"Tread More Lightly On Your Lives"

 That was back in November of 2022. Actually it's 'irreplaceable' isn't it? 

 And apologies, this will be a quite long, largely unillustrated, and not very happy post madly stuffed with microlinks, but if you click on only one of those links this last day of Pride, please let it be THIS. Thank you. I always liked you. 

 Okay. Probably the biggest, if not the only, historical development I've derived any genuine joy and hope from this century is the shedding of my own trans-skepticism as friend after friend of mine found the answer to who they were and came out as trans and non-binary. In the growing light of their revelation the world seemed to me, in this one sense at least, to become better, and richer, and more user-friendly and less exploitative. Then the party I voted into office turned that light out because they thought it's the Government who should decide what human beings are and not human beings. I've heard no one this year wish each other a Happy Pride. So no, I can't say I've grown any fonder of Sir Keir Starmer since I posted the picture above. 

 But now Labour is finally finding a replacement, and perhaps the knots in my brain will loosen. However, as the man himself said: 

"while this is an important moment it is not one for celebration. It is one for reflection. On how a party that has always prided itself on its anti-racism, its commitment to equality, its belief in a better, fairer Britain could have fallen so far as to betray its own principles, as well as the principles of the country. This is also a moment to apologise once again. To all those who were hurt, to all those who were let down, to all those driven out of our party, who no longer felt it was their home, who suffered the most appalling abuse. Today, on behalf of the entire Labour Party, I say: sorry."

 Now obviously that wasn't Starmer's resignation speech. That was the speech he gave in February 2023 after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission said they would no longer be monitoring the Labour Party for anti-semitism – the speech from which the quote "If you don’t like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave" has so often been taken out of context, that context being it was an untreated stream of white crud. Because, two years later, this same Equalities and Human Rights Commission's devastatingly under-researched guidance on who should be allowed into what toilet prompted some of these trans friends to seek out, in the words of one, "a plan and a passport" as the UK plummeted to 44th place out of 49 European countries in its recognition of trans people’s gender identity. In plain sight and to the accompaniment of countless unmarginalised commentators who genuinely don't seem to know what the word "trans" even means, the British Government became more vocally hostile to the gender non-conforming than I can remember in my lifetime, contributing oceans of piss to a rising tide of trillionaire-sponsored abject cruelty with the openly transphobic trustee of Sex Matters becoming the Prime Minister's director of communications (before resigning over Mandelson)...

 

Oh yes, Mandelson

 

... and, at the very opening of this Pride Month, Wes Streeting's replacement as Health Secretary going on the Today programme to pronounce that a trans woman is a man in a dress, an interview I have literally woken up thinking about most days since. (His exact words were in fact "I wouldn't say trans women are women", but what are they then, fucking UFOs?) 

 

 

Sorry, wrong picture

 And obviously – actually I'll take that "obviously" back, because so many seem to miss it – Starmer-mandated cruelty wasn't just reserved for the trans. Look at Woolwich Crown Court: With plans still in place to speed up "access to justice" by ending a person's right to trial by jury, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson recently set a couple of unorthodox precedents, firstly by intitiating a prosecution for contempt of court against defense lawyer (and veteran of inquiries into Grenfell, Hillsborough, and the murder of Stephen Lawrence) Rajiv Menon for daring to remind a jury that they were allowed to vote with their conscience, and secondly, by sentencing the four Palestine Action activists left to defend themselves to a total of twenty-five years in prison for a crime they'd neither been charged with, tried for, nor found guilty of. What all four had been charged with was "criminal damage", specifically: taking a sledgehammer to Elbit Sytems UK "products" intended to be tested on Palestinians before being marketed globally as "battle-proven". (Who knows what "products"? Helmets probably.) What they were jailed for however was terrorism, with the backing of a Court of Appeal who had, in deference to the Government, reversed the High Court's overturning of Palestine Action's proscription.

 But that's a tangent really, as is Starmer's appointment of the guy who used to run the UK's most notorious monopsony as a new monopolies regulator, as is the constant downplaying of Russian interference even when it's arson attacks against Starmer's own property, as is anything Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood does, or anything I was ever planning to write about Morgan McSweeney, the not nearly famous enough Liberal-hating, Socialist-hating, Gary-Lineker-hating former Chief of Staff who put Starmer into power with undisclosed donations to Labour Together and a campaign of surveillance against journalists. I'm just getting all these brain-shredding grievances down here now because I don't ever want to write about Keir Starmer again.

 But no, they're all tangents, because the only thing compelling me to write any of this at all was there was meant to be a mass lobby of MPs to reject the EHRC's "bathroom ban" last Friday, but it had to be cancelled because of the heat and so I was hoping we could all write to our MP instead (particularly if any of you live in Makerfield) and here's that link again please. I also hope whoever takes over as Prime Minister has a plan for the heat, and the hatred, and the battle-proving, and I hope it's more than just letting it play itself out or whatever.

