interesting interview on the abc radio national, here's the transcript.
Note: Her tendency to not consider getting out of her brain, and elevating her consciousness to actually study consciousness. She is trapped by her own beliefs. Greenfield bless her thinks that drugs can damage your brain but she's failed into the narrow belief that drugs are bad. there are good and bad drugs, and the idea of any discipline is to change the brain not damage it. she has seen the results of people who took dumb drugs, she should investigate the ones that have used it as a medicine, our plant friends will educate her on the ideas of consciousness and what can be perceived with it's expansion.

Enjoy....

Today a feature interview with ‘brain woman’ Susan Greenfield. She’s Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford but she’s become a pop star of sorts amongst scientists.

Harpers and Queen ranked her No.14 on its list of the 50 Most Inspirational Women in the World. She’s a member of the House of Lord and is Director of the Royal Institution in Britain, the first woman in that role. And if that wasn’t enough Susan Greenfield continues to do her science and leads a research team looking at the neurodegenerative disorders Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease. She’s also managed to write a handful of extremely popular science books amongst them The Private Life of the Brain.

Susan Greenfield has done a lot of thinking about what makes me, me and you, you, about how each of us comes to have a unique sense of self. And today we’re exploring her ideas about the basis of human consciousness. “There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain” – those are the words of philosopher David Chalmers, author of The Conscious Mind. Words to which, I’m sure, Susan Greenfield would respond – well let’s give it our best shot.

Music

Natasha Mitchell: Few of us would ever really get to see a human brain dead or alive so I wanted to start by asking you what was the first experience like of actually getting your hands on a human brain? This role I imagine obviously struck a cord.

Susan Greenfield: Well exactly, that’s exactly why I decided to do brain research because until that time I’d been much more preoccupied with the arts subjects, literature and history but primarily with philosophy, I was interested as the ancient Greeks were in the concepts of mind and the issue of accountability and responsibility. But in order to do that certainly the course I was doing at Oxford entailed doing some practical work and this entailed dissection of a human brain and I do remember it, actually getting this plastic pot put in front of my partner and I and then getting this thing out. You have these gloves on and you put your hand in and you pull out this pickled essence of a person and I remember thinking if I get a piece under my fingernail would that be the bit that somebody loved with or would that be a memory, what would it be. And it does bring it home to you this absolute normality of what it is and what it looks like. It’s far less exotic and glamorous looking than the heart or the lungs. It does bring home to you the absolute stunning miracle of how the water if you like is converted into wine, how the physical bump and grind and sluggy thing can actually translate into that inner world that we call our consciousness.

Natasha Mitchell: Because it very much is like porridge isn’t it?

Susan Greenfield: It is, in its normal state, I’ve seen a brain operation, it is a very quivery, quakery unstable looking mass indeed.

Natasha Mitchell: Brain operations occur while the person is actually alert and conscious.

Susan Greenfield: Well certainly my friend and colleague Henry Marsh has pioneered that approach and I don’t know if people saw when I recorded my TV series of talking to a very, very nice lady who’d been volunteering to undergo brain surgery in front of the cameras and talking to her face and she was talking on about her honeymoon and her recipes and then you’d go round the other side and look at this six inch hole with this red splotchy stuff which had been talking at me and then it was almost Monty Python-esque you know of me talking to her as my friend Henry was aspirating the tumour which had a sort of sucking noise it’s a bit like a little vacuum cleaner. She said oh, don’t take out too much you know, she had a fabulous sense of humour, don’t suck too much, that was the brain saying that and had she wished, although she didn’t want to, Henry allows them to look at their own operation on closed circuit television. But she didn’t want this because she thought she might freak at it. But if you think about it had she’d agreed to do it that would be the brain looking at itself. It’s the sort of thing makes your mind really whirl and it’s those kind of questions, those kind of issues that I think put centre stage the issues of mind and brain.

Natasha Mitchell: Now the mind, the brain, the consciousness, we often use those terms as if they are interchangeable and traditionally philosophers have been the ones over the centuries that have dappled with the world of the mind and what it might mean, and what is it, and where does it fit and scientists have been a little bit more comfortable in more recent times with actually getting in and looking at the physical mess that is the brain. Why do you think scientists have been reluctant to grapple with this nebulous notion of the human mind?

Susan Greenfield: Someone once said that any scientist studying consciousness and the mind was undergoing a CLM – a career limiting move. And I think perhaps that it was quite telling but the pioneer scientists who are exploring consciousness and the mind such as Gerry Adelman, Brian Josephson and Francis Crick, what they have in common is they’ve all won the Nobel Prize and perhaps after that it’s something you can do otherwise people don’t take you seriously. I think the problem has been why mainstream science is very wary of the study of consciousness is that it is utterly subjective. It is the first person world, as it seems to you. Now science is all about impartial access, third person, clear measurements and here we have something that’s insubstantial and ineffable, some kind of magic and no wonder that is not very practical to scientific method and therefore most scientist would rather be preoccupied with some smaller problem. But as the philosopher John Saul said that’s a bit like saying you’re studying stomach but you’re not interested in digestion.

Natasha Mitchell: I do want to look at the ebb and flow of people thinking about consciousness because it has gone in and out of flavour hasn’t it and it’s certainly had a real revival now. Why are people obsessing about it now?

Susan Greenfield: Well of course philosophers have always been interested in philosophy of the mind but things do go into fashion and there is a mood of the time. In the 80s, 1980s there was a mood suddenly for philosophers, the more adventurous ones to actually start to talk to some scientists and the scientists to actually look up from the parapet. This also coincided with about ten or twenty years of brain research and we tend to take brain research for granted nowadays but until the early 1970s it didn’t really exist. The concept of neuroscience didn’t exist as a concept at all, people were either biochemists, or anatomists, or engineers, or physicists who may tangentially study the brain but it was considered far too mysterious really for anyone to take very seriously. And it wasn’t until the 1970s that people started to have these real exciting multi-disciplinary meetings where because no one knew very much everyone could understand what everyone was saying. So you’d go to a talk on vision, and then one on memory, and then one on language and there was a feeling of real excitement and exuberance and discovery as gradually this fledging science was given birth to, neuroscience.

Having said all that I think nonetheless we do have a confidence now that we know a little about how the brain works. Nowhere near enough but we have a grasp of some of the basic principles, sufficient enough I think to make some of us either the very brave or the very stupid I don’t know what we are, competent enough to start to think about these problems and I get rather angry when people say oh, we don’t know enough yet to understand consciousness because life is too short and we only have now, we might as well start now even if we are scorned by the next generation.

Natasha Mitchell: Well let’s consider some of your ideas about how we come to be subjective, feeling, conscious creatures. I wanted to ask Rene Descarte originally decided that there was a dualism, that the mind and the body operated as separate entities, they were something different, there was something materially different as well. Do you have any sense of what he said?

Susan Greenfield: Yes, he was a very great philosopher but one has to put them in the context of the times, and the context of the times to have denied the spiritual would have been heresy. It was something that nobody did. Sometimes people do say to me what about the soul and my answer back to that is that I’m not a theologian but I do know that the concept of a soul is something that entails immortality. But what is for sure is that the brain is perishable and that dies when you die so if you believe in a soul, if, and you therefore believe in something that’s immortal, that’s nothing to do with the physical brain so the issue of spirituality in the sense of surviving death is something that does not help us understand consciousness or the mind. It might help people understand the afterlife but that’s a separate issue.

Natasha Mitchell: Well the philosopher David Chalmers who actually originates from Adelaide in Australia but is now in Arizona heading up a great consciousness studies team over there, he decided that possibly consciousness might actually be a fundamental property of nature, you know something unique like time, like space.

Susan Greenfield: Yes, I’m familiar with that view, that’s almost what we used to call pan psychicism that is to say that consciousness is out there somewhere in some irreducible way. Obviously one can’t disprove what he says but at the same time it’s not overly helpful, it’s the kind of idea you’d come to once you’d exhausted absolutely everything else because what can you do with something like that. That is not going to help me explain why Prozac makes people less depressed or morphine gives people a dreamlike state and as a neurochemist you can see where I’m coming from.

Natasha Mitchell: Well of course then you consider that consciousness somehow resides in our brain. The temptation has been amongst many neuro-scientists has been to look for a centre of consciousness, a little bit in the brain and there it is, that’s where consciousness comes from. I mean how do you view that quest?

Susan Greenfield: I think it’s a rather pointless quest, it does echo the phrenology of course of the 19th Century when people thought the bumps on their head would be autonomous mini brains concerned with very specific functions like banality or love of children, and love of country being another bump. Nowadays that we have brain imaging it has tempted some people into thinking that because a certain bit of the brain lights up during a certain task that that is the centre for this and the centre for that. We know that is not the case, there’s two problems with that – one is multiple brain regions will often light up and also imaging, as it stands at the moment is over a second in duration which sounds pretty good but on the other hand we know consciousness can vary on a sub-second level. So if you think about it, it makes no logical sense because you’re talking then about a brain within a brain, you’ve miniaturised a problem you haven’t solved it. You’re no further down the line in understanding what consciousness is.

Natasha Mitchell: OK, so how do you think consciousness is working in our minds, in our brains, oh there you go, you see I’m swapping the two too.

Susan Greenfield: Shall we start off then by drawing a distinction between consciousness and mind? Because having dismissed the soul we might as well now romp on and look at the mind. Many scientists when they write their books on consciousness and there have been a huge rash of them most notably in the 1990s, conflated mind and consciousness, I think consciousness was such an ugly word that mind sat much better on the front cover. But my own view is that that’s wrong because if you think about it, just think in everyday language, we talk about blowing our mind, and losing our mind, and being out of our mind but you are still conscious and ditto when you go to sleep and you’re going to lose your consciousness you don’t think you’re going to lose your mind as such. So let’s think about mind as opposed to brain. It usually emphasises a personal element, some particular way we see the world broadminded, narrow minded, develop your mind and I think that’s just what happens actually that your brain gets personalised, we know that even though you’re born with pretty much all the brain cells you’ll have, it’s the connections between the brain cells that accounts for the growth of the brain after birth and these we are learning more and more reflect the kind of experiences you have. So that even if you’re a clone, that’s its own identical twin, you’ll have a unique configuration of brain cell connections and I think it’s this ever changing constellation of brain cell connections that carries on right up until we die that will determine the kind of person we are, even when we’re asleep even when we’re not conscious.

