Diary of an unborn writer #39 - Power goes in waves and finds nodes to seep through

I've been thinking of Copenhagen and a supposed failure of the world to do what is right. I have been thinking fo the interests involved and find it surprising that many heavy weights are launched behind environmentalism. This does not make them our allies, beloved friends, remember who they are and what interests they present.

Remember Al Gore and his niche as political saviour all the while touting the establishment of a mechanism that distorts the flow of money from development to God knows where. I am referring here to the $4.3bn that was raised for $100 bn of on the ground projects.

And this before the fact we consider the hypocrisy of using a market to cure something that is essentially market-created.

The trading of carbon of done because it is easy to measure and has diffrentials of output around the world. If we're going to get environmental, let's a make a fast busk of it. Or else, create labyrinthine structures so obscure no one knows who wins. I pick Gore because he was one of the chief proponents. I am sure he's not alone: this is a mechanism bigger than any he could propose.

What happens in a carbin market is that the those with excess supply of carbon (equiliberally defined) and excess demand for carbon will not lose. The market creators will. The financiers, and traders and advisers on policy who...

just happen to have funded the election of Barack Obama. His creation by the people is a myth. His record on small sum donations was worse than George Bush.

Barack Obama had no interest in forcing through a deal at Copenhagen, even if the US Senate had granted him the privilege. The goodwill generated by Copenhagen, though temporarily thwarted, will be used to take the next best (though first best for his funders) route: carbon trading.

As George W. Bush made a party for his friends in Iraq, so will Barack in the upper echelons of high finance, with marginal benefits for the environment.

I don't blame Barack for this, he's doing as any president has done in the past and most in the future will but let's clear the bubble of expectation if it has not already popped. His interests are not yours, not are they aligned to the common good of humanity.

As if to underline my point, the Yemenis are receiving his special forces help. Overtly it's for training the army of the near to failed state but likely they'll be cooking up some juice of their own.

And why? This is part of the Pentagon's Long War. No brain child of Obama's but published by the Pentagon in 2006. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, did however devote a whole book in favour of the topic. It is the 21st century's equivalent of the Project for the New American Century, but in place of Shock and Awe they have Stealth and wealth.

By providing security to many vulnerbale countries, Barack will have them in his pocket and his markets under his belt. By reiterating the myth of the war on terror the scene is set for an endless war against an unseen enemy. And special forces escalations in supossedly vulnerable countries will create a fast-reaction network of awesome power and incredible global reach.

It's the ultimate zeitgeist - out of sight and everywhere - and the man's still being praised to high heaven because we don't know where else to put our hope.

It's not that I want to create fury, just to dispel a lie and I am sick to the hind teeth of people making excuses for a charlatan with big words.

