The price of fame... can be fairly expensive

November 7^th – What is it about the rock/pop music industry that attracts more, far more, than its fair share of dubious characters? Let’s set aside the performers, they’re a faction all their own, and just look at those on the periphery, those managers, personal assistants and promotions staff that surround-to-suffocation the performer; it’s almost a brand of legalised stalking.

Whenever I’ve had to deal with someone who is in the upper echelons of showbiz (or who considers themselves to be so) I always dread the arrival of the tag-along with clipboard and mobile ’phone. How bad can it get? I’ve had face-to-face, two-foot-apart conversations with the talent only to have the hanger-on do all the talking for them. Any questions, requests, descriptions, explanations are all repeated by the clipboard and answers forthcoming from the talent are all relayed back via the clipboard…that’s how bad.

What we were all aware of back in the 60’s/70’s was the number of nefarious characters that hung around the edges of both stage and band, using muscle and lack of patience in order to bend the available aura that attracted the slightly unbalanced, like moths to a lamp, to the vortex that was the talent; those suppliers of sex, drugs and booze, in order to divert these supply chains past them first where the rake off could be made. There’s many a place (dive) I’ve gigged where you felt distinctly ill-at-ease with the management and their support staff; really quite unnerved. Together with this darker side, and with flower-power and the beautiful people being to the fore, a high number of same-sex predators were also very evident at just about every gig. The beautiful boys in the band were their target and they were nothing if not persistent. It was unusual not to be propositioned at least once a gig, and although the explanation that one didn’t bat for the other side was politely taken as a refusal it was still not uncommon for folk to come back to the dressing room an hour later, after you’d finished the gig, to see if you’d changed your mind in the interim.

It’s a given, really, that the amount of attention and fuss that’s made of you, if you are in any way even slightly seen as famous, has to be a factor in turning one’s head thereby turning one from a mere mortal into a god (unfortunately only in one’s own opinion) and let me assure you that even in this deluded state, hell hath no fury like a star overshadowed…

This, as we know from the legion stories to come out of the pop/rock scene, can manifest itself in many ways; murder, drug O/D, strange sexual practice mortality, paedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, the list goes on…and unfortunately on. There really is no shortage of ways these chosen ones choose to shorten their career or free-life on this planet, and some can be really…odd; take the case of Rod Lauren.

No? Not familiar? Let me refresh.

Mr. Lauren was a B movie actor and one-hit-wonder pop singer who was most active in the 1960’s. To say his career was less than stellar is an understatement; his one-hit-wonder pop song, If I Had a Girl only reached number 31 in the Billboard Hot Hundred (so hardly gold record status…or, indeed, anywhere close) and the majority of his film work was in TV, albeit with Mr. Hitchcock, so hardly ranking in the IMDB five-star listing. During his filming in the B movie, Once Before I Die he met and married another cast member, Nida Blanca, who was a big thing in the Philippines movie industry…BIG. She starred in over 163 movies, numerous television shows, and took 16 awards for movies and 6 awards for television during a film career that lasted 50 years. To complete the overshadowing of her husband’s meagre output she was named one of 15 Best Actress of all Time by Yes Magazine. One would like to think that hubby was satisfied enough with being associated with a lady of such stature and that they lived happily ever after…weeellll…not quite.

When the very attractive, very active, very rich Ms. Blanca was found stabbed and beaten to death in the back of her car, and the health of her marriage and terms of her will were understood, Mr. Lauren (aka R. L. Strunk…you couldn’t make this stuff up, could y’) became chief  suspect. Out of the country when the arrest warrant was issued on this day in 2001, Mr. Lauren defeated two attempts at deportation by the Philippine government who had collected evidence that Mr. Strunk had hired a hitman, Philip Medel, to murder his wife before the will could be enacted…which would mean he would be cut out of a share of the 85 million peso (£1.25m) worth of Philippines properties, a San Juan condominium worth 10 million pesos (£143,000) and a house in California worth $300,000 (£187,000).

Mr. Medel admitted to the deal and then reneged on it, claiming police coercion, but served time for it anyway, dying in prison because of it. Mr. Strunk committed suicide by jumping off’f a second floor balcony in Tracy, CA…the second floor of the Tracy Inn of all places; so, from unfulfilled property millionaire to hotel chain suicide victim via accessory to murder suspect in the short space of six years; it would seem stardom, even undesirable and in small doses, is a strange pathway to stumble along aint it?

Marianne Faithful - Now there's a life.