Natasha Mitchell: This is All in the Mind on ABC Radio National and Radio Australia, with me, Natasha Mitchell. And I’m talking consciousness with neuro-scientist, Baroness, TV star and author, Professor Susan Greenfield. So Greenfield considers that our brains become personalised with our unique memories and experiences over time through local constellations of neurons being activated or hardwired together. But what about that general sort of global consciousness that we all experience, what generates that feeling of a sense of self, connections between neurons suggests Susan Greenfield but on a much larger and more transient scale.

Susan Greenfield: This is the big problem because at first blush it is qualitative and scientists hate qualitative things so if only we could turn it into something we could measure. The one thing that we could measure would be the intermediate level of these connections but not just the hardwired ones but the ones that can change perhaps, that can coral up very quickly and disband we know that the brain can do that, that if you flash lights for example at the brain we know that in a quarter of a second ten million neurons can start working together and then by half a second they are disbanded again.

Natasha Mitchell: So here we’re looking for some physical explanation for a moment of consciousness, the very moment that a thought passes somehow into our brain and out again.

Susan Greenfield: Well I think a big assumption that we all make that’s wrong is that you’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. I glibly said just now consciousness is when you go to sleep you’re going to lose it. Now I think that dichotomy has bedevilled the concept of consciousness and indeed its study of the brain. Let’s question that. What if instead of consciousness being you have it or you don’t have it, what if consciousness grows as brains grow, because it certainly explains the riddle of a rat being conscious but not as conscious as a dog or cat, and a dog or cat being conscious but not as conscious as a baby and even, controversially a foetus being conscious but not as conscious as a child.

Natasha Mitchell: Levels of consciousness whether we have a deeper consciousness or a more shallow consciousness.

Susan Greenfield: Now we talk in our adult lives about raising our consciousness, people go to raising their consciousness sessions or deepening your consciousness and I think that’s also helpful not just because it does start to make sense of these riddles but as a scientist now converted something that was completely elusive now we’ve converted it into something that we measure. And what I think happens is that you’ll have a trigger or a stimulus, a bit like a stone being thrown in a puddle, and that stone could be the hard wired hub of brain cells that by the normal systems I was taught in Oxford when I was teaching visual systems for example, we know all the pathways that would activate a hard wired hub that’s easy, but then what happens this will coral up, very transiently, a large scale assembly of brain cells a little bit like the stone being thrown into a puddle, the ripples that will emanate will be highly transient but their excursion will vastly exceed the diameter of the stone. So what will happen is in the brain I think that you’ll have a trigger from a hard wired hub when you see something or someone that means a lot to you, the meaning being of course proportional to the number of connections and then that will coral up a very large population of brain cells.

Natasha Mitchell: It’s a bigger network of neurons firing in that moment.

Susan Greenfield: Yes, that’s right. The way you can get lots of ripples going in a big assembly of a deep consciousness is either to have a big stone that is to say a lot of associations built up over your life and that person will mean something to you or the stone thrown with great force, the alarm clock going, and I think that every moment of our life that’s what’s happening.

Natasha Mitchell: Are you really saying that the subjective world that we experience and live in is but a constellation of neurons firing on and off?

Susan Greenfield: No, it’s not that, what the assembly is, is an index of consciousness and that’s very different from being consciousness any more than if you look at your light going on in your iron you’re not going to say that the iron is all about that little flashing red light it’s an index that is sufficient as well as being necessary to signify degrees of consciousness but that if you put an assembly of brain cells in a jam jar thats not going to be conscious, of course not, it’s more what it is indicating and referring not just in the brain but in the whole body. And many scientists as indeed the philosophers tend to think of the brain as some isolated organ, very few of us, myself included, no much about immunology, or intra-chronology or below the eyebrows of the body very much but my own firm belief is that factors influencing the formation of that assembly and hence the depth of your consciousness don’t just include things within the brain but there’s feedback from not just your autonomic nervous system but also from your hormones and your immune system. Because if there wasn’t you’d have biological anarchy and we know that’s not the case, we know that when you are depressed you get ill and I think this is a new area again one requiring a multi-disciplinary scope and perspective. Having said that we know there are certain classes of chemicals that can, if you like, be tri-lingual that can work as neurotransmitters as chemical messengers in the brain that can talk to the hormone system and they can also talk to the immune system and I think that by studying these cocktails of peptides which is what they’re called then one could perhaps start to match that up with the size of the brain cell assembly. Now I think that would be the way to go but we mustn’t lose sight of the brain being part of the body.

Natasha Mitchell: Because it is intuitive that when if you think of say an emotion as being a fundamental unit of consciousness and experience of consciousness it’s intuitive that emotions are very much felt in the body. You feel sick, our heart beats or whatever, consciousness it seems is very much a full body experience.

Susan Greenfield: Yeah, we talk about gut reaction for example and indeed lots of these peptides were first discovered in the gut so I think it’s very important to not lose sight that it is a brain in the body and it’s this traffic in the peptides between the three great control systems that from my view is consciousness. Now that’s not to say you can reduce consciousness to the brain cell assembly but what we can’t do as yet is know how the one causes the other and I’ll be the first person to admit that we don’t know how that happens. But I can’t see what else there is because I certainly don’t believe it’s beamed in from anywhere else.

Natasha Mitchell: This is All in the Mind on ABC Radio National and Radio Australia and I’m talking to Professor Susan Greenfield. What about the notion of the collective consciousness? Very interesting concept.

Susan Greenfield: There are several things there I think. One is the ecstasy taker who says they feel and I’m told you feel that one with everyone else. Now one idea there would be that you have stripped the world of some much cognitive content that you put yourself back into being a baby again. There you are with a beat going something like techno, techno, techno, like this I gather, (duff, duff duff) well OK very good because obviously you’re more of an expert that me. But it has no meaning as far as I gather the music you know, It’s there, you’re putting a premium on the beat and you’re putting a premium on the heat and possibly the smell and certainly lights and it’s arguable therefore you’re back to being like a small infant again where you would feel the same as everyone else cause you’re not differentiating one for another. The idea of what a very ancient monk called anosaphere, that is to say we are perhaps the future of human beings will be that we will hook up with each other is another thought and a very different type of thought but some people in the future predict that with the web being as pervasive as it is that what might eventually happen is we’ll all be plugged into the web and we’ll be so interfaced with the web, and using it so much, we won’t be able to draw boundaries anymore between our individual minds as such and that we’ll be a great collective consciousness across the world.

Natasha Mitchell: Well I mean the cyborgian reality is a fascinating one, this notion that we might be able to one, hook ourselves up to a matrix, a data base a piece of machinery and become one with it and there’s also this notion that we might be able to download our brain and its essence so that we exist in virtual reality. That we exist without our body, I mean it’s all fantasy but the closer we get to these things the more freaky and real they become.

Susan Greenfield: Well I certain think that the downloading is harder to conceptualise because any memory you have is predicated on a host of other memories, feelings and emotions so it would be hard to actually isolate a single memory so for that reason I would say that that was impossible. But we don’t even have to think about implants. If you and I were talking let’s say in 10 or 20 years time when computers will be ubiquitous and invisible, they’ll be in a jewellery and our ear rings and they’ll be voice activated, they’ll speak back to you in the voice that you choose, so that if we were talking we wouldn’t have to remember anything, we could just keep referencing as we were talking this joint cyber space. So where would you end and I begin? And ditto with these highly interactive personalised computers embedded everywhere in us they will be interactive with our environment all the time, changing the colour of the walls, changing the temperature according to how our body is sensing. I think we’re going to question the future, the very boundaries of our bodies and the very boundaries of our minds and that is both frightening and exciting in equal measure. But I want to talk about it and think about it and explore it because I think the more it’s out there in a forum the more we can harness it for good and minimise the threats it poses. What we can’t do is pretend it doesn’t exist, it’s a question I think that concerns and fascinates everyone and we should be in on the party.

Natasha Mitchell: Do you think we may ever cultivate a conscious machine? It’s the sexiest question of the 21st Century and I’m intrigued by the possibility of what it would mean to live and coincide with a conscious machine. I mean Terrance Deakin who I spoke to recently nominated that we will do evil things to the first conscious machine, it will be a moral engagement.

Susan Greenwood: Talking of sexiness, Stewart Sutherland, psychologist said he believed a computer was conscious when it ran off with his wife and I don’t know whether you or I would fancy a philandering computer and then someone might decide to bash it up anyway. More seriously the problem I have with that question is several. One is when people talk about modelling consciousness, artificial intelligence, then you immediately have a problem because if you model something you are taking the salient features and leaving behind the baggage you don’t need. So if you or I were modelling flight say then we would put at a premium something that could defy the laws of gravity but it wouldn’t have to have feathers or webbed feet or a beak or anything like this, aeroplanes do not have these things but they fly. Now in consciousness we don’t know what the salient feature I, so therefore if you were designing it you wouldn’t know what to leave in and what to leave out if you’re modelling it within the body. The other problem I have is that people designing machines at the moment put a premium on learning a memory and that’s easy because it’s something that delivers a response whereas you can have someone just there with the sun on their face at the end of a hard day absolutely conscious but emitting no response at all. If a computer could do that you’d chuck it out. As yet, and I’m sure I’ll have a flood of people telling me I’m wrong, the AI models have not really addressed the issue of emotions and feelings but on the whole, people I come across are still very proudly pointing to robots which are wonderful, I’m not denying robots and I think robotics is a very, very important aspect of 21st Century life, especially if it does the housework and if they will do dangerous or boring things and free up time for us to think about how the brain generates consciousness.

