Today there was news that should’ve sent a chill through the heart of every so-called liberal. But as I’ve noted before on this blog, the thing about liberals is that they are not liberal. I mean they say all the right things, read the right books, listen to the right things, eat all the right food, but when push comes to shove, when a difficult decision has to be made, they take the easy route. Not that it should be a difficult decision when Twitter have permanently suspended Donald Trumps account and anyone who believes in free speech, as I imagine most liberals would claim to support the principle of, should be outraged by this.

But hey, its Donald Trump and we don’t like him. Don’t like what he says and we don’t much like the people who agree with him either.  So we don’t care, in fact this should’ve happened long ago. He doesn’t conform to idea’s of what statesman-like behaviour is.

But the inherent paradox of free speech is that if you believe in it, it must apply to everyone. One can’t deny free speech to someone whose opinions disgust you. You have to defend their right to free speech with as much vigour as you would defend the right of someone you vehemently disagree with. Arguably more so.

And the fact that Twitter have decided to do this, interpreting their own rules with all the consistency of tomato soup, is even more chilling. Because whilst the usual assortment of ‘celebrities’, politicians, has been’s and never were’s have praised Twitter for their action, without being aware of the irony of them doing so on the very platform that Trump is banned from, they are not aware of the very steep slope they are standing on the edge of.  Again, another paradox presents itself. If a corporation such as Twitter can ban someone permanently from using its product, doesn’t that mean they can ban anyone? Has that not dawned on these people, and anyone else who thinks it’s a good thing that Twitter have banned him. Are they so wrapped in their own self-righteousness, so focused on the transient appeal of virtue signaling, that they are blind to this inescapable fact?

I don’t like Donald Trump. But that doesn’t mean he should suffer a fate that I wouldn’t want.

Be that as it may, onto happier thoughts. When I was packing up my stuff and preparing to move house, often I would find myself going on a musical journey with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Here he is performing ‘Blu’ with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

As I have observed a few times on this blog before, things that other people find shocking are not shocking to me but are rather a wholly predictable event. It may one that may be alarming and a cause for concern but they are not shocking, not least to me anyways. What is shocking, however, is that other people find the same wholly predictable event shocking and that this fallacious opinion becomes a truism by dint of the media deeming it as such.

The events at the US Capitol buildings the other day are but the latest example of what might be charitably called ‘reaction inflation’ inasmuch as the reaction to the event is much greater than the event warrants. Of course the storming of the US Capitol building by protesters was deeply concerning, but was it shocking? Really? I mean shocking in an unexpected, unforeseen way, in a before-it happened-you-never-thought-it-would way. Like a piano falling off a building and crushing someone to death way or a spear of frozen urine flushed from a plane impaling someone, ‘The Omen’ style?  That’s shocking. Donald Trumps supporters running amok, causing mayhem? Not so much.

Is it shocking or just one more in a long line of wholly inevitable consequences of us living in a digital echo chamber. The age of confirmation bias, one where opinions and beliefs, no matter how risible, misleading or offensive they are – are widely shared amongst others who think the same.

So really, what is the difference between the US protesters who caused so little damage but so many headlines and the murderer of Jo Cox MP? Of Donald Trump claiming that there was fraud and irregularities in the US presidential election count and Gina Millers’  legal actions to try to prevent the UK government from carrying out the will of the people? Or of the UK Supreme Court ruling that the UK government had acted unlawfully in trying to do just that and Donald Trump, on his 2016 presidential campaign, threatening to ‘lock her up’, her being Hilary Clinton.

Apart from the effects of these actions, they are all I believe on the same spectrum. Each at different points, granted, but on there nonetheless, part of the growing refusal to accept that others have beliefs, that while different from ones own, are as equally valid and deserving of defence. That’s what democracy is about fundamentally, because, as Voltaire wrote, “I may not agree with your opinion, but I’ll defend to the death your right to have it’.

Anyway, enough of that, and onto this, something I heard on an Radio One’s ‘Essential Mix’ late last year, only to find out it had been recorded in 1979!  It sounds a bit like Goldfrapp, well it does to me

Oh, that roast beef dinner I had last night? My stomach wants you to know it was fantastic.

Well today started badly enough, the afternoon was even worse, and lets just all join together in prayer to our Lord to ask him to make tonight a bit better.

I’m joking of course, not about the day mind, but about praying to make things better. Nosferatu is taking care of that, by the clever use of a roast beef dinner.

