C.J. Stone's Blog, page 11
June 13, 2019
Whitstable Shops: how many more are under threat?
Janet Street-Porter has been writing about Whitstable again.
The bulk of her column in Saturday’s i-newspaper was about the new chief executive of John Lewis, Sharon White, the first black woman to run a large UK retail business, and the future of High Street retailing in the UK, given the threat posed by on-line rivals.
Her mention of
Whitstable is towards the end and follows on from a paragraph about
the growth of the luxury sector – up by 50% in four years,
apparently – and a reference to the fact that many of these luxury
retailers operate out of “small boutiques in premium places.”.
This is when our town
gets a mention.
“In a small town like
Whitstable in Kent, for example, tourists flock to walk up and down a
High Street lined with small retailers,” she writes.
I wonder which shops
she’s referring to exactly? Whitstable seems…
View original post 506 more words
June 1, 2019
Toothache
I’ve just come back
from the doctor’s. I’d gone to get come painkillers for my toothache.
The receptionist told me that the doctor couldn’t see me.
“You need to see your
dentist,” she said.
Of course I’d already been to see my dentist, who had taken an X-Ray, and told me that the nerve in one of my molars was dying. “You’ll just have to ride it out,” she said. “Once the nerve dies, the pain will stop.”
I was taking
paracetamol and ibuprofen at that point, which barely touched the
pain. It came in waves. It would start as a throb, and then build
over several hours until it felt like my jaw was being prised apart
by red hot pliers.
I asked if she could
prescribe anything stronger.
“I can’t,” she
said. “You’ll have to see your doctor.”
So what are you
supposed to do? In order to see a dentist out of hours you have to
ring 111, where you can be kept on hold for hours.
If you look on line,
the advice, then, is to take painkillers. But over-the-counter
painkillers don’t work, so you have to see your doctor. But doctors
won’t come out on call out for dental pain. There’s a clear gap in
the system.
Meanwhile, once you do
get to see your dentist, you’ll be charged £22.70 merely for walking
through the door. What if you’re broke or on benefits? The advice is
to keep your receipts and claim the money back.
And if you haven’t got
the money in the first place? There is no advice for that.
While you’re waiting to see the dentist you’ll also notice that they take up an inordinate amount of wall space warning you about attempting to cheat the system.
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“Over 428,000 people received a penalty charge notice after claiming free dental care last year. Don’t assume you’re entitled,” says one poster.
Another says: “If you
claim free NHS treatment that you’re not entitled to, you could be
facing a penalty charge of up to £100.”
The emphasis is theirs.
This
is exactly what happened to a friend of mine. She’d been on benefits,
including mobility allowance and income support, but had now reached
pension age. She naturally assumed that her entitlement to free
dental care would continue. She was wrong.
Being
a pensioner isn’t enough. You have to be in receipt of pension
credits too. At the time of her dental appointment she hadn’t yet
made her claim, although she is entitled. Hence she’s fallen through
a gap in the benefits system, caught in the space between two
different departments.
The letter she received comes from an organisation called NHS Business Services Authority, and has a very threatening tone.
This
is what it says:
“In accordance with the National Health Service (Penalty Charge) Regulation 1999, you are required to pay a penalty charge in addition to your unpaid dental treatment charge relating to the NHS dental services you received as detailed below.”
So
she owes not just the £100 fine, but another £59.10 for the
treatment. That’s almost as much as her total weekly pension.
The
letter then goes on to tell her that she has to pay the money within
28 days, or she will be charged another £50 and sent a final
warning.
If
she fails to pay that her case will be passed on to the bailiffs.
This
is a pensioner, and an ex-Nurse, who has given her best years in the
service of the NHS.
As always, it is the poor and most vulnerable who are being made to pay.
*************
From The Whitstable Gazette 30/05/19
The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves
the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even
when emailed and a daytime telephone number.
Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ
fax: 01227 762415
email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk
May 9, 2019
Agnosticism for Dummies
I’ve got a confession to make. I’m an agnostic. I don’t believe in anything.
I don’t believe in
science. I don’t believe in art. I don’t believe in religion. I
particularly don’t believe in newspapers or TV or anything that’s
reported on the news.
