Head-On - Julian Cope

 HEAD-ON - JULIAN COPE

The story of Julian Cope is like one of Bill Hicks' positive news drugs stories: 'Today, a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration - that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.' Being a one-time consummate drug taker, however, isn't the only string to Julian's bow of course as he's also a musician, a writer, an antiquarian, an activist, a visionary and an eloquent user of the English language which is what makes his autobiography, Head-On - Memories of the Liverpool Punk-scene and the story of the Teardrop Explodes (1976-82), such a joy to read.

Combining perfect English phrases such as 'bless my cotton socks' and American West Coast, Haight Astbury-like phrases, Julian Cope's uses of language is endearing. The title of the book, 'Head-On', is a double entendre referring to 'head' not only in the fellatio sense but also in the sense of where someone is at. For example, anyone with a penchant for music is a 'music-head', anyone who simply likes going to the pub is a 'pub-head', and anyone seemingly without any particular obsessions is a 'non-head', and so on and so forth.

But never mind all that. Let's just cut to the chase shall we and get straight to the drugs? Julian was 22 years old before he smoked his first joint and before that he'd never even smoked a cigarette. In fact he had always been vehemently anti-drugs until one day Teardrop Explodes guitarist Alan Gill told him that he was a tense asshole and needed to relax properly. 'Oh, that seemed fair enough' Julian says before describing the moment he lost his drug virginity.

'I sucked hard on the joint, a massive toke. It tasted really good. My head cleared up. My aching which had been there since my early teenage years, started to evaporate. Out of the top of my head I could feel all my little devils flying off. Yes, I was saved. I felt clean. I was 22 and I felt free. Not hippy free, just cooler about myself. I realised that it was okay to be me. And so it began. The turning point.'

With the slightest of skips and the barest minimum of jumps, Julian quickly progresses to constantly dropping LSD and from then on there's no looking back as he transforms into - as one fan describes it - a king of psychedelia. When appearing on the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, Julian is on a cocktail of weed and amyl nitrate, and when appearing on Top Of The Pops he's on acid - staring down the camera into the living rooms of millions of viewers.

In America, fans queue up backstage calling out to Julian that they've got some LSD for him, whilst on arriving in San Francisco he's given a clear plastic bag full of 'sherbert', 'It's pure California Crystal,' he's informed by the bearer of the gift 'A thousand trip bag. I live out on the rock and the Dead sent it for you.'

Can you imagine? It certainly puts that night you got really drunk down the pub into perspective.

At one point Julian mentions a couplet that he's had spinning round in his head that went: 'I'm a Turner sky, and I look from above. It's all right for now, but how do I get down?' It's a brilliant line and one I'm not sure he ever committed to an actual song but it aptly describes the state he must have ascended to from his prodigious intake of hallucinogens. This all begs the question of course as to what effect such copious drug use might have upon a person in the long term? Well, have you seen what Julian Cope looks like nowadays and how he dresses? He's in a league of his own though we shouldn't be deceived by appearances because beneath the matted hair, beard, leathers and military cap there's a genuinely lovely human being concerned with environmentalism and cultural revolution whose railing against 'greed-heads' never lets up. Or as Julian describes himself: 'A forward-thinking motherfucker'.

It could be argued that Bill Drummond was wrong when he told Julian not to do drugs because he was bad enough straight so just think what a pain in the ass he'd be when high? Certainly, as evidenced by his book, before his drug-induced revelations and the pulling away of the veil from across his eyes, Julian never concerned himself much with the wider world beyond that of music and the societal politics of punk rock. In fact, throughout a large part of his book Julian comes across as a petulant queen bitch with hardly a good word to say about anyone - and that includes himself.

For example, according to Julian a band like A Certain Ratio were 'crap', Monochrome Set could 'fuck right off', Essential Logic were 'London free jazz', and Paul Weller-inspired Mod stuff 'sucked shit'. As for individuals, Ian McCulloch of Echo And The Bunnymen was a 'shit head', NME journalist Dave McCulloch was 'a plank', the Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark vocalist, Andy McCluskey, was like Leo Sayer; and as for erstwhile manager and fellow band member David Balfe he was 'a twat, a dwarf, and a satanic son-of-a-bitch'.

Those who do meet with approval are Pete Wylie, The Clash, Mark E Smith and The Fall (who he sees 28 times in 1978), Arthur Love, Scott Walker and even Lydia Lunch who visits Julian one night backstage and informs him that watching him on stage was like masturbation, before whisking him away and shagging his ass off.

By the sound of it Julian needed to write Head-On so as to get it all off his chest and to enable him to move on. And moved on he certainly has to become nowadays a polymath of sorts; expert in all things Krautrock, post-war Japanese experimental rock, stone circles and European Megalithic culture. As well as continuing to explore his own musically creative urges in the form of over 30 albums of original, fascinating and innovative near-sonic orgasms, as he might put it. 

Julian Cope is a gentleman and a scholar, a floored genius, an endearing writer and a veritable national treasure. And Head-On is a good book.

John Serpico

Zapata Of Mexico - Peter E Newell

 ZAPATA OF MEXICO - PETER E NEWELL

Everyone has at least heard of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, I presume? If only from a slew of cowboy films where they and the Mexican Revolution are a backdrop to the main story? If not, then why not? If yes, then you might wonder what significance they have to the modern day world? Or if you know of the Zapatista slogan 'Tierra y Libertad' - 'Land and Liberty' - you might wonder how it might be relevant to a densely-packed urban population living in any of Britain's major conurbations where the closest a lot of people get to land is a window box on a tower block balcony? And of course, you wouldn't be wrong to wonder because Emiliano Zapata and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 do indeed appear to be a world away from the modern day world. But then on closer inspection and examination, however, they might actually be a lot closer than you think?

In January 1994, under the guidance of Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos, the indigenous people of Chiapas in Mexico declared independence of the Mexican State, creating an autonomous zone that is still in existence to this day. The indigenous people declared themselves to be Zapatistas, named after Emiliano Zapata from seeing themselves as his natural ideological heirs. They aligned themselves with anti-neoliberal sentiments and actions gaining traction at that time, recognising as natural allies the huge swathe of people around the world who were also questioning and physically challenging the concurrent global economic system.

A trade deal going by name of The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had been struck between Mexico, America and Canada and it was going to leave the peasant land workers of Mexico in a very much worse off position to that which they were already in. It was this that instigated the people of Chiapas to not only reject the Mexican State but to also declare war against it. All driven by the confidence and belief that rather than a world of exploitation being thrust upon them, another world was possible.

As any would-be revolutionary should know, taking on the full military might of any State power is commendable but at the same time potentially foolhardy or even suicidal which is why Subcommandante Marcos and the Zapatistas of 1994 not only looked to Emiliano Zapata for inspiration but also for tactics.

"Amigos! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees," Zapata had once famously declared "The land free, free for all, without overseers and without masters, that is the cry of the revolution."

