Newcastle University goes military

As a student of Newcastle University, I am deeply concerned to learn of the new relationship between the institution and multinational defence firm Leonardo. The company’s role in several notorious conflicts, including in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, is documented, and there is speculation about the implementation of its technology in Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza. The willingness to contribute to the development of weapons would seem to stand in stark contrast to the university’s stated aims of ‘providing ideas and solutions of economic, social and cultural benefit for our world… [promoting] a culture of welcome, engagement and safety for people fleeing persecution and violence.’ Offering (competitively priced) haven whilst also creating the conditions for those very instances of persecution and violence is tantamount to disaster capitalism.

Universities are traditionally imagined as bastions of progressive thought and the possibility of equitable human and global betterment, yet my own academic home has put paid to any such outdated notions in one fell swoop. Just down the road at Northumbria University, there is a similarly cushy arrangement in place with Lockheed Martin, also complicit in civilian murder in dystopic war zones including Yemen.

It is incumbent upon students and lecturers alike to speak out against these flagrant breaches of academic, institutional and moral integrity, and to reimagine universities beyond their current manifestations as lapdogs of the neoliberal machine.

Follow Leonardo Off Campus to join the fight.

‘We must envision the university as a central site for revolutionary struggle, a site where we can work to educate for critical consciousness, where we can have a pedagogy of liberation.’ [hooks, b. (2015). Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, New York: Routledge, p. 31]

An open letter to Labour in light of the response to the Israel-Palestine conflict

I am certain you feel the same horror as myself at the situation that continues to unfold in Israel and Palestine. There is no doubt that illegal atrocities have been committed by Hamas, necessitating immediate and transparent investigation. However, as Israel appears to be on the cusp of launching a systematic process of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, I would like to know why Labour have adopted a policy of paving the way for these imminent war crimes, indiscriminately justifying Israel’s military response.

We need compassionate and level-headed leadership at this terrible time, not self-serving political cynicism. As a likely (albeit reluctant) Labour voter in the coming election, I would suggest that this is an opportunity for Mr. Starmer to demonstrate something of his self-professed fundamental respect for human rights, to call for a deescalation of violence, the opening of humanitarian corridors into Gaza, a scaling back of the illegal blockade of food, water and electricity, and a relentless push for diplomatic and peaceful negotiations.

In the light of the dispassionate response to the plight of the Palestinian people of the majority of mainstream British politicians on both sides of the chamber, I have never been more ashamed to be British. Israelis and Palestinians all deserve peace and compassion. I pray that we won’t have to look back on this sequence of events as one of the darkest moments in our collective humanity.

Email your MP

Compassionate Critical Inquiry

Anyone who spends time on Twitter and similar platforms will have noticed the recent uptake of ‘critical race theory’ as a popular buzz phrase, typically used by politicians and commentators to vilify those who make the case for wide-reaching societal, systemic change, reducing a centuries-old, extraordinarily complex web of relations and shifting power structures to a bothersome academic construction with no relevance for the daily lives of British citizens (the same phenomenon has appeared also in the US). Very seldom is any attempt made to explore anything of the substance of ‘critical race theory,’ to dissect what it actually means, to present a compelling reason why it is so inimical to the wellbeing of normal folks. Instead, the stuffy whiff of academia is conjured as a lazy refutation of legitimate — for many, life or death — concerns and calls for change. One is given to doubt whether certain individuals have any understanding, or interest in understanding, the body of this area of inquiry.

In a Times Radio interview given on 8th June 2023, conservative MP Miriam Cates made some extraordinarily sweeping statements in the space of scarcely one minute:

‘Our young people now have a lack of hope and they have a lack of hope for the future. One of the things that has contributed to a lack of hope, I think, in young people is these kinds of critical social justice theories that are being taught in schools and universities. So climate catastrophism, critical race theory, gender ideology that are confusing to children and have kind of divorced them from the reality of what life is about and where meaning comes from. And my personal opinion is that those theories, which in some kind of centre-right circles are known collectively as ‘Cultural Marxism,’ those theories are contributing to people’s lack of hope for the future. Wokeness is causing a lack of hope and anxiety in our young people.’ [Cates & Times Radio, 2023]

In one fell swoop, concerns about climate change, gender, race, and various other unspecified ideas about social justice are unceremoniously lumped together under the hollow moniker of ‘wokeness’ and blamed for the ‘lack of hope and anxiety in our young people.’ To borrow another of the demagogic buzzwords of the day, these pesky irritations are the favoured ammunition of the ‘blob,’ which has now laid claim not only to the crusty wastelands of academia and unwashed utopists, but has also swallowed up swathes of the civil service into its bilious entrails. Not even King Johnson or High Priest Trump have been able to halt the inexorable creep, retreating into the political rectum of disgrace (an alarmingly bloated cavity these days).

Cates is most definitely correct in that there does seem to be a lack of hope in our young people. I’d go further and say that no one is immune to this hopelessness, regardless of age. No time-acquired wisdom could rescue one entirely from the mindless beat of the engorged existential drum. Five minutes alone with any news channel is enough to hear tell of mass murder, endless war, famine, drought, devastating floods, widespread and deadly addiction, egregious corruption, suicide. As if this weren’t enough, truth is harder to recognise than ever before. It doesn’t take long to find yourself chest-deep in a suffocating quagmire of conflicting and terrifying conspiracies hinging on gargantuan webs of lies. Even the extremes of the left and the right have begun to inhabit some of the same territories in the weirder of these warped realities.

