there's been a big media circus surrounding the grand mufti of australia as he made a comment about women who have been raped saying they were like meat left out unwrapped, and the cats would obviously come out to eat them, so he sees women as meat and blames them for attracting rapists. anyways the media have gone nuts over it, talkback radio, current affairs shows, the newspapers, opinions, cafe chit chat, its everywhere. now i am no friend of islam, but it is getting a bit nuts, the mufti has always spoken absolute nonsense, he's a 28 year history of racist bigotry and now all of a sudden the media have taken it upon themselves to crucify him. man i am always reminded about my friend professor learys comments, 'ban stupid people.'
the guys stupid, along with most of these fundamentalist nutters, they should have kicked him out years ago but they need the vote, the Muslim vote like the catholic vote is like freaking gold to these politicians, its the beginning of the end of democracy. what's strange is the amount of people (predominately on the abc) who are saying he has the right to free speech and that he was using a metaphor that doesn't translate and his english is poor. its amazing how stupid people are, they should be kicked out with him.
old jonney howard and kim beezly both agreed his comments were disgusting, a week has passed and the mufti has since made several statements ranging from, blaming the white house, to saying women are pearls, he then had an asthema attack and was rushed to hospital. meanwhile two grand muftis from overseas flew in to support him and do some interviews with the tv people. theres a lot of muftis in the neighbour hood.

Silence is a decree all should fear

Political correctness, as much as fundamentalism, is responsible for our state of absurdity, writes Umberto Eco.

ALMOST 15 years have gone by since I wrote that within a few decades Europe would become a multiracial continent, and the process would cost us blood and tears. I wasn't a prophet, but merely a man who studies history, convinced that if you know what happens in the past and why, you can better understand what will take place in the future.

Even if the terrorist attacks in European countries over the past few years are excluded from consideration, it is clear a troubling trend is emerging. In France, a high school teacher, Robert Redeker, wrote some highly critical things about Islam and subsequently received death threats. In Berlin, the Deutsche Oper's production of Mozart's opera Idomeneo was cancelled because it featured not only the severed heads of Jesus and Buddha (and we can let that pass), but also of the Prophet Muhammad.

Then there's the scholarly Pope Benedict XVI who, in his address to scientists at the University of Regensburg in September, quoted a Byzantine emperor's thoughts on Islam; the Muslim world erupted in protest. He ought to realise that there's a difference between a university professor's lecture and a pontiff's televised speech, and so perhaps he should have been a little more careful (but those who used the historical quotation as a pretext for calling for a new religious war are not the sort I'd like to go to dinner with).

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy wrote a fine article about the Redeker case, published in Le Point magazine. You may disagree with Redeker, he argued, but you have to defend his right to express his opinion freely on religious matters; our society cannot submit to blackmail.

As for the Idomeneo affair, the Italian political commentator Sergio Romano recently wrote … well, I will try to put it in my terms, thus relieving him of responsibility. If a director includes a display of the severed heads of major religious figures in his staging of a Mozart opera when such a thought never even crossed Mozart's mind, the least you should do is kick the director in the pants, but for aesthetic and philological reasons.

The illustrious musician Daniel Barenboim, writing in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, wisely wonders if it is really in the spirit of Mozart to stage the opera in this way. Despite this, Barenboim defends the rights of the artist and explains why freedom of expression is a necessary condition for artistic creativity.