And so with these words echoing down from the past along with an additional cry of 'Basta!' (Enough!) the Zapatistas of 1994 armed only with machetes, clubs and a few guns launched their attack upon the Mexican State.

Emiliano Zapata had understood that sudden, hard, merciless attack is the best form of defence and that formal battles with the Mexican Army should be avoided unless victory was fairly certain, thereby denying the enemy the opportunity to destroy them at one blow. The Zapatistas were more an insurgent people than an army but were instead masters of guerrilla warfare. They laid traps and ambushes, cut supply lines, took small towns by storm, destroyed the smaller enemy units and harassed the larger ones. These tactics completely disconcerted their enemy who could never put their firepower into effective use. If the Mexican Army advanced with a large force, they never found anyone to fight and if they divided their forces they exposed themselves to destruction in ambushes and assaults.

Just as importantly, Zapata also understood the power of the word and that the written word in particular was also a weapon. Subsequently, circulars, decrees and manifestos would pour forth from the Zapatista headquarters. For Zapata, a printing press was just as valuable as a gun.

These are the lessons learned by Subcommandante Marcos in regard to the Mexican Revolution of 1910 though by 1994 there was of course also the Internet to be used as well, enabling therefore effective global communication to all fellow travellers and supporters. And vice versa.

Zapata Of Mexico by Peter E Newell is the sprawling, rolling story of Emiliano Zapata and how he came to symbolise unmitigated and unrepentant revolutionary zeal. It's the story of a man of great principle who could not be bought out or brought down by concessions or the lure of wealth and luxury. A man who was never interested in the seeking and gaining of power but in only the destruction of it. A man who still to this day symbolises a purity of intent that due to its very simplicity is at odds with everything that the modern day world of global economic capitalist power represents. A man who rather than trying to impose his will upon a people sought only to serve and protect that peoples' will.

Peter E Newell's book is not an easy read by any means as it's often difficult to keep up with the gamut of characters and place names stemming from how incredibly well researched it is. It is, however, an invaluable book and a useful gateway into the history of Mexico and the meaning of what it is to be a revolutionary in a world of exploitation, reactionary politics and compliance to the idea of greed being an inherent condition of human nature.

John Serpico

Strangeland - Tracey Emin

 STRANGELAND - TRACEY EMIN

I like Tracey Emin. There, I've said it. There is a proviso, however, in that I'm not a big fan of her art, particularly her installations. It's a delicate balance - a juggling act - but I manage it in the same way that I like Francis Bacon whilst not being a big fan of his art - or his studio. Especially his studio. I remember there being an exhibition of Tracey Emin's artwork in Amsterdam once, and on the outside of the Van Gogh Museum a gigantic banner advertising the show had been hung and I remember stopping to look at it and thinking that's an impressive achievement for an artist to have their name outside the Van Gogh Museum like that. Up there if not better than being nominated for the Turner Prize? The thing was, I didn't feel compelled to go in there and to actually view the show. I did at a later date but for the meantime the kudos and the sheer achievement was enough, which all served to enforce the idea that Tracey Emin's greatest work of art is not her tent with the names sown onto it or her unmade bed or her drawings. No, Tracey Emin's greatest work of art is herself.

Strangeland is a collection of Emin's memoirs and recollections written in a painfully forthright, often shockingly confessional but more than likely exaggerated manner, reminiscent of the confessional writings of Billy Childish. And that didn't take very long did it - to bring Billy Childish's name into the proceedings? But then it's almost unavoidable, really. Billy Childish is like the conscience that haunts Emin's art. The pure and unsullied Ying to her 'sold to the highest bidder' Yang. The question of whose art is the better doesn't come into it, however, and neither does commerciality or even originality. If anything, it's more to do with marketing because without any doubt more people know who Tracey Emin is and know some of her art than those who know of Billy Childish. It's just how the world works. The art world especially.

There's some pretty shocking stuff in Strangeland. Things that a reviewer once said that he wished someone who loved Emin had advised her not to publish. But publish she did and now here it all is in book form for the whole world to see. And for whose benefit? Well, for Emin's I presume because whilst it's good to have such candid and at times such brutal honesty displayed there's very little for the reader to actually gain from it, particularly when it comes to her anecdotes in regard to underage sex and abuse.

Strangeland is another addition to Tracey Emin's canon. Another string to her bow. Another medium to channel her art through - that art being herself, of course. Tracey Emin is her own muse, her own subject, and her own creation. Her grand finale, even. The point being that whether it's good or bad art is neither here nor there. That's not the question. That isn't what Emin's art is about.

Likewise, the question as to whether Strangeland is a good book or not is also neither here nor there. It can be read in the same way you would any other book, of course, but it shouldn't really be critiqued in the same way. That's not to say it's beyond criticism, it's just that the ingenuity of Tracey Emin is in the way she's smashed through a kind of fourth art wall in the same way, dare I say, as Picasso did with his Cubism. Purists might scoff but it's true and it doesn't mean you necessarily need to like Emin's art to recognise this.

John Serpico

Harmony In My Head - Steve Diggle

 HARMONY IN MY HEAD - STEVE DIGGLE

The last time I saw Steve Diggle he was as happy as Larry. This wasn't round his house for tea and biscuits I should point out but onstage with the Buzzcocks at the Paradiso, Amsterdam in 2009. He was playing his heart out on his guitar, swigging from a bottle of Champagne and smiling ear to ear looking for all the world as if he was in his natural element which, of course, he was. Whether or not any chemical stimulant was adding to his happiness is between him and his lawyer but as this was Amsterdam there was a slim chance it might have been. And why not? When in Rome and all that...

Harmony In My Head is Steve Diggle's autobiography, ghost written by Terry Rawlings, and it's a rollicking read full of of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. All the things, in fact, that you could want from an autobiography. There's also plenty of insights as you might expect in regard to the early Punk days, the Buzzcocks, and life in England during that whole Punk era with Diggle coming across as a genuinely affable, working class bloke possessed of a wit and intelligence that has seen him weather and survive decades of both personal and music business highs and lows. Moreover, he comes across as the kind of bloke you'd want want as a friend that you would very much treasure as such.

'People have forgotten just how desperate it was living in England during the early Seventies,' Diggle says, and it's true. History has a way of being written by either those with a vested interest or by those with a hankering for nostalgia, hence why as promoted by the tory press that decade is always depicted by images of piles of uncollected rubbish, striking workers, and the three-day week. The entertainment industry in the meantime depicts it as a golden age of glam rock, Hollywood blockbusters, and 'traditional' comedians telling 'traditional' jokes.