Yes, there is no argument here. Many people, the young included, are frightened, confused, and lacking in hope. However, it is a giant leap from this anecdotal observation to a simplistic and unsupported declaration that social justice theories are at the heart of our hopelessness. I will summarise what I see as some of the glaring flaws in this characteristically vapid statement, representative of the intellectual and moral ossification at the heart of our political class (without even broaching on the problematic idea of Cultural Marxism).

Climate catastrophism is not a social justice theory: it is a negative reaction to a perceived existential threat, often utilised in an attempt to frighten others into action. Perhaps the most notable exponent of this approach is Greta Thunberg, who famously does not mince her words, and has become the target of vitriol from everyone from Andrew Tate to Julia Hartley-Brewer. We could have a legitimate discussion about the place of catastrophism, and whether it mobilises people or grinds them into paralysed inaction, but the heart of the issue is climate change itself. Thankfully, it is becoming less and less socially acceptable to deny the reality of impending disaster — indeed, many are already suffering the consequences of our hubris. Hopefully Cates is not placing herself on that side of the argument. In my experience working in schools, and as a current student at Newcastle University, I have not seen a pedagogical attitude of doom and gloom. Quite the opposite: children and students are encouraged to talk about the enormous problems we are facing in a spirit of positivity and agency. What can we do, here and now, as one person amongst billions? This is empowerment and collectivity, not hopelessness. It is togetherness and responsibility and pride, and hope.

Critical race theory, gender studies, intersectionality, and so forth, may sound like haughty and complex knowledge structures, but they are in fact areas of inquiry which touch each and every one of us. They explore questions of the basic reality of our interbeing, how we understand ourselves and each other. They help us identify and examine areas of tension and perceived inequality, creating a space in which we can propose and explore potential solutions as a community. Presumably there is scarcely a person alive who would declare that our society is completely fair and functioning, that nothing can be improved. This being the case, we need the opportunity to develop our critical faculties, to learn from each other, to challenge and be challenged, to empathise with the plight of others, to share our own troubles and hopes and dreams. Racism, misogyny, antisemitism, homophobia exist, and it would be well worth certain individuals remembering that if it can happen to someone else, it can happen to you. Life is not a zero-sum game: what lifts someone else up out of the darkness shines a light on you and yours. This is what I observe in such areas of inquiry. Again, in my experience in schools and universities, I see open and positive discussion. One thing we can most certainly be proud of in Britain is the diversity of our population. It is therefore imperative that we explore ideas of self and other, that we not let ourselves be manipulated by flimsy, disingenuous and cynical rhetoric, that we remain ever cognisant of the truth of our sameness, above and beyond our differences.

What is, then, ‘the reality of what life is about and where meaning comes from?’ From a practical point of view, life won’t be about very much if the world continues to burn, if the fabric of our society continues to fray and unravel. From an individualistic perspective, it makes obvious sense to look after the planet and the communities of which we are a part, as we rely upon both for our individual safety and prosperity. But what is life if lived only for oneself? Meaninglessness. Thinking about the climate, about race and gender, is thinking about others. It is an investment in empathy and compassion, a gradual letting go of the hard borders of the self, a pure and beautiful joy in every selfless act. This is no reason for hopelessness. We don’t need to abandon the pursuit of global betterment, to cocoon our children and young people away from the often uncomfortable truth of our painful existence. There is a joyful, hopeful path through strife and suffering that celebrates being even in the face of unimaginable adversity.

Rather than weaponising discontent and succumbing to the stultifying simplification of sound-bites and social media, I would implore our politicians and people in positions of power to remember the fundamental truth of our interdependency and to encourage and nurture positive critical inquiry. This does not mean that debate is out of the question. On the contrary, debate is fundamental to the process of learning, discovering, and healing; it represents and does justice to the community in research. However, these issues require careful thought and wholehearted engagement. ‘Empathic interaction leaves time for silence: reflection is crucial… Empathy involves privileging “listening”… over “speaking”’ [Waters, 2018, p. 10]. Perhaps this is an attitude from which we could all benefit?

References

Cates, M., & Times Radio [Times Radio]. (2023, June 8). Wokeness is causing a lack of hope and anxiety in our young people [Video]. Twitter. Retrieved June 10, 2023, from https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1666738697344040960?s=20

Waters, S. (2018). Contribution towards an ethics of listening: an improvising musician's perspective. Critical Studies in Improvisation, 12(1). http://www.criticalimprov.com/article/view/3752

Cocooned

Driving back from Pumphrey’s in Blaydon, long overdue beans sat comfortably beside me, I notice how cut off from the world I am in my carapace of metal and glass. Even with the windows down, sounds are unable to pass through the thick wall of engine huff and road noise, not to mention the flatulent cavalcade of vehicles that surrounds me during most of the journey.

From here, my mind steps easily to thoughts of houses, airpods, and practice rooms. Some of us go our entire lifetimes making only brief excursions into the unprotected outdoors, timorously scurrying from front door to car seat, from car seat to office, from office to car seat, and on and on and on, ad nauseam. For those brave souls who muster the courage to expose their smooshy flesh suits to the indifferent elements, airpods conjure invisible walls which travel with them where’er they may wander (not to mention the two-way barriers of sunglasses and facial coverings of various descriptions).

One thing that has for years baffled me, ever since the appearance of mass-market MP3 players, is the sight of two or more people walking together, presumably friends, at the very least acquaintances, passing time or going from place to place in comfortable company, each with earbuds plugging up the sides of the skull. One can only assume that sound pumps through these plastic umbilical cords, filling up the cranium with moreish fluids sanctioned by the hype machine. What is this weird way of being together? This social dynamic makes absolutely no sense to me. Awareness is withheld, denied, microcosmic isolationism even amongst friends — Goodness help us when it comes to enemies — a tacit statement of compassionlessness, a commitment to ungenerosity.