November 6^th – At what cost?

The Baroness Sacher-Masoch has connections through her family name with the descriptive sexual practise first used in the novel, Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and known to us as masochism.

Nico, who has featured here before was part of the beat poet society in her vocal renditions and persona with Velvet Underground. Never did go much on her (nor she on me, I’d guess) but was aware that she was reckoned as a presence in the 60’s/70’s and is still referred to as an iconic performer and role model for the age.

Goethe’s Faust is the apocryphal German tale…come on, keep up… Goethe’s Faust is the apocryphal German tale likened to the blues standard, Crossroads and the English saying;

Be careful what you wish for.

All of us daydream at one time and another about what it would be like to be rich, famous, fast, clever, whatever, and in the most part this is all these thoughts remain; daydreams to keep away the cold winds caused by supposed failure or lack of recognition. How many of you have spent the Lottery millions in your head over the past year? I have: twice this year alone. I often think back to that excellent Play for Today production first screened in 1977, Spend, Spend, Spend about the working-class couple who won the Littlewoods football pools of £152,000 (when £152,000 was probably the equivalent of five million quid now). Made a big impression on me that one (mind you it was co-written by Jack Rosenthal with help from the Viv Nicholson so, what’s not to like) and I refer back to the feel of that drama whenever I get a bit above myself in wishing for things to be better, faster, bigger…

So, how would it be if we were ordinary us but wanted to be the friend of the famous, have luxury a-plenty at regular intervals and be courted as the 25^th most influential man/woman of the century? Let’s say our perfect shoulder-mate Beelzebub came a-knockin’ and laid it all out, says;

My dear, you can have it; I’m gonna make you a star.

That you’d come close a couple of times but wouldn’t actually die until you well into your seventies, guaranteed… But that the things you went through to get there would do for you in the end; cut twenty years off’f your life so death at 78 not 98; what then? Would we be prepared to suffer the slings and arrows for a taste of fame and intermittent fortune? Let’s opt for the end being severe, debilitating, life-threatening drug addiction where the drug was all and a life on the streets was preferable to going without. That you have no course of action open to you apart from denial about the lies and mis-information peddled as truth by newspapers about a single event, to the point where it became what defined you as a person for years. We’d have to balance how much we would gain in celebrity kudos from lost love, lost children, lost health and loss of faith by friends of course, and whether a hit album was worth the extent of the losses. Sit by as the things you suffer, self-inflicted or not, are turned inside out for the amusement of others and be used by music-critics and pseuds as a way of defining your talent in lieu of a very dubious complement; like getting throat cancer and being praised for your;

Husky, smoky vocal abilities.

as though this is the reason you went through it, just so’s they could sit in their living room and not only take their smug, self-satisfied pleasure from the result of your affliction but pass judgement on how good it is…or not; makes it all so worth the while don’tcha think?

As advertised here previously, having been under the influence of a breakdown (twice) in my lifetime, because you are in the centre of this mental twister you really can see nothing but the debris that whirls around you and which it’s impossible to dodge between in order to gain escape. What you become, against all odds and if you do manage to escape, is a survivor; damaged in places but stronger in others. From this position of relative experience (key word here is relative) one can appreciate the journeys made, the plateaus scrambled to and the destinations attained by others and I have to admit that, in the case of Baroness Sacher-Masoch (aka Marianne Faithfull) to have survived her roller-coaster ride of life and, on this day in 2006, having beaten breast cancer too, one has to say, whether her lifestyle, love and music appeal or not it’s hat’s off to a survivor.

The Bee Gees and HS2

November 5^th – I hinted at the practice in my last published novel, The Quarry’; I quote from chapter two:

Along this trackway, now denuded of its iron rails and wooden sleepers but still covered by the weed-pocked, creosote-stained ballast that once supported them, were the skeletal remains of a dream ripped apart by Mister Beeching and his cohorts many years ago. Although they preserved the remote country stations, which gave an accurate map of the country homes of politicians, what they helped to destroy was the Britannia Class landscape in the lives of suburban, short-trousered tykes with grey mothed pullovers, grubby knees and notebooks. These past runways of British Rail rolling stock were now just the winter roosting sites of wood pigeon, fieldfare and redwing and here, on one of the estate’s favoured drives, of pheasants; and tonight they were all in their allotted places.

That seems very shallow of me, to use that lengthy quote to illustrate today’s guff but, honest, there’s a reason. In the news now, with HS2/HS3, and what has been in the news for the past 20+ years, ever since the Conservative government embarked on hiving off our national railway service to their friends to make a profit out of, has been the wholesale castration of our transport industry into its present-day shit-shape.

