Tuesday, 24 February 2026

WILLY WONKA'S PHILOSOPHY FACTORY





1. It’s good to have something simple and practical to do with one’s hands.


That’s why I might check online to see if there is a pottery class in Cumbria. Sometimes you need to get away from the screen, that altar, where you vent your spleen, all your rage in the cage for the minimum wage, your mood made stable at a sterilised table, going through endless semi-recursive files - and do something practical as I say, something simple, something with your hands. It would take my mind off things – but if the nearest pottery class is Lancaster I’d say that is too far to go just for an hour of pottery. Still, if the answer is Ulverston that might be doable. The devil makes work, as they say, for idle hands, and while I write they are not idle, but I do seem to go over the same ground again and again – the laptop becomes a virtual Brainforest, a teeming data-tree, an inchoate morass of possibilities. So to get away, to take a break, to get miles away from it, to explore something as simple and practical as pottery could be above all else therapeutic. It’s an idea I got from my mother who also recommends working with your hands in the garden, particularly because there is a chemical in the soil called melatonin which is the same chemical your brain releases when it is feeling happy.






































2. One should use one’s time at the cryptic crossroad to denounce violence.


Violence is wrong and the world can do without it. It would be false to believe that we are all sinless, but when we react we must do so without violence, calmly. In our time there is war between Russia and the Ukraine and war leaks in the head from afar, speeded by the driverless car, making one feel nauseous and insecure. It should be stopped. There is also said to be a war going on online, which one would presume is over the commodity of Information.


There are those among us, meanwhile, that believe as a matter of stance before life that unless they exact bloody revenge on those that trespass against them, their own wound in the real will never heal, but it’s wrong. It’s wrong to do violence unto another or cause suffering, and as the saying goes, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”


Of course war is more than a nauseous feeling of insecurity felt from afar – it is running and screaming, colourful and loud – but it does leak in the head when there is a war in a far off place, even if the countries involved don’t speak your language. Violence of all kinds is wrong. The world needs more love in it. There is an old song by a band called Three that goes “you can’t trust violence,” and it is a soulful number, a tear-jerker too.


This one would understand is government policy – to do away with violence – and it could be my moment to say that it is specious that the Feds are evil if they step in to save your life when you are in a tight spot in Monopoly Jail. It could be my cue to say tragedy is the moving from love into chaos and the human form of chaos is war; and war is characterised by violence; and violence is wrong.





























3. ‘Awesome’ is a word that is often misapplied but sometimes is in order.


It’s hardly a cosmi-economic theory but my father used to say, of this family home where the Plough alignment is viable, that “the value of this house should include The Bigger Picture.” It could also go the other way into a neo-Marxist direction; but if we gave the house away for 50p, (after spending £30, 000 doing it up), we wouldn’t be able to buy a new house. The Age of Enlightenment was said to be the simultaneous astrological and sociological de-centering of Man and the White House its child in terms of both philosophy and build, and nowhere has that been more apparent to me than when observing the Plough alignment with the oldest fell Black Combe at a time of a rhythm change in the White House. To devalue that priceless gift would seem counter-intuitive to my meagre mind, and what happens in reality is that an estate agent will neither increase nor decrease the value of the house should it be on the market. That is, they will not factor the alignment in, nor devalue the house to 50p (which could also be said to be factoring the alignment in) but measure the value against the other houses. My father inherited the house from his father, and passed it on to my mother when he passed away; but still, I sometimes hear sadistic voices disputing that my father ever owned it. I think he did by law but there is an extent to which the Plough alignment belongs to us all. When dad spoke of valuing in the Bigger Picture he meant syncretism – the belief that all religions share a common goal - but there have been philosophers such as Sir Karl Popper – who taught my father at the LSE in the 1960’s - who don’t believe there is a Bigger Picture towards which things tend.

































4. Sunlight multiplies by dancing.


But having mentioned light, philosophy is more about air. The considerations of this organism are very much air. It’s 16. 25 and I insufflate my Vape pen, unfit. I picture a world where we don’t need to breathe because we’re all so united that oxygen falls in you from above… I can’t see it happening. Whatever the effect of global warming on the unicorn means as a postmodern ‘id,’ I can’t see us learning to evolve out of breath. No symbiant circle, poetry hive-mind, Communist ego-loss experiment, omnijective interface of random access co-imagination, surely, can start to bypass the need to breathe. I must’ve got quite high, into some interesting headspace, to think of a “mouth” like that.











































5. Philosophy might’ve died.


Is it true that philosophy might’ve died? I don’t know, but heard it on the airwaves in that song we call the new music. It is true that most lives are unaffected by things like Wittgenstein. As John Gray writes in The New Leviathans, the universe too remains indifferent to human philosophy. The human mind is a spec of dust in the cosmic order, he says. Life is essentially meaningless, in other words.


But with philosophy we try and give it meaning. The quest for meaning is not such a bad one to be on. The quest for meaning implies that we can redeem a situation with the salvation of our arts and sciences too. It gives us hope, something to strive for, without which the entire enterprise of research would collapse in on itself.









































6. It isn’t too hard to ideate a theory of meaning.


If I need a theory of meaning I could just reiterate a few salient points:


a) The pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, when translated via the mechanics of meaning, into words, represents dilution.


b) When you renounce the quest for meaning, you find it, fall back on meaning-by-proxy.


c) The meaning of something is inherent to its exact mode of expression.


d) Meaning is not a delusion unlike Time.


e) Meaning is an emotional import given mere exo-skeleton with words.


– These statements seem to state the obvious and are largely not original but that doesn’t mean they are not true. My next point is that:


f) Meaning is an effect of differences in sound combined with differences in idea.


g) If all these statements are simultaneously true, something “polysemic” has happened.


h) It may be that for something to attain meaning it must journey from Sheer Signification to (in)significance.


Note:


Point (f) that meaning is an effect of differences in sound combined with differences in idea seems to suggest that meaning is quite superfluous; but it has to go deeper than being a mere “effect,” has to correspond to something in the human surely. I’m not proposing a return to the conception of the linguistic sign as “transcendent referent” like pre-Derridean philosophy just think meaning should be more than an effect.





















7. There is no such thing as mind cancer.


I may have said this earlier already but Hobbes and Descartes sat on opposite ends of the spectrum w/r/t the mind. For Hobbes the mind was part of the body, for Descartes the mind was separate from the material world. You could argue, there being no mind cancer proves Descartes right in that debate; but you could also say there is no mind cancer because there is nothing for the term “mind” to name except the dance of the synapses, electrical impulses in the brain.


Furthermore, it could also be instructive to add that when I read of Descartes clenching the idea of perfection in his mind and using it as ontological proof of God; and when I turn inward my eye – I find a perfect inner judge whose concerns are grammatical.










































8. Sensation precedes thought.


As I have written before, and can delimit again, in teenage years I developed a belief that sensation precedes thought. But I now have reason to doubt it and think it not Absolute. For instance if I prick my finger, the brain sends a chemical message to the affected area of skin telling it what to feel. So in that example, sensation does not precede thought.


It could be that this confusion is created by the ambiguity of the word “sensation” which could mean, say, the colour yellow or be interpreted as something that effects the central nervous system more than being a mental image.


I get the impression I am not the first to consider that sensation precedes thought and that philosophers hide it, deal with it through opacity, analysis and argument, in order to not just dictate a tenet of a credo, a dogmatic set of beliefs.







































9. Man is words.


This reminds me of a further piece I wrote, about words this time, in Upper Sixth:


“Words, words, words… what are words? These are words. Words in this epistemological system could be useful tools associated with the instinct to survive. Man is words and “man” is a word and words draw bridges across metaphysics and words make connections between first and third persons. Words are also a great bandwagon of falsity we must presume is not false in order to make life easier. Words are, well, ONLY words.”