Being born into this world meant being born as mere cannon fodder fit only to be a spectator to the spectacle. Active participation in the world and the shaping of it was denied, leaving the likes of Steve Diggle with his nose pressed against the window watching life go by outside and an often ludicrous life at that. He sums it up by describing a night at the Manchester Free Trade Hall watching Patrick Moraz from prog rock group Yes, onstage with 'a fucking shop's worth of keyboards, banks and banks of them, with all those jackplug socket boards that looked like a telephone exchange. It was ridiculous but that wasn't all. Half way through a number he jumped up and blew into a 15-foot Alpine horn. That's when I knew I'd been had.'

From seemingly out of nowhere, however, the Sex Pistols suddenly appeared and from experiencing them came the notion that you don't need money or permission or even talent - you just need ideas even if those ideas are above your station.

'The message was 'Do it yourself',' Diggle tells us. 'I can't emphasize how important this was at that time, how important it was for music in this country. There were a million people on the dole and here was a band saying 'Get up off your arse. Express yourself. You can do it'. The barrier had gone between the ordinary kid on the street and the musician on the stage.'

Hence the Buzzcocks and punk's first double entendre - suggesting a vibrator - and a name as good as a Sex Pistol. Hence Spiral Scratch, the Buzzcocks debut EP on their New Hormones label that according to Geoff Travis of Rough Trade was the first independent record people really wanted. Hence a slew of classic, near-perfect singles that when compiled onto a single album - Singles Going Steady - made for a classic, near-perfect album. Hence for Steve Diggle a life of creativity, travel, art, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

Diggle's a candid raconteur and reveals things of interest in a very matter of fact manner, much of which I'd not even considered. I didn't know, for example, that the song 'Harmony In My Head' was inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the best though most difficult books in the world. I didn't know 'Love You More' was at the time the shortest ever A-side single released  in the UK, clocking in at just one minute and forty-five seconds. I didn't know that on signing to United Artists that the label at first refused to press 'Orgasm Addict' as they thought the word 'orgasm' was disgusting. And then likewise with 'Oh Shit', the B-side of the second single, 'What Do I Get?', where the pressing plant staff actually walked out.

And then in regard to original Buzzcocks bassist, Garth, whom little is really known about to the point of him being somewhat of a punk rock enigma, Diggle informs us he was a 'massive truck driver-type of a guy, a huge build of a man, a proper bruiser' who happened to have a certain propensity for fighting. Garth would fight with bouncers (six at a time on one occasion), band members themselves (Pete Shelley once, for buying the wrong size batteries for his ghetto-blaster), and even whole audiences, one time in Leeds wading into the front row after someone spat at him only to result in the entire stage being pelted with bottles and glasses and the band having to flee the venue for their lives.

Being a self-confessed, life-long conscientious objector to the 9-5 work ethic, Steve Diggle has successfully navigated and dodged every imaginable sling and arrow that a life of being a rock'n'roller (and a punk one at that) could possibly throw at him - and he's still standing. Harmony In My Head is a testament to that mighty endeavour and that most noble of achievements. 

John Serpico

Mother, Brother, Lover - Jarvis Cocker

 MOTHER, BROTHER, LOVER - JARVIS COCKER

A book of selected lyrics written by Jarvis Cocker and the obvious question it invites being 'Is Jarvis Cocker a great lyricist?' The immediate problem with this, however, is in the criteria in which the lyrics are judged as in do they retain their integrity when isolated from the music and when stood alone on a naked page? For the most part I'd say unfortunately not, that it's only when combined with the music of Pulp that they come into their own, though to be fair to Jarvis this is something he admits himself in the written introduction of his book where he highlights the instruction he includes with any lyric sheet that comes with the records - 'NB Please do not read the lyrics whilst listening to the recordings'. That's not to say he doesn't have his moments but in comparison to some genuinely great lyricists such as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Nick Cave and so on, they're few and far between. So is Mother, Brother, Lover an ill-advised vanity project or merely meant for Jarvis Cocker/Pulp fans only? The fact that mine is a signed copy and that this means very little to me suggests that yes, it might well be a bit of both.

I used to adhere to the Lemmy Kilmister school of thought that said if you can't say something in three minutes (in the context of the typical length of a song) then it's probably not worth saying, though nowadays I tend to rescind on that idea and sympathise a lot more with the epic song and lyric. I still believe, however, that anything too stupid to say is sung instead which is where the appeal of Jarvis Cocker lies because  at least he's always tried to inject some sense and meaning into a song. A prime and probably the best example of this being Cunts Are Still Running The World that not only makes for a good song title but is also a pretty meaningful and even sensible and reasoned thing to declare.

Another thing that makes Jarvis Cocker's lyrics of interest is his class consciousness which is actually a rare thing to find within music or for it at least to be so prominent. It's in evidence throughout his songs such as I Spy, Mile End, Catcliffe Shakedown, and Cocaine Socialism among others and of course it's there in Common People, the song that is perhaps the pinnacle of his song writing. There's a caveat, however, and that's in the way that however much Jarvis displays his awareness of where he's from and the class structure he was born into, there's a certain loathing if not even a fear of certain aspects of the working class culture he's of that actually outweighs his adversity to aspects of middle class culture he's encountered.

There's an unpredictability and a latent violence within working class culture that Jarvis encapsulates in Common People with the lines 'Like a dog lying in the corner they will bite you and never warn you - Look out, they'll tear your insides out.' It's an acknowledgment of not only something that Jarvis himself is frightened of but of something that others should be wary of too. What Jarvis does not acknowledge, however, is that this unpredictability and latent violence is a power that the working class hold and is in fact a key to their emancipation, for want of a better word. Rather than living their lives with 'no meaning or control and with nowhere left to go', the very things that Jarvis is frightened are what actually enables the working class to 'burn so bright' whilst all those possessed of wealth and privilege can only stand to be 'amazed that they exist' and be left to 'only wonder why'.

As I said, Common People is probably the pinnacle of his song writing and is a song Jarvis should be rightly proud of.

Jarvis Cocker nowadays is very close to being a national treasure, a kind of grand old dame of Britpop. He may not have a latent violent bone in his body - which of course is no bad thing at all - but because he is of the 'common people' he still has an unpredictability about him that is always going to stand him in good stead and is the ingredient that will always have him remain a person of interest. Even if his book isn't.

John Serpico

Go Now - Richard Hell

 GO NOW - RICHARD HELL

He was a punk rock originator, or so they say and so he claims. Not of the musical style but the look as in the spiky hair and the ragged clothes held together by safety pins. Malcolm McLaren had seen him in New York and wanted to bring him over to England to lead a band he was thinking of putting together. He declined, so McLaren simply stole or 'borrowed' his image and the rest is history. To have invented punk rock should be enough for any man and guarantees a legacy of sorts but if you're possessed of a creative urge then you've got to do something with it, hence Richard Hell and The Voidoids and his career as a poet and writer. A man's got to eat and pay his bills at the end of the day as well, of course. Not that I imagine he's actually made much money from his legacy, his music and his books, if any at all in fact. Which brings us to Go Now, written by Richard Hell and published in 1996, and though its reach is global as evidenced by a copy falling into my hands down here at the edge of the world it's very doubtful it's been much of a money spinner for the author.