Natasha Mitchell: And of course we wouldn’t want those robots then if we get them to do all our dirty work to have any sense of consciousness cause that of course throws up all those moral questions of exploitation.

Susan Greenfield: Absolutely, and moreover if the robot was conscious then you couldn’t find out how it was working anymore than you could with a human being cause it would cause it pain. I think it’s very useful to have machines that are the , as to say they operate on a this and that basis yeah, but I don’t see the point anyway of having them conscious unless Stewart Sutherland’s right and you get these hunky ones that run off with wives that might be a quite interesting scenario but apart from that I can’t see any use.

Natasha Mitchell: Well it’s a brave new world, one that you’re definitely exploring Susan Greenfield, thank you very much for joining me on the program today.

Susan Greenfield: My pleasure, thank you very much.

the last few days i've been thinking about poor ben, i spoke to his dad and was informed the situation is still critical but the drs are going to attempt to bring him out of the coma. it was a difficult conversation, i mean i am a father and there's a connection. the guys that committed this act are free, they got away. the police whom i loathe at the moment are to busy busting people for driving without the correct stickers on their car.
it's just unbelievable.
another mix of testosterone and alcohol gone wrong, sometimes i think they should ban both.

after much fiddling and twisting dials, pushing sliders and buttons and various buttons i managed to get my mixing desk, the big new one working and recording sound through the mic into the sound software. this is a huge step for me being so technically challenged, next step is to hook up the chaos machine. i think i have enough ideas for the next cd, some half sketched others remain in my head and need taking form, its a strange process and i'm leaning more towards a band now than solo, although val is kinda like a band in himself.

i'm very tired of all this bullshit, really it's getting me down. lisa 1 rings me up and asks if i want to have dinner. i decline stating melancholia but lisa 1 is persistent and offers to shout me dinner. i have no will power, im thinking to myself i should just stay home and read but lisa 1 insists. so she picks me up and we drive south, i wonder where she's taking me.
'somewhere special she says.'
i tell lisa 1 about my awful week and then i start to rave about how fucked everything is.
around neutral bay a siren starts sounding and we have to pull over.
lisa gets busted for not having rego.
ironic, fate, coincidence, destiny, synchronicity , i dunno, just plain bad luck x2 i guess.
we end up at papaya a thai place in neutral bay, the best restaurant i have ever been to this side of the bridge. its amazing. we eat banana leaf salad which is prawns, and crunchy stuff and then special fried rice which has pineapple, king prawns and things served in a scooped out pineapple. amazing food and cheap.

ben a friend is in RPA after being bashed in a fight. the perpetrators ran away and have not been caught. ben is kinda loud and a bit of an ego but he's a good soul, helpful chap, pretty straight up, i took mescal with him once and we laughed a lot, he seemed to lighten up and one day i bumped into him with his daughter and saw how proud he was. kinda felt a certain kinship. he may have permenant brain damage, the nurse said the outlook is bleak.
it's funny how life is. this society. i get fined and hasselled for not having a piece of paper that makes my car legal, yet some idiot can get away with destroying someone's life.
it just don't add up.

driving home, beautiful morning, its about 8am and i turn into the main street that leads uphill to the parkway. immediately i know i have made a mistake, i'm stuck behind a big truck that's travelling like a snail. then at the top of the road a long traffic jam and then as i turn onto the parkway a lovely stretch of road in front i pass a police car who must have done a very fast u turn because next thing i know he is behind me siren blaring. i pull over and he gets out the car, i'm already outside wondering what i've done wrong. he's a huge bloke, trussed up with his gun and visors. he tells me my reg is outta date, fines me $500 and tells me how lucky i am as he could have charged me $1500.
to which i reply, man its ironic that my very wage which i contribute tax pays your wage and keeps you employed, and given that you make more money from innocent tax payers by fining them for minor infringements that is a matter of criminality itself. the fact that you can't even give a days grace is absurd.
thats the law he says looking like he just wants to tazer me.
then the law is an ass i say.
i've always wanted to say that. i can't help it.
i've never lived in a country or state where there are so many regulations and rules, i can't believe how controlled everything is, how many fines there are and how the government always wins. in my head i imagine me discovering some common law notice that allows me to sue the govt. imagine that, i'd be assassinated or worse fined.

i run around in the sun attempting to sort out my rego, when i could be surfing, its such a waste of time.

im halfway through all sorts of things, i feel my head slip and slide around, mind unfocused everytime i miss my yoga classes, enjoyed a dinner in newt town with val and olga and my son jake came along to join us. we heard stories about their travels across europe on a big motorbike. vals like the nexus for all events important, it's like the classic heroes journey, starting of without knowing anything about what's happening as the story starts to unfold around him. galactic events seem to attract themselves towards val, he is connected to everything. the more time i spend with him the more i see that. even ayahuscia plays a role. obscurity and esoteric meaning collide together in a particle accelerator that whirls around his mind.
i'm very stuck on writing a bio, how would i describe myself, an anomaly, a freakazoid, overweight underachiever, just another lost angel, plant emissionary, father, pychonaught, dream enthusiast and sci fi aficionado, accidental musician, jeez it's really hard to do this without sounding like a wanker.

for a brain damaged reclusive eccentric and shy kinda individual i have had a busy week, socially filled with weird and wonderful events and interesting developments.

windswept and rain soaked wednesday night i picked up my son and we drove into newt town to look at bookshops. strangely he is a mini me, a passion for books and reading, we are different in some ways he's unusually creative and socially cultivated for a 20 year old whereas i'm just a shy introvert. anyways being very stylish he went of to look at clothes and things, i went to meet val and olga who were back from their motor bike trip around europe. they both look great, europe obviously suited them. stories were exchanged, drinks drunk, jake joined us laiden with three pairs of shoes. we eat at strange italian place, great food, great company. val seems to be the nexus, everything happens around him, he brings things together and creates something from them. me i feel slightly out of place with all these musicians, they have the talent, me i have a good imagination, that's about it.

yoga is the best thing i have done in the last 5 years. it's saving me from decay and stagnation,in such a short amount of time i feel so much better. i'm still really poor when it comes to the asanas and breathing, but i try and reach my limits. the instructors know i have had broken bones and assist me giving me props. the guy today said he recognised me from avalon, he said he met me once and he would be happy to teach me to become better. i want to be better at yoga. i can feel it in my soul, something familiar and something my body thanks me for afterwards.
i have always meditated, magickal work requires meditation, focus and visualization. i have a good mind, but my body lags behind.
it's time to purge and time to cleanse, it's time to become.

friday night i have dinner with a lisa and gravy, cool meal, japanese food, seaweed salad and english spinach and black sesame seed sauce. very very cool, we smoke a big spliff and watch a big red moon rise over the ocean and follow it as it appears over the headland, i look through gravy's hi tech secret agent binoculars and we can make out the craters, it's magickal, my soul gets its nurishment from this kind of thing, i need it in my life, and people to share it with.
its all wonderful until someone tells me the red is caused by pollution.
saturday i am in glebe an old second hand book shop when an attractive young girl introduces herself, she's an old friend of a friend, we chat a bit and i give her a cd cos she looks a bit gothic and the cover is a bit gothic and truth is i was trying to immpress her, which i now feel embarressed about. me a grown man!
then later in the same bookshop i meet another friend who says hello, he lives in glebe now and i chat about my time living above the salvation army church on ross street. strange days, i lost my mind in there.
in the evening i drive to steve's gig at manly. i'm very early and wander around the jetty looking at the ocean, very calming. there's a strange energy in the air, lots of people getting ready to start their big nights out, i'm a bit nervous because i don't like manly, its filled with testosterone and alcohol fuelled teenagers at nights, not my cup of tea at all.
the boatshed is a place that has not changed much in 20 years, it's a narrow staircase leading into a nautical ambience contained within its confine, a small bar, small stage, no major dress regulations which i find refreshing and a very nice lady running the show.
people trickle in, i'm the first person so and i watch them arrive, such a mixed crowd. the first guy goes on to play. it's not my cup of tea but i admire his playing, the place is filling up fast, steve and nic arrive, we go for a quick smoke at spots. outside manly is gearing up a notch, you can feel the energy, frantic charges with no direction, chaos emerging, random drama, i look at the young girls plastered in make up, short dresses and the folly of youth, the males loud and testy, the smell of violence hangs around, it's unnerving, almost animal but less than, because animals have a nature that they have to follow, this is just stupidity, even decadance has style, this is not decadent. we have a quick puff on what i can only describe as super strong weed. i suggest i take the merch box and see what we can generate. we can only try, all things being equal i hope we can shift some cd's books and the dvd to make up for loss of earnings from the previous gig. it seems the least i can do.
i'm finding it hard to understand how steve kilbey didn't get paid for a gig, it's incredible that someone could not pay the greatest singer song writer in australia for a show. i know it's a big claim but it's true. i've thought so for 30 years. i'm not wrong about this. anyways im kinda having a ball, steve is very funny and has a mind that operates at a million miles a second whereas mine is super slow and sluggish especially after smoking the green goddess. anyways it is kinda like a dream come true, to help your fave rock star out at a gig. something i can tell my grandkids about when steve finally gets that acknowledgement.
the crowd inside are loud and wild, its a rowdy northern beaches joint where people just wanna drink, fight and fuck. i'm somewhat frail tonight, it's intiomidating being in the middle of such erratic people, colliding intop one another, screaming at the people standing next to them, so much interference.
nic and i set up the small box of merch. i'm plugging painkiller to anyone who will listen. steve plays an awesome set, but i feel the crowd should just shut up and listen, they are talking and yelling at one another and steve has to work them into a bit of enthusiasm. i guess the leonard cohen may have been a bit to dark for those beachy types but eventually a persistent steve won the crowd over. people dancing.
then in a kinda post script to the evening, steve has this awful time getting paid resulting in some pretty serious stuff occurring, and then as a result not only gets his money but gets invited back again without the toxic middle man. i do love a happy ending these days.