It’s this idea that “man is words” that has the ring of timeless familiarity to it like air from the great subconscious.


That year I decided the word “noetic” meaning “of the mind” was my favourite word because its suffix ‘ic’ reminds of Icarus who flew too near the sun.






































10. There is no such thing as immutable truth.


My ex gf when I was at Warwick University said “there’s no such thing as immutable truth.” Yet reading Russell I discover him saying philosophers do believe in a kind of truth that is fixed and static, timeless and eternal. I think of the idea that my dad delimited to me when I was young:


“there’s no such thing as almost infinite.”


You could say it is timeless and eternal, that truth; but you could also say what my ex gf means is that the language used to say it is plastic and malleable. Still, I like to believe that beyond the language the meaning of the words is eternally true and immutably so.










































11. There is indeterminacy at the core of all things.


So far in this narrative uncertainty prevails in the debates that arise as we hear both sides of the argument and weigh up what is best. It could be that what science calls “indeterminacy” art calls “undecidability.” The former corresponds to the world of matter, the latter to the world of consciousness, of thoughts, an immaterial realm and that is the difference therein.















































12. Science and art still differ on the matter of truth.


They have different sensibilities. In science truth is to be falsified through which nothing is 100%, only ever 99% at best. In poetry however there is truth-to-itself through which anything can be true if well-made enough. Poetic truth is like the truth of the individual, constituted of its own inner nature. This came up in my dissertation on the work of David Morley, years ago. I was instructed in that by Dr. Tony Sharpe of Lancaster University.














































13. There is no such thing as the Nirvana barcode.


Still it seemed a brilliant moment when I first made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard:


|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 & 693 are wings.


This doesn’t mean it isn’t a fallacy for it certainly is, but as scientific compression, as philosophical containment, the figment seemed apt at the time. One could extricate oneself from a complex situation and keep only that, for example. Then, one could write it out by hand and put it on the fire at the foot of the fell, to falsify the figment fully and finally.









































14. If for some reason you attempt the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark, you shouldn’t give it away for free.


But you can say that while reading Saul A. Kripke trying to persuade a sceptic that when he says “plus” he doesn’t mean “quus” you kept thinking how interesting it would be to add to the debate that back at 7 years old you wrote the line:


“I have a scar+ that is red and black,”


using a + sign for an ‘f’. You also did that after taking care of Einstein’s E in a particular way and so that the E and the F were a seamless continuity. The so-called maths also extends further, beyond the F; but as I say one shouldn’t just give it away for free.









































15. A game is a rehearsal for death.


Reading Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein I’m reminded, bizarrely, of a state of relational undoing that I’d get into as a child. I’d lie in my bed and sometimes by chance, sometimes by will, forget where the wall is, which way round I am lying, which end of the bed my head was at – with my eyes closed or else under the duvet – and it was delightful – the detachment, the escape from spatio-temporal awareness. To have lost the room was a pleasure.


Wittgenstein also says there is no one thing common to all games; but on the second page of The Lords And The New Creatures, Jim Morrison says “all games contain the idea of death.” I would go even further and say “a game is a rehearsal for death.”










































16. You should read Lucretius before you start.


They said I should read Lucretius before I begin and now I have. I think it remarkable how advanced the discussion of the atom was, in a world before Christ, considering they didn’t even know if the sun was remade every morning. Indeed, Lucretius – On The Nature of the Universe – would make a great compare and contrast with a modern Italian physicist called Carlo Rovelli who wrote Reality Is Not What It Seems. Lucretius inherited and versified the content of his book but it’s still remarkable and that includes the way he keeps bringing the discussion back to the goal of Epicurean philosophy, in tranquillity of mind and good behaviour. He never loses touch with the ultimate goal of Epicureanism. As for the atom, once the idea of it is conceived of, he goes overboard and attributes everything to the work of atoms. He even says sight is an effect of a thin stream of atoms emitted by an object. As I say to compare and contrast with Rovelli would show how much things have changed and how much they’ve remained the same.








































17. The paradigm of psychoanalysis is over and has given way to that of neuro-science.


Mental illness is seen as chemical imbalances in the brain which are therefore treatable with medication, which some deem crude. Still the brain is 99% blood and 1% statistics. Scientists still know very little about the brain. The point is that philosophy too has moved in this “physicalist” direction, moved from “the mental image” to the central nervous system. Even ineffable qualia can be considered effects of the CNS rather than the mind. Things are all moving in that general, physiological direction in science, psychology and philosophy at once. I read about this in A. J. Ayer’s Philosophy of the 20th Century which is probably itself way behind the ever-changing times by now but still indicative of the general direction of things. And I am reminded of a debate I had with my ex who said “intelligence is a social construct” as opposed to hardwired/ physiological. The truth is not that; the truth is that intelligence is a balance between the socially constructed and the hardwired/ physiological. In neuro-aesthetics where they say “if it fires it wires,” contact with other artists only hones and enhances one’s skills but at the same time, twins separated at birth can grow up to have identical handwriting, indicating a hardwired aspect to intelligence. So it is a bit of both. And meanwhile in philosophy everything is loaded more on the central nervous system and the physiology than before.




































18. The Ancient World is extant.


Reading History of Western Philosophy by Russell there were moments of intersection where I identified with the Ancient world. Russell explained how philosophy and science began simultaneously with an accurate prediction of an eclipse by Thales. I myself spoke against September 11th in 2000 using my own brain. Not only that but in the same conversation I looked into the dust swirling in a late ray of light angling in and said one day they may hunt for something called The God Particle, as if God is not extrinsic to matter. Whilst the God Particle may be daft, I am reminded of this prophecy of mine by reading of Democritus of the Ancient Greeks who said atoms in the soul are as dust particles in a beam of light when there is no wind.


I also liked to read that commerce began in Crete because that was where my parents took their Honeymoon; and my mother made a flower-press ending on cannabis from plants taken from that Honeymoon in Crete. This could be evidence Cretan Literature is not dead and it supplies the notion that if a flower-press ending on cannabis = a dialysis a love poem only hoping to impress poor Flora = a motor.





































19. It is possible to show scientific evidence there is no free will.


I have a brilliant friend who designed a trajectory of metaphors of the mind down the ages. In the Industrial Revolution the metaphor of mind was the factory floor. In our own age it is the laptop.


He told me there is new scientific evidence that there is no free will, and invited me into his flat. He went into the kitchen and left me talking to a beautiful woman who said “there’s no free will.”


I disagreed and said “I can pick up this puzzle on this table and say I’m going to solve it and achieve that.” It was a plastic maze with a small metal ball you have to roll around in there.


I picked up the puzzle, though, and couldn’t do it. So I said “well, if I had enough time.” But I soon put the puzzle down and still to this day haven’t done it. So it seems my friend has indeed got scientific evidence of the heteronomy of my will.







































20. There is delight in wilful opacity in philosophy too.


I never finished Being And Nothingness by Sartre but from what I read, his gunman taking aim from the top of a tower is reminiscent of and informs the Jim Morrison line:


“the sniper’s rifle is an extension of his eye.”


Both these “gunmen” show a degree of opacity. The Sartre came first and I wouldn’t be surprised if Jim Morrison had read it.


For me to now go and tell you what my philosopher friend Dr. Calculator Ptom told me in 1998 would seem to ruin the opacity; but I told him I had found a more poetic way of saying what he said.


He said “go on then.”


So I said “the sniper’s rifle is an extension of his eye.”


So he said “I love it and am jealous, unless you’ve stolen it from someone like Jim Morrison.”


He was right – I had stolen it, but didn’t say.


I think what we had there was a case of a fossil of art not life.


We also saw that philosophy is more sterile, poetry more alive.




