I wrote yesterday that thanks to you tube, accessing music has never been simpler. And to underline that point, here is the rave classic ‘Bombscare’ by 2 Bad Mice.Thanks the way you tube compresses music – me neither, and had I’ve people try to bore me to their death with it – the muffled sound for the last minute or so is actually the sort of bass that was magnificently devastating in clubs!

I had another bad night last night. Not as bad as the night before, mind you. I remember having a waz and checking my ‘phone at 03.47 and then being awake for what could’ve been a couple of hours, before being woken at 08.09 by a text. That I could’ve done without. That and being drenched in sweat at shitting cock o’clock.

I know I’m anxious; the problem is that I don’t know what exactly it is that I’m anxious about. It’s like an all-pervading general anxiousness, except that it runs according to its own clock; it’s never the same level of anxiousness at 4pm as it is at 4am. But it’s always with me, sometimes more present than at others, and the truly bizarre thing is, I get anxious when I’m not aware of my anxiousness.  

Anxiety is something I’m well used to since waking up from the coma years ago now. I wrote yesterday about the growing sense of disassociation from the lives’ that we lived. Well, I know how that feels, the sense that what was no longer is, that things one assumed would always be, because it never dawned on one it could be otherwise, were now been. 

If the past is indeed another country, then my past is the Roman Empire. No delusions of grandeur then.

One of the great things about the internet, aside from the freely available porn that is, is the sheer amount of music that has been uploaded onto you tube. It really is a lifesaver. For example, as I type this, I’m listening to ‘Essential Classics’ via the BBC Sounds app, and thanks to you tube, I can share this piece of exuberance with you.

So here we are again.

Well kind of.

Kind of in the sense that we’ve endured a national lockdown before. We know what to expect. The novelty, if one can call it that, the unknown curtailments on all aspects of daily life and the growing sense of disassociation from the lives’ that we lived; the notion that if the past is indeed another country, then quite possibly our old lives’ might suffer the same fate as Mesopatma.

Kind of not, in the sense I’m no longer in sunny Camberwell, but am in beardy Stoke Newington. When the last lockdown was announced, I could’ve stayed here, as I was here on the Friday just before it was announced. We all knew it was coming, so I asked Nosferatu to drive me back, partly because of the space, partly because of the garden. But mainly because that was where LMS was, and for reasons to do with my mental health I knew I’d need the sort of single-minded dedication to fun, general messing about and just being herness that sometimes drove her parents mad, but which I found refreshing.

An example – one of may – leaps to mind. One morning during the last lockdown, Joe and Marge came into the kitchen to discuss the latest death rates from COVID to wash down their cups of tea with. LMS and I, were by contrast, engaged in the more important business of classifying farts. What, for example, did a weasel fart sound like, and when did it become a trumpet fart?

I knew that I was going to miss her terribly, but this new lockdown has just made a frankly appalling state of affairs a mountain sized portion of broccoli ice cream worse.

“I’ll see you in the morning.’ said Marge the night before last  and that was when the full impact of what this move means, hit me like. Because I realized, there won’t be any more mornings – yesterday was the last one – where she was able to do that.  I’ve left much more than a large selection of cunningly shaped walls, ceilings – some of which leak – and a chandelier. Those are just things, and the thing about these things is that they’ll be replaced by other things, Maybe not as big, but hopefully not as leaky either.

People – despite Elon Musks crazed fantasies – can’t. Marge has been part of my life for over twenty years. We’ve been housemates in three houses, so she knew me before my accident. I can’t stress enough how important this detail is; when so many ‘friends’ have disappeared; those who remain attain an even greater significance, given its just her and Nosferatu.  She has stuck by me when she could so easily have walked away, thinking,  ‘I don’t need this, I’ve got problems of my own to deal with, I don’t need to help you deal with some of yours.’ Instead of which, and in so many ways, she’s attempted to help me help myself, and if the results haven’t been as successful as she might have hoped, the blame for that is mine.

People who meet me now get the version of me that has had niceness foisted upon me, a version that’s more of an extreme immersive improvisation. Not the original and best version, the one who used sarcasm to such a vicious effect that more then fourty people who worked with him signed a petition complaining that he was rude and offensive, the one who – and I’m quoting Marge here – ‘was like Eddie Izzard on speed’ when he wanted to be and the one who when he said he didn’t care what people thought about him, really meant it. The version of me that didn’t – because he couldn’t – wake up from the coma

So her saying that was something I’d never consciously taken on board before, I mean I’d briefly thought about it, but amidst the welter of other things to get done, it didn’t register. However, all the things that needed doing have been done, and there remain no other distractions with which to occupy my mind.

