonder I always seem to have 'social jetlag' (the latest name for getting up too early in the morning if you have the bodyclock of an owl - like me). I particularly dislike people who tell me living by daylight 'is' natural. Nonsense. The cold-blooded animals ruled the earth until those warm-blooded mammalian ancestors worked out how to stay awake at night, move around in the cold, and feast on dormant diurnal dinosaur tails.

Till Roenneberg believes that more than half the population are in effect socially jet-lagged all the time, because their body clock is permanently out of synch with their working hours (Chronobiology International, vol 23, p 497). New Scientist

Almost cut my hair

When I found myself approaching 60 I started letting my hair grow (I always did love hair) just as a matter of defiance, but once I turned 60 I just started to feel like the old guy with the ponytail. Funny though, that the only guys wearing long hair these days seem like the guys who would have jeered back in the 60s, and offered to cut it! Bikers, Truckers, World Wide Wrestling ‘actors’, Heavy Metal rockers, etc.

I kinda like the Gandalf/wizard thing of silvery locks, (even if I don’t do fantasy and sword and sorcery, etc) – sort of goes with being a granddad.

Ah well…

Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It was getting kind of long
I could have said it was in my way

But I didn't and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
And I feel like I owe it to someone

Must be because I had the flu for Christmas
And I'm not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking into a mirror and seeing a police car

But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
Cos I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone

When I finally get myself together
I'm gonna get down in some of that sweet summer weather
I'm going to find a space inside to laugh
Separate the wheat from the chaff

Cos I feel like I owe it, yeah
Said I feel like I owe it, yeah
You know I feel---- like I owe it yeah to someone

ALMOST CUT MY HAIR
David Crosby