Wake up for yourselves, change your selves, transform your communities. Don't waste years clinging on to the hope of another idle dictator and use your inspiration to benefit each other not the short-termist ambitions of another desperate emperor.

~~~

China too has been in the news, on Western front pages for the lock up of a human rights activist who was too outspoken about political freedoms in China. The issue of Len X__ is not an issue, but the way it is reported is.

Of th west's remainign ideals, democracy is unquestionable. It does not matter how contrived, how influenced or how much it is controlled, we are able to trot out the doctrine that democracy is best. At risk of sounding like Churchill, it probably is, but not with the dismal levels of participation and transparency we currently enjoy. However, the Times can get haughty about it and don't forget those free voters are free consumers and freer markets can be overtaken as surely as day becomes night.

It is a universal truth, the desire to be free and no doubt China will one day open its doors to another grade of governance that better expresses the will of its people. But it enrages me to think of a haughty Western press, lazily comatose in their superior vision of the world, thinking that our system is free from control. It is deep and embedded in constructs just outside of your vision to make you think you're making a decision. In the large part it will be happy, but repetitive so collectively we choose to be over-entertained and underwhelmed by the lack of what is important. The real wealth: conditions for a good life, so its peaceful happy accidents can happen. This is the business of governments but the psychic deluge we're subjected to is nothing more than to comfort us with an uneasy peace. And cloak us from what's really going on. Which is...




more than I am succinctly able to say or understand. Whenever I've gone down that track I find myself embedded in folk-lore and at straws to explain gross conundrums. David Icke and his kin give much food for thought and occupy space the other outlets ignore. But in as much as they inspire us to question that what is presented is unlikely to be what is going on, I am happy to go no further, just relay my impression of the tide of forces as I see them.

I'll try not to be so political next time.

Diary of an unborn writer #39.4 - midlife crisis

You're better as a mystery, you tell yourself after wondering for the 15th time what to do next year.

You're better as a mystery and excuse yourself for inaction, disregard and getting knocked off balance by unanswered questons.

Diary of an Unborn Writer # 38.2 - Happenstance

The artist is arrogant because he has seen what it is to do nothing and be beautiful.

But at some point the spring ran dry and artist was left doing nothing and drinking with his friends. The friends that inspired him less than the old ones and required more drink to tolerate.

He needs to do something now, not to tolerate but to find again his spring of non-wishing that when it sprang gave him more than the world could ever need. It ran in rivulets on canvas spreads and writing books.

But now he's drinking with his friends and they take less and less notice of him.

Picture courtesy of Hesq. Thanks.

Diary of an unborn writer # 38 - The worst named decade of the century

The herd was loping in a muddled indescript kind of way.

We were keeping close together and trying hard against the light, not to see it. The plain was wide but we stayed close together and winds blown up by gods aided our ensemble.

'Masanga' the close-by tribesman would say.

And then they began to drift apart.

Though the wind was strong it was possible to turn aside and see the plain from a different angle. The herd was moving, slowly and gently to a cliff. So we began to make a noise, but mistaking it for breeze the herded ones closed their eyes again, folded their ears and kept moving on their way.

The breeze was one of many colours. Sights, sounds, swirls and tastes. Thought streams ushered past by the Gods and in order to not relent, in order to keep the move afloat the herd had, as one, shut down its sense.

But the cliff was coming near and a few spied themselves long enough to jump out the way and others saw their friends and did the same and all of us, right now, pulling ourselves back from a hideous collapse of our species because we stopped looking for too long.

This is not climate (only). This is not capitalism (only). Nor is it social degradation or direst poverty existing, nor all powerful corporations, nor the inter-corporate and governmental bodies that decide our fate (only). Its not biodiversity plummetting (only) or another war fought for geo-politics and the fate of precious housewives' fears before the hundreds of thousands lives in another country.

But weaving through all of this, has been the stream. The wind. The vast god-blown edifice that is the information deluge that our decade more than any other has been subjected to. We're colouring it, you and I, with our blogging and gentle protest chants and our conviction that correction can only come from inner realisation that these colours are our friends.

We're getting better at decoding, deciphering the swarm around. Cherry-plucking inspiration from the dirge and the misery and the stink that suffices for entertainment and the news. We're singing in the rain, telling funny stories again and in candle-lit corners serving organic food, our play is taking shape.

It's a play of longing, of desperation looking again to the stars and not the belly. Feeling in the depths of your very soul that all that was and has been told could be woven right now with a stroke of your pen, or brush or love caress or question to a politician that things might not be as he sees, jaded as he is, becoming the more grey. They deluge hit him most and now governments are starved of ideas, abandoned by their populi who looked elsewhere.

The edifice is crumbling.

They thought the banks were our masters and Barack he thought the same - withholding poverty reducing measures to keep his friends in play. The Tobin tax has a way to put things right by shaving off small sums from vast transactions it forces folk to stop and - heavens, no! - think.

But Barack knows who put him their and on whose noose he will be hung. Another saint goes the way the devil's lure. He made a bargain after all and will keep it until the blood runs dry in Afgahnistan and mothers of victims of vultures screams ask what they saw in him. Again.

The Bush was the one who catapulted our age from OK to disaster with the flick of a retributive switch. We cannot know what was in his mind but it missed important aspects of us and blew up ones we'd rather have seen away some time ago.

Blair in Britain, meanwhile, did his dismal damndest to subject the state to more control and shovel up welfare in the hands of a few. A Labour politician we were told. He certainly made sure those who voted for him kept working beyond reasonable suspicion of his tricks and now hospital parking lots and other frauds charge where before they let you. He corporatised and villfied free thinking. And yes, backed a war that may not have happened if he said no. The long game, said his press secretary. And now Barack whispers about the long and silent war executed by CIA drones and conscripts of terrorists for the cause. Like his grandfather and great grandfather presidents before him. Will we ever learn? Maybe. We're just coming on a little slow.