sometimes i can see myself in a robe, in a temple setting, dark yet warm, somewhere tropical with a breeze that blows through like clockwork when the sun sets. i have some people sit around me and we drink some weird tea, later i strike the bowls, a tone rings out and everyone settles into a nice quiet calm.
meditation is the process where by we focus on the breath as an object and allow our minds to come to a rest. for it is our minds that are the cause of all suffering. we pay to much heed to the thoughts that drift through, often attaching more significance than is necessary. while focusing on the breath, a whole bunch of stuff floats by, you let them go, don't cling to anything, just let it pass and eventually still the mind. in this space exists the void. reaching the void is the same state as being in an isolation chamber for a few hours. after the thinking stops, something else kicks in, a nothingness, the void. even time is obliterated and in this state, out brain can be changed, rewired and updated. but getting to that state requires commitment and hard work.
i see us all, my tribe who sit before me, having practised and practised for many years we can now almost instantaneously reach the void.
within the void we have work to do.

the difficult second album
strangely enough this feels like my first as the recording of adventures was done in trance states due to my brain damage and loss of the girl i was in love with. so here we are full circle, ready to start thinking about the next one.
what's happened in the meantime regarding my thoughts towards the music is a number of clarifying things.
i'm in tune with intelligence beyond my own, my muse is sending me information. sometimes it comes in plant form sometimes dreams sometimes just after deep meditative states. the information is strange and mystical yet ties in with a lot of stuff happening that links all things. for example. my muse instructs me to make trance dimensional pop music.
my own intellect leads me to the conclusion there is only one dimension, all others are in it, and this one dimension is god.
my experience tells me that my consciousness along with a few others has opened and expanded to embrace the current change in earth kundalini. the energy's here are cosmic. there is a planetary alignment happening soon, possibly in 2012 it's self but i am getting information from my intuitive self that things will happen on the 11th of november 2012.
i feel the earth in communication. i hear the whispers of it's guardians, i connect more with the call than anything else. its pulling me towards trans dimensional pop. i have residual songs from the last session that i need to let go off. Maybe an ep.
The second CD will be known as 'esoterotica' it will be warmer, more tropical and sexy, with thematic sexual and sensual overtones. Already one song is halfway recorded. The others are just forming in another world. I am drawn towards the tibetan bowls as my instrument of choice. the soft vibration of their sound powerful and ancient is the sound that transcends dimensions. its the calling sound, of union, it's gods front door bell. my cd will start with that sound. i feel we will journey through the ancient to the modern or all things will converge. this is the information i have gleaned over the last few months.

yoga
i'm the worst student in the class, overweight, i fall over, stumble around like a clown, i can't get my breathing right, i'm easily distracted by the girl to my right, my arms and legs hurt when i try to do the positions as they have breaks and wounds all over from years of accidents, my thoughts wander to the girl on the left and my mind feels like an oil slick spilling out onto something pure and gentle, yet by the end of the class i'm feeling amazing, like i just had a blood transfusion. yoga works for me. i want more.

i took a trip through my memories once, a landscape made of melting clocks just like dali, there were homes and houses, smells and sounds, children laughing and adults crying, there was a ghost playing with a wegee board summoning the living.
came to a big old house with a gothic vibe, the flowers were all overgrown with weeds and the trees alive with malevolence, there was a crow in the branch smoking a cigar, singing a jazz song with another playing a tiny saxophone, jivin. i listened to the voodoo message, 'don't dwell in the past don't return there'
i went to protest and found myself mute. i wandered onwards.
climbed up stairs, trying to find the door, but the steps just reached the sun and the sun just went on and on, and i was thinking no no no...
i was burning like icarus falling falling calling out for god, the devil and any random deity who happened to be in the neighborhood, fallen angel fallen friend fallen faller.
my descent was broken by a travelling band of troubadours and maverick's, wearing bright colours and playing tunes of the spirit and soul. they said 'hey brother you're home now.' so we lit up the peace pipe and blew some smoke rings, under stars and by the oceans gentle wave. i lived with a cute celtic girl who wore bangles on her feet and had the woman's way. she was strong and healing and nursed my wings. we lived in a tee-pee with a dog called pan. we read to one another, did yoga, meditated and surfed, grew our hair wild, untethered to anything material we were free. time propelled its influence no longer for this was love beyond time, just like a dream. there was no power and no desire to control, freedom smelt sweet and light.
then in some other dimension things began to bleed and everything started to change, i was trapped in a series of dreams, symbols and symptoms all merging like lyrics from a bob dylan song when he was just fucking with us, and then i found myself wrenched again. abducted by forces beyond my control.
all i carried with me was the terrible weight of loss and a tragic sadness of longing.
in this life i'm looking for something, something i only know when i find it, i don't know where to even look but i look everywhere, inside my heart, the depths of my soul, i look across the globe, asia, america, europe, i speak to poets politician's, thieves and jokers, i converse with holy peoples and the shaman and the wise, i talk to gardeners, builders, artists, scientists, mystics and magickians, people of the cloth, people of the metals, people of the woods, people of the book, i search within nature, the stars, the patterns in the sands, i look into the tiger eyes, and every night i ask, where will i find this thing that is lost to me.
one day in this strange life i find myself looking through bookshops in the city, old second hand ones where out of print books line the walls and form a maze, bookshops where the books choose you.
i'm walking along kings street. and i see a freind who yells out 'mission' and waves.
i turn and see a friendly face. not quite steve mcqueen in bullet type drive by motion but more like the killer with his beautiful kids. i salute you sir. the king of king st. i know you seek it to.

katmandu
1989
i'm sitting in my hotel at the top of the world smoking some hash, there's a knock at my door. i'm a bit spooked because i don't know anyone here therefore i'm not sure who it could be, my mind runs through a list of possibilities, the police, the hotels manager, someone from the embassy, perhaps it's that girl i saw in the markets, the canadian with the peanuts scarf. i open the door to see a tiny man dressed in red and orange robes, a monk. i'm somewhat stoned, the hash is going down nicely, the altitude. it's an awkward moment but i see the little chap can do me no harm so i invite him in. he steps inside my room.
'captain mission' he asks.
'yes' i respond surprised.
'you have to come with me.'
options run through my mind but there is only one that is worth pursuing. i'm curious, i'm to stoned to fear, and there's not much point in being paranoid up here unless you are in trouble with the chinese border police or smuggling contraband. all i had was ball of nepalese temple that i had half smoked, hardly enough to concern any one. i jumped up from my bed where i sat, grabbed my coat and hat and followed the monk out the door and up some stairs to the roof of the hotel. he said nothing on the way, just shuffled his feet forwards. i attempted to look into his eyes but they were obscured by the shadows, he did a gracious bow and muttered, 'captain mission, stay here.' then he returned down the steps.
up there it's hard not to appreciate the beauty even if your stoned, it's simply breathtaking. i gazed down at the people and the streets below and the mountains and the skies, breathtaking, i couldn't breath or it felt like it. a light encircled me, a beam of yellow light seemed to surround me and i could feel myself disintegrate. that is, every part of me seemed to fall apart, my skin just seemed to dissipate like the final moments of a sand mandala in the breeze. there was no pain just a tingling sensation and suddenly i was nowhere and then the tingling returned, only this time i was pulled together, i could feel myself re assemble, and i took a beautiful big breath.
'Wow'
I was no longer on the rooftop. I was somewhere else. Inside what looked to be like a clinical, medical facility only there were no walls, just a shimmering light and no signs of any instruments, in fact when i looked down there was no floor, everything had a silvery colour and then a face appeared, mercurial and silver, obviously non human.
'What is this?' I asked.
'Do not fear. We have no intention to harm you Captain Mission.'
'Why am i here?'
'To learn.' There was no real speech but the thought in my head, i could see the face now, it was an alien, classically looking archtype, with big round eyes and that child's mouth, the lips moved but the sound appeared in my head, telepathy.
'we are in a different dimension than you. everything appears different to you because you cannot imagine the next higher dimension of existence with you're brain structure at this moment in space time, but we want to share this with you. The lesson will be quick but you will learn quick, your brain will change dramatically and then we will return you to your place upon the roof.'
My mind was kind of falling apart but slowly enough to take stock. i had been teleported somewhere else, a space ship or some sort of military facility, these people were either genuine aliens or i was part of an elaborate hoax, both seemed possibilities. if it's a hoax then i should be a good sport and go along with it, i should not fear a few cameras and besides i should try to look good.
'okay lets go.' i said filled with a fake confidence.
they showed me my life from their dimensional view point, i appeared as a worm, a kind of giant worm because time for them was not cause and effect, it was just effect, my life from birth to now looked like one event, we all did. everything seemed to be in process, all heading towards one direction. my worm life was a beautiful thing, the way it intersected with yours, the way we are all part of this process towards consciousness.
then i re animated again, back to the rooftop. The monk was there to escort me down the steps. i thanked him and he left me on my bed. i smoked another joint and fell into this deep dream of life.