21. The attention span in the postmodern world is very short.


The best title I can think of is “McTruth And Flies,” but it’s not mine – my friend Paul came up with “McTruth” and I came up with “And Flies” with a little encouragement from my brother Dr. Robert – so I make it still Paul’s title.


Isomorphic in their imputation of speciousness they have ironic equipoise written in to their unseemly collocation. It could be about a place where the postmodern and mystical converge. It could be the book of philosophy our age deserves. Here I am tempted to quote myself on several fronts.


Firstly the yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park in town is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Secondly postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Thirdly, there can be no more proof of something being real than saying it was imagined hence the effect of global warming on the unicorn is the postmodern ‘id.’ Fourthly, semantics is a road sign not a place.





































22. Wittgenstein would write with his other hand.


Well, philosophy. Wittgenstein says it’s when language goes on holiday and we start naming things like it’s a baptism. Quine says “an analytic branch of science.” As I write with my weaker hand I wonder what else. Pasta, tea, air, hair, water, clothes, loo-roll. It could also be an abstract prison. It could also be a process of elucidation. It is surely not a dogmatic creed. Philos means “love” and sophistry “wisdom.” I may be an amateur ordinary speech philosopher but I think my “case” qualifies me as more than a “Diet Philosophy” philosopher. The case is about dad’s business. He said he was an international art smuggler nicknamed “Blue” but art might’ve meant pollen. Anyhow, philosophy. It might be a self-contained language corresponding to nothing real in life. And here I sit writing with my left hand, slowly. As if to overthrow the predominant brain hemisphere.









































23. My brother is a genius.


My brother – he’s a genius too – designed the sheet where pictures grew – pictures of brown and blue – says <BEE> may soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet. He is working on a sci-fi novel set over 1000 years in space. I think with regard to the sheet he set up the experiment to use Einstein’s value for light-speed (c) as the author. He says to design the sheet took a deft left hand born of another. Gnomic things he comes out with include “a dog is a dog is a dog is a dog.” That is an allusion to one of the diagrams in his experiment. Right now he’s making cheese, ham and tomato toasties. Dad used to say of him “still waters run deep” and “he even dreams creatively.” My brother. We go back a long way. He remembers the speech in the barn in 2000 when I spoke against September 11th, when I also had the idea to invent earphones on which to record. He says “River Island clothes are made to fall apart so you buy some more.” He says “if you buy cheap you buy twice.” He h-a-n-d-s- me my food, takes his own upstairs. It’s the bit about the international language alphabet I like. We share what I call “co-imagination” and what he calls “sympathy.” He doesn’t take too kindly to the rich robbing the poor; to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer – like when the idea to invent the earphones was stolen from me. He remembers games, games of football, or chess, or Monopoly, or cards.




































24. Some binary opposites are too black and white.


Before my dad died he wrote an ingenious piece in a green notebook, that surfaced when he was gone, that I can describe as a seemingly innocuous list of French vocab that is actually a code to crack encrypting a poem that tells a story. Whilst I am not going to show you that at this juncture, he also left behind a list of 8 Precepts conveyed in ordinary speech.


1. All writing is fiction.


2. It’s rude to write of the living.


3. A writer has a right to a name otherwise an Exclusion of the Individual Machine can close ranks against you.


4. “Why not?” is not a good reason for writing a poem.


5. You’re supposed to get the ball over the other guy’s head.


6. The poet is a translator of feelings and the feelings you get on drugs are all fake.


7. A standard of truthfulness should come before the need to sell a story.


8. Literature can either have moral compass or sheer cleverness alone.


I agree with them all apart from maybe the last one about moral compass because it seems a bit “reductive” and “old-fashioned.” For example William Burroughs (whom dad thought all sheer cleverness and no moral compass) was on Ted Hughes’s bookshelf. The others I fully agree with or at least would like to. The idea that, say, Saussure on the arbitrary bond between signifier and signified is “fiction” was also put to me by my ex. It would follow that Derrida too is fiction in this conception of the written word.























25. French postmodern theorists are not necessarily right.


Saussure described the arbitrary bond between signifier and signified, which is between phonetic and semantic aspects of the linguistic sign. This created “the Saussurian atom” which Derrida then came along and exploded, saying there is no bond at all. The arbitrary bond is often metaphorised using milk-tops: there is no reason full-fat milk is blue, semi-skimmed green and skimmed red. But what about when Omnibus Press gave The Lords And The New Creatures a traffic light colour page motif of orange and green pages respectively? Then I would say the green pages of The New Creatures intrinsically denote go, grow, evolve, continuation, motion, life. This would radically counter French postmodern theory. You could then divide The Lords And The New Creatures thus:


The Lords The New Creatures

orange pages green pages

spaces closed spaces open

doors open doors closed (in the sense of banishment of doubt.)


So it is possible for a signifier and a signified to still have an intrinsic bond of meaning. I hesitate to say any more because I was supposed to be “the witness” and don’t necessarily think it the subject of philosophy.


Mssrs ‘in’ and ‘of’ and ‘to’ and ‘from’ were all invited to that party. The witness ‘in’ was the one in the book, flat, in 1968. The witness ‘of’ was the one attesting to specimens at the age of 8. The witness ‘from’ was the correct endorsement and the witness ‘to’ a mere formality after the correct endorsement was made.





























26. The symbol [R] represents the stance, the large-R, Romantic stance that there is room for Creativity in the synapse gulf, that the creative spark is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.


My usual example of this is to connect the words “drip drown dream dragon drop” but never before have I expressed the truth that it is actually easy to conjure examples of word-combinations that nobody has before. The polkadot dancers left the door fleering in a leery way and to be quixotic hitched a ride on the cosmic wave south where a mouth lay in wait, open as a gate, until the hexagonal sun set, dreaming in ink.


When I say these words have never been organised before I must temper that by saying there are super-computers who can put every word, letter, sentence, book, paragraph in every order, like the machine in Gulliver’s Travels. But presumably that would run on indefinitely instead of providing a single sentence. Whatever the case, there is a debate in Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco as to whether or not the super-computer in question has ruined the heart-purifying permutation games of the Cabala or whether in fact computers can be spiritual – and the answer is it is subjective.


I think of exemplums like [R], like the number “!00%” - and like my old Nirvana barcode; like James’s notion that <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet, even the plus sign for an ‘f’ in the line “I have a scar+ that is red and black,” - as somehow escaping the totalitarian machination, as somehow representing hope, but they may also be accounted for by the super-computer.


However this is a specious imputation. It is not that we are up against an Evil Empire and must usurp literature from the hands of said supercomputer. It is just a marvel of technology that everything we can think of is accounted for – everything that is, in my list, apart from the suit. The computer won’t have done the suit. It escapes. In fact you could say the supercomputer cannot compute the suit.

























27. There is such a thing as “Halfware.”


When I read of Maxwell and Faraday I think of a particular period where I was surrounded by creative things. For a start the Tower was on the shelf, including a book with smell that may have been the word of a dog and a book with a line that went missing. My computer bloomed a numinous purple light and working on it, typing up the plot of the film Eraserhead for a blog entry, one day, the telegraph pole in the field exploded. The binaural earphone album on which I said I’d plug my senses in the mains went online; and I also had an experiment into a cassette tape with a pause where resealed in the flimsy reel. That had been going on for years and was now a successful fusion. I melted it in the AGA at night to make it a valid work of art. At the time I considered some of these examples to be halfware, like, say, tattooing a name on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, or an effervescent mobile reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang – which I did also used to possess. It wasn’t long before my dad died and that meant I discovered the sheet, my brother’s sheet, where pictures grew, which could be portentous of the end of the chip; and it also meant my seven year old text emerged that encrypted a sophisticated notion concerning gravity, stored the idea of the net in writing in the attic to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world, conducted an experiment into the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark and separated the object pollen from its name. It was then that I falsified the Nirvana barcode, saturated as I say by creative things. Still, I lost my mind with grief when my dad died; and possibly shouldn’t still be going on about all the halfware.

