As a starter, I nominate for the position of Worst Train Station in the UK the joyful stop that is Bristol Parkway. Was there ever a more depressing, cruel and socially alienating yet almost unavoidable place on the UK mainland? I’m open to challenge but you’ll have to prove it. This is a corrugated-iron wind tunnel where the regular announcements by electronically segmented phrase selections assure you that a machine somewhere in the bowels of customer-service hell is sorry for the delay; and these automated vox-pops signify all that is terrible in this careless, supportless nation of ours, and so the beat goes on.

With a start figure of £25bn, HS2 has now bloated itself out to a present-day estimate of a £40bn price tag, with the PM saying he’ll;

Cut the £50bn cost of HS2 ?

It would seem even the figures bandied around by the industry are £10bn short of what the PM thinks it’ll cost; there’s a man who’s on the case... Due to be completed in June 2033 (yes, that’s right, twenty thirty-three) my guess is the HS2 costs won’t decrease any… Ever had the feeling we’re being right-royally fucked over?

One of the myths being promulgated is that the railways are safer in private hands; but the facts tell an interesting story. Since privitisation in 1997 there have been 28 rail crashes resulting in 83 deaths and 1345 serious injuries over a 16 year period so 1.75 rail crashes per year average. Before privatisation and taking a similar 16 year period there were 38 rail crashes resulting in 132 deaths and 1165 serious injuries so 2.37 rail crashes per year average; not a lot to choose between them…but, thing is, those accidents that happened post-privitisation were, in the main, caused by poor maintenance (pointing to a lack of infrastructure investment perpetrated in order to gain a greater dividend for the shareholders and board members) whereas those before, when politicians ran the show, were, in the main, caused by driver/staff operator error (pointing to possible excessive shift working to make up for poor pay, union intransigence in staff discipline and management’s lack of investment in training).

On this day in 1967 a train was derailed at Hither Green near London. 49 people died and 78 were injured and amongst those was one Robin Gibb (of Bee Gees fame) who was travelling in the crowded train with his then fiancée, Molly. Mr. Gibb helped many injured passengers from the train wreck until, after three hours of helping he too was taken to hospital suffering from shock and exhaustion. This was a pre-privitisation crash that was caused by poor track maintenance which, in turn, was due to the practice of using joiners for the rail track as well as the excessive speed by the driver in order to keep to the timetable.

After this crash the practice of continuous welded rails and greater inspection routines were introduced all of which helped to reduce the probability of a repeat.

At the time of this accident the Bee Gees were riding high in the charts with their rendition of the New York Mining Disaster of 1941 which tells the tale of a fictitious service industry accident (although there was an Avondale mining disaster in Pennsylvania in 1869) and makes much of the bravery of folk in extreme situations. So, at the time Mr. Gibb was singing about coping with a fictitious disaster when he was employed in coping with a real one....just sayin'...

Mills Brothers remembered in an altered reality

November 4^th – It’s interesting to see how time alters the focus of things, softens them in some cases, or brings others into sharp focus. Take racial perceptions as an example.

It was in my lifetime that it was perfectly acceptable to have a sign outside your rental property that read;

No Dogs

No Blacks

No Irish

It was all in order for the Robertson’s Company, on their line of jams and preserves, to have a golliwog as the emblem for their various varieties of jam and marmalade. Indeed, us, as kids, were encouraged to collect these tokens on the jar and send them in to the company in order to receive a metal badge of a golliwog so’s we could wear it with pride as being a member of the Robertson’s Golliwog Club. As things are and in our enlightened state, confirmed by the ever growing stature of the black community over the past forty+ years, those statements and commonplaces are now no longer acceptable in either content or comment. As populations begin to mix and mingle greater understanding and connection makes itself felt and pre-conceptions handed on to children by misguided elders are seen for the stupidity they are. Growing up in a colonial past, the preaching’s accepted as Urban Myths by the children of a supposedly superior civilisation are seen for what they are; the oppression and abuse of a different civilisation who should have expected, if our self-aggrandising statements about Great Britain being the cradle of Democracy, honour and tolerance, much better. These things we can now understand from our position of experience and greater learning but what these understandings also do is alter our perception of things from our past that we re-read anew only to dress them in clothes that just do not fit.

Tricky one this; take it as I write it, you know the cut of my jib by now.