I think my friend Daniel, who is of Russian-Jewish descent, would join me in complaining about the fact that versions of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice are often criticised because the play was inspired by the anti-Semitism common in the playwright's day, even though it shows us a human and pathetic Shylock.

ah summers back in old newport, blue skies, the occasional fluffy white cloud, people stroll by with their dogs, smiles are exchanged, pleasantries swapped, it's kinda business as usual. yet today something called the stern report was released. the stern report basically was written by lord stern an english economist who was asked by the british govt to write about the economic impact of global warming on planet earth. basically it states that unless we take action now the economic impact will be akin to the depression of the 1930's. the total cost to avoid this is 3.25 trillion AU dollars. and if we do nothing by 2010 it would cost us 9.1 trillion AU dollars. Australia is one of the few countries that refused to sign the kyoto treaty, much to most peoples dismay, and unknown to most people actually negotiated a 9% increase in emmissions, however the rational behind this is that australia supplies so much raw material to china that it actually reduces emmissions to the world if it ceased supplying china with coal. the australian govt has said it would sign a treaty if the whole and developing world signed one as well.
anyway down on the streets people are still smiling.

my take on global warming is big freaking deal, so the temp. is getting hotter, the planet is adapting to our dumb industry, well its a bit arrogent on our part to assume we could get away with it, after all we have only been on the earth for a blink of an eye, more species have become extinct than remain, why do we think we are different. if we were smart we would begin to evolve rapidly, loose the physical form and transport ourselves through space, seeding the universe, finding sexy planets that we can start again, nice places with lakes and pink sunsets and decent weather, and good surf...

the suns back, the surf returns, all is bliss as i spend my daze catching waves. there's nothing quite so perfect as being in the wave as it rolls towards the shore, you poise yourself for that one flipper propelled kick, tucking the head down and being transported faster than thought, not on the wave, not in the wave, not behind or under but with the wave. you are the wave and the thoughts that enter your mind are the thoughts that shape your moment. its bliss, i love my fin, translucent blue, alien shaped. no people out there today, no dolphins, just me.

last night agent stone and i went to the pemeire of a movie, 'trust the man', its a romantic comedy, it's patchy, the script is reasonable, the acting good, David Duchovny is really good, but the ending was not right. i don't know how it should have ended really, i think maybe a happy ending was ineveitable but there was something to happy about the ending, it needed some edge, a suicide perhaps, one of the minor charachters. i dunno.

tea and books with jake, he's reading anne rice at the moment, i never really liked the vampire books, she wrote some intresting porn before she discovered horror. i heard she lost her son and became a born again christian. to me there's only one vampire novel and thats dracula. its brilliant.

saw 'children of men' a film set a few years into the future in an england we can see lays just around the corner, go see it, it's brilliant.

snap crackle pop breakfast cereal that talks nonsense yet says infinitely more than most people i know.
a long time ago i moved in with a friend of mine who was going through a difficult time, he latched on to me and became quite obsessive, i found him intrusive and demanding and as much as i wanted to be patient with him i found myself needing to create clear boundries. i told him one day, as is my form when pushed to far, 'i am culling a lot of people in my life and i'm starting with you.'
'you can't just cull me, i've known you for years.'
'no you have not known me, if you knew me i wouldn't need to cull you.'
'but we live together.'
'yes and i need some space from that.'
'but i think when people live together they should have breakfast and meals together.'
'maybe if they are married.'
then he hit me. anyways years later i find myself working with this man, a man who comes across as a gentle, spiritual soul, a man who starts to inform my co workers that i have an issue with authority.
actually i say to my work collegues, i don't have an issue with authority, i have an issue with people in authority who are stupid. i guess my issue is with stupidity.
i am entering a period of conflict at work, war is looming, i am confident in myself, i have no allies but i know becuase i let myself be under estimated the forces that move against me will be over confident, they will make mistakes becuase they are stupid people in authority.