Robert Anton Wilson said that belief is the death of intelligence. Once you believe you stop asking questions. You think you already know. Questions are quests of the mind. When you stop questing, you are no longer truly alive.
That goes whether you
believe in something, or disbelieve. Both are aspects of belief. If
you say, “there is no God” you have closed the door on the
possibility of ever knowing. You’ve already made up your mind.
An agnostic, on the
other hand, doesn’t know and doesn’t pretend to know. Nothing is
certain, therefore we can play. We can can use our imagination
instead of blindly following the crowd.
Einstein came up with his theory of relativity by imaginative means. He imagined a train travelling at the speed of light and saw, from this perspective, that everything else was relative, even time.
Einstein began by not believing. He didn’t believe in the standard model. Had he believed he would never have bothered to do his thought experiment and everything would have remained the same.
Earlier, in the 15th Century, Copernicus came up with the idea that the Earth went round the Sun rather than the other was round.
[image error]Giordano Bruno
Even more startling, in the mid 16th Century, an Italian Dominican Friar by the name of Giordano Bruno lay on his back one brilliant, moonless night and imagined the stars as distant suns surrounded by their own planets.
What an extraordinary
leap. Most people hadn’t even begun to accept the Copernican view,
let alone envisioned the Universe as this vast, infinitely expanding
space.
Giordano Bruno was an
agnostic who was burned at the stake for refusing to accept the
dogmas of the Catholic Church. He questioned the belief in eternal
damnation, in the divinity of Christ, in the virginity of Mary, and
in the transubstantiation of the host in the Eucharist.
At the same time he
suggested that the Universe might be alive, and that the soul might
be reborn in another body through reincarnation.
Both Giordano Bruno and Copernicus had read the newly rediscovered pagan works of Hermes Trismegestus, dating from around the 1st century AD, which some say helped to kick start the Renaissance.
So it took an ancient
text, something outside the normally accepted world-view, to start
making people curious again.
The word “renaissance”
means rebirth. And it’s precisely a new renaissance we need right now
as our dangerously out-of-control political and economic system is
driving the world off a cliff edge onto the rocks of ecological
disaster.
Just as Church dogma in
the 15th and 16th centuries restricted
imagination, so economic dogma now does the same.
Prior to 2008 the majority of commentators thought that the economy could just keep expanding. Until the whole system collapsed, that is, and the world was thrown into crisis. So we need a new imagination, of an ecologically sustainable future, living with nature, as opposed to against it.
We need to free the wealth currently hidden in off-shore accounts so that it can serve the whole of humanity and not just the greedy few. We need to stop listening to the propaganda that says that nothing can ever change.
We need a Green New Deal, of the kind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is offering in America.
Most
of all, we need to question everything we are told. We all need to
become agnostics.
*************
From The Whitstable Gazette 09/05/19
The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves
the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even
when emailed and a daytime telephone number.
Send letters to: The Editor, Room B119 Canterbury College, New Dover Road, Canterbury CT1 3AJ
fax: 01227 762415
email: kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk
[image error]
May 5, 2019
Invocation of Hermes
Hermes, Hermes, Hermes, fleet of foot and swift of thought, I invoke thee. May I be the vehicle, as I was before.
If you are the message, let me be the messenger. If you are the story, let me be the scribe. If you are the book, let me be the author. If you are the tale, let it be told.
Let me overcome the difficulties. Let me face up to the challenges.
Let me be the vehicle for the greater good. Let me be inspired. Let inspiration be my guide.
Let pettiness not distract me. May I do the work of the gods.
May I find my proper
place in the tumult of being, and not lose my way.
For everything changes,
each to its own rhythm.
Let the beat of my heart be the drumbeat of time. Let the pulse of my blood be the rhythm of time. Here in the moment let me live.
If you are the god, let me be the form. If you are the music, let me be the dance. If you are the song, let me be the words.
If you are the world, let me be the witness. If you are the sky, let me be a bird. If you are the mountain, let me be a tree.
Let me find my heart’s beginnings in the space between the worlds, in the breath of the wind, in the high places, where magic is born.
Hermes, interceder, intercede for me, cross boundaries for me. Let me know that you are there.
God of gates and hinges, open them for me. God of fields and boundaries, cross them with me. God of paths and roadways, be a map for me. Envoy of the gods, deliver my messages for me.