The Mills Brothers were a vocal quartet of the very highest quality who released more than 2,000 recordings (yup, not a typo, that’s as in two thousand recordings) and these 2,000 recordings sold more than 50,000,000 copies world-wide (yup, not a typo, that’s as in fifty million copies) and the selling of these 50,000,000 copies gained the quartet at the very least 36 gold records (yup, not a typo, that’s as in 3 dozen gold discs). They guested with the very best in game, Mr. Crosby, Mr. Powell, Mr. Sinatra, Ms. Fitzgerald, Mr. Miller, Mr. Martin, Ms. Midler, Mr. Como, Mr. Boone, Mr. Benny…the list goes on and on. Anybody who was anybody in the 30’s/40’s/50’s/60’s/70’s big-band music and film scene queued up to gig with them or get them on their show; they really were that good.

Using their hands and voices to recreate the sounds of trumpets, trombones, tuba, bass guitar, all manner of big-band instruments, they layered them on top of succulent and captivating vocal harmonies and what’s more important to an old has-been muso like me, they could do it all live. I got to know their music from my dad who’d come across them during the 39-45 conflict and enjoyed the quartet for their musical and harmonic abilities as well as their frequent work in the movies of the time which, as every service person from that era will testify, was the one of the few highpoints in any break in hostilities; to me they weren’t black musicians they were just brilliant.

Thing is (and here I hand it all over to you and await your verdict on whether I really am the silly old duffer I suspect I am) with all that has happened in the intervening period, all of the changes we've been through and the redefining of racism and it's shifting to become the edges of covert and undercover but still prevalent in some strata of society; when we've all too late discovered institutional racism in so many aspects of public life and services; when the word outranks the deed but doesn't stop it, that what I once saw for what it was, enjoyed for what it was and smiled at what it was, is now tinged with a streak of knowledge and, like looking at spring blossom and being unable to separate its beauty from the knowledge that the thread of eventual death runs through it, I can’t rediscover that innocence and enjoyment. S’bugger, innit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14QEoEIvUuk&list=RDn2m8VZBfRYo

Lonnie Donegan...and just about every rock star since.

November 3^rd – For me the Cisco Kid was the epitome of the American cowboy…and that horse! I guess that’s what first got me onto horses…that piebald/skewbald horse of his (couldn’t tell, B/W TV, remember) the saddle, bridle and bit and his clothes…ivory-handled six-guns in holsters of what were obviously, in my imagination, made from the hide of a deer shot at extreme distance by The Kid and his trusty Winchester… It took my first viewing of The Wild Bunch to finally dislodge this dreamscape from my mind, but this ingrained vision of the pristine cowboy took some shifting and that’s because the stereotype was refreshed and renewed in another main educator of mine.

On repeated visits to my local cinema (Penn Cinema in Wolverhampton) and as part of the uncontrollable herd known colloquially as Saturday Morning Picture House, amongst other fare were the cowboys of Tom Mix, Whip Wilson, George Montgomery and James Ellison, and these were the rough-tough hombres upon which I’d base my childhood characters when, on release into the sunshine, my friends and I would re-enact the feats of derring-do in the woodland near my home. Apart from developing my taste for the fanciful, the other life-forming happening of these times was the event that took place every Saturday just before the films started.

In a somewhat forlorn effort to keep a modicum of control over the serried ranks of pre-teen devastation, the house sound system was plumbed into a record player and the management would play the hit records of the time…at full volume. Great plan that, to take three-hundred super-hyped, E-number-riddled children fed on a diet of 1950’s sweets (all stuffed full with every chemical known to man) and then play them hepped-up early rock ‘n’ roll; excellent plan. Did it work? Did it fuck. So, in order to gain some kind of credible control, the management would invite six or eight children onto the narrow stage in front of the screen to mime-play along with the songs being broadcast. This would at least cut the marauding numbers down by those on stage plus a few of their friends; not much difference but when you’re faced with wall-to-wall hysteria any drop in the stalls mayhem is a help. I can well remember the one and only time I was selected (hauled out from the melee by my collar) to be a stage performer. I was handed a tea-chest and single twine-dressed broomstick was thrust into my sticky paws and, along with five other kids, was thrust out onto the stage: Bugger me, was that a defining moment or what. One of the songs I recall us accompanying (yup, it made THAT big an impression…turned me into the show-off I am today) was Freight Train by Lonnie Donegan who died this day in 2002.