 Finally, since I hope never to write about Starmer again, I'll use this post to share his very last interview before resigning, given at the G7 summit. Chris Spargo is a fairly new YouTuber to the scene, whose other videos include "Why is this bin everywhere in the UK?", "Do you really need to preheat the oven?", and "I just want to show you some weird stones". I love Chris Spargo. And Callum, Emma, Sib, Griffyn, Harry, Amanda, Ashley, Billie, Sarah, Alastair, Maya, Pippa, Jack, Jas, Jordan, Jay, Es, Ozzy, Miranda, Mamoru, Oli, I love you too. Happy Pride x

 

Floaters and Flashes

 That's last night. This is not a sponsored post but if you're wondering, the PIKOY Galaxy Projector Light is available on ebay for about thirty quid, and I definitely recommend it. You can change the colours, and it also does stars but they're immutably green. I assume white light's too messed up for a laser. This was today:

 

 I found a new park overlooking the Lea Valley, and it being Summer and me being someone attempting to live in the present, I lay down in the grass. Looking up at bare blue, my view was interrupted by more wavering forms: previously unnoticed cobwebbby gunk "floaters". The NHS website says they're only cause for concern if you've not seen them before. When I sat up and they didn't go away, I briefly made plans for going blind. Very briefly. I mean, something something talking books, that was the extent of it. Because then I wondered, what if they weren't new, what of they were one of the reasons I'd felt so much no this year, one of the bags over my head, in my way in my head? There's a blank wall in front of me now, I'll stare at that. 

 Okay, it seems they've gone.

Exciting Resignation Blog Placeholder: Topless Politics Revisited

I'm afraid you will have to read the link in full to understand this. I should get photoshop again.

 

 Okay. Good. 

 The hopeless, teeth-grinding paralysis logged in my last post has lifted a little today. 

 And with genuine love and respect for all who, by contrast, find themselves disquieted by Keir Starmer's resignation, I do intend to pay my proper goodbyes to that feeble, purge-sanctioning pepperpot soon. But for now I just want to share this Unattended Article from nineteen years ago! I'd thought it prudent to start backing up the blog because who knows what's going to happen to the internet now it's literally being run by Nazis – sorry, "hard power" enthusiasts – and in doing so... well firstly, bloody hell if I say so myself, but this was a great read in its early days before I started just sharing stuff... and secondly, and more pertinently, having grown to believe my anxieties about the normalisation of the Far Right had only begun in 2008, with the shamelessly guff-spraying double whammy of Sarah Palin as Republican candidate for Vice President and an openly Islamophobic Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, I was genuinely taken aback to find in August 2007, when this blog had just begun and Gordon Brown just become Prime Minister: 

I've noticed a number of angry twenty-year-olds at work, angry and hopeless, robbed of any ideology. And it occurred to me of course, any fellow thirty-somethings, that these people have lived HALF THEIR LIVES under the present government… so no wonder they're so scared and racist. It was alright for us because we knew the Tories were baddies when they talked about "Preserving the British Way of Life"… We grew up with images of gorgons smeared in blood and cash and war… But "kids today", they've heard that same poppycock from the good guys. Thatcher's not the baddie anymore, it's something called the New World Order, and expect to hear immigration mentioned a lot...

Emu's World

 

 

 Having paid my respects to the category-defying works of Fred Spencer, I feel I should probably also share some weird, personal, self-produced music videos that are actually ept. Jazz Emu's visual album Ego Death (below) came to my attention last year when the video for Fun Kitai Furai Dei (above) appeared on a bill of comedy shorts at the Ritzy to a hot crowd of universally dropped jaws. When real-name Archie Hendersen's full album showed up on youtube in March, its brilliance lifted me out of a particularly lightless attenion-deficit - I had just moved to a spacious flat near Arsenal and decided to keep the walls bare, a stowaway in my new captital P place, my brain two-thirds phone. That threat of playing statues hasn't entirely vanished, the feeling of wanting to tell myself to just go on ahead and I'll catch me later. But Ego Death still gets me moving.

 

Simon and Tom do Phonella's Shopping

from Notebookery 1

 

 Sometime in late 2000 or early 2001 going by my dye job (open auditions were being held for The Pianist) Tom Lyall and I staged one of the stories I'd written in the mountains of Bajardo at a cabaret at Chat's Palace, Hackney. I originally did these storytelling "acts" at Shunt's arch in Bethnal Green, and I might put one or two of those up as well now I'm finally digitising my VHS's. The scare quotes around "act" are just a reaction to my louche mumbling here. No level of video degradation can dim the splendour of Tom's work, even if the capture does little justice to his makeup choices as Phonella. Speaking of degradation, I thought I'd parcel this in a little Hi-8 footage of the region whose actual walk to the shops had inspired it, and I'm very grateful to Kane Parsons' Backrooms for cementing ageing VHS as a now legitimate liminal aesthetic. Enjoy (possibly with subtitles).

Ian Calvin (Uncredited)'s Living Room, 10 March 1971

 "It is wonderful, isn't, yes. Proper prestige telly! Yes. Glenda Jackson! And really, thank you all again for coming over, it's so – Bit nervous, yes. Ha. Now, I'm not entirely sure when I'll be showing up, but – Oh, she's the... She's Mary Queen of Scots, isn't she? Or her mother– Oh wait, THIS IS ME THIS IS ME!"