So since not even the planes have started flying o’clock, my mind has been considering her words, all its many implications, and wlth all of its many unknowns. And these were what were bothering me most at shitting crikey o’clock the other morning; because they’re unknown, the mind can create an infinite variety of them, some, none or all of which might come to pass.

And for a variety of good reasons, there hasn’t been enough time to discuss all of this, and with me having left yesterday, it was unfortunately the case that all the things that have been unsaid will remain unsaid. Today is the start of a new part of my life, one without her in it; or rather her not being as in it as much I’m used to her being in it.

And it’s me who’s doing the stuffing!

Obviously the news that what we thought we were doing for Christmas is now not the case is an unwelcome gift from COVID. Which is putting it mildly, although not as mildly as if one were unlucky enough to get the new strain of it

Nosferatu has played a blinder though, she really has.

Last Tuesday evening, after all my stuff had been put into storage, and we had stopped off for a cheeky McAcne, she suggested that we book up somewhere near to our holiday destination. Just for two nights, in case of a lockdown, so we could still have our holiday regardless. She asked, expecting – with good reason – me to say ‘Yes, go right ahead’, and not, as I did, to say ‘No, I want to spend the last few days at the house’

She could constantly be making reference to this, seeing as how I’m the one who always bangs on about how anyone can be wise after the event, but the trick is to be wise before the event. I mean, yes, she mentioned it a couple of times yesterday following  the announcement, which was even then remarkably restrained, but since then, hardly anything..

She could also have made reference to the fact that on Friday night she wanted to come and get me, and had she done so, we could’ve still gotten away.  But no.

I know her game though, don’t you worry, oh yes!  Thinking that by staying calm when she should be by rights blowing her stack – and me knowing she should be, has loads of good reasons to – is only going to magnify the guilt I feel. That’s the kind of stunt I’d pull, actually probably have, knowing me, or knowing the version of me before the accident. In fact I should refer to the accident as The Fall, less of a reference to Mancurian misanthrope Mark E Smiths band, but more of a reference to my over-inflated ego.

The truly perverse thing for me is that my feelings towards being in the house have changed. When our holiday was still happening, I wanted to make the most out of the reaming time here. Then it was finite, ending, so of course I’d feel that way. But that was then and this is now, and now the holiday is no more, in part due to my unwillingness to leave the house, I’m ready to go.  

Well it makes sense to me.

Especially as its gone a bit “I’m Alright Jack” here.

The Christmas tree in our house is many things, but ‘lit up like a Christmas tree’ isn’t one of them. The tree reminds me of a man who only irons the parts of his shirt that’ll be visible when he wears a jacket. So not the arms, not the back and above all, no taking the jacket off no matter how hot or unbearable it becomes. Admittedly, they’ve only started decorating the tree and LMS is of the opinion that it needs a lot more of everything before she’ll be happy, but if previous years efforts are anything to go by, probably best she doesn’t hold her breath. There are lights, tinsel and baubles, easily enough for a tree a fifth of its size.

I think back to a Christmas some years ago now where I had the weirdly disorientating – is there any other kind? –  experience of visiting my girlfriends parents. In America. A really posh part of New York state. I should’ve been aware that all wasn’t well in the state of jmhplc when a limo picked us up from the airport. But hey, a free holiday is a free holiday after all so I went with it, and the limo to her parent’s house. ‘House’ doesn’t do it justice, it was a house in the same way that David Beckham was alright at football. It made me think of ‘Southfork’

Another sign should’ve been the bizarre transformation that affected Lou as soon as she pressed the bell. Gone was the independent, quasi-feminist I’d known, one who rejected anything that smacked matriarchal control. That person I knew, I didn’t know the person who was all ‘Yes Daddy’, all little girly, simpering, compliant and…totally Stepford. Worse was to come. We’d arrived on Christmas Eve and dressing the Christmas tree was a thing they all did, a family Christmas tradition.

First off, the tree. It was fucking huge, a big and bushy fucker! ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to decorate that’ I foolishly thought before I glanced down at the boxes of decorations at the foot of the tree. Which had been carefully packed away after last they’d taken the previous years Christmas tree.

Now my childhood experience of dressing our Christmas tree rather summed up what was to follow. Festive it wasn’t. Dad would go up to the loft and armed with a torch and swearing would return down with the Quality Street tins that the decorations were crammed into. He’d try and assemble the tree, which even if it were assembled perfectly would never look like it did on the box.