well its a few days later and i'm still caught in the afterglow, i tell ya it don't get better than that. my world is a strange one, my internet dating experiences are becoming more and more bizzare with various girls, the other day i met one girl in newtown whom although was plesant enough was not really my cup of tea, anyway in the intrests of being polite and hungry we decided to have a bite to eat. i took her to my fave place 'taste' on 'king street', which specializes in fantastic salads, anyway there's a guy with a pony tail chatting to this lovely american girl, she's stunning and my pheremones are going nuts. i order a pumpkin salad with poppyseed dressing, and by defualt sit next to the beautiful girl, who immideatly starts chatting to me, she's from vermont and i'm telling her about my travels and how i really loved new mexico but never made it to vermont. while i am chatting i am slso painfully aware that i am with the internet girl so i have to engage her and eventually vermont girl leaves.
anyways when i get home i write a song, and the next night find myself in newtown again. so i put the song in an envelope and give it to the guy with the pony tail. there's nothing on the envelope except 'vermont girl' and no info about me, no e mail address, no phone number no name. i just think it's sometimes nice to return an inspiration to its source. the music is kinda sad, a piano, a simple drum beat and a very nice sounding electric guitar that kick in half way through...

vermont girl with salad dressing
by
the deep fix

i’m not young,
aged disgracefully
miss spent youth,
guess i missed my destiny
like a ghost haunts itself
in the suburbs of regret
uninspired by money making schemes
and grandiose opportunities
seems like everyone’s
got a line to spin
so here’s something for you
a little genuine
i never wanted to
rule the world
i just wanted to
find my girl
in the evening twilight,
in new towns casual sight
you know the message that I’m sending
to the Vermont girl with salad dressing

Have you ever seen
any thing
so beautiful ?

0h now you don’t even know me,
you may not even care
but i am a stranger here as well
and my eyes declared
there’s no expectation,
i guess you’re just a little
ahhh, inspiration…to me
you may not want it anyway
you may not even feel
these days it’s kinda hard to tell
the fake ones from the real
but I just want to say
i went to santa fe
but I never saw anything there
i wanted to take away
nothing quite so unique
to capture my attention
still I count my blessings
Vermont girl with salad dressing

Have you ever seen
any thing
so beautiful ?

there are events in one's life that have no anologue, no point of reference to tether words to, adjectives fail, decriptions can't decribe, images missrepresent, all attempts impotent, and you know the score with this particular band...
i wish i could even begin to tell you all how special this was, i wish i could capture the moment and share it but the moment came on like a cosmic tidal wave and what remains is the very essense of what the church do to me when i see them play live. if one perceives music in its purest origional form it is nothing more than shamanic intention and tonight the church took the enmore into another realm completely, a sublime cacophony of sound, pure rock and roll did what it's supposed to do, kicked down the doors and abducted our spirits, showed us things we ain't never seen before, took us places mythology talks about, i was taken to invisible landscapes and like all those 'special nights' parts of me are still there and parts of me have returned, ever changed, ever respectful of the power of this music, ever humbled by the experience, all i know is there's an awful lot of love in my heart for the church.

north korea holds the world in check after impotent world leaders waffle and let of a lot of hot air over a bomb testing, i guess every one forgets that the french, the english and the usa have tested their fare share of bombs as well, usually in some poorer part of the world where the natives can't sue. as far as bombs go, i think they really are just a feudian dreamscape, insecure men playing with their weapons, mines bigger than yours. its ironic that my world has split in two halves, reality, the political world of work, societies and people is shot to peices, while my spiritual world is perfect. paradox.

I assume that you, like me, want to live longer and better. The key to a longer life is not merely sticking around for decades but lies in the ancient Greek concept of time, which was described by two words, "chronos" and "kairos". Each concept measured time, but in radically different ways.
"Chronos" is familiar to us, the chronological march measured by our watches, by seconds, hours, days, months. The key to a longer life lies with the second measure of time, "kairos". Kairotic time is measured by events, not by hours. Philosophical discourses have been written about the difference between chronos and kairos, but the sweetest succinct explanation I have found was written by a former professor of philosophy, Sam Keen, in 'Hymns to an Unknown God': "Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change his direction in life."
In kairotic time, weeks can seem like months. Many Australians understand this, which is why we are, among all nations, the most inveterate travellers. Because travellers understand, instinctively and by experience, that travel and adventure change and elongate time, even while navigating the deadlines of airline and train departures, sitting on buses and waiting. It would be intresting to find out how much time (chronos) we have spent in our lives waiting.