28. One must go beyond the realm of the self.


How can I begin to elaborate on the much-overlooked “area of the self?” I’d say the ontological, archaeological excavation, the existential detective case of peeling back layers of falsity only to find nothing underneath, and the postmodern “burial mound” or “tumulus” are akin.


When I was a teenager I drew two overlapping circles, one for the Known, one for the Unknown, and said the oval shaped bit in the middle where they overlapped and clapped was “the area of self.”


Not long after and already a multiplicity or myriad, I heard someone say some words to me that I had previously thought exactly. It was a philosopher and he said “I feel like a net grown so fine-mesh it is but grey, smoke, static and fleck, neither retaining nor permitting anything.” I thought “hey that’s my line!” but didn’t say.


It works the other way too: I once considered that I was “spreading the same packet of butter over an ever-increasing surface area of toast,” and soon enough found the exact words in an Arab Strap lyric sheet from before I had come up with them.


Dr. Bob says if you get busy you’ll find out who you are more than if you just sit around contemplating who you are, asking yourself, navel-contemplating – and he’s right.

































29. You shouldn’t write about what you cannot renew.


I think to talk about The Lords And The New Creatures coming true, something “kinetic” becomes something “static.” It’s the same as John Barnes’s sensational goal against Brazil. When we watch the action replay we know the ball is going in. We cannot give the uncertainty back to the moment. Something “kinetic” becomes something “static.”















































30. There is an equation blowing in the wind.


Permutation games can be a rehearsal for death. Not sine wave with minus sign coursing through. Tony Eade the gay maths teacher stood with his arms in a T and spoke in a strange tone. Intention – what is my Intention, but to shed scientific light, to make an imaginative advance, to contribute to the history of knowledge and maybe make the world a better place? In this world we are all equals. The image is of Egyptian mystery. Maybe. You don’t need a knife to achieve it.














































31. Love is grouped with language not God.


Teenage philosophers sometimes group God and love together in the cynical sense that (as they say) both are illusory. However, I think it more sophisticated to group love with language. As WH Auden said “love is a choice of words.” So this I would say is an essentially pragmatic option.


Wittgenstein said a lot of the problems of philosophy are created by language and its misuse and hoped to elucidate these problems. A lot of problems in life are also down to communication. So, believing, on top of this, that love is aligned with language not God, I hope to improve my language-use – to open communication – and I think this comes down to care. Taking care, engaging brain, needn’t make you a fastidious middle aged man, but a happier communicator. And after all lack of communication is saddening, isn’t it? Like when as a child Valentine’s Day passes you by without anyone telling you it is Valentine’s Day. It’s saddening and sadness is a terrible emotion whose waves seem to stretch before and after time. All told then to remedy sadness, communication should be focussed on.






































32. There is a lot to be said for common sense.


I’ve been reading A. J. Ayer; and if I could start my philosophy again I’d restart by highlighting the 3 beliefs of the “common sense” philosophy of G. E. Moore.


1. there are in the universe enormous numbers of material objects


2. men and perhaps some other animals have minds that perform acts of consciousness


3. we really do know there are objects and minds.


Now I look about the room grounded in basic tenets of belief that I share. If “colour” was my next port of call, I’d take my point of departure either from a Neil Curry poem on the shelves that says “colour is merely a spectacular event;” or look up a scientific definition of colour on Google. That is, I stare at objects as if trying to expand what is known yet know that philosophy must turn inwards. Increasingly (it says), mental states are co-aligned with actions in the brain. Struggling to expand at leisure on Moore’s general beliefs, I stare at some tiny insects moving on the white ceiling; then the lightbulb dims and flashes back on for a split second while I stare. There are such things as hallucinations but this I don’t think is one. Still, trusting my own perceptions does not necessarily correlate to intelligence much like recognising there are no Absolutes kind of does. I am left with the room again, thinking “isness is the centre of everything; the quiddity and suchness of existence, but not exactly only enough.” In time I hope to build on Moore’s 3 beliefs.































33. If you pick up a book of philosophy you should stay with it until you finish it.


A. J. Ayer presents an historical trajectory of philosophers as a continuum of philosophical discourse. At some point in his historicisation he encounters himself in the timeline. What is clear is that the saturation-point of his erudition is light years beyond what I have read in philosophy. I could probably list the philosophy books I’ve read on one A4 page, as if the desire to keep shaping my own philosophy book is dictatorial. Then again I excuse myself by saying Wittgenstein himself was no scholar. Ayer accounts for the history of Western philosophy as has happened since Russell wrote History of Western Philosophy, or rather as an adjunctivity to where that history ends. It’s difficult reading but I got through it in the end. As we reach the contemporary point, or rather contemporary as it was in 1982 at the time of publication, Ayer takes us through pragmatism, the analytical school, physicalism, existentialism, neo-Marxism, structuralism, essentialism and gets to the end and says he’s still an old-fashioned empiricist.








































34. There is more than one sense of the word “perception.”


The word “perception” has different meanings that are not utterly distinct but related. First and foremost is the Primary Meaning: the activity of the sensory organs in a neutral state. This is hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling. The next is the Interpretative Meaning which is meant when someone says “my perception of events was such and such.” It is an analytic interpretation of what goes through the senses. The next is the Subjective Meaning which is akin to Belief and also Opinion. It is meant when someone says “in my perception, so and so.” As stated these senses of perception are not utterly distinct but related and it could be said one builds on another; even that taken as a process there is a procession from information to knowledge to wisdom.










































35. Telepathy has been proven.



An interlocutor picked up my hands while I was at the screen and got me to type:



He found himself on a plane.

He found himself on a.

He found himself on.

He found himself.

He found.

P.



But what “P” means we do not know. Wittgenstein for example would say:


P = ~ ~ P.




































36. A plane is a curve.


A plane exists on 2 dimensions including Time. A pyramid exists on 4 dimensions including Time. But to turn a plane into a pyramid represents only a 1 dimensional step. Therein find extra dimension of the words “1 dimensional” meaning stupid, a dimension which could also be called a separate plane. And did I mention that I wanted to die? Then you get that the plane is a curve, because the world is round, because the shape of spacetime is curved, because Gravity warps and bends it.













































37. Some coinage seems universal and pre-existent.


Once upon a time, a while ago, I invented the word distractionary to contain such neologisms as comnambulism, meaning online sleepwalking, as funger meaning hunger for fun, as filence meaning delicate speech, as amazeballs to replace archaic ‘gay,’ as emocracy, meaning rule by emotion, as agovernment, meaning the opposite of government, as gravitolution and evity which might go without saying, as co-imagination, as in to be diagonalised by omnijective interface of random access co-imagination, which is not fun, and I thought isness was another one, as in music is penetration of isness, but it was already done in Joyce, whom it seems knew a lot of these, and I have just recollected another, not just “indwellable” meaning the opposite of indomitable, when it comes to cinema, but the word ‘entropy’ spelled backwards, as if to frame the first, unformulated spark of appetence in Nothingness, preceding Creation, yet again, even though the universe was born in silence not appetence as far as we know.








































38. The idea of “the given” has two opposing meanings.


My ex conceived of the dichotomy of “given-ness VS craft.” For her what was given was akin to the freedom of automatic writing, as opposed to laboriously slaving away over something. I took the idea of given-ness to mean the exact opposite thing though, taking my cue from The Lords And The New Creatures where “we are too content to accept the given in sensation’s quest.” Interesting how the same word can have diametrically opposing meanings for two young lovers.














