Then came the untangling of the lights. This would precipitate more swearing, only for there to be yet more when after he’d eventually untangled them, he’d discover that some of the lights weren’t working. I’d try not to laugh at him, a grown man incapable of not being bested by his own apathy a year earlier. Successful I always wasn’t. My brother didn’t help matters either. We’d always do something to annoy the other, start bickering, which would get my Dad involved with more swearing and alcohol.

So the sight of neatly ordered boxes of decorations, a real fuck off tree, together with a general air of calm that I thought couldn’t last, was something I was wholly unused to. ‘Of course it’ll be all smiles and politeness at first, but give it time, usually about the time belligerence and alcohol gatecrash proceedings, and it’ll quickly descend into something more familiar.’ But no! The calmness continued, helped by some good natured joshing, that seemed to be as well loved and well worn as some of the decorations. And to help with decorating the tree, they’d placed it in the centre of the room and bought a folding stepladder so they could dress the entire tree. Properly, not just the bits you can see, but the bits you can’t, the places deep within the tree, that were only going to be known to those who’d decorated it. Pride in job well done wasn’t even in it! It was for them as much a family Christmas tradition to be enjoyed as ours were to be endured.

Christmas tree’s are a good example of ‘before’ and ‘after’. ‘Before’ they’re just rather drab, rather green and rather busy large indoor plants. But ‘after’ is when the magic of Christmas has transformed it into something wonderful, sparkly with lots of tinsel, lots of fairy lights – multi-coloured natch – lots of…well everything. Subtle and understated it isn’t meant to be, what is meant be is something that if it were an item of clothing, Liberace would wear it.

Liberace wouldn’t be seen dead in…oh, I forgot!

LMS wants to move the tree into the centre of the now empty dining room, the problem with this being – and which is why it’ll never happen – is if it is, the full extent of its Scroogeness will be clearly evident. Quite how anyone could look at the tree, declare it good, and then not immediately see it as a sign that they needed to have an eye test is beyond me.

Last night Joe said he might get around to reading my blog sometimes. I warned him and Marge not to read this one.

FUCK!

NOT SO MUCH A WHITE CHRISTMAS AS A SHITE ONE

It had all been going so well. Feverishly searching for a straw to clutch onto, salvation – and this will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me – came in musical form. Whenever I’ve been feeling down or worse, music has always managed to take me to another place mentally. I don’t know how it happens, I’m just glad it does, and yesterday it really did. As my post of yesterday will attest, I was so not the laughing queen of jollity farm. Sat in what was my former bedroom, with just a heater, a wicker sofa to sit on while I wrote my blog on my computer, and a Bluetooth speaker.

Hold on, a Bluetooth speaker? Didn’t that I could play music through that via my computer? And with the room being devoid of all furniture, didn’t that mean that the acoustics were good? No. They were great! Trying to convey in mere words how much better they were – and how I could tell it they were – would be like trying to describe the colour blue to a blind man.

So I went on a bit of a Ryuichi Sakamoto journey, with pit stops from Maxence Cyrin, some brass bands, the ‘La la land’ soundtrack and of course Michael Nyman.

I felt a bit better after all that. And then.

Then I popped into my chemist to pick up some eye-drops that had been missing from my prescription. No fuss there. It was all ready for me to collect. Bingo. Then the pharmacist gave me a present of a box of chocolates as a thank you for being such a good customer. Now I’m sure they meant well and everything, but really? Your life must’ve taken a seriously wrong turning if the pharmacy is giving you presents as a reward for your loyalty.

Mulling on this I returned home and waited for my scheduled therapy appointment. Usually, these sessions bring up unwelcome or unhelpful incidents that I’d long forgotten about, or else I make unwanted connections between events years apart. If you’ve ever been in therapy, you’ll know what I mean, how condensing so much into so little can be rather something. Thankfully this session wasn’t like that.

She never called. Talk about a confidence boost! Really affirming, the positivity is almost palpable. It’s not like I asked her at during our last session to call me and not do it via Zoom because I wanted privacy or anything. Nor have I repeatedly mentioned how difficult I’m finding the whole move. I sat in the dark for quite some time, thinking rather too much. I remembered lying awake in bed as a boy, staring really, really hard, at the dark trying to imagine what death was like. So in order to ward off these thoughts and to stop me going down the labyrinth I did what I knew would make me feel better.

Like this.

And this.

And, and, and..