Things crumbling

Christ, I’ve just watched the documentary about Woodstock ’99 on Netflix.

Fascinating to see the organisers still trying to control the narrative despite the evidence of history. What a disaster. As someone who works in events this was more of a horror than the Fyre Fest doc. It also just helps illustrate how quickly things can get out of hand. This was my age group, this would have been my Woodstock. The marketing had found me. I was at Guildhall at the time. I remember hearing about it but immediately dismissing the whole thing because of the lineup being uninteresting to me. It would have to have been Leonard Cohen for me back then to justify a transatlantic flight. Not these aggro rockers.

A good watch though, and a good end to one of the last relaxed days I’m gonna have for a while. I’ll take my weekend where I can. It’s rarely on the actual weekend.

Golfo has gone back to Liverpool leaving a hole on the far side of my sofa where we have companionably snuffled and sleeptalked to one another amidst the sea of gubbins. I’m feeling the cold here now but not yet enough to put the heating on – how long can I avoid that? In the current environment, as long as possible. The Russian propaganda machines are hastening the demise of an already unpopular governmental choice. Fiddy Cent has renamed himself Pound. We need to rally or we will get buried. The online narrative is controlled and amplified by those huge propaganda factories in St Petersburg, so now more than forever we have to employ our own checks and considerations on any piece of information we receive online. Who is disseminating this? What is their angle? Why have I received it? Why has it been written? Etc. Critical thinking, the very skill that is under fire from the fundamentalists, like because it’s better to just have faith? Without critical thinking we are doomed to become sock puppets. Some of my friends already have. Their mouth moves and other people’s words come out.

Like those young men burning stuff at Woodstock, we all feel pretty angry right now. It all was messy and narcissistic and pointless then, and it probably will be again, but I’m aware that I’m disillusioned enough to be one of the tiny voices crying for change. But I’m maybe too disillusioned by this messy selfish species. We fish until there are no fish even though we know that stopping for a bit will help the stocks recover. We burn until there’s nothing left to burn. We consume consume consume. We are a flash in the pan and have likely already sewn the seeds of our own destruction, but the world will continue and maybe we will too in some more humble form, but this nonsense is not sustainable. Disease greed and warfare. Maybe we will just make our own atmosphere poison to us. Some of us might adapt quickly enough to survive in some small capacity as the jellyfish have a few hundred thousand years and then woodlice. Intelligence is overrated, as you all know based on how incredibly useless the person you know who identifies as “highly intelligent” is.

All that said I’ve had a lovely few days with happy friends doing unimportant things, consuming. I’m feeling pretty good right now despite the narrative trying to be that the UK is on fire. Think though about who controls the narrative and why. I’m no Tory. But if I was an outside agent trying to bury an economy that has been funding a war against me, I would be looking to destabilise, particularly if that was my particular speciality. Annexation soon. All hell is about to break loose, my darlings. I know where my iodine is. PLANTS!