Our human need to protect ourselves, from predators, the elements, other humans, necessarily led to the erection of walls. Warm, dry, safe spaces mean longer, healthier, more prosperous lives. No argument there. But with the success (and I’m using this word very cautiously) of the human race, the explosive spread of the population and the establishment of the big state, walls have proliferated, both literally and metaphorically. At some point, the origin of this act of separation, initially counterbalanced by a continuing relationship with the earth in all its muddy, toothy, terrifying glory, has been forgotten, yet the walls remain, now an end in themselves. We ceaselessly craft cocoons, hardening ourselves, insisting on our fundamental separation, in turn worshipping at the altar of our inevitable demise.

In Western musical sites, we have the practice room and the performance space, both practically sacred, denatured, untainted by the outside, often silent places into which we pour our pure human genius, safe from the dirt and shit and reek of the creeping crawling mistake on our doorsteps.

Our hearts have been cocooned. They struggle to beat in their unfeeling coffins of lamentable modernity.

Thankfully, the solution is straightforward. Paraphrasing the thirteenth century Zen Buddhist priest Dōgen, Brad Warner tells us that ‘nature proclaims the truth to us loudly and clearly, even when we fail to notice it’ [Warner, 2022, p. 357]. Fundamental change begins with the individual decision to take out the earbuds, to walk out of the front door, to (re)enter the world in a spirit of openness, curiosity, patience, and wonder. One doesn’t have to live in a paradise to appreciate the beauty of the everyday. Children are amazed regardless of their surroundings. We have forgotten this amazement, blockaded as we are by our self-erected walls. Everything we need is already here, even if we haven’t realised it.

My plea to myself, and to anyone else who may discern an echo of the truth in these words, is simply to let ‘the voices of spring and autumn [enter my] ears’ [ibid.], to be generous and patient enough to move slowly through the world, and thereby to remember the reality of interbeing.

References

Warner, B. (2022). The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being. California: New World Library

The Plurality of Being [a response to growing intolerance]

I am sitting in my car in a mostly empty car-park, taking advantage of a few empty minutes in a typically relentless day, listening to the hubbub of the city around me, road noise, sirens, noticing for the first time that I can see the hills in the distance from this vantage point, a rural closeness that has appealed to me about this place since first moving here several years ago.

I am a teacher and mentor, guiding a revolving cohort of students, some eager, some not so much, through a difficult time in their lives, always walking the line between important musical discipline and the danger of destroying the simple joy of making sound, alone and in company with others. The Western classical pedagogical model is a troubling one for me, but a system with which I’m well-acquainted, and which equipped me with certain tools that have expanded the borders of my lived experience beyond my wildest dreams, and so it plays a role in my own positioning as teacher. If I can only give these young people a hint of this endless realm of extraordinary possible, then they’ll hold tight to this fertile lifeline and I won’t have failed.

The students in turn enrich my life. They come from all over, literally and metaphorically. They have vastly different backgrounds, and provocatively different understandings of the world. They learn in their own ways and at their own pace, often challenging me to better explain myself and my ideas, sometimes drawing awareness to my own blind spots, prejudices and mindless practices. Every moment I spend with them, I am changed and we are changed together. For a time, we become each other, taking these new versions of ourselves into our outside lives, changing others in turn.

I am a boy from a quiet suburb in Birmingham, who went to primary school with a beautifully diverse body of pupils at a time when such things were not considered the norm. We all looked different, spoke differently, followed different faiths, went home to unjustifiably different economic realities, but we existed together in relative peace, always playing, often comforting, sometimes hurting, learning in and outside of the classroom, largely immune to the baffling frustrations and occasional aggressions of our parents, guardians and teachers.

I am a student who has benefitted from some of the most glorious guidance that modern life has to offer. My teachers have come from Russia, North and South India, America, Britain, the Netherlands, Armenia, France, Greece, Poland, have given compassionately and generously of their time and wisdom, constantly shaping, reframing, augmenting, alchemising the musical voice that is me. I have disappeared for hours into joyful symbiosis with instruments from Ghana, Japan, India, Australia, Zimbabwe, Egypt, China, whiled away endless moments listening to music from here, there and everywhere, pored over videos of people passionately describing and sharing their own hard-won revelations and learnings. As a conservatoire and university student, I have been surrounded by amazing individuals from the world over, many of whom have changed the course of my life, welcoming me into their personal and creative lives, leading me by the hand through the veil of otherness, into new and unimagined spaces and places.

I am a reader. I have hungrily consumed millions of words covering a span of thousands of years, words which constantly rewrite my own narrative. I have escaped from the grind into other times and distant universes, been a wizard, an orphan, a time-traveller, an anarchist on the moon, an unlucky, disfigured soul, betrayed by society and recast as villain, a torturee-turned-torturer, defying simple binaries such as good and evil. Every time I have felt myself growing confident in my convictions, I have been unceremoniously ripped from my hubris by thoughts flowing jaggedly across the pages of some previously undiscovered volume, once more setting sail into entirely unfamiliar, potentially dangerous waters. I have been a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Taoist, a Sikh, a Hindu, an Atheist, an Agnostic, a fundamentalist, a feminist, a psychologist, a scientist, a mystic, a mathematician, a freedom fighter. I have wept and I have rejoiced, I have been enraged and I have been reminded that each and every human is Buddha, that far more connects than divides us.