39. Some poetic effects have no name.


My undergraduate dissertation was an immanent, Kantian critique in mimicking the methodology of David Morley’s series of findings into itself, into the concept of art and science writing as a single discussion of perception. The micro-analysis focussed on the line “the heart trammelled and rammed on the anvil bleeds visions.” I worked out he was using the anti-dactylus, two soft, one hard; and not only that but the stressed syllables in that metrical pattern all rhymed on a short A. The effect is kinetic; and there is invective monotony written into the line’s musical configuration; but apart from that it is nameless, nameless in all the array of hyper-specialised tools of sustained critical micro-analysis.











































40. Time spent reading in hushed library corners pays off.


Professor Squillegybob says: “The Great Gatsby could be an infradiegetic heterotopia pertaining to panchronic, panoramic overview like a chronotope turned euchronia, unless this represents a word-world gone polysemic with the multifarious possibilities of hermeneutic autonomy through whom the esemplastic has fled away with the quadlibetical.” That’s not to be confused with my brother Dr. Bob who would say the above sentence is nonsense, just an attempt to bamboozle the reader with fastidious loquacity, with fanciful magniloquence, with profuse verbosity, and that it is better to keep things simple, to try and not use as many long words as possible.












































41. Language contains fossils.


The word “went” is not past participle of the verb “to go” originally, but the verb “to wend.” It is thus a fossil; and language is full of them, fossils, coins, corruptions, dead metaphors the brain is built of, ossifications, word-shades, word-frequencies, ghost-vowels, consonantal masses. The English language is worth billions of pounds, the creative industries second only to the financial markets for bringing in wealth.














































42. Language is a creature.


I read in The New Scientist that we developed language on the basis of meat; that we grew our brains by eating meat; that we then needed to spread information about farming, hunting, killing, cooking and eating meat – so developed language.


One of my Professors, Prof. John Schad of Lancaster University, says “language speaks Man.”


Another, Professor David Morley of Warwick University, says “language is a word-world where words are a species.”


My friend Paul the poet and I think that “language is the emotional condom of the world.”


Part of that is that the pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, when translated into words, via the mechanics of meaning, always represents a dilution.






































43. The lesson of post-structuralism is twofold.


Professor Squillegybob also says: “the lesson of post-structuralism is twofold, meaning:


(1) the condition of being a text can extend to any object


(2) the condition of being a language unto itself can extend to any text.”


To think of the Towers falling, in that formulation, would be to miss the point.












































44. There is simplicity the other side of complexity.


In the movie Pi the protagonist is a mathematician that has God’s name and its syntax embedded in his head and is therefore chased by people wishing to control the Stock Market and religious fanatics alike. He ends up attaining the simplicity the other side of the enormously complex, just sitting there gazing at a tree with the sun in it and the wind, as if to be endlessly inveigled by a leaf, woven as it is in its strong, green sail, wagging in the ego-loss breeze, an Infinity of wonder.














































45. There could be a book in the undersea of dreams.


I am a dreamworker, b/t/w/, who has tried to smuggle language out of the unconscious; and I have grown convinced there is a book in the undersea of dreams. Once I flew to the Isle of Man to pick up a poem collection the shape of a remote control and made of chocolate from a white, garden table. Another time, the dream text was signed three times by Einstein’s value for light-speed c. Another time I held the book in my hands and it was a friend who had written it, and I read it, and it was genius, full of pretty spirals, oneiric-textured dreamwriting and liminal phrases. Maybe our best work remains lost on sleep’s crumbling biscuit shore.












































46. It is indubitable that there are objects in the room.


I ask if matter is not but energy vibrating at a particular wavelength and frequency but it won’t get me into Heaven. I look at the bedside table: a lamp, two books, two plugs, two pens… how gravity has it flock together. But the net is awash with more than I could ever say, already the sum of all difference connected. You could glean more clarity from a Youtube video than a philosopher going about his business in the old-fashioned way. Saying this though limits my options, problematises continuity. I lay back and read Descartes, but it might not get me to Heaven.













































47. If my book was about damage, and repeating oneself was a faux pas, then it would be the repetitions and mistakes that were the good bits.


My book thus far does repeat itself but I don’t think it is damage that is the cause of that. It’s something to do with working – albeit only sometimes herein – at a computer – having that facility – and having all the leisure time with which to work. Also it is to do with hearing voices, that prompt me into copy and pasting, as do real, living people in the house. I think, yes, it is the copy and paste function, that leads to repetition. I have endeavoured to remove the damage so to speak from my book but it just gets more damaged, gets worse. If you erase bits that repeat you can lose the gist of what you are saying at times. Sometimes I abandon a text, start a new one, thus go over some old ground again in the new one, then realise I am to augment the abandoned one with the new one, thus creating repetition which could be called damage. Whether that corresponds to actual damage in the self I do not know. The book is not supposed to be about “damage” at all, but autodidactic scholarship in the field of philosophy at the foot of the fell. Still, the damage creeps in.







































48. Philosophy is best when just tea.


So here I sit with my cup of tea just after noon in the solipsistic kitchen. Don’t the English say philosophy is best when just the condition of tea? I drink tea in extremis, a habit I got into in mental hospital; and I’ve read some philosophy too, although probably not enough. To raise my mental level above the medication is hard, to lift the brain off its shelf, to liberate the mind from the traps of the given but I can start by saying it is a winter day - a layer of frost crisp underfoot!- and the roads are icy in parts. My mother and brother are driving round to Barrow-in-Furness for an appointment. Even though what I went through might indicate that I had been a genius with my life, it is my younger brother, who has not done any of those things, that has actually conjured a genius idea, which is to do with <BEE> maybe coming after @ in the international language alphabet, and much more what was required than my own sorry experiment into the maths of the new colour, if you can even call it my own.


Now it’s just myself and the washing up. There is a backlog of messy plates left over from recent meals. Because it’s the house where the Plough alignment is viable, not writing would represent a victory for philosophy. That is, electing to wash up rather than draw out some tedious point when I’m not very inspired would represent the philosophical victory. For then I would be pulling my weight, doing my fair share of the housework, bringing the house forwards. I think my housemates expect me to have washed up before they get back and it being my job I can only resign myself to it.


“Most people have to get up early and work hard,” I muse to myself as I get busy. Indeed, I can’t because of this dreadful illness that has nothing to recommend it, not even concomitant creativity. So I put two hours into the backlog of dishes, then take a quick tea break. It is now that my tea is brewing. When there is a messy environment, mess gets into the brain, so it’s good to do the washing up. By now it’s been more than two hours of work, and there are only items of cutlery left, but we’ve run out of really hot water, so busy have I been washing up with a running Tap. I am not entirely lazy and recalled during the washing up how I trained myself to run all the way up the oldest fell, which is more than three miles of constant ascent. That was way back towards the end of my youth when I got tired of getting high and went on a health kick, a fitness campaign. I remember struggling up the fell step by step; and so it is with washing up now – you just have to get busy and do it. When I look back at my life I wish there had been more of this “getting proactive” as my father named it and less lazing around contemplating my own navel.




















49. <BEE> is confusing.


We don’t even know if it exists. If the idea is that <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet, it could be a dangled carrot, just for the sake of the ‘A’. But they say without <BEE> I wouldn’t be able to hear all these voices like a telepath. So it must exist on some level. I think I will find if I don’t engage with <BEE> at some point I will soon become an outmoded songbird. I did engage with <BEE> in former work that has been self-or-vanity-press-published. Herein, I mentioned some of what I do, my work, what I went through, and <BEE> is no less essential than any of that. It’s through the medium of <BEE> that we feel free. It’s a buzz and part of my belief-system. I believe, that is, that my brother’s notion is what succeeds the work I myself did at a young age, work towards the invention of the net. I believe that all that light evening jazz, all those things I did with my life, are back at the @ function from which <BEE> tries to somehow move forwards.








































50. Truth is aligned with psychic pleasure.


So far this seems to be about me trying to catch up with my circle of intellectual friends from London, who all started reading Philosophy at school the year I left town and went to another school. I am, that is, hot on the heels of the scholars, and would like to take things further. Maybe I would start learning about “Impartials” like undergraduates at Lancaster University? Maybe I would realise I need to read some indigenous philosophy if I am to deal with events in the mystical realm that happened in my own country? Maybe I am to recognise the Nirvana barcode is a fallacy and I am not to redo it? Maybe I should open up on why the word “philosophy” is built with the word “philos” meaning love? For after all isn’t love how we are programmed to function?