 

"... And that's it! Anyway, on with the story... No, I think that's it for me... Mm?... Yes! One take!... Well no actually, second take, but for the first one my idea had been that I'd just, sort of, be going around hitting everyone, with the stick, yes, and the drum, just hitting them very, very hard with the – there were two sticks originally – but we didn't use that in the end, and everyone, me included, thought 'tone it down, Ian, well not me included, but anyway I think there were nerves and so that was all, yes, 'on the hoof' do they say? Not much research, no."

 

Wait! I've just seen he was in Les Mis! Fair play.

And he has an Appreciation Society!

"Imagine you're actually doing the thing."

 

 And I got the job!

 It's okay to post old auditions from 2023, right? And it's okay if you want a quick clip for your new showreel to just film the television with your phone, it's fine, yeah? Great. Here it is then. 

 The title of this post comes from director Katrin Gebbe's excellent advice to me on the set of A Thousand Blows as horses, carriages and stallholders reset for the seventh or eighth take of me finally getting to run out of a pretend hotel for real – obviously, you don't forget something like that. Look out too for some lovely fortuitous swipes, my favourite having to be Kellie Bright condemned to skeletoning at 2:10.

 

 

Fred Spencer and the Great Work

 

 

 I never mentioned Hockney on here before yesterday, but I've mentioned Fred Spencer, with good reason. He used the internet as I feel it should be used, broadcasting hope, sharing his sadnesses, and living without embarassment. I'm glad he got back together with Sharon, as evinced in the video above, even if she's not interested in taking trips, and he definitely is. Of course he is. He's a pioneer. One of the first wave of YouTube celebrities.

  Long after the video that made them both famous, Fred kept proving content creation wasn't just a job for him, but a calling. For over a decade he used this new platform to make whatever he wanted, whether it was Music Videos...

 

 Satire...

 

 

 Or whatever this is...

 

 

 

 And the initial attraction of his output for me, obviously, was that so much of it was bafflingly bad. Or baffling and bad. Or bad and baffling and charming. And raw. Laziness was no impediment to his creativity, clearly. Fred would just throw the doors open and wait for poetry to happen – or to risk happening but then get derailed by him thinking about sex, then stopping thinking about sex but then thinking about volcanoes, as in the video below, which generates an emotion I have no name for.

 

 

 Once relegated to life aboard the mobile home "Starship Betty" however,  after his initial split from Sharon, he started to document a real life and, as I've written here before, I became genuinely engaged by and grateful for the candour of those unsponsored video diaires. I was sad to hear when things with Sheryl Ann hadn't worked out...

 

 

 And when I shared my condolences in the comments, Fred was generous enough to reply. Then, a decade later, once things seemed happily patched up with Sharon, my comment received a second reply...

 

 

 And that's how I learnt Fred Spencer had pasta way. 

 I couldn't find any confirmation of his death online, but that only made me realise how small a digital footprint he left outside of his own channel. 

 I've put off writing this for over a year – possibly because I've had, you know, as I'm sure a lot of us have, actual people I deeply love pass on in that year – but I knew I wanted some part of the internet to commemorate the passing of this particular Fred Spencer. And so here it is. He always kept things personal, and kind, and weird, and I hope his work stays up forever, because I honestly think it epitomises a kind of Internet before the fall, a pole star of the lived experience shared fearlessly, and a paradise we can return to whenever we like. In spite of all the algorithms trying to turn us into Hamlet, this invention is still ours, to do with whatever we like, for as long as we can pay attention to each other. Thank you. Where you've gone, I don't know, hope it's warm and sunny. Here's David Lynch.

 

A Burning Mirror

 For some reason, colours always seem happiest working with David Hockney. Here's a small, room-sized fusion of Renaissance Florence, Bruges and Ghent he built for a BBC Omnibus in 2003 because television was also his thing. I'm surprised to find I've not written about him before on here, because I think about Hockney a lot. And probably what I think about most often is his discovery – I don't think that's too strong a word – chronicled – I don't think that's too strong a word either – in this programme. Art as Science as Art, it's a typically beautiful piece of thinking, and a brilliant watch.

 

 Studying the accuracy with which Renaissance painters represented the play of light on a suit of armour or a chandelier, despite the fact no naked eye could stay still enough to capture the same gleam twice – and inspired by the perceived similarity of Ingre's line when turning out small portraits of English tourists in 1812 to Warhol's tracing of old photographs over a century later, despite the former predating the actual invention of photography – Hockney meticulously deduces that the reason why "from about 1500 to 1860 you never see a badly done basket" is not, as had been assumed previously, that everyone just suddenly got better at drawing, but rather that artists had been using camera obscura and – before the perfection of those lenses – convex or "burning" mirrors to transform the three-dimensional image in front of them into a two-dimensional, reversed projection that can be accurately traced. I think too about the scorn with which Art Critics greeted this theory, and I think about Hockney's calm counter-argument: then why are all the people in these paintings left-handed?

 

 For this and many other reasons, he was my favourite living artist. Until today. I really loved you, David Hockney. Thanks for getting me back on the blog.