i was running through the afterlife, looking at the clouds, the flowers and the fish, the patterns in the wind. a man in a white suit pulls a flower from his sleeve, he presents it to his beloved and she swoons. later they bring their lips to one another, they begin to disappear but their lips hover together in a kiss just like floating goldfish. a pelican with a top hat smokes a cigar and sings an obscured pink floyd song from a soundtrack where everything explodes like an italian orgasm. there's the smell of lemons and the breeze is carrying the strained sounds of a familiar voice. i wander listlessly in it's direction following my nose and the rhythmic beating of my heart only my heart is pumping out elvis costello's 'tokyo storm warming.'
elvis appears before me, wearing a pork pie hat, glasses and a flash suit. the flash blinds me momentarily, darkness envelopes me and i stumble and fall to the ground, only the ground is no longer there, replaced by the abyss. i call upon my daemon, i call upon my holy guardian angel, i call upon the elements and the elephants, hindu deities, icons and angels, devils and demons, one of which appears. archdemon. we do a quick deal, some colombian cocaine for my safety. archdemon laughs as i seal the deal.
somewhere in the alley ways and streets i score some coke from a man who says it's the real thing, he deals in memories primarily so i trade mine for a bag of marching powder. i offer the powder to archdemon in a ritual conducted at midnight, under the full moon, he's pleased with me and offers me a line. i decline and slip into a fugue state, some divine light crosses my path, i shake it away, transfixed and tantalized by the beautiful illusion and temptation of sex with the seductress vampyric entity with the red hair and luscious lips. she looks familiar like stacia the hawkwind dancer, free form erotic follower of the babylonian current we indulge in congress when the director yells 'cut' and the exploitation industry packages our performance under the title, lesbian adventures in lust. i look at myself in female form, not unpeasing, stacia winks.

this morning time has slowed down to a gentle trickle, all things pass and i feel supremely fast but this is an optical and experiential illusion, a side effect. the mind plays tricks, it's played three on me since i awoke so therefore it plays hat tricks, in fact there was a rabbit in my hat that turned out to be a tortoise yet when i went to show it to my friend it was not there.
i went for my first swim in a long while. the ice cold water set my heart on fire, my skin reacted with shock and my mind wandered far away. under blue skies, perfect waves and my body floated like an jellyfish, soaking up sunlight, meditating on the void, the shock of the cold had sent me into suspended animation, my cryogenic existence a mere pulse in a landscape of deep blue. horizontal i left my body and floated away, visiting people i hardly know, serpentine and comfortable in my new state i weaved my way around their bodies and lives finding nothing i want except the desire to end. then my heart broke through and my day begun.
bumped into waynes world an old friend who once gave me a saucepan when i had nothing, a true friend, we spoke about a visit to india where i would like to visit certain parts especially the south and goa. he drove me into avalon where i played chess with lisa 1 and lost, she cooked me a fish salad and drove me home, we spoke about several different brands of ice cream and i recommended the best one i know, maggie beers burnt fig and caramel. divine.

do what you love
love what you do
the rest is just a side effect

i stuck the neuro feedback plug into my head and activated the switch, a computer screen kicked into operation before me, like a mirror. fractals danced upon the screen and moved in flux, some faster than others. the technique was to get some control of the patterns by controlling thoughts and contents of the mind/brain but this requires advanced meditation. i used the void technique and some electronic vibration music from a tibetan bowl assisted in focus.
slowly the shapes before me took form and merged into one fractal pattern, replicating the contents of my head in pure form.
stars exploded in the universe on my screen, planets formed, suns where born, life evolved, time expanded, relationships developed between these things, love was born. the fractal became a white pure energy. my body vanished, the computer vanished and the only thing left was bliss.

we are on a mission.
cross town escort
to a cool looking south american god
who sits in the back of my car
smoking a cigar
and knocking back south american beers
telling me about his wife
and how they had stuck together
for years
in transit states
in rose coloured shades
in the heat of the moment
in the cold light of day


we listen to daniel lanois
haunting slide tones
sydney harbour bridge shut down
so we go under the ground
to the destination
where the points meet
in the silky sunrise
in the currents and tide
in the eternal expansion
and the waves we all ride
say hello to the genius who greets me with his family
i pass him the plant and a book
he is listening to music
but one song is dead
the other can dance
one is a man who has a strange beard filled with stars
the other a woman who sounds like a siren
but not from the cars

he calls his family and we all eat pairs.
he has beautiful girls
a beautiful wife
and i imagine quite a beautiful life
i talk to much,
last nights excess makes words generate
before i know what they really mean
they dance on my tongue
before they make their escape
but the genius listens
he asks me a question about the pain
i answer honestly
im afraid of the repercussion's
but i'm excited by the possibilities
i'd like to sit on the fence but don't have that heart
we talk a bit more and then i depart.

i meet my brother whom is so far removed from myself
yet he believes in god
the soul, the spirit and health
we wander around bondi with his girlf
she says my story was brilliant
we have coffee in a nice big book shop
i see three copies of 'house of leaves'
i want to buy them all
but i can't afford to.
i see a girl in a floppy hat
i could fall in love with her
for a moment everything balances precariously
then i drive back home to mission control
the next night i visit sue and simon
they feed me food from the gods
they offer to sponsor my artwork
i'm a bit overwhelmed.
this is something
big.

my words
my music
my art

all coming together in some weird explosion
if ever there was a time for things to come together
it would be
NOW

i'm at a bbq hosted by an ex girlfriend who has just bought a spacer scooter i name her a cadet, therefore space cadet. nice bbq, i meet a man who digs Michel Houellebecq and enjoyed 'atomized' as much as i did, a rare occurrence. i end up drinking some germanic substances, and ingesting some south american powder which is unusual as i am usually resistant to such peer pressure but in a moment of weakness i kick back and go with the flow. it's not so bad, however after two hours sleep i have to awake for a mission into bondi with a certain plant for a certain time being and to see my brother. i'm confused by things the ex girlfriend said, i need to address these things at an appropriate time.

i like all gods creatures except moths, i have an inexplicable moth phobia that freezes me in terror and makes my hair stand on end and beads of sweat form along the back of my neck. dogs are best friends, loyal and dependent, and cats just are indifferent and cool. but moths fly in unpredictable paths and have weird powder on their bodies that causes pixies and elves to die horrid slow and agonizing deaths. they also are responsible for a diminishing bee population. for its a well known fact moths are the sworn enemies of the humble bumble bee.

haunted
by
captain mission

in 1979 i built a transistor radio / tape deck, that could tune into frequencies as yet very unexplored, especially on a level that this device could penetrate. to look at it was a kind of normal radio, although from the chunky late 70's. It was black with silver dials and i'd managed to install an terrestrial antenna for very low frequencies from 50 to minus 500 kHz. the main dial was the tuner but there were two other dials, one was to focus the tune thus getting clarity, the other emitted a low frequency attraction pulse. the idea being that the attraction pulse acted like bait, and the focus dial basically fine tuned while the big dial just tuned into the frequencies. if one looked inside the components you would be surprised to see some organic material amongst some basic electronics.
without giving details away there would be a bat skeleton, hair from a deceased human, some blood and tears mixed in a small vial (not my own) there was also the 'secret' section from the necronomicon that i had ritually prepared and inserted in the circuit boards.
the other main element to the radio was a high quality mike, hooked up to the tape recording part of the machine. this radio was a device that cold speak to the dead and record the answers. pretty good at a time when electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and instrumental transcommunication (ITC) where almost unknown.
anyways my idea was to use the elementary science and advanced magickal techniques i had learnt in a practical way and see what the results where. unfortunately i had made an error, it was not a 'bat' that was required at all, it was a raven or crow skeleton, and more specifically only the skull. years later when i rediscovered an interest in communicating with the dead i amended my mistake. (thanks people at neuro-magick conference 1997)
the results were brilliant in their clarity and execution, soon i was in command of the realm of the dead, people would come to consult me and my notoriety became almost global in an underground way. the strange thing was the dead would also come, i'd just have to turn the machine on and the dials would tune themselves, information became revealed as both the living and the dead made their exchanges. i learnt that there is always a two way process, but it is the living that are the most selfish.
where is the treasure?
where is the family fortune?
yet the dead only wish to know that they were loved and remembered.
my evenings and nights (the radio could only operate after sunset) where spent hour after hour fulfilling requests and i was beginning to suffer a bit myself, no time for sleep, no time for anything other than this strange mediation between living and dead. on average i received 30 to 40 letters a day, and at least 80 phone calls.

one day i picked up a strangely familiar voice, a soft broken transmission, with a hint of poetry and sadness, it was mine. my own voice, a communication from myself, maybe from the future because i am not dead yet. fear seized hold as i wrestled with the message. 'stop... transmission, tear hole.... in dimensional fabric stop...transmission stop...danger danger mission terminate mission.' etc. i unplugged the device quickly and buried it.
there were protests from the living and some from the dead, i still have disembodied voices whispering to me to retrieve the device and continue the dialogues, for the dead seek a salvation from the living, but i never succumb to their demands. i don't wish to be responsible for any anomalies in the fabric of space and time and these disembodied tragic 'voices' i can live with them. But could you?

follow your bliss
that's what i'd like to say if some one ever asks me what i do for a living.
the sad truth is i don't.
i attempt to find bliss in whatever i do
i fail often
Buddha says life is suffering
Mission says Buddhas on to something
the fact is life is getting complex and people struggle and fight with themselves more than anyone else
trying to make sense of it
trying to figure it out
trying to escape because sometimes the grey skies are so freaking heavy
sometimes you just gotta be strong and know when to chose your battles.
and when to admit defeat
sometimes you just gotta let it all go.
winning the competition was important because i needed validation that i was a good writer and capable of being recognised. but the fact is writing is writing, weather its good is a subjective expression. my writing just is.
i'm happy with that.

grey morning i awake with a phone sending out loud signals intruding into my tortured dream, it's crazy dave offerring me masses of musical equipment for a cheap price. i thank him and then just as i'm drifting back, phone still in my hand it rings again. it's my clients mother, some how she managed to get hold off my number, she's rung me to say she supports me and likes me and i have a friend in her.
i thank her and figure the day may as well start now.
i meet my friend evan, a wise friend, some one i am close to. we both feel the earth weep as it acknowledges it has to shake us up a bit, we both feel it's hurt as rain forests are chopped down for ethanol, whales are hacked for make up and science, we know the sad and empty truth. we both know reading the newspaper won't make us feel better. my friend mike says not reading the newspaper is like a form of denial. i get caught in the middle. i read the science articles. they discovered a new planet 10 times the size of jupiter orbiting a star. they have not named it yet but i will refer to it as 'kilbey two' after steve.

this may be the last time
this may be the last time
this may be the last time
i don't know
this may be the last time
this may be the last time
this may be the last time
i don't know

i attended the writers competition where i came second to a very mediocre and 'northern beaches' safe short story, filled with the bland and somewhat infertile pontifications about beautiful avalon and sunny pittwater. which of course it is but why write about the obvious, apparently the panel was torn about the winner. anyway i was disappointed but in the face of defeat the captain knows i am only made stronger. i did eat the biscuits and drink the complementary wine and scared the mayor of pittwater buy telling him i was a radical environmental terrorist with PETA sympathy's.
the whole evening could have spiralled into self indulgent depression were it not for the two lisa's calling me up and inviting me over to the home they are house sitting where i met with gravy in the kitchen. err gravy being a man and being somewhat an amazingly talented individual with a healthy and refreshing attitude, we spoke about strange things like neurology, bat viruses,magic carpets, musical inspiration while we listened to the smiths and elvis costello. i really enjoy hanging around these guys, great people, think i'm going to hang with them for a while.