here's a strange thing, a friend sent me a recording of the revesby show, it was amazing to hear all the nuance and intricate structures of the band playing live, and the harmonies and the amazing musicianship, and there at the end, when the audeience runs to the stage, SK says, 'there's capt. mission.'
its been a strange few days i have been out surfing in huge surf, catching monster waves, and feeling the joy, and this morning manifested several dolphins, they swam around and jumped and played, it was quite surreal, if i reached out my hand i could touch them.
the water is healing me, i feel some what battered from work dramas, and personalities, the waves wash it away, give ya perspective.

THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

An Autohagiography

Subsequently re-Antichristened

THE CONFESSIONS OF

ALEISTER CROWLEY

To Three Friends

J. W. N. SULLIVAN
who suggested this booklet
AUGUSTUS JOHN
who first gave practical assistance
P. R. STEPHENSEN
who saw the point

And To Three Immortal Memories

RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON
the perfect pioneer of spiritual and physical adventure
OSCAR ECKENSTEIN
who trained me to follow the trail
ALLAN BENNETT
who did what he could

P A R T O N E

TOWARDS THE GOLDEN DAWN.

PRELUDE

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Not only to this autohagiography --- as he amusedly insists on calling it --- of Aleister Crowley, but to every form of biography, biology, even chemistry, these words are key.

"Every man and every woman is a star." What can we know about a star? By the telescope, a faint phantasm of its optical value. By the spectroscope, a hint of its composition. By the telescope, and our mathematics, its course. In this last case we may legitimately argue from the known to the unknown: by our measure of the brief visible curve, we can calculate whence it has come and whither it will go. Experience justifies our assumptions.

Considerations of this sort are essential to any serious attempt at biography. An infant is not --- as our grandmothers thought --- an arbitrary jest flung into the world by a cynical deity, to be saved or damned as predestination or freewill required. We know now that "that, that is, is", as the old hermit of Prague that never saw pen and ink very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc.

Nothing can ever be created or destroyed; and therefore the "life" of any individual must be comparable to that brief visible curve, and the object of writing it to divine by the proper measurements the remainder of its career.

The writer of any biography must ask, in the deepest sense, who is he? This questions who art thou?" is the first which is put to any candidate for initiation. Also, it is the last. What so-and-so is, did and suffered: these are merely clues to that great problem. So then the earliest memories of any autohagiographer will be immensely valuable; their very incoherence will be an infallible guide. For, as Freud has shown, we remember (in the main) what we wish to remember, and forget what is painful. There is thus great danger of deception as to the "facts" of the case; but our memories indicate with uncanny accuracy what is our true will. And, as above made manifest, it is this true will which shows the nature of our proper motion.

In writing the life of the average man, there is this fundamental difficulty, that the performance is futile and meaningless, even from the standpoint of the matter-of-fact philosopher; there is, that is to say, no artistic unity. In the case of Aleister Crowley no such Boyg appeared on the hillside; for he himself regards his career as a definitely dramatic composition. It comes to a climax on April 8th, 9th and 10th, 1904 e.v. The slightest incident in the {31} History of the whole universe appears to him as a preparation for that event; and his subsequent life is merely the aftermath of that crisis.

On the other hand, however, there is the circumstance that his time has been spent in three very distinct manners: the Secret Way of the Initiate, the Path of Poetry and Philosophy, and the Open Sea of Romance and Adventure. It is indeed not unusual to find the first two, or the last two, elements in the molecule of a man: Byron exemplifies this, and Poe that. But is is rare indeed for so strenuous and out-of-doors a life to be associated with such profound devotion to the arts of the quietist; and in this particular instance all three careers are so full that posterity might well be excused for surmising that not one but several individuals were combined in a legend, or even for taking the next step and saying: This Aleister Crowley was not a man, or even a number of men; he is obviously a solar myth. Nor could he himself deny such an impeachment too brutally; for already, before he has attained the prime of life, his name is associated with fables not less fantastic than those which have thrown doubt upon the historicity of the Buddha. It should be the true will of this book to make plain the truth about the man. Yet here again there is a lion in the way. The truth must be falsehood unless it be the whole truth; and the whole truth is partly inaccessible, partly unintelligible, partly incredible and partly unpublishable --- that is, in any country where truth in itself is recognized as a dangerous explosive.