I am a person living in a country founded on principles borrowed from Ancient Greece, themselves built upon ideas first established in Ancient Egypt, a country rich in wisdom from the historic Middle East, a country which has left an inescapable stamp on the global landscape, instrumental in establishing certain fundamental rights and liberties, priding itself on its sense of justice, a country full of contradictions which refuses to acknowledge its significant part in an overwhelming story of suffering, oppression and inequality, a country of Saxons, Romans, Vikings, a country of multiple languages, some new, some old, a country which enslaved and pillaged, but which was fundamentally transformed in the process. A country of kings and queens, of trade-union political movements, presided over by one of the oldest political parties in the world, a country in which aristocracy never really went away, just went into hiding, a country of public schools and old-boys networks and illegal fox-hunts hosted by prominent (and cartoonish) politicians. A country defended by the Gurkhas and Indians and Jamaicans and Trinidadians and Hondurans and Nigerians and Ghanaians and Kenyans and Ugandans and Malawians. A country that sits in the lap of luxury, that enjoys the fruits of outsourced labours, watching from a distance as others suffer unbearable tragedy at the hands of war, famine, climatic disaster, tyranny, drought, rampant neoliberalism, a country whose citizens are capable of extraordinary waves of heartfelt charity and collectivism, a country often implicated in those very humanitarian crises about which it professes to care deeply.

Plurality is our reality. We are the totality of our experiences, and those experiences are legion and infinite. We are consistently enriched and enlivened by our interactions and relationships, however small or seemingly insignificant. Change is the only truth; to fight against it is pure folly, like trying to hold back the ocean with an umbrella. Britain is a complicated and conflicted place with a muddled history in which ideas of purity, ownership and nationalism are misguided and ultimately groundless. In closing our borders, we cut ourselves off from the rich and varied international community which has been instrumental in establishing the gorgeous tapestry of our modern-day state. To lock ourselves away is to begin the process of unlearning, of regression, of unravelling. It is to foster division and discord and disharmony. The visceral sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ starts with borders but does not stop there, leading ultimately to total isolation, hence absolute meaninglessness, and finally destruction.

We must not allow ourselves to be twisted and warped by a vile, cynical and self-serving political class of profiteers, criminals and charlatans. The warning signs grow by the day. Comparisons with horrifying historical periods are alarmingly clear. A country which vilifies people who have made perilous journeys, who have lost everything, who have fled murder, torture, rape, imprisonment, a country which sheds not a tear as men, women and children drown in desperate flight, knowingly presenting inflammatory, inhumane and feeble solutions, feeding on media-fuelled racism, bigotry and xenophobia, is a country in which every single sane and compassionate voice needs to shout to the rooftops, to demand constructive dialogue, international collaboration, and heartfelt tolerance. Humanity’s salvation lies not in separation and individualism, but cooperation and togetherness, unity, solidarity, connection. We are only as good as each other, and therefore our responsibility is always collective. Let us recognise plurality as the ground of being and hand-in-hand build towards a global society in which people are not forced to risk everything simply to access their basic human freedoms. Stop the slogans, not the boats.

Outside the Mask

[This piece was written as a real-time prose response to the improvised duo album Outside the Mask, from myself and violinist Marie Schreer.]

A way of being together, looking forward, feeling forward.

Glacially patient inhalations and exhalations, like some aquatic behemoth with slow veins, impossibly veiled, delicately breaching the surface to steal precious moments of moonlight. A broken siren song drifts dangerously, unheeded by ancient shore-side ceremony.

Here a disco fragment petulantly presses against a porous membrane, disrupting, summoning, breaking, a violent moment of cleansing disequilibrium.

Thunder-clap punchline. Cartoon athletes jostle, laughable self-importance, over when the tiny lady sings. Returning to the twilight, the ancient behemoth rising once again to cast a curious eye over a disturbingly disconnected realm.

Fire on the shore. Lonely traveller in a pool of shimmering gold. Two worlds momentarily meet, a welcome tear in the fragile fabric of our tragic separation.

—

We seek a common language, edged with sand, as we walk through the night on this dusty path, bodies softly merging with depthless shadows. Strange voices in the darkness, imploring, insisting, threatening to sweep everything away on a river of endless sorrow.

A mother gently washes away the desperate impotence of incoherent youth, the lullaby which cradles all through this life and the next.

Two travellers in a pool of flickering gold defiantly summon brittle melodies to keep the darkness at bay, recounting tales of the sea, so very, very distant. The earth hums, muted peals rolling heavily from above, ocean drawing near.

El Anhelo

Tonight in the car on the way back from Leeds, I was struck by the force of vocalist Israel Fernández performing his composition El Anhelo. The overwhelming weight of times past, a gargantuan, writhing mass of experiences remembered and forgotten, flooded over me, staggeringly unexpected, catching me entirely unawares. It has been some time since I gave my attention to flamenco, a sound which had fascinated me as a child and which seemingly saturates my memories of summer, intensely tied up with confused, hopeful love and blissful naivety, untroubled by adult realities and cloudy horizons. How this music is written into my very being, violently shaking long-dormant emotions to raging wakefulness. The surging force of nostalgia is terrifying, and terrifyingly intoxicating. You can get lost there, a stranger to your younger self, an aged doppelgänger behind a one-way mirror, proof if ever it was needed that you never really were, no more than you are, or you will be. Like Narcissus mercilessly ensnared, lives are squandered here in visceral hindsight or desperate anticipation, fearsome yearning, el anhelo. The intervening years have turned me away from blistering defiance, incandescent resolve, towards a place of boundless quietude, perpetual renewal, patient drifting. There was a time I loathed the word content — so pathetic, so docile, so unambitious. Better to reach, to grasp, to rush, to finally outwit time in all its haughty primacy, to be the first conqueror in an eternal struggle measured in suffering and loss. But there is no peace here, for the struggle itself is but a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, chains made of smoke. There is only now, a shifting, roiling, infinite potentiality, everything and no-thing, a oneness that belies the separation of self, a separation from others, a separation from endless versions of you. Where do we leave all our former selves? When does one stop being one self, and step into the shoes of a new, updated self? Do the other selves continue on, ignorant of the irresistible call of oblivion, or are the selves shelved in some cosmic refrigerator, doomed to sit shoulder to shoulder with weirdly familiar yet horrifyingly unknowable yesterdays and tomorrows? No, nothing has been left behind, and nothing is yet to gain. Everything is already here, and always has been. There is no shadow at the centre of the star. Look forward, look backward, look upward, look downward, you will find yourself smiling back, the universe pouring through your very eyes.