No Water
By
Captain Mission

My great grandfather had told me Nowater was the most beautiful place on the earth, he often spoke warmly of the natural beauty, the way the ocean and land met with the sky, the way light fell and diffused through the many trees, bounced across the water from boat to boat, he said it was gods country and whenever he spoke of it there were tears in his eyes, but god had relocated now, there was no sign of him here.
I stood upon the ruins of the lighthouse, gazing out at the salt flats. Once upon a time, in my great grandfather’s day this was all water, it was once known as Pittwater, now it is more appropriately Nowater.
The ocean was almost just a myth, gone the way of his god.
I often imagined my great grandfather’s world, peaceful and uncomplicated. Life must have been a simple equation in those days, a beautiful time to be alive. He enjoyed the leisure within nature, now we all just survive against it.

Winston pointed out to the salt hills in the distance, ‘My people used to live over there. They left their markings in the caves. I think you should still be able to see them if the salt hasn’t got in there, it’s so abrasive, might have worn the markings away.’
‘How old would they be Winston?’
‘Old. Before history, before time.’
‘Can we see them?’
‘We would have to cross the flat. Can we make it?’
I checked the sun, ‘Yeah easy. Let’s go.’
We began our descent.
Winston took the lead, I followed, one foot in front of the other, careful not to loose my footing. ‘It’s had to imagine this was all bush.’
‘Yeah all bush and ocean. It’s all gone now. Just salt.’
‘People used to live here to, there were communities. There must be homes and cars and bodies under these hills. Our cultures were very different Winston, yours lived in harmony with the land, as custodians, mine dominated it and caused all this.’
Winston kept silent, there was nothing to say.
When we hit ground level I picked up a lump of white rock, applying a slight amount of pressure it disintegrated in my hands, a fine powder trailed in the wind.
‘Salt, it’s all fucking salt now. All that’s left.’
‘Come on let’s head out there, before the sun gets to high.’
As we walked closer I could see some sort of structure rising out from the ground, in fact it was the only thing standing at a right angle to the surface. It looked man made, like some sculpture. Impossible I thought. We walked towards it, each step bringing us closer to the mystery. The sun was still low but even through my visor I could feel it’s blaze. As we approached Winston began to mumble something, a chant. I didn’t recognize the words, it was his native tongue, a song.
For a moment I wished I could take of my helmet and just feel the sunlight on my skin, I had never felt natural light unfiltered before directly from a sun, the visor had many layers of filters that protected us yet gave everything a strange monochromatic tint. I longed for the breeze through my hair and to run my fingers along the strange cathedral structure that was sticking out from the sand, towering over our heads. It was a giant rib cage, probably from a whale.
A whale.
I had seen images of them, heard their sounds on recordings but they were like a myth to me, lost in antiquity.
I had never had a religious feeling before, the numinous was missing from our lives replaced by just the brute will to survive. No one considered anything mystical or supernatural but here I stood within the ribcage of this dead creature overwhelmed by something inexplicable. It was impossible to consider that there was no more whales left, that this mighty beast had once been covered in flesh and swum freely in the earths oceans, feeding and playing, singing its own song. We killed them with our ignorance and arrogance.
‘My ancestors sung the whale song, they walked in the whale dreaming.’
‘I wish we could be as proud of our ancestors as you are of yours Winston my friend.’
Winston patted me on the back of my suit, ‘Come we need to beat the sun.’
I walked backwards looking back at the strange bones, they cast a long shadow across the salt, their points meeting at the direction we had come from.
I imagined what this must have been like when my great grandfather was a child. He said he once fished here and he spoke of sailing upon calm waters along the beautiful crystal clear rivers. He said that even though he was near a city it felt as if we were somewhere in prehistoric times.
Now his descendants live in post history in a terrible aftermath.
I thought about the other expeditions and wondered if they had discovered anything as magnificent as the whale cathedral. My cameras attached to the suit would record everything, later we would process the information and make assessments. One day we may be able to live out here again but the air is still very toxic, sun far to dangerous, the land incapable of sustaining life. Humanity would be confined to the Dome for many thousands of years but for life in cosmic terms that would be a blink of an eye. My great great grand children’s grandchildren may one day breathe clean air and drink water naturally. That would be wonderful I thought. Hope sustains life as much as water.
I looked back at our footprints, two sets across the white surface cutting the landscape like a gash upon nature. Those footprints were so out of place amongst the strange empty landscape. I followed them until they took me back to where we had landed, although our module was hidden by the white backdrop of and high ground.
It was becoming harder to make out details.
This was a form of snow blindness we had been warned about. The human eye couldn’t distinguish between the various subtle shades of white within the environment, plus the ultra violet light bouncing from the surfaces eventually swamp the retinas and the brain declares everything as white. Another reason to get over to the other side while the sun was low.
We had been walking for about two hours, I figured another 30 minutes before we reached the shore.
The sound of our breathing was all we could hear. I felt dizzy overwhelmed with the landscape and the strange feelings the whalebone sculpture had left me with.
How could something like that ever have had a life?
Where is its family?
Why was it alone, how would it feel to die out here alone?
I felt the ground rise up to meet me.

I came to in the darkness of what could only be a cave. Winston was sitting with me smiling.
‘Take it easy Jakob. Rest for a moment. You are fine, I just brought you out of the sun. We have to stay here for 4 hours then we can start the return journey.’
‘I’m so sorry I passed out. Everything just went white. Did you carry me?’
‘Yeah, it was no problem. Rest and then I’ll show you something.’
I checked my suit, nothing was damaged save for a few scratches upon my helmets visor. I adjusted the air conditioner and checked my solar cells, full power. I felt a slight claustiaphobia but my breathing exercises helped regulate my fear.
I stood up and walked to Winston’s side, he was filming the cave walls. There were some rock paintings, pictures of animals; I could see a large bird, a fish and various creatures I did not recognize. They were drawn in what must have been paint or charcoal, not much color just black and hints of fading red ochre, they looked ancient and primal but they seemed to have an essence of beauty about them.
‘Why did they paint these here?’
‘I’m not sure. Probably before a hunt, maybe to visualize what they needed in some sort of hunting ceremony, maybe they just tell a story. My ancestors loved stories.’
‘Yeah I’ve heard about the dream time stories but I never really understood it.’
‘Come. Let’s look down here. You will need your light.’
I activated my helmets light and a beam lit the way ahead. The cave took a steep descent and the ceiling seemed to rise upwards even higher. Our movements echoed as we followed the trail down. The passageway seemed to go on for a few hundred metres, Winston assisting me clamber down other more difficult areas. Occasionally we would stop to look at the markings on the walls. The images now became more abstract, symbols, a few animals but more representative of something other than a simple ‘hunting’ ritual.
There were a few numbers, and something I recalled from a class I had taken in applied theoretical particle physics and quantum math, it was an infinity symbol and some ‘closed time curve’ configurations.
I was looking at an equation, something to do with Tachions.
Winston looked at me incredulously, ‘This makes no sense at all.’
‘Let’s keep going, maybe we will pick up some clues.’
‘What do you think happened to the people here?’
They moved inland when the white settlers came. Some were killed but mostly they just moved away. My ancestors were nomads. Eventually they assimilated and the old ways were forgotten. There are a handful of descendants left back at the dome, but in another generation we will be no more.’
‘Same as my people really.’
‘I didn’t know you had a people Jakob.’
‘ Ha! They were called the Jews Winston. Now just another dead tribe.’
‘Now we have one tribe. One people.’ Winston said proudly.
‘Winston, we have always been one tribe really. We just couldn’t grok it.’
We both exchanged a smile and continued the walk.
Eventually the walls began to get further apart and we emerged into a huge underground cavern. I could make out the stalactites and stalagmites, calcium deposits, which would mean there is water here. My training kicked in, I took a sample.
The chance for life, I smiled. Hope. Nowater could reclaim its original name.
‘Let’s send a flare,’ Winston whispered making the moment seem even more sacred.
We crouched down, positioning the flare gun somewhere into the darkness beyond. A purple streak flew across the cave and suddenly exploded into a massive expanse of falling bright white light. We stood in a huge cavern, endless, there were no boundaries, no distance between walls or ceilings that we could distinguish, it was a huge expanse of emptiness. There were no visible life forms, no plants or animals, just these strange rock formations and the sprinkling of salt that had found its way inside.