God of lore and language, speak your truths through me. God of trade and commerce, be an exchange for me. God of art and cunning, play your tricks for me.
Amaze me with your art, bamboozle me and leave me wondering. Let your shenanigans be playful, let your thievery be just.
Let me learn the sleight of hand, not to deceive but to amaze, or if deceiving, to pay my way.
Let me never be greedy, let me be honest in my thievery. I am a child of Robin Hood. Hermes, as your presence has been known, down throughout the ages, let it be known again. They did not banish you, but you remained hidden, disguised in other names.
It is you who leads the carnival, who sports and jests in tales of thievery, the Good Thief, who opens up the vaults of secret hoards, who would see no child go hungry;
God of migrants, the dispossessed upon the roads, help us guide this world to Justice. May your presence be among us once more.
Hermes god of mind,
fleetingly swift, emissary, archon, messenger, you through whom
inspiration flows, aid me in my quest.
Patron of travellers
let me travel, swiftly, boldly, consciously, along the pathways of
life.
Wayfarer of the
highways and byways, wanderer of roads, follower of tracks, explorer
of lanes, wend your way.
May I find my
direction, may the way be ever interesting, may I never lose my
attention or be misguided by the road.
Breath of life, breath
through me. Path of life, step through me. Word of life, speak
through me.
Let the silent prayer
be answered, offered in silence, answered in silence, in words
without sound, at the beginning of the world.
For thou art Mind, Hermes, Hermes-Mind, ever-young, he who carries the messages, from this world to the next.
Master magician aid
imagination, make mind holy, open, make mind free.
Let mind embrace the
heavens. Let mind step through the doorway. Let mind ascend the
ladder that climbs to the stars.
For you are the
emissary of thought between the above and below, the god of the
inbetween, the spirit of the air, invisible presence of the breath of
the word;
God of signs and
intimations, of proclamations, of double-meaning, of the
two-become-one.
Master of chemistry,
transmute for me. Master of language, translate for me.
May I meet your
presence in the lanes of the day.
April 25, 2019
Haunted Maunsell
“Was the ghost of David Elliott trying to contact us by electronic means?”
“Was the ghost of David Elliott trying to contact us by electronic means?”
Mauncell Forts: “like the rusting relics of some ancient alien invasion which took place centuries ago”It’s been a memorable
week. Firstly my family were over: my brother from America, and my
sister from Tenerife. We were burying our Dad’s ashes next to Mum’s
in Whitstable cemetery.
We cracked open the
last bottle of Dad’s home-made Elderberry wine. Unfortunately it was
undrinkable. It was sixteen years old and it hadn’t aged well. But we
poured some of it into the grave, alongside a picture of Mum and Dad
on their wedding day, while my other sister read something she’d
found tucked away in Mum’s jewellery box, which had obviously been
left for just this purpose.
Later in the week, on
Easter Saturday, I was also involved in helping a friend scatter his
Dad’s ashes out at sea…
View original post 533 more words
April 18, 2019
Discordianism
Christopher J Stone discovers that the crazy world of discordian philosophy contains some useful and enlightening truths, as long as you don’t take it too seriously
From Kindred Spirit Issue 163 Mar/April 2019
ALL DEITIES RESIDE IN THE HUMAN BREAST: William Blake – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The name of the band
was Hearing Things. There
were about seven of them, one drummer and six guitarists, all playing
the same chord, over and over and over again, without variation, for
half an hour or more. It was disorientating at first. After that it
became weirdly fascinating. It was like a minimalist dirge. The sheer
mind-numbing repetitiveness of the music hacked its way into your
brain and opened up a space, like a cavern full of echoes, with
soaring complex choral harmonies which grew ever larger and more
portentous as the music droned on, as if the angels themselves were
riffing on a theme by Mozart, with the devil playing the didgeridoo.
This was typical of the
whole festival. These people weren’t musicians. This wasn’t music as
such. It wasn’t entertainment. It was music beyond music: music as
transcendental technology, as Zenaural meditation, as a psychoactive
echo at the gateway to eternity.