Surround Sound

As a teenager, I would chain multiple mini-speakers together with jack-to-jack cables, hoping to flood my bedroom with sound, to immerse myself absolutely, not understanding the realities of surround sound or signal capacity, nor recognising the necessity of speakers beyond the eBay disposables market. Listening back to the low-fidelity files years later, my ears can scarcely believe that I once happily feasted upon these eroded documents. Things sound different now. Instruments emerge that once were invisible. The tapestry has disentangled itself, presenting threads and beads and patterns and tears and mends and edges and twists and turns. If these intermediary years have shone such a light, what might yet appear? What am I missing? Perhaps the mosaic will begin to weave itself back together, discrete relationships manifest as just that: relationships, the single and only truth, a truth against which our cerebral being daily rails. Sound has no borders, is ringed by no fuzzy edges, is either here or not here. It touches at a distance, where distance has no meaning. Everything is connected. You can no more disconnect yourself from this motion than you can stare directly into your own eyes. Speaking is touching. Hearing is being touched. In musicking, we transcend our corporeal borders, bodily reawakening to the fundamental delusion of separation. No me, no you, no us, no them. Only everything, all the time. How then can we continue to other ourselves, and other others? Fear, hiding (as it so loves to do) behind rage and indignation and wilful ignorance and gleeful frenzy. Violence is silence. In listening, we allow ourselves to be moved, to be moved in turn, to be transformed together. First there was the word. When the world remembers to listen, to listen with the body, to open every pore to the voices on the wind, only then will we be able to heal, to enter once again the joyful embrace of the primordial light.

The Dorian Portrait

If you’re not saying anything, then why should I listen? Same shit, different day. Coercion and complicity. Give me some grit. Throw some dirt in my eyes. Call me out. Anything but this pantomime of rigor mortis grins, these obsequious slugs towing the line under the flag of creativity. Better frustration, better rage, better desperate confusion than this servile spectacle, this dreadfully delightful jolly.

Times past, your medium actually meant something. There was pain here, and danger, and uncertainty, and courage, and lunacy, and exquisite togetherness. Nobody was safe. Nobody (and everybody) was sound. Hacking at the edges, screaming and shouting, bloodied and battered and brimming with irrepressible protest. And yet here we are, swingin’ merrily along on a plastic circus teacup (sleigh) ride (minimum height 3 foot 7), gyrating titillatingly through AstroTurf fields stapled over a heaving bedrock of imminent collapse, an Akiran mass of cancerous discontent muffled only by wilfully ignorant ears turned towards inoculating silence conjured by state-prescribed music meds.

Your artistry is not an automatic solution, nor is it de facto resistance. It is not an excuse. All we are is sound, and so if you choose to move me, to ooze across this mortifying vacancy, do so not like a pebble, but a falling mountain. A unifying violence sinking apathy and (dis)consent, a synaptic realignment displacing any and every thought of surrender. If you pacify, if you placate, if you pander, you have betrayed the immensurable power of your being, and for that you alone bear a grave responsibility. This shaman is shamed and fallen, a soldier of the ossifying machine of inhuman hunger.

Animate yourself. Remember who you (we) are. Be prepared to fuck up. Don’t back down. Others may turn away, may even curse your name, but you will stand tall in the warmth of your glorious compassion. You carry in you the truth that connects, the love that binds, the immediacy of the clear light. When all else clings to casual slumber, be the racket that rends the Dorian portrait asunder.

Water Music

[This piece was written as a real-time prose response to the duo album Water Music, from myself and bassist John Pope.]

Finger snapping. Eight fingers on eight strings. Black and white echoes of crooked cops and damply reflective midnight streets. Quicksilver flight. Ocean surge. Pedantic, relentless deformation, forward motion. Fifth mode of the melodic minor, major in the bottom and melancholy on top, the supposed dichotomy of existence. Pull the wool from your eyes. Wool from where, and who put it there, from which monstrous sheep? Stuck in a groove, mutation every 33 and a third revolution, not a line but a circle.

Sweetly consonant, unapologetically humorous commentary. In the face of such hardship and disbelief. Hard to believe you can keep smiling when even Miles hates you. Be more like Clark. He’s there with a shoulder even when you pawn his horn. Here’s the madness behind the grin, driven to breaking point. 100 mph on the freeway. A borrowed narrative, the radio playing unwelcome notes of lingering concerti.

A challenge for Eric Dolphy? No challenge needed. The man was his own challenge, and continues to challenge us decades after his premature departure. Not interested in boxes - not interested in cans and cannots. Not buying into cons or conservatism. Prematurely dead because they couldn’t believe he wasn’t a junkie. Please help. I’m diabetic. Hidden behind a stumbling excuse for a way of being. Sociopathy as diatonics.