It seemed almost that we were on the other side of the mirror, over ground and under ground, both the same desolation but both opposites, one without hope, one with, one without light one with, one without water one with.
Then Winston started yelling.
‘Jakob, Jakob come quick. Jakob. Look! Look! It’s impossible.’
I ambled towards him, he was looking at the wall paintings, face pressed right up close, I could see the glint of fear in his eyes. There were more drawings of mathematical symbols, some I recognized. There was a lot of physics represented here, quantum mechanics and wave theory.
‘I didn’t know the aboriginals were so advanced in their thinking Winston. Space. Time. It’s all like a dream. Dream time.’
‘I don’t know what these markings signify,’ he said pointing at the equations, ‘that’s not what scares me.’ His hand moved further along, ‘Have a look at this.’
Winston’s head beam followed direction with his head movement, over to the lower left of the equations was the unmistakable image of a whale’s rib cage. Then next to it were two people in white suits, complete with helmets and over on the highlands was a landing ship, a spacecraft. Our module. Granted it was a poor representation but it was unmistakably us.
We recorded the pictures.
‘How is it possible Winston?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t understand it.’
‘It’s not really possible at all.’
‘But here it is.’
‘Yes.’
We returned across the salt flats in silence. Both of us surrendered to the mystery, both lost in our thoughts. As we passed through the whale ribs again I felt a teardrop falling from my left eye. We climbed up on the banks of the salt hill and made our way to the module. Whatever this place was we both knew it was sacred. It was a holy place, spiritual. It didn’t matter that it was desolate, incapable of sustaining life for the next million years, maybe longer. It had a power beyond that, beyond time and space. Whatever happened when we returned to the dome, we would carry that knowledge with us always and we would tell our children of the magic of this place.

This land has a power and we would both respect it in a way that would make all our ancestors proud.
Winston and I had left our mark there, we had drawn another picture on the cave walls, a picture of ourselves, a white skinned man and a black man holding hands. We were brothers. We had thought we come from different tribes but we were the same tribe. This was our connection, this was our bond this is what made us family.
As the module left the Earth’s lower atmosphere I looked downwards at the place we had left behind.
Pittwater, Sydney Australia, The Earth. It was once home, it was once the sustainer, the nurturer, the mother to us all, and it would be again.

The end

in my other life, the one where i work at autistic central, i am surrounded by idiots, the ones without autism. the truth is nsw government bureaucracies are corrupt and nepotistic, they are not interested in the clients, they are only concerned with looking good, image and keeping the media at bay. one day i will expose them, one day soon.

the only way to be authentic is to be true to yourself, the only way to be true to yourself is to know who you are, the only way to know who you are is to experience the boundaries dissolve, because everything you think you know changes and the truth is revealed. everything is an illusion, our brains deceive us, they can't think about the process of thinking so it invented the mind and the mind is not the brain, what is it?
the mind is consciousness exploring itself.

science looks at everything in terms of quantity and function.
spirituality looks at quality and intention.
eventually both reach the same conclusion.
all you need is love
love is all you need

two lisas and i end up at a party on the plateau, where lisa one gets busted stealing crackers, for a moment she looks frozen in time, wondering what to do next to break the spell of being observed. she smiles, disarming everyone. it's a classic moment, one we laugh hysterically about later. lisa two and i talk about physics, she lived near CERN and tells me its got a cheap cafe filled with great conversations. she tells me about homeopathy and i talk about plant medicine. its not everyday i am in the company of two beautiful and bright young women. we hang out in a balinese garden, we have a biscuit carving competition. i create a battery hen. a woman accosts me in the kitchen telling me about how she knows my son. i just want to escape but i can't, i'm hemmed in. there's some chocolate cake going around, i make my escape, regroup with the girls, exit.

i finish the book neuropath by scott barker, it's disturbing but brilliant plot has left me feeling uncomfortable. the science in it is not far off and the theory is sound. all we are are brains and all the brains are are a giant brain and every thing else an illusion. love is a chemical response. pain and pleasure interchangeable, all spiritual experience can be recreated by playing with the brain.
what is meaning if not science.

i'm somewhat disappointed that we didn't get sucked into the black hole...does that make me weird?

anyways i've made it to the final selection of the short story competition. i have to turn up at the bookshop in case i win, then they say, i have to read my story to the people. i will surprise everyone with my cultivated accent and interesting elocution, the literary girls will all want to fuck me and someone from a glossy magazine will take my photograph. i will talk to them about my life and tell them stories of travels and tales of adventure, they will be scared and amused and sucked into my persona. they will wine and dine me, introduce me to duchesses from duchland and a sexy countess from norway, women will inspire me to write more romantic novels and in my epoch years i will be invited to writers festivals interstate, meet paul auster and smoke joints with my sexy agent, who wears thigh high leather boots. i will take a year out, reside in paris, or maybe berlin, or lima. i will make friends with a waitress, a stripper or a monkey. we will have a small adventure and i will profess undying love, we will marry (unless it is the monkey) and i will write stories and articles for international journals and magazines. eventually i will be shot by a man in a black suit, he will ask forgiveness and bow down before he pulls the trigger. i will die instantly but not before he will be forgiven. i will be 96.

mid town new york circa 1967
eddie intrudes on a conversation between dylan and reed with an unlight cigarette.
bob does not move as eddie puts her face to his ears and whispers, ‘light my fire zimmer man.’
he does not blink but offers her his lighter. she holds hands with truman caopte who looks awkward and nervous. phycadelic lights swirl around her white short dress so she looks in flux, colour certainly explodes here.
truman wants to interview reed but reed isn’t talking to anyone tonight except dylan, they are discussing the fundamentals of their art.
does it matter if our art is never even observed? reed says
no, what matters is the expression.
you mean the act.
yeah that’s all it is.
so why play and record
to share the experience of art man.
i don’t think you should even think about it, just do it, eddie says.
yeah but who do you do it for eddie dylan asks
it don’t matter. just have to express it and the rest is just a side effect.
like an illusion.
no like creation.
what about the value of it.
the value is arbitory.
no there’s a quality that matters man, there’s got to be a cure for the mediocrity.
that’s what we are lou says.
truman makes his one on only contribution to the conversation, ‘one day the universe will be sucked into a black hole.’
andy approaches with two transsexuals either side. ‘you’re on lou.’


down town sydney circa 2008
captain mission hangs around a small club waiting for the painkiller.
he sees some old friends, they chat about technology and the amount of cameras in the room.
soon it will be in our biology. imagine being able to zoom in and rewind and all you have to do is close your eyes.
yeah well it’s in the imagination already.
how true.
the support band exit and a curtain is drawn, some interestingly diverse people gather, cameras everywhere, lights begin to swirl and then from behind the curtain some radio phonics (that’s phonics) begins to transmit. the curtain draws and the band begin.
straight into outlander. already things are very different, this is new territory, this is what we look for, this is it. yes. there captain mission stands between to go betweens, there’s a strange area created at the front of the stage, like a sonic force field no one penetrates but all stand transfixed. these people on stage make more than music, they don’t play their instruments, they are the instruments here it is, i get it it’s the cure. a shot in the mind, a kick in the cortex, mediocrity dies here.
it’s no good describing any of this, i can feel my heart beating, thunderous bass notes, watch that man, two strange new players on the stage, one a vampyre with all the romance that goes with it, the other warm and humorous with a glimmer in his eyes and a smile for someone out there, you can see they have the beauty and skills to deliver us safely. and here behind the skins is tim, i’ve always loved the way tim plays, it drives everything, the throbbing engine room, the dylithium crystal. there are beats there that are subtle and pure, there’s an intricate delicacy at work, power in passivity and then when it rocks it rolls and when it rolls it rocks, that’s the way it is. and to give everything texture a sonic scientist plays his dials and knobs, sending out the frequencies, creating a the parameters, space rock is alive and well. i’m picking up a message from beyond, calvert sends his blessings.
and then there’s steve. what can be said about this wonderful enigmatic shaman that has not been said before. he’s the jewel in the skull, the eternal champion. best gig ever, yeah i’m sorry i never got a chance to say ‘hello’ to nk last night, for behind every great man there’s always a great woman, and she was spot on, best gig ever.

cern under the swiss french border 2008:
while the band plays the ambient section of ‘not what you say’ scientists switch on the super collider

sometimes i just want to curl up with some one warm and sleep for a week
sometimes i just want to close my eyes and see
sometimes i need to drink from a stream to quench my thirst
sometimes i desire a girls kiss and her whisper
sometimes i wish there were no cars
sometimes i need to see the earth from space
sometimes i'd like to catch a wave to your feet
sometimes i want to be invisible
sometimes i want to be seen
sometimes i talk to animals
sometimes my heart beat slows down
sometimes time dissolves
sometime i feel like a fraud
sometimes i want to commit the crime of the century
sometimes i would like to walk into the sea
sometimes i'd like to weep for us all
sometimes memory is a curse
sometimes my laugher fills the universe
sometimes i want to bite you
sometimes i lick my bowl clean
sometimes the beginning equals the end
sometimes i regret
sometimes i float
sometimes i don't know anything
sometimes i dream it was us
sometimes its perfect
sometimes i want the red head to materialize in my bedroom
sometimes i just want to turn the dial up all the way
sometimes i turn the lights off
sometimes i smoke my jazz cigarette and gaze at the stars
sometimes i walk on the beach and remember a girl called marnee
sometimes i can't even stand it
sometimes i press all the buttons
sometimes i pick up the pieces
sometimes i don't know
sometimes i stay up all night
sometimes i read until i fall asleep
sometimes i strum my guitar until words come
sometimes i let the dimensions merge
sometimes i hear new sounds
sometimes i start a revolution without even doing anything
sometimes i am a free man
sometimes i feel the walls closing in
sometimes i give it all away
sometimes i just say 'yeah'
sometimes i can't see the trees for the wood
sometimes i wish i were in paris with the cello player
sometimes i think about angels
sometimes i wonder if the devil got a better deal
sometimes i get high
sometimes i just want to blast of to the horse shoe nebula in a purple space submarine with a shit load of girlfriends and books and jake

i am still immersed in amazon beaming, mcintyre now a member of the mayoruna travels with them as they prepare for the ritual that will take them to the beginning of time, and of course the ritual is ayahuscia. here he describes his bones melting away, his mind becoming limitless, he suggests a kind of birthing. he describes the animals that grow inside the bodies of the indians, how the visions can be diagnostic tools for healing or have a spiritual nature, he talks as if demons are expelled from the body, he talks about the sharing afterwards, he talks about the way the body is revitalized after sleeping, hunting ability becomes millions of times magnified the next day, and he understands man moves through time, in all directions. he understands death.