Better known for his novelty songs here was a man who’s influence kick-started the careers of many of the greatest performers and bands of all time…of all time. Tom Jones, The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Queen, Van Morrison, The White Stripes to name a select few; indeed it was Jack White who said at his acceptance speech at the Brit Awards;

Remember, Lonnie Donegan started it for you.

And, in a way, he started it for insignificant me. I’d like to think, in my own small way with my own meagre output of rock from the 60’s through to the 90’s that I’ve paid back a little of the debt.

Desi Arnaz - Pro Choice

November 2^nd – One thing about progress, once it’s done it’s done; you can’t undo it; you can do without it but can’t reverse it and that can often spoil a perfectly balanced set of circumstances and turn something from friend to foe; be careful what you wish for…. Take TV and that dreadfully overworked political word choice for instance.

Where things go tits is the supposition we’ve been suckered into, up to the point where we really believe that having countless avenues of choice will provide the stability needed to repair shoddy, dangerous services that threaten life and limb but which, in fact, only give a cats-cradle of excuse pathways for the myriad suppliers when the poo hits the propeller. It’s come to the point now when, on a challenge from the Floor of the House to a government minister who has been found to be in charge of a sensibility-challenged department, now says, and I quote;

This is an unacceptable situation and I can assure the House that I will call in an independent group of consultants immediately and then report fully, once their report is available, in 12 months time.

My first reaction to this is to shout at the radio;

If you’ve got to call in a group of consultants to sort out the mess you’ve made then what the fuck am I paying you for? May just as well employ them and sack the fuck out of you; save on salary and idiocy.

And that, magnified by ten, is what we’ve done to the National Health Service. We’ve allowed successive governments to hive out the various sections of supply and treatment to their mates to make a profit from all the time telling the client (that’s us, the patient) that all this choice will make us better…which it won’t but we continue to be too busy to challenge them. Yes we have unprecedented choice in which hospital we go to for treatment, but when you’re gasping for air in the centre of a heart attack my guess is the last thing you want to have to do is take time out to consider which hospital will give you the best chance of survival; surely it should be equal across the board, shouldn’t it, or have I misunderstood something? And we can equate that ideology by looking at just where multiple-choice will take us by scrutinising present-day television channels.

Out of the hundreds of channels available there are only four terrestrial ones that carry no advertising. All the others are funded by their advertising revenues and, consequently, one can flick through fifteen or twenty channels without actually seeing a programme being broadcast. All is ads all giving children, who watch TV from the age of 1, a totally skewed idea of life and, like the WONGA ads, are baptising them with the loan-life philosophy from the get-go (BTW didn’t everyone think that WONGA were just a bunch of shysters…? Or was it just me?) These ad-breaks often run for eight or ten minute slots and in addition to the Shopping Channels which seem to grow exponentially by the week. The other channels are re-run and cheap TV sites (CCTV footage) and what becomes obvious as you vainly switch channels in order to find something, anything that’s either vaguely interesting or that you’ve not seen before, is that more choice just means more choice of shite. What’s brought on this diatribe of invective? Well, on this day in 1986, Desi Arnaz died (although he did get an extension in some obits as having passed on in December…which is a fat lot of good to him now but still…).

For those not au fait with this guy, he was the partner of Lucille Ball when they did a TV series called, I Love Lucy which began broadcasting in Great Britain in 1955. This was a time of B/W TV and just a duet of television broadcasters (there are now 480): The BBC and ITA. ITA chose the show as a vehicle for showing its credentials (they had only just begun broadcasting) and although the programme was only then available in the London area it still racked up the number two slot for popularity in 1955. How popular? I do believe that even now, today, 2014, somewhere in the world an episode of I Love Lucy is screening as it has done since its inception. Thing is, I’m not advocating we return to those days (don’t need to – see above) but what those original figures meant was that with only two channels to choose from, the output was of high production and content value and what’s far, far more important, was restricted in its output hours in a locally broadcast show the viewing figures were such that they could not only be toted up but were sufficient to put that show in at number two which meant that although we had restricted access to TV and in the channels and times too and we went outside to learn about the world and played it still knocked ’em in!

As part of Desilu Productions, Mr. Arnaz and Ms. Ball were the first real showbiz entrepreneurs and even back then laid the groundwork for what they called basic good taste, determined to avoid ethnic jokes as well as humour based on handicaps, mental disabilities, and so on. Because they were one of the few, what they espoused to was seen as the template for TV broadcasting. A level all should aspire to.