A further difficulty is introduced by the nature of the mind, and especially of the memory, of the man himself. We shall come to incidents which show that he is doubtful about clearly remembered circumstances, whether they belong to "real life" or to dreams, and even that he has utterly forgotten things which no normal man could forget. He has, moreover, so completely overcome the illusion of time (in the sense used by the philosophers, from Lao Tzu and Plotinus to Kant and Whitehead) that he often finds it impossible to disentangle events as a sequence. He has so thoroughly referred phenomena to a single standard that they have lost their individual significance, just as when one has understood the word "cat", the letters c a t have lost their own value and become mere arbitrary elements of an idea. Further: on reviewing one's life in perspective the astronomical sequence ceases to be significant. Events rearrange themselves in an order outside time and space, just as in a picture there is no way of distinguishing at what point on the canvas the artist began to paint. Alas! it is impossible to make this a satisfactory book; hurrah! that furnishes the necessary stimulus; it becomes worth while to do it, and by Styx! it shall be done.

It would be absurd to apologize for the form of of this book. Excuses are always nauseating. I do not believe for a moment that it would have turned out any better if it had been written in the most favourable circumstances. {32} I mention merely as a matter of general interest the actual difficulties attending the composition.

From the start my position was precarious. I was practically penniless, I had been betrayed in the most shameless and senseless way by practically everyone with whom I was in business relations, I had no means of access to any of the normal conveniences which are considered essential to people engaged in such tasks. On the top of this there sprang up a sudden whirlwind of wanton treachery and brainless persecution, so imbecile yet so violent as to throw even quite sensible people off their base. I ignored this and carried on, but almost immediately both I and one of my principal assistants were stricken down with lingering illness. I carried on. My assistant died1. I carried on. His death was the signal for a fresh outburst of venomous falsehoods. I carried on. The agitation resulted in my being exiled from Italy; through no accusation of any kind was, or could be, alleged against me. That meant that I was torn away from even the most elementary conveniences for writing this book. I carried on. At the moment of writing this paragraph everything in connection with the book is entirely in the air. I am carrying on.

But apart from any of this, I have felt throughout an essential difficulty with regard to the form of the book. The subject is too big to be susceptible of organic structure unless I make a deliberate effort of will and a strict arbitrary selection. It would, as a matter of fact, be easy for me to choose any one of fifty meanings for my life, and illustrate it by carefully chosen facts. Any such method would be open to the criticism which is always ready to devastate any form of idealism. I myself feel that it would be unfair and, what is more, untrue. The alternative has been to make the incidents as full as possible, to state them as they occurred, entirely regardless of any possible bearing upon any possible spiritual significance. This method involves a certain faith in life itself, that it will declare its own meaning and apportion the relative importance of every set of incidents automatically. In other words, it is to assert the theory that the destiny is a supreme artist, which is notoriously not the case on any accepted definition of art. And yet --- a mountain! What a mass of heterogeneous accidents determine its shape! Yet, in the case of a fine mountain, who denies the beauty and even the significance of its form?

In the later years of my life, as I have attained to some understanding of the unity behind the diverse phenomena of experience, and as the natural restriction of elasticity which comes with age has gained ground, it has become progressively easier to group events about a central purpose. But this only means that the principle of selection has been changed. In my early years the actual seasons, climates and occupations determined the sections of my life. My spiritual activities fit into those frames, whereas, more recently,

Note: Raoul Loveday, who died at the Abbey of Thelema after drinking from a polluted stream. See part 6 of this work for the rest.
the converse is the case. My physical environment fits into my spiritual preoccupation. This change would be sufficient by itself to ensure the theoretical impossibility of editing a life like mine on any consistent principle.