The blurb on the back cover describes the book as a 'tragi-comic road novel. A walk, ride and fall on the wild side' and in one sense it is; like a cross between Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, On The Road, and any number of books by Charles Bukowski. The plotline - or what there is of one - is very simple: A fading punk rock star and his ex-girlfriend are commissioned to drive a car from California to New York and to write a book about the experience, him doing the writing and the ex-girlfriend taking photographs. What it entails, however, is her taking photographs and him doing a lot of navel gazing.

'How are you supposed to spend your damned life?' he ponders at one point 'What is there to aspire to? Fame and money. Sex and drugs. What else is there to do with freedom?' And on it goes, which is fair enough though it doesn't make for the most riveting of reading it must be said. The problem is that there's too much self-loathing and pitifulness going on. Too much wondering where he's going to get his next bag of heroin from whilst at the same time juggling with the question as to whether he's an addict or not and if so why so? Too much junky business, as Johnny Thunders would say. The America he's describing being almost a desolate one, punctuated by cheap motels, diners and people pre-occupied with their own problems. Like an echo of the inside of the author's head, America is not a happy place.

A curious aspect of the book is when it comes to the question of how autobiographical it is? The narrator goes by the name of Billy Mud and this is clearly Richard Hell himself. The ex-girlfriend is called Chrissa and is French which suggests this is meant to be a representation of Lizzy Mercier Descloux, who was once Hell's girlfriend. The funder of the road trip and the person who wants to produce the book based on it is British and is called Jake. I was thinking Jake Riviera, the co-founder of Stiff Records, the label on which Richard Hell's debut Blank Generation EP was first released.

This all then begs the question did any of the events in the book actually take place? Did Hell ever take a road trip with Mercier Descloux and if so did they stop off at Hell's aunt's house where he ended up having sex with his aunt and being caught in flagrante delicto by Mercier Descloux, who then took photos of them in the act? Having read Hell's actual autobiography, I Dreamt I Was A Very Clean Tramp, it's entirely feasible from what he revealed in it in regard to his sexual peccadillos and his somewhat ungentlemanly disregard for discretion. 

Though does any of it matter? Of course not. Does any of it make for a great book? Well, no, not a great book as such but certainly not a bad one.

John Serpico

The Time Machine - H G Wells

 THE TIME MACHINE - H G WELLS 

The interesting thing about H G Wells' The Time Machine is that his vision of the future is based on a class analysis where the middle class are noticeable by their absence and the world is divided between the ruling and the working class, though Wells throws a spanner in the works by suggesting it might be the working class who are the actual rulers.

It's interesting also that when it comes to books and visions of the future it's always 1984 and Brave New World that are cited as the touchstones within that particular field whilst The Time Machine is studiously ignored. To make up for this perhaps, H G Wells is often cited as the father of science fiction alongside Jules Verne although the difference between the two is that whilst Verne was interested in the scientific mechanics of the future, Wells was more interested in the social impact of those same mechanics.

Narrated in the first person though employing a similar trope to Conrad's Heart Of Darkness where the first person narrative is conveyed by a third party, The Time Machine is the story of an un-named scientist known only as The Time Traveller who invents a machine that can traverse the Fourth Dimension. What this means is that he can travel through time and on his very first test flight is flung into the far future. He lands in a world or rather the world around him changes to one where mankind has effectively divided into almost two separate species.

Above ground live the Eloi who are child-like and simple, whose essential needs such as food and clothes are provided for, leaving them with nothing to do apart from play. They are possessed of very little intelligence, are physically weak, fey and enfeebled; and like children they have a fear of the dark.

Underground live the Morlocks who are simian-like, of bleached skin and with large eyes to enable them to see in the dark. They too are dim-witted though have a propensity for industrial labour as that is what they are conditioned to: To work and maintain the great engines that thud away under the earth for some unspecified and probably fruitless reason.

As The Time Traveller deduces: Over time the gradual widening of the social distance between the Capitalist and the Labourer had arrived at its logical conclusion and Industry and the less ornamental aspects of civilization had descended underground and out of sight. In the end this had left above ground the Haves, pursuing pleasure, comfort and beauty whilst below ground were the Have-nots, the workers continuously adapting to the conditions of their labour. Evolution had then naturally taken its toll resulting in the refined beauty and child-like demeanour of the Eloi and the pale, ugly pallor of the Morlocks.

Further to this, The Time Traveller deduces the Morlocks have an aversion to light and are only able to ascend above ground at night and only after the moon has waned. This was why the Eloi are afraid of the dark, because with the dark come the Morlocks. And then to cap it all, The Time Traveller discovers that whilst the Eloi feed only on fruit and nuts, the Morlocks are carnivores feeding only on meat. That meat being the meat of the Eloi. The Morlocks eat the Eloi - like cattle in the field.

On reading The Time Machine, I wondered if H G Wells might have been interested in eugenics and lo and behold with a quick google search there it is: Reports of how he was an enthusiastic supporter of it, hailing eugenics as the first step toward the removal of 'detrimental types and characteristics' and the 'fostering of desirable types' in their place.

I suspected as much. It's there between the lines of The Time Machine. It's there in the way the Morlocks - H G Wells' symbolic representation of the working class - are depicted as ugly and worthy only of being killed whilst the Eloi are cast as the good guys. It's there in H G Wells' very blatant anti-working class prejudice made palatable by the disguise of science fiction.

Who'd have thought it? You read a book because it's a classic of its genre and because you liked the film based upon it from 1960 starring Rod Taylor and you come away feeling a bit repulsed. Why has this not been highlighted before? That The Time Machine is an early advertisement for the art and science of the breeding of better men through the extermination of 'inferior' DNA? I wonder if Hitler ever read it? Or even Boris Johnson and certain other members of the public school-educated Conservative Party?

John Serpico

Morlock

Boris Johnson

Elvis: The Final Years - Jerry Hopkins

 ELVIS: THE FINAL YEARS - JERRY HOPKINS

Hey, buddy, the Elvis I knew was no junky. No, he was way beyond that. Being addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates was as nothing compared to his addiction to spending and giving money away. Wandering into Hollywood and Beverley Hills on an evening to spend $38,000 on guns and $80,000 on cars for Christmas gifts, handing over $500 bills to total strangers and wishing them merry Christmas, renting movie theatres and amusement parks at night after they were closed to the public, shooting at countless television sets with his derringer without a second thought, ordering his chauffeur to drive through the gates to his Graceland estate when they weren't opened promptly enough for him, giving away millions of dollars in cars, rings, houses and airplanes - all was as nothing to him.

"Lookit, goddammit," he would say "It's my fuckin' money and I can do whatever in goddamn hell I want with it."