The Strokes were a happy dawn and the Kings of Leon still sing on. In amongst them Mum and David Syvian have graced this ones ears and pleased while he was doing something else. We had TV shows that addicted more than before, brought raw our social disgraces and made them circuses of the carnal, the stubborn the ashamed. Contests for talent, for before we couldn't find any and home cookery to sophisticate and make social entrepreneurs of its stars.


We found in books and seminars that the system was not there for your benefit, but for you to become afraid. Entertainment was OK because it made you relieved and didn't see the stinking creep and it avalanched into wars and dining tables - ignorance all round.

Sing it quietly while you can but the revolutions come already, it's happening all around. Each time you see a man stop, or a child look puzzled or a free star looking up from their sofa bed and asking why did you have the right to film the murder of my mother, then you'll know it's happening.

The gentle waking up.

The crash.

The unfolding.

The heart's sweet answer to all the mess that it, and not that, is what is permanent. Not the lying, not the rules, the law or the sacrament. The fear, the dying, the wishing and the hope. Not the rage, and not the answer, not the devil's tainted rope. Not you and me, though we're included, as has all that's gone before. And recognising with sweet smile that we're not OK. We're fucked. And dancing in the cracks of that earthquake realisation, we'll find our way to be free.

In this the worst named decade of the century, perhaps we've slowly found our way.

Diary of an Unborn Writer # 37.3 - Bill Nighy

"In the theatre, there are always a couple of shows where you just forget. Somehow you turn off that part of your mind which is out to get you, the bit that undermines you, the self-conscious bit, and everything happens by magic, everything flows, everything's good, every single action you perform, every word you speak, every time you react to something, it all seems to fly. That's the holy grail."

(Picture courtesy of Nicola Dove)

Diary of an unborn writer # 37 - could it really all be music?

Life's moving in confusing streams.

There are connections made and unmade.

And most of all a warming, satisfying lull in the pit of my stomach that insulates against the swarm.

I found myself on Sunday night with my arms around a girl I had fallen asleep thinking about the previous week (entry #36 for those with close attention!). Andrew Bird was on stage holding a violin, the second time a maestro has made it into an entry this early. He was magnificent - like a court jester tipping his toes on electric pedals, looping violin threads and in a suit. He had no shoes on, just socks so he could accurately loop and swoop layer upon layer of strings, plucked or played, though I am not sure if he played a Stradivarius. No one was around to tell me this time



Except B. a little bug in front of me and swaying to Andrew and his support act Jesca Hoop -a damsel of lightning her self. Our cups of red wine resting on the stage and blowing the smoke from our joint into the feet of the crowd to avoid detection in the smokeless venue, lit up by lights and music, Andrew's charm and the notes he plays covering everybody in a satisfying silk.

Andrew was the end of a successful weekend. Successful because it was chaotic and exhausting, involved deep interactions with around 45 people, wine, women and a great deal of joy. I was in Edinburgh - the Mother - whose broad arms from Calton Hill to Arthur's seat (the left) and the Pentlands (the right) embraced me for five or more errant summer's and I dare say some Winters too but we spent those mostly alone and in doors and you never did come round unless I called. There have been a few experiences in Edinburgh and the ghost streets murmur up the names and yesterdays and chorus song of forgotten lovers - on this trip you met 3 - and drinks with old time friends. Warm whiskey in the belly, heart full and futile with conversation. These kinds and their crews you gave up hoping for, for a time - the you that is I, I'm playing with perspective, it hangs looser like a thread - but now back in front of you, their cares, their pleasures merge again in your own, and you find yourself moving from Doctor's pub (where your ancestor's name is written in brass) to the Royal Oak. The belly of Edinburgh where few dare to tread. Your rocking along Infirmary road and a muted jazz trumpet beckons you through the half open door - packed wall to wall with four copies of the Declaration of Arbroath (which made you chill to admit your English-hood) hang on shapes that revealed the tobacco stains when they took the pictures down four years ago for the ban. The ban that drove conversation and the smokers out on to cold streets, except on busy nights like tonight when the band sits in a corner, guitar violin and muted trumpet and you're handed a whiskey glass (painfully loaded with ice) before you make it to the bar and the room goes silent as a man begins to sing the lines of Galway shawl you've heard in the passionate, raw, shrill voxicon of that room a dozen times before.

The evening blurs and you merge with it to return to your host's house for cheese and bread before the plane trip home.

A sleep, a dash and tram ride and you're at B.'s house. The night unfolds and Andrew is sublime and he turns the two of you in to each other and out again. She takes the tram home and you head back to Braam. This is new, this is easy and like the weekend, flows in an undertow of melody.

Could it all be music?

No. The next 9am sees you back at your desk. The grey penetrates the gold little by little and you pour yourself a third cup of coffee to survive.

It's warm.

Today will be OK.

Diary of an unborn writer #33.1 - Could it really all be music?

Sitting at your desk it is Monday and you're humming to Jesca Hope who croons and swoons through one ear and the dirge of office is around.

OK - it's not a dirge. There are good people here and they want good things but the contrast is a little much. Contrast with what?

Dear reader, listen?

Last night you were dancing with B. as the Master Andrew Bird delivered a performance of vurtuoso proportions. You saw him three months ago and this is entirely different, except the joy is the same. He has a suit on and is standing proud with violin under chin and shoes off - the better to press pedals with his feet. He loops sample after sample and cascades over with swings of that fine violin bow. The room is stilled and wonder surrounds the lit up faces from lights reflected off the stage.

You share a joint with B. and surreptitiously. There's a ban in here so you blow the smoke into the floor. She's short, so there's no problem for her but you need to crouch over her shoulder as you take a tug andd the room settles into its comfort a little more. The music swirls around your head a little more and red wine sits in a plastic cup and trickles richly down your throat a little more easily than before.