This was taking place in one of the rooms of the Yellow Arch Studios, a nightclub, restaurant and bar complex in an industrial area of Sheffield, over the weekend of the 6th July 2018, as part of Catch 23 – “a festival in a club” as it billed itself: “a 14 hour psychedelic endurance test.”
The event was like
nothing I have ever experienced before: a heterodox mix of ritual,
music, dance, art, theatre, poetry, philosophy and fun, all held
together by the spirit of playful seriousness (or serious
playfulness) known as Discordianism.
What is Discordianism you ask? Well it’s either “an elaborate joke disguised as a religion” or “a religion disguised as an elaborate joke”, depending on who is answering the question. If you ask me: it is neither and both at the same time.
BIRTH OF A NEW MOVEMENT
2019 marks the 60th anniversary of its inception, in a bowling alley somewhere in the unenlightened heart of the United States, some time in the late ’50s, when two young maladjusted Americans were discussing the World’s problems over an under aged beer. These were: Greg Hill (also known as Malaclypse the Younger) and Kerry Thornley (also known as Omar Ravenhurst).
According to the Discordian Holy Book, the Principia Discordia, the two were assailed by a revelation at this point, as time itself stopped, and a shaggy chimpanzee appeared and handed them a scroll depicting a mysterious sign: like the yin and yang, but with a pentagon on one side, and a golden apple on the other.
The figure is known as The Sacred Chao, and it is the primary symbol of Discordianism.
Of course if you believe that you will believe anything.
As the Principia Discordia itself says: “A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he reads.”
But then again the book also suggests the opposite, as this question and answer sequence makes clear:
GP: Is Eris true?
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don’t know man, I didn’t do it.
Principia Discordia: http://principiadiscordia.com/
You can make of that what you will. The book is available, free of charge under Copyleft license on the internet, and is a joyous mix of parody and parable, wisdom and witticism, allegory, anarchy, paradox and pun.
It is based upon the understanding that the real power in this world is not order, but chaos. It is for this reason that Discordians worship Eris, the ancient Greek goddess of discord who, according to the texts, was probably the instigator of the Trojan War.
FAMOUS DISCORDIANS
Well known Discordians in the past have included: Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, co-authors of the seminal 70s conspiracy novel, The Illuminatus Trilogy (which used Discordianism as a plot device); Camden Benares, author of Zen Without Zen Masters; Ken Campbell, actor, producer and playwright (who staged an eight hour play based upon the Illuminatus in the 70s); and Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the KLF, the rave band who famously burned a million pounds.
Bill Drummond, in fact, had been the set designer on the original production of Ken Campbell’s play.
If you read the Principia you could be forgiven for thinking that it was all just a grand metaphysical put-on. Except that, for almost everyone who gets involved, it has a habit of becoming real. There are some essential truths hidden away in the craziness.
As Greg Hill explained:
“I started out with the idea that all gods are an illusion. By the end I had learned that it’s up to you to decide whether gods exist, and if you take a goddess of confusion seriously, it will send you through as profound and valid a metaphysical trip as taking a god like Yahweh seriously. The trips will be different, but they will both be transcendental. Eris is a valid goddess in so far as gods are valid; the gods are valid when we choose them to be.”
In other words, Discordianism supplements religion rather than supplanting it. It is magic for people who are sceptical of magic.
What is perhaps more surprising is the fact that the philosophy continues to thrive, and in fact has been going through a revival recently, despite the fact that its creators have all long since passed away.
DISCORDIAN FESTIVALS
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Catch 23 is the second Discordian festival to be held in Sheffield since 2016. The first was called Festival 23.
One of the instigators and organisers is Anwen Fryer.
Anwen runs the only magical store in the city. It’s called Airy Fairy and, as well as Kindred Spirit and other Mind Body Spirit literature, she also sells crystals, tarot packs, athames, and other handmade magical tools. Above the shop is a Goddess Temple modelled on the one in Glastonbury.
What drew her to Discordianism, I ask?
She was a Hedge Witch, she tells me. Originally part of the rave scene, she came across the Illuminatus Trilogy and The Principia Discordia in 2002.
“Much as I love Paganism,” she says, “I do understand that much of it is made up. We turn something we perceive and feel into something we can connect with. That’s what we’re doing as human beings.”