Dangerous edges. Uncertain footing. Another premature departure. This one driven not by ignorance but hopelessness. The Baptist in the wilderness, wide-eyed and bloated on locusts. Epigenetic hunger, unnecessary but summoned nonetheless. Voices multiply, walking bass in the distance, nearer, nearer, nearer, nearer, nearer. Adobe walls trembling, clouds of sand, prayer bells calling, shining through the haze, thirst, parched, Partched. Mirage. Too little too late. Bloated corpse softly sleeping.

Camel back, lockstep cross-step. Cosmic metronome, clinging on for dear life. Vast distance, unimaginable speed, G-force ripping the skin from muscle. Ecstatic dissonance. Cells explode, multiply, dance, grow, vibrate, walls burst. Emergence, the same but not the same. Gentle rest, joyful rest.

Unison attempted. So many voices. Is there logic here? Some kind of bastard canon, the same tune played in disparate galaxies. Noises that should. not. be. †here. Radio static (didn’t they take that off the air? — how can you take something OFF THE AIR? What does it sit on anyway?) and momentary samba. Ultimate resignation. Unison isn’t and can’t. More madness - skeleton dance (only douchebags don’t stay dead). Pitch won’t meet, so we join in rhythm, in pulse, in heartbeat. Too much too soon. Nowhere left to go. Ground coming near.

The fourth. Perfect ratio. Safe territory, calm and orderly. Diminished fifth. Terribly confusing, best not to linger (the old folks had it right). Here’s a tiny double bass plucking tiny strings, effecting tiny change. Fundament in the sky (firmament?). Phrygian buzz, moment of retuning, new channel. The wrong pentatonic, but fifths can’t lie. Ethiopian mode can’t hold the flood for long. Munch scream won’t let go, horrible paralysis with a slimy escape. We’ll pretend like nothing happened.

Distant Christmas, brittle voices grievous supplication. Something felt but not heard. Here we find no keys, no frets, no buttons. Left behind or never arrived at. Waves bend and stretch and curl, a non-earthly dynamics. Wind whistles a beautiful melody, echoed in the throats of a thousand scorched humanoids. Flight through a tip-of-the-tongue memory, or was it a dream? Does it even matter? Lone figure in the sands. Peeling away. Robe, skin, muscle, bone. There’s an absence where you used to be. An almighty absence which suffocates the air itself.

Night club fifty-eight. Smoke. Voices. Lone figure in the corner. Joined by a second. Single finger snaps. Shot down by fifty-eight knowing stares. Swing won’t stop. We don’t see. We won’t see. This is more important than your petty (petit) bourgeoisie. Now that I’ve got your attention, we’ll begin again. Weird finger snapping. No 1s and 3s, no 2s and 4s. This is something new. Perhaps something will come of it?

In Praise of Deviation and Surprise

It has long been known that cognition is as much a process of prediction as it is of perception. Throughout the developmental stages, the human brain’s predictive capacity grows increasingly sophisticated, creating an encyclopaedia of modes, models and templates through which any situation can be efficiently and effectively deciphered using an absolute minimum of precious metabolic resources: ‘rather than passively building a faithful, inner representation of the external world, the brain is constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the game, drawing on its past experiences to predict what's happening. Sensory information is not disregarded, but is relegated to the role of reality-testing the brain's guesswork’ [Kingsland, 2020, p. 11]. These working models need only be adjusted when expectation is violated by sensory input, when deviations become apparent (and most such deviations, in fact, never do become apparent). The world is far too bloated with information for a fully representational form of cognition; the human brain simply can’t contain and re-present every microscopic detail of lived experience, and indeed there is something nonsensical in the very notion. In one respect, therefore, the mind is a deviation detector - and without expectation, there can be no deviation, painting reality as relational rather than objective.

When in dialogue with others, these deviations represent the locus of discovery, challenge and renewal, ultimately world-making or -unmaking. Such junctures can be small, necessitating only a slight change of direction, taking a side-road or diversion; or they can be paradigm-shifting, ego-eviscerating seismic convulsions, tearing up the map altogether (did the map even exist in the first place?). Being open, willing and prepared to learn from these pivotal moments is to begin to see through the fundamental delusion of inherent existence. ‘…it is this ignorance, the delusion grasping at true existence, that is your true, unambiguous enemy… Although this delusion… is powerful, it is nonetheless a mental state that is distorted, and a powerful antidote to it exists.’ [Gyatso, 2009, p. 59] Musical improvisation is one such antidote.

Reality is not a closed book, not a chapter by chapter unveiling of chronological inevitabilities and discrete, static happenings, but rather a wriggling, writhing inkblot in a perennial rainstorm. Improvisation, entered into in a spirit of generosity, compassion and unknowing (‘…the wise do not act.’ [Nagarjuna, quoted in Gyatso, 2009, p. 55]), establishes conditions within which basic assumptions about difference, permanence and existence can be questioned and examined. Encountering the strange stranger (‘This stranger isn’t just strange… Their strangeness is strange. We can never absolutely figure them out. If we could, then all we would have is a ready-made box to put them in, and we would just be looking at the box, not at the strange strangers.’ [Morton, 2010, p.41]), wherein reside the gritty edges of otherness, deviation and unbecoming, leads paradoxically to the possibility of transcendence (in Buddhist terms, escape from Samsaric existence), and a vision of ourselves as Maurine Stuart’s no-person persons [Chayat, 1996, p. 19]. This way lies neither solipsism nor nihilism, but momentous insight into the fundamental fragility of the ego: not a permanent, solid, unwavering bedrock of being, but a shoddy conjurer’s spell weaved with a pound-shop magic wand. The more often one bumps up against cognitive sacred cows, the harder it becomes to continue clinging to the delusion of the unified self.