I find myself obliged, for these and many other reasons, to abandon altogether any idea of conceiving an artistic structure for the work or formulating an artistic purpose. All that I can do is to describe everything that I remember, as best I can, as if it were, in itself, the centre of interest. I must trust nature so to order matters that, in the multiplicity of the material, the proper proportion will somehow appear automatically, just as in the operations of pure chance or inexorable law a unity ennobled by strength and beautified by harmony arises inscrutably out of the chaotic concatenation of circumstances. At least one claim may be made; nothing has been invented, nothing suppressed, nothing altered and nothing "yellowed up". I believe that truth is not only stranger than fiction, but more interesting. And I have no motive for deception, because I don't give a damn for the whole human race --- "you're nothing but a pack of cards."

Here's something i lifeted from the SMH. Martin Amis, who i really thnk is a brilliant writer uses the same theme that i use, terrorism and islamic extremism is tied in with fear of females and sexuality....

The British author Martin Amis has a particular slant on the motives behind the September 11 hijackings, writes James Button.
Searching for insight ... Martin Amis's latest writings follow his preoccupation with Islam and terrorism.

It has been Martin Amis month in Britain. The writer, now living in Uruguay, is back doing the media rounds for his new novella, House of Meetings. He has also had published two long pieces of journalism and a short story, The Last Hours of Mohammed Atta.

The articles address his latest preoccupation, Islamist terrorism and Islam. The story (included in House of Meetings) tries, with typical Amisian ambition, to get inside the head of a hijacker on the last day of his life, September 11, 2001.

By now Amis's approach is so familiar readers can tick the boxes: sentences straining for significance, the impulse to humour even in the most serious matters, the mandatory mention of his literary mentor, Saul Bellow. As Amis's Atta buckled himself in on flight 11, I half expected him to be reading Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King.
But if Amis can be overblown, he can also be acute (and very funny). At an airport this week I remembered his insight - that the age of terrorism also produces its opposite, boredom - as I queued for 10 minutes to reach a machine that X-rayed my shoes. Having for years stuck with Amis on his grand and grandiose flights, I was keen to see what he would make of the flight of Mohammed Atta.
It is 4am on September 11 and Atta wakes up in a miserable motel in Portland, Maine. He cuts himself shaving, slips in the shower, studies his face with loathing. Later he will get killer headaches, luridly described. He has not had a bowel movement since May.
May? This was troubling. The idea that Atta might express self-hatred through bodily disgust is plausible. But it is old Amis territory: many of his male characters are physically, and with horror, falling apart. And the author's weakness for obscure words was distracting: his protagonist watches an old person stick out a "marfanic thumb". Was this a story about Atta or Amis?
Two forces drive Amis's Atta. One, he is not religious. He doesn't think he'll get the 72 virgins in paradise. Nor, although he hates America, is he especially political. He joined the jihad because it was "the most charismatic idea of his generation. To unite ferocity and rectitude in a single word: nothing could compete with that."
Why does rectitude matter so much to him? Here Amis has one - possibly brilliant - idea. It is about women.
His Atta, while flying on a Spanish airline in 1999, saw 15 or 16 white-robed, turbaned men suddenly crowd into the aisle and get to the floor, "humped in prayer". Over the intercom the captain ordered them to return to their seats or he would return to Dubai. A stewardess appeared - tall, long-necked, beautiful: "swinishly luxurious". The effect on Atta is electric. He watches her bellow at the prostrate men: "Vamos, arriba, c---!" Let's go, get up, she orders, cursing them with a word for female genitals. Atta "would never forget the face of the stewardess ... and how much he wanted to hurt it'.'

It is an improbable scene. Is this, then, merely Amis resuming his favourite theme of shrunken masculinity? I don't think so. In his will the real Atta banned "unclean" women from attending his funeral.