I know the considered opinion is that Elvis was at his height during the 1950s and essentially before he went into the Army but I would argue that it was in the 1970s that he was at his greatest. This was the period when Elvis truly was the Emperor King, the time during which he bought and gave away more cars, took more drugs, hired more bodyguards, sang more songs, entertained more girls, and collected more awards than anyone.

"Before Elvis there wasn't anyone," Lennon once said, affirming Elvis's place at the top of the rock'n'roll hierarchy and acknowledging that without Elvis there would have been no Beatles. Ever the gentleman, Elvis accepted such patronage gracefully even when he sometimes didn't see eye to eye with those it was coming from.

Elvis met the Beatles, of course, or rather the Beatles met him though he always made public his disapproval of their drug taking and quietly disapproved of their long hair and their social stance. Elvis may well have been the figurehead of teenage rebellion in his early days but later on in his career it was no longer the image he wanted to be associated with. He had no desire to offend anyone nor to be associated with anyone who might cause offence to anyone. The image he wished to portray of himself was that of being a good, Christian boy with no specific social or political stance and of course that's what he was even when counting Richard Nixon as a friend and being a fervent supporter of the police. Hence his distancing himself from the Beatles even though they actually had much in common. Drugs, for example. The difference being that Elvis didn't consider the barbiturates, amphetamines and diet pills he took to actually be drugs even though his use of them was kept secret. He regarded them as medicine.  

Elvis: The Final Years by Jerry Hopkins is an exceptional book telling the story of Elvis Presley's lurid, decadent and exceptional life from between 1970 and 1977. It gets right into the nooks and crannies of his life at Graceland, backstage at his concerts, the divorce from Priscilla, the aftershow motel rooms, his antics, his habits and his obsessions. At the same time it knows where to show discretion and where to draw a veil over things which means it's not going for sensationalism alone. Whilst not shying away from the pill popping, the inadequacies, the madness and the sadness it displays decorum when cruelty towards its subject could easily have been pursued. It shows respect.

Hopkins charts the slow and steady decline along with the near tragic loneliness of what was one of the most famous people in the world. Elvis was taking morphine for pain, Quaaludes to sleep and amphetamines to diet. He was bingeing on junk food and by 1975 was spending and giving away more than he was earning, not helped by all his hangers-on and payrolled entourage who may well have loved him but who also knew that he was their cash cow whom they would milk until the cows came home.

Without any question, Elvis was a genuinely lovely man whose generosity knew no bounds. As his hired hands would all attest, he wore his heart on his sleeve and openly bore his scars, those being the death of his twin brother at birth, the death of his mother, the divorce with Priscilla and then finally just weeks before his death the publication of a book by some of his ex-bodyguards exposing his private life and the problems he wrestled with, particularly in regard to his use of chemicals. Elvis's biggest problems, however, were not his inner demons but the outer ones magnified ten-fold by the machinations of the music business. 

Come the end, it was these outer demons that did for him. The exploiters, the freeloaders, the manipulators, the bloodsuckers, the usurers, the gravy train riders, the hangers-on, the ambulance chasers, and the starfuckers. 

Come the end, in July of 1977 at the age of just 42 years old, riding a cocktail of pills and a bellyful of hamburgers Elvis passed out in the palatial bathroom of Gracelands, never to re-awaken.

For the very last and final time, Elvis had left the building.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth skies (Part 54)

 UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 54)

Horses, horses, horses, horses....

Alphaville - Jean-Luc Godard

 ALPHAVILLE - JEAN-LUC GODARD

I've seen the film and now I've read the book but I'm still at a loss as to what Alphaville is actually about. The film was scripted and directed by Jean-Luc Godard so it was never going to be run-of-the-mill and based on his oeuvre was always going to be stylish - which it is, but almost to the point of distraction. Perhaps that's the point?

Set some time in the future, Alphaville is the name of a city where society is run by a gigantic super-computer called Alpha 60, where life is based on pure logic and technocracy. All emotion has been eradicated and all words pertaining to emotions are no longer in use. Bibles have been replaced by dictionaries that are continuously being updated not with new words but with words being deleted. Language, in fact, seems to no longer have any meaning and words just go round in circles as illustrated by when receptionists for example, instead of saying "You're welcome" say "I'm very well, thank you, not at all."

According to Alpha 60 via its piped broadcasts 'The present is the form of all life, and there are no means by which this can be avoided. Time is a circle which is endlessly revolving. Everything has been said. Nothing existed here before us. No one. We are absolutely alone here. We are unique, dreadfully unique. The meaning of words and of expressions is no longer grasped. One isolated word or an isolated detail in a drawing can be understood but the comprehension of the whole escapes us.'

Which sounds rather similar to how our present day Facebook and social media is.

Into this dystopia enters Lemmy Caution, a sort of secret agent/gumshoe detective posing as a newspaper journalist whose mission - like Willard's in Apocalypse Now regarding Colonel Kurtz - is to terminate with extreme prejudice the architect of Alpha 60, Professor von Braun. After much chasing around and thwarting of assassination attempts upon his own life, Caution succeeds in his mission and kills von Braun and destroys Alpha 60, escaping Alphaville with von Braun's daughter (in the film played by Anna Karina) who, emerging from her oppressed mind-state tells Caution she loves him. 

And that's it.

It's to be presumed Alphaville as in the city is a metaphor for totalitarianism though whether it's aimed at the Russian or the Western model is down to the reader/viewer to decide? What is clear, however, is that if anything Alphaville as in the story and the film is an exercise in Pop Art and is essentially a Lichtenstein-style comic strip captured on celluloid. If viewed this way and read this way then it starts to make some kind of sense. Though what it's actually about is still somewhat open to question.

John Serpico

Pic - Jack Kerouac

 PIC - JACK KEROUAC

Jack Kerouac's last novel, completed just weeks before his death and what springs to mind on reading it is the 10000 Maniacs song Hey Jack Kerouac from their In My Tribe album, and the lines: "Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother and the tears she cried for none other, than her little boy lost in our little world that hated and then dared to drag him down. Her little boy courageous who chose his words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood." And that, essentially, is the story of Jack Kerouac and the story also of Pictorial Review Jackson, the ten-year-old narrator of Pic.

In many ways this is On The Road but through the eyes of an orphaned black child, told and written phonetically in a patoi-like North Carolina dialect. It's the story of that child as he travels across America with his elder brother, first to New York and then to California, with him describing the places he sees and the people he meets in a wide-eyed manner brimful of innocence and wonder. Pictorial, or 'Pic' for short, is the proverbial 'little boy lost' searching for a place he might call a home in a world daring to drag him down.

As might be expected and even hoped for, there are a lot of familiar Kerouac traits within these pages as in the sense of forward motion through the act of travelling, descriptions of places and people encountered, the celebration of jazz, the sense of adventure, and the sense of enthusiasm unbound. As exclaimed by Pic's elder brother at the start of their travels: 'Boy! You and me's hittin that old road for the WAY-yonder. Hey, look out everybody, here we come.' And it very much continues in that vein from there on, even when dealing with poverty, hunger, exhaustion and despair.