much later in the book mcintyre has escaped the mayoruna tribe in a small raft during a terrible storm, he thinks the head shaman barnacle may have died. eventually he gets rescued and taken by sea plane back to his civilization, where he immediately writes a letter

dear barnacle
i don't expect this letter to reach you, since the postal service dosn't reach bolognesi, and if it did you couldn't read it without help from someone like cambio (hello cambio my friend) but writing it makes me feel that you are alive.
i sailed down with the flood to return to my territory, soon i will look for the beginning of time, and the mother of rivers in the andes. but i will return one day to your beginning, with my pack full of knives and medicines. together we will preform acts of kinship that no wild creatures preform, like sitting near a fire and sharing food, or making arrows, or simply thinking silently until our thoughts find a way to connect.
i wonder if you ever thought of the possibility of the space time continuum, but you probably had no time for thinking about it as you are an expression of it. you are a scientist in your own way dear barnacle, as much as i am in mine. you see everything around us as alive and therefore reachable, there is nothing forbidden to human experience. that's why you can travel in time even though you don't know what time is (me neither) and that's why you are present here and will some how earn the contents of these notes.
i want to know about time, about everything, the source of the river and the natural world it sustains.for you its less important to know about these things but to do with them. you do something with time whereas i agonize over understanding it, you have taught me a lesson. i expect you will give me further proof of the space time mind continuum, not because its important but because i arrived onto the confines of your mode of operation. and that mode is becoming my mode to.

and then later mcintyre mounts an expedition to locate the true source of the nile which he eventually finds. as he is at such high altitudes he describes he cosmic radiation, gamma rays...

those tiny particles arrive very infrequently but come in showers, they pierce our hearts, brains, organs, and drill hundreds of feet into the earth, radiation is thought to effect genetic changes. highlanders are exposed to more than lowlanders, are highlanders more evolved?
i'm thinking like an indian, everything is connected, the universe is one thing, world and mind are one.
as i ponder the gamma radiations effect on evolution i stumble and fall. tired? do i lack a gene programming my feet to step high enough to avoid tripping. it's easier to blame a galactic beam than admit a fifty four year old body can falter...

ah beautiful. i love his sense of time, i understand it completely and its great he managed to hold on to his sense of humour after his experiences, this is evolution in my opinion.

at the end of the book mcintyre finds the source, a lake in the very heights of the andes, he drinks from it. then slips over and passes out from exhaustion and disorientation and altitude sickness, in these mixed states he has a vision,

walls of ice, small humanoid figures wearing animal skins, caring spears, their passage through the landscape was sparse but warned all creatures that a new species was entering their habitat. he walks with them, following them to the majestic river sources. he was overwhelmed with the beauty and wanted to share it with the strange people, he felt the feeling was shared and recognized his companions. these were barnacles ancestors.

when he comes around he is alone, survival mode kicks in but he can't move, he's to cold and in pain. then the 'beaming' begins again, communication from barnacle who tells mcintyre he can survive, he also tells mcinttyre that now he can have the'cat people' whiskers as he has been to the source. mckintyre is rescued by his mountain climbing colleagues.


later in the evening i get a call from lisa a friend, we arrange to have dinner. i am at the restaurant and suddenly get confused about the time she said we should meet, so i call her. a boy answers..
cm: can i speak to lisa please.
boy: who the fuck is this?
cm:it's me
boy:who the fuck are you and why do you want lisa?
cm: i'm havng dinner with lisa tonight
boy: no you're fucking not you liar. you fucking tell me how you know lisa.
cm:i'm her friend, she invited me out for dinner
boy:no your not you fucking @#@* who the fuck are you.
cm:oh forget it.

later i get a text saying, 'if you don't call me back i will tell the police.'

i check the number i have with the number lisa called me on and its different, i've rung a different lisa. i imagine she gets a hard time from her boyfriend but figure i won't get involved he can work it out himself.
anyway lias and i were joined by another lisa and a few other people and we all have a wonderful time until the staff at the japanese restaurant start giving us the evil eye because they want to go home. then when we pay the bill a conflict occurs, i mention to lisa that i won't be returning for dinner there ever again. we round the evening of with hot chocolates at cachinos, a much nicer establishment.

how does it all work, i go to work, get paid, money comes in, it goes out, i am in it's flow, i owe my brother money that i'm struggling to return, i owe speeding fines, i owe rent, and car payments, i can't afford to have a social life yet i manage to get my dose, here and there, in really need a budget or at least to control my book habit. i like being alone and reading my books, drinking water or tea, i don't like noise yet i make music, i hate electric lights but love the sun, i don't abuse my body or mind with pharmaceuticals but i feed them plant medicine, i don't believe in ghosts just the spirits and i love love yet i am single, i'm the most romantic man in the world yet there's no one special in my life. i have a brother that is going back to london yet i want him to stay, i have a son that is brilliant and i wish we could spend more time together but he is torn with work and university as i am with my commitments, i have a cd out that i should feel excited about but instead the whole notion of selling it seems absurd. i have millions of things i want to say and only repeat myself, im a walking contradiction within a paradox and these are the forces pulling me every which way. i can see the attraction of living in the jungle with the tribes people.

here's a strange thing.
i took my camera to paul weller, thought i'd just get a few pictures, as i said before i'm not a huge fan (love the track heavy soul) but i respect his work and i thought i may get an interesting shot, which i did. and then when i put the film in the shop rang me five mins later to say they had fed the film into the machine and accidentally destroyed it. they offer me a replacement film. i'm amazed that these places can be so blase about this, i mean what if they was wedding photo's or i was using them professionally and lost income. what this means is, anyone could open up anything service orientated and not offer the service they are promoting. then it hit me, this is the very problem with society. it's filled with people offering a service they can't deliver.

i meet martin in the city, we wander around the nautical museum, looking at antiquity then we wander up to meet jake for dinner and a few drinks. it's great, you know i was really happy with my brother and jake, laughing and being together. it's a rare thing as we are all so busy but i thought to myself, this is all that really matters. jake and i have a look at the view from martins office, its breath taking. then we wander through the executive conference rooms and corridors and labyrinths of the legal peaks. i run to a podium and go into a fake holly wood accent.
"ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and you (i point to an imaginary audeince) lets see (i pull an imaginary envelope out) the nomonies for the best leading actor are, (read from imaginary list)
for his role in 'non stop porn party 2' martin mission
for his role in non stop porn party 2 jakob mission and the winner is....." etc

so i have an e mail from fbi who congratulate me and say they will play my cd on two shows, 'the bridge' and the 'up for it'
bless you fbi radio

took the deep fix cd down to fbi open day, met with the producer and mumbled a few words to him about the type of music i was making, err, trans dimensional, intergalactic tribal gospel punk with a bit of ambient electro boogie. anyways then i met with some people from music australia who told me about the a to z of the music industry from a business point of view, it was so strange hearing about insurance and all the different agencies you have to join just to freaking make music. anyways i did meet a great guy from an old sydney band called tall tales and true, he was a guitarist who is making soul music with his partner. i liked him a lot, really funny and kinda easy aura. anyways we are in this interview room when suddenly i'm tuning into the music they are playing on air, its painkiller, steves new cd. i run out of the room all excited, 'hey is this painkiller, steve kilbeys new cd?'
i asked hoping to have a look at the cover, but the faces at reception just look at me blankly and say 'have a listen to the dj when it finishes, which i do, but the dj makes no announcement. anyways i know who it is.



i return to the meeting room, where the people are talking about government grants, but i'm zoning out, i don't understand how an artist has to jump through all these hoops just to display their art, its so not what art is. the act of creativity is what's important to me. i tell the business people about the circumstances behind my head injury and how 'adventures' came in to be. everyone is really interested and amazed by the synaesthesia qualities i use in recording.

it's a beautiful day here at mission control, sunlight fills the the rooms, my plants all seem happy, pan sits outside chewing on a bone, the birds chirp and if i had a pet octopus i'm sure he would be ecstatic. i've been head buried in 'amazon beaming' by petru popescu, an amazing true story based around loren mcintyres travels with the legendary mayoruna tribe in the amazon. he gets left in their company and learns about them through the head shaman who literally beams information into his head. the book is so well written, it's like an adventure story but with lots of information about the amazon and the belief systems it's inhabitants use to navigate their reality. i love it, especially mcintyres commentary as he struggles not to loose his mind when it is obvious his mind is lost. this tribe are the 'cat people' who had never had outside contact before, mcintyre and the tribe are on the same quest, to find the beginning of time. this is brilliant writing and a truly brilliant story. descriptions of the jungle at night are enough to totally freak anyone out, there's one scene where mcintyre is loosing all his sense of boundaries as the depth of the jungle becomes the depth of his awareness. he's being eaten alive, lost and alone and his mind is slipping away into the frontiers of another reality.
there's an amazing scene where the tribe start bringing out all their possessions, even things that help them survive, cooking implements, arrows, clothes and they all pile them into a heap and then burn them. mcintyre wanders around confused, why would they do this, he thinks and then beamed into his head, he hears the voice of the head shaman, 'They hold us still.'
go out and buy this book, go and read about these people from amazonia, learn what they have to say about us, it's profoundly moving and wonderful and learn what our response is, that bits terrifying.