One of the July 7 London bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan, instructed his fellow terrorists in how they could look at women; on his martyr video he rants about real Muslim men (jihadis) and wimps (the rest). Before he killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, Mohammed Bouyeri tried to knife a young man he believed was having (consensual) sex with his sister. And so on.

In an article last month, "The Age of Horrorism" (it can be read on The Guardian website), Amis traced the sexual frustrations of the father of Islamist thought, Sayyid Qutb. While in America in 1949, Qutb became disgusted by - and obsessed with - what he saw as the lewdness of American women.

To Amis it leads to an inescapable conclusion. The suppression of women is not only breeding jihadis, it is caging Muslims in ignorance and backwardness. His answer: get girls into school, spark a women's revolution, spend some of the $300 billion that was spent on Iraq on raising consciousness in the Islamic world.

It is an excellent thought. My problem is with the way Amis expresses it. Because, he writes, the Koran grants men sweeping powers over women and hence spares them the need to think, "no doubt the impulse towards rational inquiry is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male". It is women, then, who will save Islam. But this is surely a false duality; the sexes cannot be split so easily. Many Muslim women are also devout, as scornful of secularism as Amis is of faith.

Can Westerners find a way to talk about their differences with Muslims without being superior? This is hard: for many, the relative position of women is the conclusive evidence that shows why the West is better. But the sort of consciousness-raising Amis advocates would have to be done with humility or it would fail. To put it simply, I can't change you if I am not also open to the possibility that you have things to show me.

"It's their own past they [Muslims] are pissed off about; their great decline," Amis said in a recent interview. And: "They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs - well, they've got to stop their children killing people."

These generalisations have a note of contempt. It's a pity, because I reckon he's onto something about the women.

i've just finished reading 'are men necessary' by muareen dowd, and it's not a bad book although i must say, it should be called 'are american men necessary' it's filled with american examples of mens behaviour. if i was the author i'd call it 'are people necessary' the answer would be a resounding NO.

Well the days have been sun drenched, warm, blue skies over the beaches, surf is getting better, caught a beautiful wave this morning, my mind still contemplating the church show, such elegance. i was filled with grace, my body shook with awe, transforming and transmigrating. i washed up for a cup o tea and lunch with a older beardered recently retired man who confessed his alcoholism to me, he's a lover of books to, and we often chat about our latest reads. It was nice to talk to someone about something substantial, we laughed at how in france when a philosopher dies there's millions of people on the streets weeping and there's a state funeral. Down in Australia, ya gotta be a footbal player for that to occur.

Well i got three days off to play in, no money but a head filled with dreams and ideas i gotta get crackin on.

I cought the front page of the manly daily our local newspaper and it was warning peoples not to swim in the ocean due to a massive layer of red algae covering the whole of the northern beaches, it was amazing, i did'nt see anything out there bu the photo was biblical. The seas have turned red. Maybe the enviromental concerns are the biggest threat after all....if it's gonna effect my surfing.

Apart from setting off a week early due to slipping through some kinda Church generated time hole, then on the actual night, the kids who live below me hid my ‘one’ pair of boots, leaving me searching frantically for them as the perilous journey to a place called Revesby, out in western sydney became more and more complex and fraught with obstacles. It was some sort of traffic long weekend police jamboree so I drove in a disciplined manner aware that with one point left on my license I better be vigilant, but I could already feel my excitement, spreading through my body which meant three toilet breaks, and seizing the opportunity to ask directions from friendly service station attendants who didn’t even know what country they where in let alone the way to Revesby. Old Captain Mission in a final act of desperation used the force, homing in on Church Radar I eased my way South West towards the venue. Revesby is well outta my comfort zone, I inhabit the Northern beaches of Sydney, very rarely leaving the proximity of the ocean, and here I am in some strange landscape filled with KFC fast food burger joints, car yards and huge freeways, motorways and a road I hope will get me there on time. Remarkably I find myself entering Revesby at exactly 7.30. I pull over and ask some one where the Revesby RSL is, but everyone I ask shakes their head, ‘No. No RSL in Revesby but there is a working mans club.' Revesby Workers, no, that’s not the place I convince myself, thinking off a workers club as a little shed in Northern England filled with men playing darts and smoking roll ups, drinking stout. I see a sign for RSL and follow that 2ks out of town, there’s a nice little RSL tucked away off the beaten track. I park and run in, only to find that this is not Revesby RSL. Again I am pointed to the Workers Club. So in a desperate attempt to find the venue I drive back, park and find that I am in a huge complex, massive, like a mall that’s also a small modern indoor town. It’s very plush and hundreds of people in well presented uniforms are rushing towards me to welcome me. Alas, no its to inform me I can’t come in as I am not dressed appropriately. My sleeves are cut from my old 'church acoustic' T Shirt.