An interesting part of the story is when they cross the Mason Dixie line when travelling on a bus and on being told this by his brother, Pic is confused as he hadn't seen any kind of line at all so can only presume he must have been asleep when they crossed it.

'What did the line look like?' Pic asks him, to which his brother replies that he didn't know because he hadn't seen it either. 'But there is such a line,' he tells Pic 'Only thing is it ain't on the ground, and it ain't in the air neither, it's jess in the head of Mason and Dixie, jess like all other lines, state lines, parallel thirty-eight lines and iron Europe curtain lines is all jess 'maginery lines in people's heads and don't have nothing to do with the ground. Yes sir, that's all it is.'

And then there's the old man they meet along the road past the Susquehanna River who tells them he's heading to Canada, who doesn't stop talking and doesn't stop walking. Pic and his brother follow him for some miles until they realise he's probably crazy and so leave him to forge ahead alone until he's gone like a ghost. And then it dawns upon Pic's brother that it probably was a ghost, doomed to walk the highways and byways of America forever, always looking to find Canada but never getting there because he's going the wrong way all the time. And you wonder: Was this Jack Kerouac himself? And in fact, are all the characters in Pic aspects or depictions of how Kerouac saw himself?

At the age of 47 Jack Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage brought about by a lifetime of alcohol abuse. He left behind him, however, numerous books and poems that have influenced generations of readers, his crowning glory being On The Road. The thing is, it's actually debatable as to whether On The Road is Kerouac's best book or not? It's the most influential, without any doubt, but for a fuller and better understanding and appreciation of him and the whole Beat Generation 'explosion' it's advisable to read his other books as well, Pic being just one of them.

John Serpico

Amsterdam - Ian McEwan

 AMSTERDAM - IAN MCEWAN

I was an Ian McEwan virgin. Never read anything by him before in my life but being tri-curious I thought I'd take the big plunge and give him a go. It was the title of his 1998 Booker Prize winner, Amsterdam, that attracted me as I wanted to know what it might be about and with that I entered blindly. I tell you: It was like entering Pan's labyrinth.

Essentially, Amsterdam turns out to be a morality play centring upon two men. One, a newspaper editor and the second a composer commissioned to write a concerto to mark the approaching millennium. Binding them together is the fact of them both being ex-lovers of a socialite who has suddenly passed away from an unspecified illness. Following her funeral, her husband approaches the newspaper editor with some photographs taken by his late wife of the current British Foreign Secretary dressed in women's clothes.

Knowing that by publishing the photographs the circulation figures of his newspaper will be boosted ten-fold and reverse it's decline, the editor is all for it although the composer objects to their publication on the grounds of it being a betrayal of their ex-lover's private life. Apart from reviving the fortunes of his newspaper, the editor also knows that if published the photos will lead to the immediate ruin of the Foreign Secretary, therefore saving the country from him being the next Prime Minister.

It all makes for a good, liberal argument. Should a person's private life be used to expose hypocrisy? The Foreign Secretary is of the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade; a family values man and scourge of immigrants, asylum seekers and travellers; openly talking about the reintroduction of national service and of taking the country out of Europe. Does it matter that in his private life he likes to dress up as a woman? The composer argues not: "If it's OK to be a transvestite," he says "then it's OK for a racist to be one. What's not OK is to be a racist."

It's a good point well made. Is it right to court and pander to prejudice in a bid to counter prejudice? Is 'by any means necessary' really always as clear cut as that? 

Years ago there were rumours of a set of photographs floating around of Margaret Thatcher's husband, Dennis, backscuttling a call girl. If it's true these photos existed then why were they never published and if they had been published would it have led to the downfall of Thatcher? Being an avowed advocate of Victorian, Christian family values they would surely have damaged Thatcher irrecoverably but what would that have said about British society? That war crimes are okay, that the wholesale destruction of mining communities is fine, that taking a wrecking ball to civil society is acceptable? Let your husband be caught indulging his extramarital peccadillos, however, then you're for the high jump and no question about it.

In more recent times, following accusations of under-age child abuse and publication of the photo showing Prince Andrew with his arm around the accuser, though his reputation has been damaged the prince seems to have got away with it. Following the CCTV footage of Matt Hancock snogging his aide, the Health Secretary was forced to resign though not before being defended by the Prime Minister. Give it a year or so and it can be almost guaranteed that Hancock will be back in politics.

The question of morality, hypocrisy and ethics is what McEwan's book spins on then, and in his well-written dance of words leads to the answer to 'who will survive and what will be left of them?' The title of the book - Amsterdam - comes into it because that's where the editor and the composer end up, at the Concertgebouw for a rehearsal of the millennial symphony and where the moral conundrum is resolved.

According to various literary critics, Amsterdam is 'brilliant' and 'chilling' whilst according to A S Byatt it's 'shocking'. Are these people somehow bribed to laud such plaudits upon these books they review, I wonder? Ian McEwan is a professional writer so you would of course expect Amsterdam to be deftly written and finely executed but I'd say it falls very short of being 'brilliant'. It maintains your attention until the end, it's entertaining, it's slick and not overly complicated but at best I'd call it 'interesting'. It's a modern day black comedy going over some very old ground. How it won the Booker Prize in 1998 is a mystery and the real conundrum.

John Serpico

Banga - Patti Smith

 BANGA - PATTI SMITH

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a cd? Is it a book? Whatever you might call it, Banga by Patti Smith is surely confusing for the anally retentive and the fastidious librarian. How to categorise it is the question? And where to keep it? Well, first and foremost as it's in book form the only place to keep it is obviously on your bookshelf even though it is as well Patti Smith's eleventh album released/published in 2012 as both a cd with a book and a book with a cd. More importantly than all this, however: Is it any good?

The first thing to acknowledge is that just about anything created by Patti Smith is going to be of interest due to it simply being by Patti Smith, which means it's almost guaranteed to be a work of art. Banga is no exception. Written over a period of three years, the twelve compositions (including a version of Neil Young's 'After The Goldrush') work equally well as both poems and lyrics. Not that this should come as a surprise, of course.

The subject matter of the compositions are in many ways typical Patti Smith fare, reflecting her current travels, concerns and meditations. The featured characters and scenarios ranging from Mikel Bulgakov, Nikolai Gogol, Andrei Tarkovsky, Amerigo Vespucci, Maria Schneider, Johnny Depp, and Amy Winehouse, to the discovery of America, the Tohoku earthquake, the stations of Saint Francis of Assisi's life, and the threat of environmental devastation.