Discordianism is her chosen channel, she says, because it acknowledges that. “You can still be magical, but you treat it with humour. It’s not too serious. That way you don’t become entrenched.”
She describes herself as a discowiccanchaosmagician. “All one word, no capitals,” she adds.
It was her and her friend, Tim Holmes – self-styled “Buddhist punk” – who came up with the idea for the festival. John Higgs’ book on the KLF served as the catalyst. Tim read it on Kindle and then passed it on to her. “You’ve got to read this,” he said. Up till then they’d thought they were the only Discordians on the planet. Now it was clear there might be other people out there too. They looked on-line and came across Daisy Campbell (Ken Campbell’s daughter) who was fundraising to put on a play based upon Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger, which delves into the early history of Discordianism.
They got involved with fundraising for that, and then, after going to the opening of the play – having met up with Discordian fellow travellers from around the world – on the drive home she turned to her friends: Tim and her partner, Robert.
“We need more Discordian events,” she said.
Thus was the idea for Festival 23 born.
A number of second wave Discordian luminaries attended that first festival, including Daisy Campbell.
Daisy is almost the living embodiment of what it means to be a Discordian. Her middle name is Eris. She was conceived backstage during the first run of the Illuminatus play in Liverpool. Her mother is Prunella Gee, who was playing the goddess at the time. It was the funding efforts for her own play which brought the Discordian community together. Cosmic Trigger opened in Liverpool in 2014, not far from where her Father’s production of Illuminatus took place nearly forty years before.
She says she shares a certain ambivalence towards the philosophy. “Maybe we don’t need any more chaos in the world,” she says. “When I was younger I would invoke Eris for the sheer hell of it, in order to unleash the madness. But you can look at Eris a different way. These days I think of her more as the goddess who can handle the chaos and not react from fear.
I think of Eris as the goddess who can handle the chaos and not react from fear.
Daisy Campbell
“It’s the nature of the world we live in now,” she adds. “There are actually Discordian tactics being used against us. The world is full of fake news, which is a way of keeping the population under control; not letting us know any more what is real and what is not, what is truth and what are lies.”
In fact, she points out, the original conception of Discordianism was that there should be a balance between the opposing forces. You need both, she tells me: the hodge and the podge, order and disorder.
“Robert Anton Wilson said that imposition of order equals escalation of chaos,” she says. “The true meaning of Discordianism is ‘don’t believe your own BS’, which in this case, stands for ‘Belief System’. That goes for Discordianism too.”
MAGICAL INTENTIONS
[image error]Dave Lee
Another key figure in the Discordian scene around Sheffield is Dave Lee. It was Dave who was responsible for one of the most memorable rituals at Catch 23. Called From S.N.A.F.U. to F.U.B.A.R. it featured some runes, some chanting, some music and some dancing. “S.N.A.F.U.” and“F.U.B.A.R.” are both American military terms. I’ll leave it to you to find out what they mean.
We stated our magical intention in the following terms: “it is our Will that weapons of mass destruction are never used.” Dave drew the runes on the floor of the dance club using coloured powder, as we chanted the name of each out loud. The ensuing bind rune was then scattered to eternity by the rhythm of our dancing feet. It must have worked because, as far as I know, no weapons of mass destruction have been used since.
Dave also helped to organise the opening ritual, which, rather than calling in the four quarters, like most pagan rituals I’ve attended, invoked the eight planets. Dave was responsible for calling in Uranus, which he did with a knowing nod towards Terry Pratchett.
It is this that distinguishes Discordianism as a practice from most other spiritual paths. It has its own fail safe mechanism ensuring that it can never take itself too seriously.
As Dave says, “Eris is the most believable deity for a world where chaos is becoming more visible year by year. Discordianism resulted in a lot of people waking up to the malleable nature of consensus reality, how it is shaped by news and illusions. This led to a new subculture of magic, a magic that you can get behind in this era of materialist scientism. You can hold beliefs lightly, as tools to experience life more magically, as opposed to getting trapped in them.”
John Higgs was also at both festivals. It is arguably the link up between Daisy and John which kick started the current revival of interest in Discordian philosophy.