To find meaning in collective improvisation, to go beyond the stranglehold of egoism and its intoxicating asylum, is to deconstruct the twin afflictions of attachment and aversion, the poles which power the circuit of our apparent separation and independent arising. Rather than grasping at the familiar and comfortable, those personally-, culturally- and societally-sanctioned musical aesthetics, or fleeing from the uncomfortable, subversive, unacceptable, distasteful and painful, improvisation forces us ‘to notice the particularity of each experience, its grounding in this moment, this place’ [James, n.d., p. 10]. Responding with alertness, equanimity, diligence, consideration and generosity, we bypass the perimeters of unknowingly-internalised restrictions and limitations, allowing us to gaze back in wonder with luminous clarity. The ego is slow, a gelatinous mass glooping along in the shadow of being, insidiously seeping into empty space, pedantically insisting on its self-evident supremacy. Being, on the other hand, is immediate, and improvisation is an instantaneous manifestation of that being. ‘Our true freedom lies in moving with, not against; in completely accepting what is here and not pursuing anything else. We move in harmony with this dance of life. Everything is transitory, empty; there’s no need to cling to passing forms.’ [Stuart, quoted in Chayat, 1996, p.34]

Prevailing systems of musical engagement, operating as they do within the gargantuan machine of capitalism and therefore subject to gross commodification, often serve to reinforce a poisonous sense of separation, both at the individual and the societal level. Music-making, arguably the most profound and transformative expression of humanity, has been cynically subverted and hollowed out by the cancerous gravity of globalisation. Music is something to be paid for (or, ironically, not paid for, thanks to the unrelenting race to cost-bottom - value is now measured in sheer volume); that other people produce; that covers up embarrassing excretory noises in public bathrooms; that comes in a plastic or cardboard case; that is delivered from a stage; that streams from tiny plastic shells thrust into the ears, protection from the ‘outside world’; that requires years of expensive tutelage before access is granted; stored in a catalogue, organised according to atmosphere and selected according to commercial requirement; a violent barrage that eliminates the need for awkward conversation with other humans on a Friday night; a career aspiration with eye-watering returns for the rare individual, a confirmation of the glory and fairness of the capitalist project.

Now, more than ever, we need spaces in which dialogue and engagement are the norm, not the exception. Music is not an escape, but a portal into the very heart of being; a being that is shaped and defined only in relation to others, to context, to situation, to world. Change is at the core of everything. In collective improvisation, deviation, mistake and surprise jolt us from our normalised inertia, much like anecdotal accounts of sudden enlightenment in Zen literature, sometimes violent, frequently bizarre moments which defy the fixity of linguistic discourse. ‘If there were a solid, really existing self… its unchangeableness would prevent any experience from occurring; its static nature would make the constant arising and subsiding of experience come to a screeching halt… But that circle of arising and decay of experience turns continuously, and it can do so only because it is empty of a self.’ [Varela, Thompson, Rosch, 1993, p. 80] Let us not buy into the idea of music as the preserve of a select few, as a product consumed in isolation (physical or spiritual), as a tribal signifier, as a quantifiable thing stored in plastic or ink, as social media soundtrack. Let us not teach music on the grounds that it strengthens multiple cognitive skills, instils discipline, cultivates a sense of group awareness, and helps develop coordination (admirable and accurate though these claims may be). Let us enter wholeheartedly into music-making that we may discover ourselves in others, that we may understand that worlds are made and unmade with every breath. Let us regain play and revel in glorious togetherness, poking and prodding, transcending our fictitious edges, embracing surprise, deviation and blunder (not for nothing is the trickster such a ubiquitous archetype).

‘The creative is found in anyone who is prepared for surprise.’ [Carse, 1986, p.56]

References

Jacques Attali, 1985, NOISE: The Political Economy of Music, Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press

James P. Carse, 1986, Finite and Infinite Games, New York, Free Press

Roko S. Chayat (Ed.), 1996, Subtle Sound: The Zen Teachings of Maurine Stuart, Boston, Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Tenzin Gyatso, 2009, The Middle Way: Faith Grounded In Reason (T. Jinpa, Trans.), Somerville, USA, Wisdom Publications

Phil N. James, n.d., The Buddhist Musicianship Series: Listening, Dharmasong Publications

James Kingsland, 2020, Am I Dreaming? The Science of Altered States, from Psychedelics to Virtual Reality, and Beyond, Croydon, Atlantic Books

Timothy Morton, 2010, The Ecological Thought, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press

Edwin Prévost, 1995, No Sound is Innocent, Harlow, Copula

Christopher Small, 1998, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening, Middletown, Wesleyan University Press

Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, 1993, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, USA, The MIT Press

My Dear Fly

My Dear Fly, I do so want to co-exist with you, but you’re making it terribly difficult. It seems that you won’t take no for an answer, which leaves me wondering what question you have, in fact, up your sleeve (forgive the linguistic laziness - I’m well aware that flies don’t have sleeves). It feels like wherever I go, you find me. There I’ll be, minding my own business (most certainly nothing to interest a fly), and lo and behold, there you’ll be, loping languorously along on a thin, invisible thread. I’ve lashed out, I admit it. Swatted this way and that with a gargantuan, flabby appendage, knowing (as all would-be insect swatters do) that my impetuous physicality is all in vain. I’ve blown gales of CO2 your way, and watched you recede into the distance, heard your tiny, tragic scream fading swiftly into nothingness. But it simply won’t work. Here you are again, a knowing grin on your face (if you have so many eyes, does that mean you have so many faces?). It seems that we’re destined to dance together, and I suspect that you know it better than me. Perhaps you are me. Perhaps you’re the me who came back as a fly because another me kept swatting at you, and here I am, trying to tell myself to learn my lesson. We’ve been here before. And soon you’ll be the swatty, sweaty, gusty me, and I’ll be the buzzy, drifty, unbotheredy me, and we’ll take up our dance, follow our steps, while away our karmic hours.