Blown out the water now, of course, ‘cos the more channels there are the more the taste envelope can be pushed to the point where we end up with the choice we have now; 480 channels containing the odd piece of original work but mainly consisting of rolling news TV, franchise TV, re-run TV, porn TV, cruelty TV, live brutality TV, live stupidity TV, embarrassing TV…or ads.

Mothers of Invention Indian roots

November 1^st – As an adolescent of the 60’s I, along with every second person I came into contact with was searching for a reason, a meaning for the life we were living…

There, that’s got your attention hasn’t it, a statement of such magnitude? I bet you’re thinking;

Blimey, he’s gonna give us the answer to life, the universe and everything in a second.

Sorry to disappoint but, no, I’m not. I’ve been baptised into, researched deeply or generally dabbled in Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Anglicism and can say, hand on heart, that all have come up short when it comes to describing a life-tenet that attends to the human condition without equivocation.

All of this life-questing I did through the 60’s and 70’s (we all did, I’m nowt special in this) led me to only one conclusion; organised religion of any sort is not an answer to the problems that have, are and will beset the human race. The answer, solutions and means to tackle the ills and wrongs will come from within. Not a god, not prayer to an inanimate deity, not by paying some preacher for your soul’s salvation but from us; humanism. I class myself as a christian (small ‘c’ is deliberate) and a humanist (small ‘h’ is deliberate) and to arrive at this much of my personal beliefs have been supported by one main source.

Frank Zappa in his various incarnations but particularly in his first big-break band, Mother’s of Invention has always been a firm favourite of mine. I know, I know;

He was considered to be a selfish, self-centred control freak that used musicians as stepping stones to fame.

Yup. Some truths there. Difficult guy in many respects, but I think musically and politically he’s right on the money…I can hear your head right now;

What, you pray to the god, Zappa!?

No, you dope, ‘course not! What it is, is that much of his output, both musically and politically, rings true to me. He’s not afraid to tell it like it is and he’s also not afeared to say it the people who could do him the most harm; the politicians and money-makers who threaten us daily by planting silent fears for our safety or our sanity, but that’s not the point of this personal note of mine.

In amongst the band member’s of Mother’s of Invention was a drummer, one Jimmy Carl Black, who died this day in 2008. An excellent drummer and perfect foil for the band’s oftentimes totally individual musical presentation, Mr. Black had a trademark line that is heard often in the recording of their breakthrough album, We’re Only In It For The Money (as an album title released into the 60’s counterculture you’d buy it for the name alone). In that recording a voice can be heard saying;

Hi, boys and girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group.

Hailing from Cheyenne heritage he had every right to pronounce his racial credentials, and he also knew the right buttons to push in order to give gravitas to his history, being credited on other albums as;

Playing drums, vocals and poverty.

As a jobbing muso his career path is worthy of note. He played with Captain Beefheart, was gainfully employed as a doughnut maker, fronted a band called The Grandmothers, ran a decorating business with, wait for it, Arthur Brown (of Crazy World of… fame; that’s one decorating business I’d like to have experienced) and said;

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area.

Got my vote right there. Mr. Black.

Why? Well, the wider issue here for me is that, in the scheme of things human, the North American Indian has been a constant reference point for me, pretty much since I read (although devoured would be a better word) Dee Brown’s book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee back in 1971. Not read it? Why? Get on it now!

Talk about an epiphany moment. I can’t think of another factual book that has so devastated, enthralled, liberated, destroyed and re-created me in equal measure as this work. Tears come easy to me (I’m the guy the word wimp was invented for) and this book brought them a-plenty, as well as a surging anger and feeling of total bewilderment and loss. This is what started me out on my trying to understand the American Indian philosophy (still just a beginner) and their/our place in the story of things. Yup, they were not a perfect peoples; they committed some terrible things on others (and, of course, we never did) and by way of introduction I can offer no better testament to their view of white Americans than that said by Red Cloud, chief of the Oglala Lakota tribe:  

The white man made us many promises - more than I can remember, but he never kept but one: he promised to take our land - and he took it.

The Seven Philosophies for a Native American Man is worth a read as is their Native American Code of Ethics and, can you indulge me a little? Good. I leave these two short quotes as a teaser.

Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents; it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, be borrow it from our children.

And.

Honour the sacred.

Honour the Earth, our Mother.

Honour the Elders.

Honour all with whom we share the earth, Four-leggeds, two-leggeds, winged ones, swimmers, crawlers, plant, rock, people.

Walk in balance and beauty.

Nightnight. X!