This is what he had to say about the first festival: “My main memory was the collapse of the dividing line between audience and performers, and that everyone you met had their own thing or project that they were working on and showcasing. There was a virtuous circle of people being inspired by people becoming inspired, which served to bring all this out. It felt like a culture growing from the bottom up, and totally natural, as if it was all other situations that were weird.”
He tells me he wouldn’t actually call himself a Discordian: “You can call me a Discordian-influenced writer if you like.”
However, he has written extensively on the subject, which means that, in the eyes of many, he is an expert on the subject.
His novel, The Brandy of the Damned, has a decidedly Discordian tone.
It involves three members of a long past-it pop group travelling around the coast of Britain on an increasingly bizarre and magical journey into their own souls.
On the way they keep finding blue bottles washed up on the shore containing unsequenced fragments from a future Bible.
It is Chapter 17 of this strange and unsettling missive which contains both the key to the book and, I would argue, to the Discordian message.
“Beware of the man with one religion, for he understands nothing but he does not know he understands nothing, and he will get in the way and cause all sorts of trouble,” it says.
For “religion” read “belief system”.
It goes on to suggest that the ideal number of religions people should ascribe to is three:
“I mean roughly three. It’s not an exact science. But between two and five, something like that.
“Consider the man who is a Daoist a Pagan and a Christian. Consider the woman who is a Buddhist, a Sikh and an atheist. These people won’t easily fall for your nonsense. These people will have a wide perspective. These people will be able to get on with life.”
It is this wide perspective that Discordianism encourages.
It is a parody religion that is sceptical about religion but which takes religion seriously, all at the same time.
It does not avoid the contradictions. It embraces the contradictions.
Discordianism works.
I wonder if it will for you?
FIND OUT MORE:
Airy Fairy: https://www.airyfairy.org/Dave Lee: http://www.chaotopia.com/Daisy Campbell: https://cosmictriggerplay.com/John Higgs: www.johnhiggs.com
RECOMMENDED READING
Principia Discordia: http://principiadiscordia.com/Robert Anton Wilson: http://www.rawilson.com/Ken Campbell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_CampbellThe KLF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_KLF
April 11, 2019
Carnival Magick
“Carnival is a tradition. It’s a spectacle. It’s a living pageant… if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.”
Being a member of the carnival committee isn’t exactly what I’d planned for my retirement. I’m supposed to be writing a book. Well I still am writing a book, sort of. It’s just that no actual writing is taking place. I’ve got half a chapter, lots of notes, and a ton of books to read.
The book is about
Magic. When I said that at one of the committee meetings, someone
asked, “is that magic with a c or magic with a k?”
There’s no difference. “Magick” is the archaic spelling of the word. It’s how Magic is spelt in Dr Johnson’s famous dictionary, first published in 1755.
The spelling was revived by Aleister Crowley in the early 20th Century in order to distinguish his own brand of ritual magic from the Harry Houdini stage-craft variety. My favourite story about him appears in a book about Austin Spare
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March 31, 2019
Bad Neighbours
What half-baked turnip thought it was a good idea to give planning permission for a new supermarket right in the middle of a residential area?
Disturbances on Cromwell Road…
How many Co-ops does
one town need?
Whitstable has four of them. There’s one on Canterbury Road, one on Oxford Street, one on Faversham Road, and now the new one on Cromwell Road, where the old delivery office used to be.
Every one of them carries exactly the same stock.
The new one also doubles as a Post Office. Whitstable needed a Post Office. It didn’t, however, need another Co-op. So while the Co-op is often half-empty, the Post Office, which only has two counters and one member of staff on at any one time, can sometimes have queues running out into the shop.
What half-baked turnip thought it was a good idea to give planning permission for a new supermarket right in the middle of a residential area? Didn’t anybody imagine that it might lead to trouble?
The first problem,
immediately, was the amount of…
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March 15, 2019
Happy Birthday Ferlinghetti
it is entirely possible for an art movement to change the world
If you read last week’s paper you will know that I’ve been involved in moves to save the Whitstable Carnival. It’s not actually what I’d planned for my retirement, but there you go.
I’m busy with the process of setting us up with a constitution, along with looking into ways in which we might earn some money. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
Meanwhile I’ve also been working with Kevin Davey, the author of Playing Possum, the Whitstable based novel that was shortlisted for the Goldsmith’s Prize, on a celebration to mark the birthday of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
I suspect few of you
will have heard of him. If I mentioned Jack Kerouac or Allen
Ginsberg, on the other hand, my guess would be that many more of you
would register who they were.