Here you are again. Go right ahead. I think I’ve changed my mind. You’re not so bad after all.

P.S. Sorry for accidentally squishing you after writing this. I hope you’ve escaped samsara.

Centrifugal Apotheosis: Allan Holdsworth’s Fluid Dynamics

That old dinner party number: if you could spend some time with any one person, living or dead, who would it be? I usually come up short. Plentiful extraordinary individuals enrich my life on a daily basis. What need have I of a brief, limping moment spent with a distant, unfamiliar human, likely at odds with the vicarious construction occupying some dusty corner of my internal reality?

But there’s always Allan Holdsworth, a human who was gone before I knew what I’d lost, and indeed what the world had lost. An enigma to the very end, an artist in the truest sense of the word, equal parts mad scientist, tidal instrumentalist, visionary composer (you’ll forgive me the hyperbole when rhapsodising over one of my heroes) and reluctant sage. Holdsworth’s alien landscapes, oftentimes jarring, disturbing, nightmarish even, belie a profound spiritual beauty and an unshakeable integrity, the latter coming at economic and professional cost, situated as it was within a commercial marketplace driven by the low-risk, low-investment, disposable easy-sell (an environment that has become increasingly superficial over the subsequent years; a mindless, relentless hunger). That Holdsworth was able to secure a place at the table at all given his outlandish idiosyncrasies is testament to the undeniable force of his artistry.

What could I really expect from fifteen minutes or so of polite conversation with this diffident druid, a man who so often seemed uncomfortable to find himself in front of a camera or a surging audience of diehard fans? Holdsworth never gave much away, not even to his colleagues. Cocooned as he was behind a (for many, impenetrable) wall of esoteric harmonic movements, breakneck and asymmetric rhythmic cycles, bewildering improvisational language, disorientating formal constructs, and an occasional synthesizer sound-world more commonly associated with eighties pop, it is hard to imagine this private person, this introspective artist suddenly launching into quickfire truths and kernels of wisdom, softened by my wide-eyed naïveté. Holdsworth’s legacy is one of challenge, not charity. Like any great artist, he laid a path for those who would follow, not in demanding that others become like him, but that they become more like themselves.

There was something of the elemental in Holdsworth’s music, something fluid: illimitable, fundamental, alchemical. At his most vulnerable, Holdsworth could conjure the stillness of a softly-rippling mountain lake at twilight, gently reflecting rose-dappled light. At other times, the awesome intensity of his playing could be suffocating, the fury of an ocean deity riding the primal storm. As the waves receded, however, as pedestrian reality pedantically pieced itself back together, Holdsworth seemed to retreat into painful self-doubt, oblivious to the stunned, almost baptismal, elation radiating from nearby witnesses.

In a rare moment of public self-reflection, in the liner notes to his 2000 album The Sixteen Men of Tain, Holdsworth quotes from James P. Carse’s 1986 work Finite and Infinite Games: ‘Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.’ This constant need to redefine the borders of his own creativity (and humanity), an almost Buddhistic awareness of the moment-to-moment arising that insists on an absolute here-and-nowness, can clearly be observed in the scope and breadth of Holdworth’s output, both in the studio and on the stage. There is a palpable evolution in his work, perhaps not as definably linear as that of Coltrane, to pick one example (salient, as Coltrane was a major influence), but more meandering, occasionally devolving even, ebbing and flowing. Holdsworth’s voice is always immediately recognisable, but there is often a feeling of bumping into an old friend after years apart: different hair, a few more wrinkles, stories to tell, new turns of phrase, peculiarly mutated mannerisms, and so on. Were I to get my fifteen minutes, I might ask what was to come after The Sixteen Men of Tain, a record in which it felt to me as though multiple strands of Holdsworth’s creative hunger began to merge into a breathtaking and incandescent totality. Only one other album, Flat Tire, subsequently emerged, followed by sixteen years of studio silence.

Holdsworth was never the king of his universe, but a willing comrade, co-creator of an inexorable logic and an ineffable beauty, astonished and gleeful at the blossoming phantasmagoria surrounding him, whilst blissfully unaware of his own agonising grasp for the summit, the titanic effort required to bring this utopian temporal tear to its boundless crest. Transcendence through motion: desperate plea for absolution, or centrifugal apotheosis - gyrating at light-speed in a galactic washing machine.

I will be forever grateful to Allan Holdsworth and his many colleagues for their radical world-making and their courage in pursuing a vision that was, and remains, so singular and strange, so disarmingly honest. Although I will (likely) never get my fifteen minutes together with him, I will take Holdsworth’s teachings into my life as an artist, student, educator and human, in the hope that this spirit of empowerment, integrity and joyful curiosity may bring as much to others as it does to me.

‘The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.’ [James P. Carse, 1986]

Postscript For those unfamiliar with Allan Holdsworth’s music, it can take some time to move beyond the sheer confusion and shock which people commonly report on first listen. The Sixteen Men of Tain is a good introduction, somewhat less enigmatic in instrumentation than other records, and with clearer allegiance to the ‘jazz tradition’. From the other end of his career, the Road Games EP features a number of his ‘greatest hits’ and predates most of his more experimental inclinations, presenting him in a more orthodox jazz-fusion guise (although there’s still plenty of astonishing music-making on display). May your discoveries be rich and bountiful!

References

James P. Carse, 1986, Finite and Infinite Games, New York, Free Press