One of the problems Patti Smith has always had to contend with is that her debut album, Horses, has always been her masterpiece and so has been near impossible to surpass. Not that she hasn't tried and often come close, it should be said. How do you follow what is, in fact, one of the greatest albums of all time? The poem/song 'Amerigo' in/on Banga is quite possibly one of the best things she's ever written and that's obviously no mean feat, and for this alone makes Banga an important addition to her canon. It concerns the exploits of the navigator Amerigo Vespucci, from whom America got its name, and him coming to the New World with the intention of baptizing and bringing salvation to the natives. "Ah the salvation of souls," writes/sings Patti "But wisdom we had not. For these people had neither king nor lord and bowed to no one, for they have lived in their own liberty." Come the end, rather than converting the natives, Amerigo himself is transformed. "And the sky opened, and we laid down our armour. And we danced naked as they, baptized in the rain of the New World." In its depth of subject matter and its ambitious scope - it works. As does the whole collection.  With its beautiful design and its array of accompanying black and white photographs taken by Patti on her old polaroid camera, Banga is without doubt a work of art from one of the world's true artists. 

And whilst on the subject of Patti Smith, it's interesting that she's one of the very few artists who has been with me throughout almost the whole of my life. From my very first introduction to her via a cassette tape of Horses at the age of seventeen whilst living on the southeast coast of Crete through to the present day and being given a copy of Banga as a present. I've seen her playing live a number of times and though we've never spoken our paths have crossed, from backstage at the Glastonbury festival, to the Van Gogh museum, to the streets of Amsterdam with us passing each other by, looking straight at each other almost as if to see who would blink first.

A thing to appreciate about her, I've always thought, is her lack of pretension which of all things might appear to be a strange thing to say given her penchant for namedropping and her range of oft-cited influences? What should be remembered, however, is that essentially Patti Smith is of working class origin and that what elevated her to renowned artist level was and still is her love of reading. She's an autodidact. She's the living proof of how by simply reading, the world becomes a much more wondrous place and life becomes a much more fascinating and beautiful experience.

As Patti puts it in a final sign-off at the end of Banga: Believe or Explode.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      John Serpico    

What Happened, Miss Simone? - Alan Light

 WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? - ALAN LIGHT

The things you learn. Nina Simone wasn't her real name. She was actually born Eunice Kathleen Waymon and only changed her name to prevent her mother who was a devout preacher finding out her daughter had taken up playing 'the devil's music' in a nightclub. Apparently, 'Nina' was taken from a nickname given to her by an ex-boyfriend and 'Simone' was taken from the French actress Simone Signoret. The things you learn.

When thinking of Nina Simone you tend to think of three things: her voice, her piano playing, and her politics; sometimes you think of all these three things at once and it's at these times that her stature as an artist morphs from the beautiful to the sublime. Her rich contralto, her classically-trained piano playing and her black liberation politics made for a heady brew that to this day echoes down the ages attracting generation upon generation of new listeners.

According to Alan Light in his Nina Simone biography What Happened, Miss Simone? the first time Simone met Martin Luther King Jnr she said to him "I'm not nonviolent" to which King replied "Okay, I'm glad to meet you." She then extended her hand and said "I'm so glad to meet you too."

Growing up as a black woman in America at that time Simone of course was aware of discrimination and segregation but it was the killing of four young black girls by a bomb exploding while they were attending bible class at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 that for her put into full glare the evil and injustice of American racism. "When they killed the little girls in Alabama," she's quoted as saying "that's when I changed."

The first thing Simone did was to write a song with the title 'Mississippi Goddam' that for its lyrical directness and undisguised anger is somewhat startling even to this day. This song, according to Light, marked a dividing line in Simone's career and when she premiered it at the Carnegie Hall in 1964, introduced a level of outrage and immediacy unlike anything else in the black civil rights protest movement. Come the summer of 1969 Simone was on stage asking her audience "Are you ready, black people? Are you ready to smash white things? Burn buildings? Are you ready? Are you ready to build black things?"

Nina Simone was an inspiration to black people everywhere, no more acutely realised than in such songs as her 'Ain't Got No/I Got Life' medley and 'To Be Young, Gifted And Black'; the latter of which when playing live would introduce it by saying "It is not addressed to white people primarily. Though it doesn't put you down in any way... it simply ignores you. For my people need all the inspiration and love that they can get." The flipside of this, however, was that Nina Simone needed all the inspiration and love she could get also and though there were plenty who loved her dearly it seemed never to be enough and she would always end up hurting those who loved her the most.

Alan Light's book depicts Simone as an extremely formidable woman who could clearly be more than a handful, not suffering fools for a moment yet suffering from her own personal demons. Interestingly, some of Simone's behaviour and antics are remindful of Adam Ant who was eventually diagnosed as being bipolar, subsequently explaining a lot of things about him and his career. It isn't, however, until near to the end of Light's book that the words 'manic depressive' and 'bipolar' are mentioned in regard to Simone and then from her daughter, Lisa, who in 1984 began hearing these words being mentioned although the terms stopped short of being an official diagnosis. For Lisa, a possible clinical explanation for her mother's behaviour meant reconsidering her mother's whole life and actions.

"Would you say you were an angry black woman?" Simone was once asked in an interview. "No," she shot back "I'm an intelligent black woman. I sing from intelligence. Anger has its place, anger has fire and fire moves things but I sing from intelligence." And therein lies a significant point. Attempts at defining Nina Simone and attempts at explaining her through a mental health condition/chemical imbalance are attempts at corralling and boxing her in. She would, however, have none of it, presenting herself instead as royalty - a Queen - who demanded respect and particularly in regard to money who demanded she be paid her dues. Her dignity, her demeanour, her belligerence and her behaviour frightened people; all backed-up by a gun she allegedly kept in her handbag and her willingness to even chase with a knife an audience member who'd annoyed her.

Come 1999 and at the age of sixty-six though her participation in civil rights activities had long ended ("Active in civil rights? Motherfucker, I am civil rights!") Nina Simone's formidability was still very much intact as evidenced by her backstage rider reportedly asked for at that year's Nick Cave-hosted Meltdown Festival in London - that rider consisting of champagne, sausages, and cocaine. A rider fit for a Queen.

Nina Simone passed away in 2003 at the age of seventy and with her death went the passing of a legend the like of which the world will probably never see again.

John Serpico

Chomsky And Globalisation - Jeremy Fox

 CHOMSKY AND GLOBALISATION - JEREMY FOX

I eat Noam Chomsky books for breakfast. I chew them up and then spit them out. I gorge on them. This one, however - Chomsky And Globalisation - written by Jeremy Fox is but a snack, a nibble, a morsel and because of this it's not enough and after reading it I'm still hungry.

Chomsky is known as the 'Einstein of modern linguistics' and was once arguably the most important intellectual alive although whether that accolade still holds today is debatable due entirely to how old he is now. He is still to this day regularly interviewed, however, popping up more recently on YouTube zoom-talks where his views are sought on various geo-political and environmental issues.

