Why You Must Travel

Posted on by djmadar

966277_10152933295550521_912737435_oIf this unashamed piece of delinquent propaganda has wormed its way to the front of your computer screen then don’t hurriedly click away. Please allow me to introduce myself – I’m a man of wealth and taste. I’ve been around for a long, long year, stolen many a man’s soul and faith.

If your reaction to those last two sentences was one of confusion that’s ok. Keep on rollin’ along – it’s only a stones throw away.

The internet – a bastion of creative pornography – is also home to a hive of illegal downloads. Once upon a time, Generation X would have to lie, cheat and steal just to get their poor, grubby mitts on esteemed vinyl records. You know, stuff like Revolver and Dark Side. And now – in this golden age of technology – it’s just lying there, naked and free, ready to be consumed and adored in the way it so craves.

And yet, you young punks are out there being Beliebers and what not – listening to generic tunes, produced by sell outs for corporate wankers. When it’s just you and an iPod for company on a wretched twelve hour bus ride that simply won’t cut it.

When you’re forced to leave the petty worlds of Facebook and Twitter behind, and actually engage with the music itself; when it’s no longer the background scapegoat of your shallow attention span, but the very centre of your mind. Only then will the majesty and wonder of melody surge through your awoken soul.

I look forward to creaky trains and crowded buses – sometimes for the lone excuse to whack on those headphones and enter Pumpkinland; to soar and dive with those beastly guitar solos and rhythmic beats; to listen to every sound of every note and interpret every lyric. That’s when you know you like it. Plug it in you maggot brain and play that funky music.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg my friend (and not the one that sunk our buoyant ship). Hour after hour on the road provides perfect escapism to shroud yourself in sound and literature. Guffaw and gasp at the magic of David Foster Wallace and Gregory Robert’s Shantaram: true definitions of destructive genius.

Let those archaic barriers bestowed upon your innocent childhood fall apart, as you converse with countless strangers in dodgy old bangers and taverns. Don’t kid yourself with the bullshit pretence of money or time. Make it happen and take the fucking plunge. Work and save on that fat pay cheque in the West. Then stick it to the man and spend East.

Stay on couches or in hostels. Meet a set of characters: the roving conqueror -regaling tales of gallant adventure far yonder; meet the sharpest minds you’ve ever known – acing every conundrum; meet those who will inevitably fade into mere numbers through the constant stream of contemporary faces; meet the guy who has everybody in hysterics at the end of every punch line – the joker of the pack.

And most excitingly meet those exquisite eyes from across the room. Feel your heart race and your stomach lighten. Feel her silken skin on your fingertips and her puckered lips. Unleash the mortal tension and fire from within to this diamond queen. Let the passion course through your blood as you fuck your exotic goddess all night long. For god sake remember her fucking name and the time you spent together.

By next week, you’ll probably be somewhere else. The travellers, the shakers  – they tend to be a more interesting bunch than those who stayed inside the box; those who grew up in that drab, inconsequential town and never really left.

So far in our crash course I feel we have focused merely on the side shows of this fanciful existence – the salad, mayonnaise and onions of our gourmet burger. Inevitably it’s time to bite down good and proper and taste the succulent flesh of life on the road. (Metaphorically speaking, of course, unless you’re a roadkill fanatic.)

In The Flesh

There’s a lot to see in this strange and uncertain world of ours. Even the most seasoned of ramblers won’t have traversed half of it; it’s the size of a bloody planet for Christ sake! Does curiosity not get the better of you? – it never really killed the cat. Do you not want to pull back the curtain and peek out the window? Just to see what’s really going on with your own two eyes.

Procrastination (probably what you’re doing now) and weak gossip shows are at an all-time high – correlating no doubt with a generation of zombified citizens, bored to death by their monotonous, suburban lives. It’s time to pull out the backpack and trek the Andes; stare in wonder at Giza; and dream of Nara (this is all yours Joe). Time to swallow the Big Apple; motorbike across the Gobi, and discover planet China. Start a revolution along the way.

Ok, so that’s a fair bit to be getting on with, but who knows what the future holds? Apologies for the Marxism, however what exactly is this constant obsession for newer cars, fancier clothes and an endless list of ostentatious possessions? We’re more hooked on this consumerist malarkey than crack. And quite frankly that’s ridiculous.

Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road you’re on.

Quality of life comes from within. Narcissism and jealousy never made anyone happy, yet it saturates our 21st century existence. All this hollow sensationalism and woeful displays of self-aggrandising: nobody gives a fuck and they probably never will. It is through experiences that bend and shape our unique personalities; through the constant interaction and exploration of the land’s great mysteries and treasures.