‘But I bought a ticket.’ I protest, no one explained that I needed to be in a sleeved shirt, I look at all the women who where wearing sleeveless shirts inside, by this time I’m frantic, ‘Look I’ll go in and buy a t shirt from the band.’

Everyone seems happy with this, including myself. In we go, and the Workers club is like the titanic, hundreds of people milling about, moving around from restaurant to bar, escalators all over the place, music leaking through the walls, I imagine that one day space travel will be like this, people will cruise in huge Mall type structures, gambling and getting drunk, humanity makes first contact. intelligent life in space, well one can live in hope, I can hear the sublime intro to ‘Never Before’ and clutch my chest, no please, no more obstacles. Then I realise I didn’t pick up my ticket at the front desk.

Fortunately I am hearing the sound check, it’s a closed door so I amble back down to get my ticket and taunt the uniforms in my sleeveless shirt.

Well the set was amazing, it looked as if there were a few sound issues, some technical peculiarities towards the start but things went from amazing to mind blowingly brilliant. It was just one of those shows, ‘hey wait, aren’t they all with you Capt’ I hear ya say. Yes its true I am terribly subjective when it comes to the crunch, but this was an amazing show because the audience were so good, really responsive and appreciative and the band just shone. Plugged in The Church move through aural sculptures ambient and latent sonic landscapes that can’t help but suck you along into their vortex and carry you away.

I didn’t take my camera tonight and just soaked up the atmosphere and it was beautiful atmosphere in the workers club, from the choice of songs the highlights that i recall are : Saturation, Iona Blues, Reptile, Is this where you live, Easy, Pure Chance, Never Before, Day 5, Tommorow, Block, Unguarded Moment, ripple, destination, myrrh, grind, shadow cabinet, numbers, I'm sure i left out a few,
they played a good length and some of the into's and outro's were amazing, very expansive, ambient and moments of rock and roll beauty. I've missed out a few songs but i'm sure that gives you a taste.
This is quality musicianship individually and as a synergy of the band. I sat down the front watching a diverse mix of people, all mesmerized by the beauty of this music. Steve’s playing was brilliant, those base notes filled the night like languid points of light and the two guitars feeding of one another in symbiotic communion. But for me tonight the most amazing quality that held everything together, was Mr. Tim Powles. His rhythms were so magnetic and held such a gravitational pull I could feel everything being sucked in towards them. Highlights – I can’t really say there was a highlight, it was all excellent, perhaps the highlight was the fact here’s my favourite band on this planet playing together, evolving after 26 years and I know that they haven’t even peaked yet, the best is yet to come. you can see all that potential overflowing. There were some beautiful harmonies and lovely ambient sounds created, often leading into or out off songs. In many ways I am always very upset that the church never get the recognition they deserve from the music media in Australia, however at the same time, part of me is selfishly glad, that there’s something intimate when you see them that I fear would be lost, something special and meaningful..But don’t take my word for it, go see the Magnetic Strip Tour yourself. Plugged in, tune in, turn on, trip out.