Kerouac was the author
of the seminal Beat novel, On The…
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February 28, 2019
The Secret Life of Waves
Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing is fixed. Hericlitus
[image error][image error][image error][image error][image error][image error]Like a rakish pirate[image error][image error][image error][image error]A steam enthusiast
I attended the funeral of David Edward Elliott who passed away recently. He was 89 years old. I didn’t really know him. He was the father of a friend of mine, , previously Jonathan David Elliott, who had invited me to the funeral. I was more than happy to attend. I only met David the once, at the sheltered housing in Canterbury where he spent his final days. I was taking Jon to visit.
There was a meeting in the common room. The vicar was there. David was talking to the vicar at the top end of the room. They were both standing, as if on ceremony, David with his back to his chair, the vicar standing before him, like a subject before his King.
David was shaking the vicar’s hand warmly, looking him straight in the eye and declaiming loudly in a voice suffused with wry good humour.
“I’m a hundred years old you know. I might not be around next week.”
This wasn’t what I had expected. I knew that he had dementia and had been depressed, but in this room full of lost, lonely and desperately confused people, he stood out like a lantern in a cave.
It is true that what he
was saying wasn’t actually true, in the strictest sense of the word,
but he said it with such verve, with such confidence, that it might
as well have been.
He had a patch over one eye, which made him look like a pirate, and huge hands which entirely enclosed the vicar’s normal sized mitts.
He had been a railway
man most of his working life, and he was a steam train enthusiast,
Jon told me.
Later he came and sat
with us, and I was made aware of the deep affection between them.
David continued with his stories. He said he was a child spy working for the British government during the war. He was working with Tito and spying on the Germans, he told us.
He said he was an early
experimental subject for electro-convulsive therapy, for Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder.
He said his real father was Lord Tufton, and that he was born into the aristocracy.
He also said that he was of the Elliott clan in Scotland, and that his father was a Scottish butcher.
And on like this, contradicting himself at every turn, and not caring one way or the other. He had a twinkle in his eye, and he spoke with a rakish chuckle, so it wasn’t clear whether he believed it or not. It didn’t really matter all that much.
Jon told me later that the real story was that he was a child in Ashford. He said that a bomb had landed in the next street during the war and that he had been evacuated.
Jon had lived with his Dad for many years, in a council house in Whitstable, where David soon became a local character. Jon said that often, when he was in town, the shop assistants would ask if they were related. When he said yes, they would get all enthusiastic, telling him how much they enjoyed talking to his Dad, and how they looked forward to him coming in as he brightened up their day.
[image error]Albert and Harold, Steptoe and Son
At the funeral Jon read out his eulogy. He said that living with his Dad felt like he was auditioning for an episode of Steptoe and Son, which made me splutter, and that one time he had brought home a bemusing object from a junk shop: a battery powered, singing fish plaque which had amused him.
I laughed out loud at
that. I couldn’t help it. That image seemed to bring the old man so
vividly to life.
Bernadette Fisher, the councillor, also spoke, and she told a wonderful story.
She said both Jon’s Dad, and Tory councillor Ashley Clark, had been fighting against the Devine Homes development on Duncan Down. One day someone had cut through the wire fencing that the company had put up to stop people accessing the land.
Later Ashley and David,
accompanied by his three legged dog, found themselves sitting on a
bench nearby. Ashley said, “whoever cut that wire must have been an
angel.”
David opened up his bag
to show the ex-copper the bolt croppers he had tucked away in there.
“You might be sitting
next to an angel,” he said.
Jon finished his eulogy
with a beautiful thought. He said: “I feel somewhere between
science and mysticism the quantum universe does not forget such
spirits and characters like his and he may be on a higher plain or in
another dimension waiting for us to join him.”
I do hope so. He was a man I would have liked to have known.
Nothing is forever except change. The Buddha
[image error]Eddy Stone
Jon is much wiser than he thinks. He often surprises me with his observations. It was Jon who helped me to get over the death of my own father last year. He told me about a programme he had watched on TV, and suggested it gave insight into the processes of life and death. The programme was called The Secret Life of Waves. It was made by David Malone, and it was on BBC 4 on the 31st July 2018. This was less than a month after Dad died; so I watched the programme at Dad’s house on i-Player.