Observe it. Question it. Analyse and discuss it. Make sense of the senseless. Find out why and how and where. Learn outside that dark sarcasm in the classroom (teachers, leave them kids alone), in a way that doesn’t demoralise and crush your innately inquisitive being.

And yet, it’s by discovering everything else on your eternal journey that you discover who you really are. Only then, pushed to limits you never really thought existed – as you heave and sweat years of processed garbage, cigarettes and alcohol – does that long lost adrenal throb rise up. Up from the darkest depths of Mordor. You’ll experience the full force of wild unpredictability, as animalistic emotions fluctuate between ecstasy and despair.

Just remember – as you enter the fortieth hour on that highway to hell – that one day you’ll find the gold at the end of the rainbow. In the meantime, grit your teeth and get on with it. As you experience the madness and macabre in front of your very eyes learn to rationale as they do.

Feel your mind open wide enough to allow it all through the same door. The theories, ideologies and even dichotomies.

Feel those curious, squalid faces, incessantly spying your every move; the attention and warmth they show your exotic countenance. It’s here, in that lost corner of the world, that you’ll really become a pioneering explorer. The poorly clad locals, devoid of electronic gadgets and straight teeth, provide the ultimate human paradox. Those with so little tend to give so much more.

Finally, you’ll realise what it means; to understand what Buddhism (and more recently Yoda) has been trying to teach us; to become hippy and not hipster – more Dalai Lama and less social justice warrior; to genuinely care, rather than straining to convince a bunch of tossers that you’re a decent human being. Let that maniacal, all consuming western ego fall gently by the wayside, before that desperate encounter with the karma police. Give back to a world that gives us so much.

Now you can you truly relax, safe in the knowledge that it no longer matters how much you impress anyone. There’s more to it than that. Maybe, just for a fleeting moment, you’ll feel ashamed contemplating all the selfish things you’ve done (and will continue to do.) Fighting that incessant insatiable desire for more is exhausting. As people starve and vomit to their undocumented death, we continue to spend that last ‘well earned’ penny on whatever we fucking well please.

And then we complain and sulk about all those excessive guilty pleasures, working ourselves into such fits of melancholia we hire a shrink to ‘cure’ our warped dimensions. Don’t bother with such bollocks – take the travel medicine instead. Keep yourself out there as long as you can, returning only when you’re not even sure what to call home anymore.

As you stare around in dim disbelief at the routine behaviours and conversation patterns of your original friends, you know it will never be the same again. It’s indescribable, but it’s most certainly there, lulling your confused and distressed mind into a deep coma. Make sure you wake up and get back on the road again. You’re no longer a waitress or a barman, a marketing executive or a drug addict. You’re a traveller.

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Fear and Loathing in Theresa May’s Britain

Posted on by djmadar

I have not had the privilege of spending much time in the UK since Theresa May picked up the ball up from the back of scrum following David Cameron’s spectacular EU referendum backfire. The UK was meant to stay in Europe and Cameron was meant to remain as prime minister, but his tactical ploy messed up big time.

From that sense maybe it would be better to leave it to the Experts and Press Wizards to sum up Britain’s latest election – set for June 8, 2017. But as Michael Gove asserted, the British public have “had enough of experts”. So let me have a go at dissecting it for you.

First off, Prime Minister May likes to emphasise that she’s a ‘strong and stable’ leader – read weak and wobbly. She might draw comparisons with Thatcher (mostly because she happens to be female) but her incredulously drab personality has far more in common with John Major than the Iron Lady. He also caught a loose ball following a messy Tory in-fight, picked up the pieces against a far left candidate – Neil Kinnock – in 1992 and then got slaughtered by New Labour in 1997.

So what does Mrs May actually stand for? Despite being a Remainer (albeit a tactically very quiet one) she is now Out Front leading the charge for ‘hard Brexit’ – whatever the hell that means. She talks a tough game with European leaders, but this long and gruelling divorce has barely started and already the complications seem unassailable.

While the Remoaners should admit that leaving the EU is not the end of the world, Brexiters would do well to embrace some of the Institution’s better aspects. Sure, it’s democratically questionable (I apologise for bringing Nigel Farage into the equation, however as he points out the EU Parliament is in effect a self-gratifying echo chamber, since the power to legislate is vested in the unelected European Commission – unlike the British House of Commons or America’s Congress.) Still, our First Past the Post voting system is hardly a beacon of democratic representation…

Anyhow, I’m getting sidetracked; these are other questions for other days.

Mrs. May has torn up the fixed term parliament policy introduced by Cameron and Clegg in 2010 and called a snap election in the hope of scoring an overwhelming victory over Labour and the rest of the progressive riff-raff – namely the Lib Dems, Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Trust me, she says: a safe pair of hands for a shaky situation.