For most, Chomsky's major work has been around the manufacturing of consent, American hegemony and globalisation; the driving force behind it being what Bakunin once called an 'instinct for freedom' and an objection on principle to unjustified claims of authority over people. 'Any form of authority requires justification' Chomsky once wrote 'And any time you find a form of authority illegitimate, you ought to challenge it.' Which, once you start looking is practically all authority.

Jeremy Fox's book is about globalisation and the way it's presented and the way it's perceived as opposed to the reality of it as explained by Chomsky. Economic globalisation in all its supposed grandeur is meant to be the path to universal prosperity and the solution to the Third World's economic problems. It is, however, nothing of the kind and is instead the arbiter of social, political and economic decline for the many and vast profit and consolidation of power for the few. It's the legitimization of inequality being normal, natural and even desirable. As Fox puts it: '70 per cent of global economic activity is nowadays speculation and in the windowless bunkers in which fortunes are made, nothing is actually produced. Nothing, that is, except wealth.'

And to whom and to where does this wealth go? Who actually profits? According to the established wisdom as declared by all those in positions of security and advantage we all ultimately benefit. And of course, the system isn't rigged and of course it's only right and proper that the winners should end up enormously rich. And as for the losers? Well, they end up on the breadline but that's their own fault for being losers.

It's the philosophy and language of Donald Trump. Remember him? Except that Trump was just being open about it because it's also the philosophy and language of every cut-throat, Ayn Rand-influenced, middle-of-the-road, so-called reasonable, sensible, neo-liberal advocate of the democratic free-enterprise system that ever crawled over the bodies both physically and theoretically of every dead child refugee washed-up upon the shore, portrayed in your daily newspaper tabloid as a threat to the national standard of living.

The thing about Jeremy Fox's book is that, as I said, it's not enough. It's important to state where problems lie, of course, and it's important to recognise them but beyond that things start to get a little vague specifically in regard to the question of what is to be done about the problem? According to Fox we have two choices: We either acquiesce in global injustice and tyranny or we join in the struggle for justice, democracy and freedom. 

So what to do? When all political Parties support free enterprise, globalisation, the private ownership of property and the profit motive then who do you turn to? Where do you go? What to do?

What to do...?

John Serpico

Drugs Of Hallucination - Sidney Cohen

 DRUGS OF HALLUCINATION - SIDNEY COHEN

To have or not to have? To have or have not? When it comes to the Covid-19 vaccination that is the question and whilst for most it might well be a no-brainer, for some it's an issue of procrastination. It's not for me to advise what to do but as it's one of the most important questions of the age it demands some consideration at least. Which brings us in a very roundabout way to Drugs Of Hallucination, written by Sidney Cohen and first published in 1965.

To give it its subtitle, Cohen's book is 'The LSD Story' and though any link between lysergic acid diethylamide and the Covid-19 vaccination might be non-existent, a similarity on the point as to whether the drug should be taken or not is there. There are differences, of course, but it's all to do with the reasons why some people say yes, do it, take it, have it, whilst others advocate caution and some even outright condemnation and rejection.

The thing about imbibing LSD - as with almost anything - is that once you've taken it there's no turning back. It's too late. It's in you. Which means whatever effect it might have upon you be it physically or psychologically is going to be there potentially forever. It's going to leave a footprint. Might your whole outlook and perception of life be any different to how it was before the drug was taken? There's just no way of knowing.

Cohen's book touches upon and explores a good many salient points in telling its story, many of which can be interpreted and translated so as to apply to circumstances other than the imbibing of a drug. The similarities between a model psychosis and a visionary state for example are discussed and whether the taking of LSD can lead to either? It's an obvious question, of course, and one most famously cited by Aldous Huxley's Heaven or Hell quote.

There is also the subject of mind control and whether psychochemicals can lead to robotization and a kind of dictatorship without tears? It's a fear shared by a lot of Covid-19 anti-vaxxers who seem to think vaccination will lead to them being controlled by Bill Gates. It's certainly possible that drugs can be used for mind control, says Cohen, though there is probably more to fear from a television advertisement or even from your own parents when it comes to such manipulation of the mind.

When it comes to the question of LSD and whether to take it or not, Cohen comes firmly down on the side of caution citing not only examples and testimonies from those who have benefited incredibly from the drug both psychologically and even spiritually but also from those who have been permanently damaged by it to the point of death by misadventure or even suicide.

Not surprisingly there is no love lost between Cohen and the likes of Timothy Leary and other advocates of free use of the drug for all. In his condemnation of Leary there is, however, a whiff of elitism on his part particularly when talking about the availability of the drug to 'the lower classes'.

At one point when talking about marijuana, Cohen tells us that in Western cities it's 'the marginally adjusted' who smoke it either for ''kicks' or to work up enough courage to commit a felony'. Which is plainly wrong and even somewhat ludicrous. He then goes on to say 'some 300 million (worldwide) are supposed to use hashish regularly, almost as many as those who take opium'. These are figures that I suspect need to be verified and quantified but if true then following Cohen's logic that's an awful lot of felony.

There are similar clues dotted throughout the book that suggest Cohen isn't learning from his own insights and that his judgement and evaluation is being guided by his own prejudices and academic elitism. He's very good at capturing the effects of LSD as in 'the breathing of flowers, the undulation of walls' as he is in capturing its power and profound impact: 'I have just come back from seeing the world for the first time' and 'How do you describe red to a person who was born blind?'

His more complex insights, however, hang glibly upon coat hangers like suit jackets bought but never worn: 'It is important to realise that the world as we see it is far from an exact image of the physical world. Perception is variable and often quite erroneous. One limiting factor is that we perceive only what we can conceive; knowing is prerequisite to seeing and strongly determines what is seen. We tend to see what can be incorporated into our established frame of reference and try to reject that which does not fit.'

Hence Cohen's comments about 'the lower classes' and 'the marginally adjusted'?

'A map stands in the same relationship to the territory it covers as our idea of reality stands to reality', he tells us. And that's it. Cohen's revelations, points of view and insights are maps; some leading to where you might wish to go, others leading to the back of beyond, some detailed and precise, some clearly very wrong as if drawn with crayons. Cohen's book is a map. Some of it being very useful in regards to drug culture, some of it being less than useless.

As to the question about whether drugs (or vaccines, even) should be taken or not, if applying the same Cohen map analogy then it depends on which map you're reading. If anti-drugs (and anti-vax) then you can only wait and see where that gets you - which is probably nowhere. If reading only your official, government sanctioned ordnance survey map then again you can only wait and see where that leads you - along a very straight and narrow path.

As to my own personal opinion, I would never advocate the use of drugs but I would never condemn it either. As for the Covid-19 vaccination, yes, I've had mine and had no qualms about it either, if only for the very simple reason that against some of the dangerous stuff that in the past I've willingly and very happily put into my body, up my nose and in my veins well, I feel it just doesn't compare. As Danny, the purveyor of rare herbs and prescribed chemicals in Withnail And I said: 'Why trust one drug and not the other? That's politics, isn't it?''

John Serpico