That was strange, watching a programme my Dad wouldn’t have watched, mid-afternoon on his own TV, without him there. Dad, too, had dementia, and would often make up stories to fill in the gaps in his memory, though his were never quite so ornate as David’s. So he swore blind that he had once had a boat which he kept by the side of the house in Marston Green, a town with no lakes or rivers, a hundred and fifty miles from the sea. In fact it was my brother-in-law’s boat he was thinking of, which was, indeed, tucked by the side of the house; but that was here, in Whitstable, only a year or two ago.
The Secret Life of
Waves is a science programme, about waves and wave formation, but it
contains an odd piece of biographical information, which is why it
stands out.
At the beginning of the programme we are introduced to David Malone’s Mum, who is sitting on a bench with her husband, on a cliff overlooking the sea. It was this view, Malone tells us, that first informed his fascination with waves.
“What is so exciting
about waves is that they reveal what is usually hidden from view,”
he says. “You can actually see energy in action. They present
insight into the forces that rule the Universe. Waves are not made of
water. It’s not the water that’s moving, it’s the energy. Water is
the medium that transmits the energy. Waves are a form of transport
of energy.”
[image error]Insight into the forces that rule the Universe
The bulk of the
programme consists of various demonstrations of the truth of this
proposal.
Waves are made by wind, he tells us, and he shows how this happens by blowing on the still water in a pond, to watch the ripples spread out to the furthest shore. We see waves in water tanks with model boats bobbing up and down on top; we see the circulation of the water, using coloured dyes, as the wave passes through.
He explains why this
is. “Energy is the invisible force that drives the Universe,” he
says. “Energy can never be destroyed, it can only change from one
form to another. Even after the wind dies the energy lives on in the
waves.”
This is when the
programme shifts, and he starts talking about waves in general, as
opposed to the watery waves we’ve been discussing so far.
“Waves of energy are
found throughout the Universe,” he says. “The world is actually
filled with waves. Everything is in motion, in process. Waves are
process.”
Thus mountains are in the process of rising and falling, like the waves in the sea; it’s just that we don’t see it this way as it is happening too slowly for our eyes to register. There are hidden waves throughout the world, too fast, too slow, or in a medium too invisible, for our eyes to catch a glimpse of. There are waves in the vacuum of space, waves in the congealed heft of matter, waves in the sky, waves in the sea, waves of heat and waves of cold, waves of electromagnetic energy in the very life around us. There are waves in the terrifying expanse of intergalactic space-time, and in the infinitesimally small, paradoxical world of quantum reality, where thoughts, like waves, can influence matter. Waves are everywhere, as movement, as change. Everything is in the process of change, as the Buddha pointed out over two and a half thousand years ago.
“Our lives are in continuous change,” Malone says, speaking now about the human dimension: “a dynamic process of change.”
It’s at this point that
he tells us that his Mum had died during the making of the programme,
and that he had been thinking of her the whole time.
Now this was something new. A science programme with personal information in it. How often do you see that? Science likes to pretend that it is entirely objective, that it is only about the measurement of facts. But scientists are human too. They too have feelings, and here was one person in a science programme willing talk about his own, difficult, human experience.
It wasn’t only about grief. He was telling us about life. Life too is a wave. It is a wave of energy that passes through us, like the waves in the sea. We are not flesh, any more than sea-waves are water. We are energy, and energy never dies. Just as the sea-waves’ energy is transformed as it crashes on the shore, and becomes something else – a sound, a wave in the wind, which then joins the rest of the air-currents to make new waves in the ocean – so our life-energy wave carries on too; to where we do not know.
Perhaps, as Jon suggests, it shifts to the quantum universe and enters another dimension. Perhaps his Dad really is an angel. Perhaps his Dad and my Dad are sitting together right now, in some hyperdimensional portal between alternative realities, drinking quantum whiskey, and reminiscing about things that never happened.
Perhaps.
Just because you cannot
see something, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
*************
[image error] From The Whitstable Gazette 28/02/19
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