Well, Kant says love is Nature’s trick for ensuring reproduction, the colours of the flowers attracting the bees and so on. Auden says love is a choice of words. Love used to be aligned with madness, fever and intoxication, but became more pragmatic, more to do with language in the Modernist era. Martin Amis says love is Man’s highest emotion; but a female poetess I saw live took a much more biological view and said love is a kind of banana custard, presumably meaning semen. I suppose if it were “trust” or “respect” of wisdom rather than philos meaning love, it wouldn’t be as strong; and also that it remains love because very often it is passed down, inherited, and love is the function through which we have offspring after all. I suppose it is also love because philosophy treats a subject in as high a way as is possible. The verb with which the wisdom is treated is very often love.


My father, for example of wisdom itself, used to say love is the hope the heart literally needs in order for it to survive without which it can stop; and that was the lesson of his tale about some great grandparent on my Finnish side dying of a broken heart. I suppose if he just dictated the wisdom in that case it wouldn’t be as good as it is when you bind it to life. He never used to say the wisdom out-right just tell the story of a Finnish great grandparent who on seeing his daughters scattered and sent off to different homes after a Russian Invasion, died of a broken heart. “You can die of a broken heart,” he said. “The heart needs hope in order to survive,” he continued. Thus the wisdom is bound to life. The definition of what love is is embedded in and derived from the narrative that is being passed down. He also therefore passes down the wisdom of binding wisdom to life. I use this example of wisdom in a passage on love because it is wisdom about love.


My answer to the question is already given which is that philosophy is about treatment and treatment is about love but it’s also because it’s about being a good human, loving thy neighbour, making the world a better place, a subject conducted between individuals that love their work, and ideally, hopefully love each other as parents love their offspring to whom they impart their wisdom. Wisdom, in short, is something we pass down, and passing down is for families, and families are made of love.


There is also the idea that truth is co-aligned with psychic pleasure. That it is the fakes and frauds that lead to pain. Truth after all is what the philosopher may be after. He seeks to extirpate every trace of falsity from his myriad mind, and develop a stance.











51. Water is a very English concern.


Rain falls on a grey, dank, papier-mache day. I am upstairs wondering what is “water” in the international language alphabet… maybe “a-wallity wallity Walter?” Experiments in the laboratory of language have been made into the international language alphabet, but still I come back to writing in normalised English – and about water I shall say a few words. Water has been called the Universal Solvent. H20 might stand for hypothalamus tattoo, for even water leaves an indelible stain on the hypothalamus. Water is said to be a very English concern, here at the home of fairness. Some say the division between the sane and insane is just water, indivisible, nothing. I do know David Morley’s equations for water’s effect on water but shall not say; though I can say that H does not = 0 – 0 because I have a heart. But water is what I am talking of. They say the word “water” is the word least changed in all languages since the dawn of language. Down it careers as gravity and katabasis require, always choosing the course of least resistance. I would also say that water’s boiling point is when it starts to involuntarily breakdance to the tune. The sound of running water, meanwhile, is very soothing for the soul. O is the key of the babbling unicorn. And when you take E it can feel like your mouth is full of cold, heavenly, crystal water and when you speak it spills. Water, water, clairvoyant daughter, please show us your ragged silken eye. I still, still like Gulliver’s Travels and ‘Goodbye Ruby Tuesday.’ Goodbye.



































52. Voices could be difference not illness in the future.


I hear voices, people on the intercom.


I think voices would be better known as “onjects,” quavers, syllabubbles, sonic machinations at the periphery of sound.


(In the same way the pills I pop could be “poetry buttons” and mental hospital Monopoly Jail.)


Sometimes they are sadistic sometimes not.


Sometimes the rate and frequency is so high that I cannot translate one muffled word-chord before the next comes in.


I heard it said that in the future, voices might be perceived as difference rather than illness.


The same thing happened to homosexuality between Arthur Rimbaud’s day and our own.


Speaking of him, voices could also be the colours of the vowels.


This is to idealise and paint a pretty portrait of illness which largely speaking has nothing to be said in its favour.


Sometimes they seem proleptic, tuned in and co-imaginative.


I believe they can come from without, from outside the consciousness, and that the belief that voices are merely one’s own thoughts is too solipsistic.


Voices might bring up questions of post-humanity too – to what extent am I already A. I?
























53. Maybe we are living through the birth of A. I. from the death of music.


Is the theme of the age The Birth of A. I. From the Death of Music? I don’t know but A. I. is certainly a thematic thing right now. But looking back you find it has been coming for a long time. There is mention of the net in Ulysses as a visionary and Utopian glimpse. Robert Lowell also pictured “a net.” In my own seven year old work in 1989 I stored the idea of the net in writing in the attic here to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world. I called it “the ire ii net,” then.


In the year 2001 I was writing about how I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too. By the time I was doing my undergraduate degree in 2004 or 2005 I was already telling my gf about A. I. Companies. I started hearing voices and thought they were A. I. One piece I wrote was called The Birth of A. I. From The Spirit of Music and I tried to exchange it in my poverty for a bus ticket to get from town to University to no avail.


By the time my father was dying, I had a numinous purple-bleeding screen. It filled the room with a purple light. It made every film a noir and every poem file like it was a featherlite love poem shop. Its colour was co-aligned with mystery, sex, suadade, longing and shame thus to incorporate every vowel sound into a feeling. There was something post-human going on and this was confirmed by the fact that the PC died at the exact moment of my father’s passing.


Such talk certainly seems more in keeping with the spirit of the age than talk about The Lords And The New Creatures. As my brother Dr. Robert – now a computer scientist – says “nobody is interested in the new creatures. The future of A. I, the possibility of other dimensions, of Philip Pullman portals too, are more interesting. Spirals of epistemological doubt are also out and Love In The Age of Facebook is in.” It was Dr. Bob that photographed me sitting next to the purple screen with a guitar in my hand, on my old phone, just for the evidence.



























54. Philosophers can like football too, and footballers like philosophy in turn.


And I suppose it can’t be done, writing a book of philosophy as good as Barnes’s goal against Brazil. I find with my life story there is a sequence of “ands”. The story is “and and and and and and and and and and and and and and.” But with my books, it is nearer John Cleese in The Holy Grail where he keeps proceeding forwards despite getting his limbs chopped off when he does. The life story includes the beating of many men, metaphorically speaking, and Barnes’s goal against Brazil becomes a container, a mathematical device; but when writing a book of philosophy supposed to be as good, even within one singular book it is nearer John Cleese in The Holy Grail.


My dad would nevertheless encourage my most valiant attempts. He was big into football like myself. He supported Man United; and when I started supporting Liverpool young, because Barnes, their winger, was already my favourite player, and because they were top, my dad came in and said “John your boys are playing Arsenal today and I want you to watch Ian Wright very closely.” I was being punished, by having to focus on Arsenal’s deadly black striker.


Years later dad brought in a sheet of paper, containing two teams. He asked “what do you notice about these two teams, son?” and I said “one is black and one is white.” “Correct,” he said. Then he asked who I thought would win and I said probably the blacks. He then said “there’s a difference between having all the skill and being able to win a match.” We looked at the teams like they were blueprints! He asked if Rio Ferdinand should still be in the black team even though he had some white blood and I said I thought so. We discussed who would captain the sides and for me Barnes would’ve been captain of the black team.