And whose fault is that? Europe aside, there’s plenty to be pissed off about. Hard up nurses using food banks as they prop up a cash-starved NHS, an increase in child poverty and swingeing benefit cuts. Sky-rocketing rents and stagnant real wages is a toxic combination. When inflation outstrips average wage growth – as it has done for many years – you’ll get indignant faces.

After all, our government is mired in debt, as hard-earned tax payer money found its way into the hands of the Banks after the 2008 Financial Meltdown. Austerity is biting those most in need. Back in 2010 Cameron insisted such cuts were necessary to eliminate the deficit by the end of 2015. Except it’s now 2017 and the Tories are barely half-way there.

That’s Tory fiscal credibility for you. And that’s modern Britain for you – socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. It might not be as bad as Greece or Yemen, but it’s hardly a record to brag about. Maybe that’s why Mrs. May refuses to engage Mr. Corbyn in a live TV debate. Her recent Q and A sessions have  underlined the severe plot holes in her self-serving narrative.

Meanwhile, her voting record since arriving in Parliament in 1997 appears inconsistent and opportunistic. She’s certainly something of a War Hawk, supporting every parliamentary motion to bomb and invade Iraq in 2002-03, the no fly zone in Libya in 2011, and several votes to use airstrikes and impose economic sanctions on Syria. While denouncing the regimes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, she’s happy enough to sell British-made weapons to Saudi Arabia in the blink-of-an eye.

Sadly she is not distinguished in supporting such measures, but that doesn’t make her record any sweeter. She did indeed serve as Britain’s longest Home Secretary in history, though longevity should not be mistaken for competence. See Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Blair’s third terms as prime minister.

So what about the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn? Like Prime Minister May he was elected to the House of Commons during a period of chronic party weakness – Labour under Michael Foot in 1983. Back then he was portrayed as a scruffily dressed mummy’s boy, so has he grown up since then?

Well… he’s still a terrorist sympathiser according to most of the Press Wizards. Apparently requiring the UN to provide firm evidence that the Assad regime was responsible for the chemical weapons attack is irresponsible and dangerous (a position also held by those “freedom hating” Russian and Chinese governments) – obviously when Tony Blair got down on his knees for George W. Bush over some imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that wasn’t the case.

And T.B. doesn’t like J.C. – good. The fact that Mr. Blair waltzed off into the sunset to become a Middle East Peace Envoy after helping to destabalise the entire region, as well as being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to give exclusive speeches after leading us to the brink of an almighty financial crash, is pretty sick. Sure, Tony was good at winning elections, but he was also an utter Slime Ball. If he dislikes Corbyn, then Jez must be doing something right.

Mr. Corbyn is indeed wildly popular with grass roots leftists, securing two humongous victories in party leadership contests. However the Labour Machine is not so on board, with several MP’s having demanded his resignation. Jeremy’s here to stay for the election at least, and then he might be on his way… either to the top or cosigned to the dustbin of history. Unfortunately, the latter seems more likely.

Looking past the Big Two, Mr. Tim Farron says he wants a second EU Referendum (meh – I’m getting a bit tired of all these votes) and supports the legalisation of cannabis – about time! So let’s stop pretending that a few tokes of sweet mary jane leads one to become a heroin addict. As Liberal Democrat leader, Tim has his work cut out to regain those seats wiped out in the 2015 General Election (and to get people to remember his name). The Green Party says some nice fluffy stuff about the brutality of consumer capitalism and environmental destruction, but realistically the best they can hope for is a continued rise in vote share. As for the SNP and Plaid Cymru…

Mr. Corbyn offers the only chance of an alternative in Number 10 Downing Street to Mrs. May, but I do not foresee the Establishment allowing for such a scenario. The Opinion Polls suggest the gap is too wide and most of the Media Hacks insist that Mr. Corbyn is unelectable and unfit to serve as prime minister. He peddles fantasy economics they say.

More austerity economics is the way forward supposedly. All those gleaming low-paid and zero-hour contract jobs, just excellent! All this fractional reserve banking is an almighty House of Cards anyway, what’s the point of pretending anymore? But we’ve got to keep the workers on this endless tread-mill to keep the great Big Lie alive. This fear mongering of immigrants, benefits scroungers, terrorists and Vladimir Putin is getting rather tiresome (though the recent attacks in London and Manchester were very real and traumatic).

Brits are working harder but are worse off than before. We’re saddled personally and fiscally with insurmountable debt, and we’re helping to export some ghastly weapons to Middle Eastern despots while telling the rest of Europe to fuck off.

This is the reality of Theresa May’s Britain.

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