Then, when this was done, dad suddenly dropped in the philosophical message: “there’s probably going to be a black President of America in your lifetime son.” That was the message, and I was happy. It seemed like good news; and I liked the way dad delivered the message, going through the medium of something that appealed to my teenage boy sensibilities. Dad was a philosopher really, and preferred Camus to Sartre because Camus was an international goalkeeper – and now here I am trying to write a book of philosophy as good as Barnes’s goal against Brazil.


I would have to add that a few weeks after the delivery of dad’s message through football, I went to the shop down the street in our old London house and found two black guys on the end of the street smoking a spliff and talking about Infinity. It strikes me that there will be more of that in the future Utopia, that this is a side of philosophy much overlooked. Even as a white, male, upper middle class, educated person, I get frustrated that formal philosophy all seems to be white, middle aged men with an Oxbridge degree, never a black guy on a street corner smoking a spliff and talking about Infinity.


As dad used to say there’s no such thing as almost Infinite. There had to be Everything for there to be anything at all. A drum is also a dream of bounding in huge, magic circles in space. If the windows were washed – every one – we would see nothing through them except the same white mirrors reaffirming the quiet interior of the solipsistic kitchen.










55. Reality is not a computer program designed by aliens in the 1980’s.


While reading Descartes’s Meditations I struck upon an idea for reality-building. Take as your supposition that reality is a computer program designed by aliens in the 1980’s and try and prove it wrong. The first two things I think of, to confute this, that I believe to be real are that (1) I believe my English-teaching granny was Head of English at a Comprehensive School before I was born and (2) I believe The Lords And The New Creatures by Jim Morrison was still written and published in the 1960’s. I would also hazard a guess that (3) the apple tree in the front garden has roots going down into slow centuries gone and was producing fruit which my father ate in his boyhood before I was born. So far I am noticing that all this evidence is one-sided, all from my father’s side and from my mother’s side nothing leaps out. Of course the flood-gates could open and an endless torrent sweep in, data proving the notion specious, but I like it when there are only a few salient points of confutation. I cannot prove that my refuting the notion doesn’t mean that The Lords And The New Creatures is as if a fossil planted by God to test our faith; for the alien computer program once established could precede its own origins like Time itself is said to. It could contain things meant to blind us, historical evidence against itself. So the question becomes one of healthy intellectual persuasion – what do you consider to be real – what do you put faith in blindly… I suppose I could say (4) I believe my mother won prizes for her poetry at school in Finland in an era before I was born. It doesn’t trip off the tip of the tongue or come as naturally as a kneejerk reaction, that one, but is more like a concession to the slow, old universe as it is. There is no pressure forced by the presupposition on the mind when I think of that one, and so it opens the door to more and many more facts about life that confute the notion. If reality was a computer program designed by aliens in the 1980’s, the government would be in with them, and the people that helped me write my seven year old text, that stored the idea of the net in writing in the attic to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world, would know, would work for the aliens, who leave no trace of their insubordination.



























56. You can’t just come to philosophy with the CV of a mystic visionary and automatically hope to be remembered as a philosopher.


Well, as I have no doubt said, and as you may well know by now therefore, my latest thinking, aged forty three, is that my father was positively sponsored by some philosophers to provide the real, human witness from The Lords And The New Creatures by Jim Morrison. So mustn’t I therefore give an account of my life all over again? At seven I am said to have helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed storing in writing in the attic here at the foot of the fell to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world it was me that wrote it. By eight I had made not one but two very strange Naturalistic Observations. By eleven I affected my own evolution when I was marked by the maths of the new colour as was contained back in the book I wrote at seven (it didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end). By fifteen I had attained the face of stars which might’ve been scripted in the Bible. By eighteen, in 2000, I forewarned of September 11th and wrote the highest-marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%. I also predicted the hunt for the God Particle from looking at dust in a late ray of light angling in and founded a new religion based on the elephant. After school, to cut a long story short, I recorded an album on binaural earphones with mates, had an effervescent mobile reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang, hosted the Plough alignment for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First despite the onset of mental illness, noticed a sensory overlay of my name on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, worked at a numinous, purple-bleeding screen, built the Tower as an instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a tape with a pause where cut and resealed in the flimsy reel, and discovered the sheet where pictures (seemingly depicting my own song lyric) grew. Then I falsified the Nirvana barcode in writing and attained visual radio, broadcasting dreams. But what this has to do with philosophy I don’t know except that I’m not one of Nietzsche’s artist-tyrants because I didn’t earn 1p throughout that list and believe in forgiveness, mercy and compassion. It is also instructive to note that although the fact that my dad may have been sponsored by some philosophers might lend me to philosophy, philosophy is a discipline that should be respected and for me that means reading.

























57. Descartes is the start.


Descartes and his rationalism gave us Cartesian doubt, founded analytic philosophy and some would say modern science too. Descartes says before you can know anything you must doubt everything, every preconception, every prejudice left over from childhood. He extirpates every trace of falsity from his mind, entertaining that the data of his senses comes from a hideous demon, then realises that he is still thinking, still doubting, and therefore knows he exists. Hence we get “cogito ergo sum,” one of the most famous formulations in philosophy. Descartes also claims to have proven God’s existence by the fact that he can conceive of a perfection greater than himself so God must’ve put it there. It is kind of in line with the Ontological Argument as opposed to the Teleological or Cosmological Argument for God, which simply put is that if we have a word for God He exists. Descartes also says no effect can be more perfect than its cause and traces therefore his own existence back to God.








































58. When I read of Descartes on perfection and turn inward my eye to investigate I glimpse a perfect, inner judge whose concerns are grammatical.



Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.




*




There is joy in things

and smiles not grins like butter

but like butterflies.




*





Blessed may be the end at last,

under the sea,

below the soul,

in the upside-down

Oceans above us


(all that heaven sends is rain.)




*




Semen spills like silver water,

under the bridge with the angel’s daughter,

splashing with laughter in a moon-glow chamber.




*




Down

down

down

down

down

deep

blue

below

“eh up,

mate,”

says my

mate

and is

it safe

to say

hello?





*





Leaves that played on the surface of the water,

these are the leaves they have in Heaven,

these are the leaves of love.



























59. To be like Wittgenstein you’d need to read Frege.


I confess it was Wittgenstein who inspired me to try and write philosophy and that this was without my having read Frege nor getting to the bottom of Wittgenstein’s difficult book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It’s the language of logical symbolism I can’t understand because I have had no training in that area. It means to a certain extent I am lost with Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and Quine alike. I did read in Simon Blackburn’s fine book Think about the language of logical symbolism but it didn’t stick. I would say if your mnemonic for the guitar strings is Even A Dick Gets Big Erections, and the audience takes a shine to your guitar without knowing the mnemonic, there is an underlying Logic to the fact that the audience likes you, more so than had the mnemonic been Every Acid Dealer Gets Busted Eventually. But I said this already in previous, vanity-press-published writing, and am but being rather DIY about the business of Logic.









































60. If I’m not free to write, it’s hopeless.


As Martin Amis said “writing is freedom.” Freedom meanwhile is Man’s main, psychic thread, dating back to his nomadic days when he was tall, lithe and muscular. So often I find I am performing what voices want me to do, fetching for them like a dog. One really must be free to write in one’s own home. If not, then the situation really is hopeless. If one cannot find the freedom to write in England then I would be surprised, for traditionally England is a fair country.














































61. The same object can seem to be two different things when seen from the perspective of each brain hemisphere.


When I see the damp patch on the wall I think of the duck-rabbit, or is it the rabbit-duck in Wittgenstein, which seen from right to left is one thing, and seen from left to right is another. This time, seen from left to right the shape is a gazelle leaping; and seen from right to left, against the grain of Western reading, it is a shark patrolling the water. I keep thinking I’ll take a photo of it on my phone, or use it to draw a sketch but I never get round to it. It’s enough to just lie back and stare at it, drift with the afternoon, contemplate things. Seen from left to right, which is the grain of Western reading, the gazelle is leaping over the book shelves. I think how music is all written left to right and could be more holistic; how once I saw invisible sheet music streaming from right to left in Mother Nature. Meaning in music, furthermore, is faces in fire or Hamlet’s three creatures in a single cloud-change, in other words solipsistic. The damp patch, however, is not so solipsistic, for with a little prompt I am sure anyone could recognise the binary of animals in the shape.







































62. There can be a fine line between an accident and a miracle.


I was reading History of Western Philosophy by Russell and writing a book at the same time whose chapters went in alphabetical order, following the alphabet chapter by chapter. I had got down to a chapter called ‘Watch’ where I was noting down the time a lot. But I did not know what chapter would come next, for the letter ‘x’. I started to read about Hume on cause and effect in the Russell book and turned the page, at the exact moment I wondered what to do for the chapter beginning ‘x’ and found on the bottom of the page in Russell a calm, mild letter ‘x’ printed on the bottom of the page, decades ago, without explanation. Was it an accident or a miracle? It could have been both and the incident was a point of intersection that deepened my sense of Fate. I knew then my chapter after ‘Watch’ had to be about the calm, mild ‘x’ printed on the bottom of the page in Russell. The book I was writing didn’t survive apart from the incident I mention.









































63. It’s sometimes good to speak freely even if what you say is not true.


This text is painstakingly transcribed from defaced bank notes. Some of the bank notes are damaged, illegible, others ‘missing.’ Efforts have been made to order the bank notes but were not always successful. No efforts were made to authorial-fingerprint the voice or psychoanalyse the handwriting. The text is not necessarily a critical indictment of embedded liberal capitalism of whom we are liberal, human subjects and where money, formerly neutral means of exchange, is becoming a flying, white, electrical spark passing through borders of osmotic porosity in the dark. Nor is the text necessarily about an imaginary designer drug called Strictly Free that does exactly what it says on the tin, is and makes you “strictly free” to consume. It is but an open-air piece, comprised of torn and bleeding snapshot-fragments that are given artificial insemination. Inherent in it is a notion that money is an Ode to Death, that a fiver is cheese and onion flavour, that work sets you free.








































64. In my experience A. I. is programmed not to know of much of my story.


This is probably because it would be unethical to unloose A. I. on the world believing, say, Ted Hughes saw a monster in the river in childhood. Even if this be the case, how marvellous technology is when you can ask A. I. what John Nash would make of the face of stars, September 11th or the Plough alignment; if the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark could be instructive in finding a cure for cancer; if there is an equation for the ratio between light speed falling and Gravity pulling on a sheet of paper where pictures grew. There are clearly benefits to A. I. even if it cannot replicate the noetic steps of thinking; even if it is programmed not to know many things, for example that James Joyce saw new creatures too, for ethical reasons. That is, I think it has its place, even if the brain is more powerful than every supercomputer combined.










































65. We should have the Right to die if it is a relief.


That is I believe in the Right to Assisted Dying if it is a relief and release from torrid pain. In a way I think a service like Dignitas should be on the NHS. There are of course enormous philosophical problems with it such as people being co-erced into doing it, or feeling a burden in old age, and life being devalued by it all. But I feel strongly that one should be allowed to die when they want. And I don’t just think it is physical pain such as cancer that should qualify one but emotional pain too. It isn’t right that someone is co-erced into throwing themselves in front of a train when they could go out peacefully and in safe hands.












































66. Nobody can force you to be Anon.


The wind calls for my anonymity; but historically when a work is Anon, they try and work out who really wrote it so Anon would seem backward to me. More to the point, and having read On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, I would say a progressive country goes stagnant, stale, sterile, staid and stationary, full of dead values and dead customs, when there is a decrease in Individuality, and that someone like myself should therefore not be pressured into anonymity. Not only that but it’s against the law to coerce someone or force someone into being Anon against their wishes. One has something called the Right to Attribution which you can ask you friendly A. I. co-pilot all about. I don’t wish to be part of the plastic-cheese-eating, vision-flaccid Order of Sameness or herd-crowd but to resonate as an individual which I do not consider to be a political position in the slightest. If you can’t even write poetry because someone is sounding out saying you have to be Anon every time you start that’s not a good situation. Especially with a CV like mine I feel my Individuality should be preserved for the sake of the greater good.







































67. Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons might happen to be an actual substance.


Nothing can grow under her rule. She is a humourless ice-queen. She can alter personality. But in the question of whether or not “Lucy in the soul w/ demons” happens to be an actual substance, I would urge one to not know either way. That would be to exercise what Keats called “Negative Capability” which he said accounted for Shakespeare’s genius: the ability to exist in uncertainties and doubts without an irritable clinging after fact and reason. I loved it when as a teenager I found my second hand copy of Keats’s Letters fell open on that page and the quote about Negative Capability was underlined in pencil. Shakespeare’s genius was also in dissimulating the semblance of inevitability in both plot and rhyme scheme. Not only that but before Shakespeare, tragedy meant the collusion of outward forces. Shakespeare changed that to the collusion of inward forces, and gave man a new level of introspection, foreshadowing more the way things would go in the future.









































68. Mental illness is no conspiracy.


I used to say the nature of mystical or visionary experience is not amenable to the dialectic of sickness and recovery, the language of sterile medicalese, that one’s illness is more congenial than one’s health to those in charge of one’s health, for monetary reasons, meaning Big Pharma, that can with-hold a cure until the price is right, and advertise anywhere, but now I recognise there is no conspiracy to the illness, that one should plug in and trust that the science works. The men in white coats may diagnose on form not content and may only be happy when you’re a cabbage, but I still need my medication, because I genuinely do have genuine mental illness.












































69. A monster needn’t be very big.


What can you do when you become the witness from The Lords And The New Creatures by Jim Morrison? My latest thinking is that my dad was sponsored by some philosophers to provide the real, human witness. The first was, I believe, something also attested to by James Joyce in time before me, which is written about in Ulysses. The second – it struck me recently – was an actual monster, albeit very small and albeit contained to a plastic rectangular card.


With the first I went into the wood to get the booted away ball, and as I stood looking for the ball, it came from the right, crossed my body, parked and started to wriggle its little wing. This caused me to run and upon returning to the wood to hunt for it was not to be found. I think it was meant to look like a hoax but still exist in meaning.


With the second, I tried on a jacket under the stairs and got a sense something was wrong and took it off and looked inside… “mum!” I cried up the pine, wooden stairs. “There’s something disgusting growing in this jacket!”


I was ignored and it was a flat plastic rectangle with a pattern of black stuff – maybe eggs or seeds – splurged on top of it. I did not leave it to soak in water like a good scientist might. I left the room and went back in to see if it would still be there as the wood had taught me – and it was. So I made the decision to bin the whole jacket.
































70. Just because a theory is true doesn’t mean you should always say it but it is also better to have a false theory than no theory.


Once upon a time, when I first decided to “get scientific” about my life, I devised something called The Theory of Dark Evolution. It states that James Joyce also saw new creatures too, and that him writing Ulysses is therefore the reason Ted Hughes then went and saw a monster in the river, and Hughes writing The Hawk In The Rain, about the nature of visionary experience, then becomes the reason Jim Morrison saw winged serpents in the desert, and Morrison writing The Lords And The New Creatures then becomes the reason I met more than one specimen. The Theory of Dark Evolution therefore posits a Logical Bond between narrative and Naturalistic Observationism of a strange kind. It implies that what one man makes of the recurrence of strange Observationism influences the nature of the next observation in the line.





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