Month: December 2024

Mmmm I was just zoning towards sleep when Lou messaged and I remembered I had told her I’d pick her up from the station. There’s something extremely Chelsea about an overcoat on top of pajamas and a pair of Gucci sliders. I bought the sliders on Vinted for cheap as an in joke with Lou because of all the saunas, and they have become a big part of my day to day. Convenient things, particularly if – like me – the only shoe option tends to be a great big pair of walking boots. I’ll happily kick around in bright socks and designer slip ons. Although apparently it is illegal to drive in socks. I was told that by an uptight female friend when I was driving barefoot, but I think it is actually a thing. Nuts of course, the better you can feel the pedal the more nuanced your use of clutch and throttle will become. But we all know that laws are largely a massive pile of buttsick.

Christmas approacheth. I’m not gonna be working now until next year. Don’t want to do any of that festive event stuff, Paris and RSC means I’m still ok for now without spamming energy into other people’s stuff. I’m just gonna be festive homebody. Today I sorted some sheets out a little bit. Tomorrow I will look at costumes and try and catalogue what I’ve got so it can go in the attic but come quickly into play.

Boo is being delightful, Lou is working all hours, Brian and I are starting to think about Christmas and what we might be having to achieve. Likely this weekend will involve a massive shop to get in all the things that we will need to get in. It is always carnage the morning after. I’ve got a floor mattress, some bits and bobs, I’m making sense of rugs and towels etc etc. We will manage. There are definitely lots of plates.

And I’m exhausted. Lou just made camomile and I had it’ll be head down and off into my extremely eloquent and lucid dreamscape. I’ve been spending time with lots of people I have almost forgotten in the waking world – dreaming into old friends and old alliances, breaking old tracks and patterns.

It’s ten. I have a feeling I’ll be flat out in ten minutes. I don’t think I can keep my eyes open. Winter. Early dark. This is the longest night of the year and I’m feeling it. From tomorrow, the light will be tentatively returning. It’s hard to believe it. Another corner, a happy corner, back gradually into the light again. Breath. Hope. Good things to come.

Very lovely to have seen a McFly musical, I feel like I missed out on something cultural. These lads were standing right next to me in the gala and sure they were well turned out but without any sense of judgement, if I had to say one lyric from them on pain of death, I’d be dead. I’d go with something love related. “Believe in love,” I guess that’d be my last words.

To me it’s Marty. The Power of Love. That’s probably where I got it from. His attempts to not have sex with his mother so his father could make him exist… a seminal part of an eighties upbringing.

Lou is working on Creakers. It’s glorious. Some really strong performers, all telling this hilarious weird story made up by a famous pop human. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

I did my first London performance on that stage. An award ceremony for school musicals. They played my track an octave too high for me to sing. Bob Holness from Blockbusters was judging it. I could’ve fucking killed whoever it was that sent me on as a tenor when I was a bass. We didn’t have time for rehearsal. It was a year since we had done it. The track was wrong. I remember being one of the only people in that group knowing this would be my job, and I remember fruitlessly reaching for the high notes in front of a big crowd and it was really uncomfortable and the original version for which the song was picked was in my register.

Nice to come back as a functioning practitioner, to see a show where I know a fair few of the creatives. Nice to be there just after coming back from Stratford and to see Fin in the audience with me, who was up there with me, who is supporting his girlfriend.

In particular, nice to see Lou in her element. She’s here in town with me and was running wardrobe tonight. She’s made this thing. She’s knackered in my bedroom now and Boo has widdled on the floor which seems significant somehow, I think largely because she needs to have her litter changed and I don’t understand her auto litter thing.

I’m gonna stop writing just as it feels I need to.

Up in the morning just to be up in the morning. I had to take my beard off. José the caretaker was tidying up the fire escape for the first time for many months, which is typical as that’s where I wanted to go to shear myself. Still, Mel was faffing all morning and she agreed to help with the tape. She’s flatsitting for a friend in Chelsea, just up the road from mine. Too good an opportunity to miss – a good friend, a great actor, local, American and female where most of my scenes are opposite an American female. I spent my day attempting to shunt words into my short term memory, whilst occasionally bumping up the Steam Deck to play Mass Effect 2 (oh my god).

Mel is off back home for Christmas and I know her well enough that I can guarantee you she’ll get swept up in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I won’t see her until late March at the earliest once she flies away on Friday. So I’m making the most of the time we have now. I was always going to fall into this hole in the run up to Christmas. I am trying not to do Santa, so it is just me and my bank balance at war until I get a decent acting job. Gotta make the plans, roll the dice, believe.

Lou has just returned home knackered from her Christmas show. Mel and I retired triumphant to The Rose and Crown for a pint of beer post tape and pre edit. I’ve just come out of selecting the scenes and editing them all together. It watches fine – nearly three minutes of footage – I hope they cast me. I want this one.

I’m clean shaven again. Back to being mister sharpchin for the festive season. I like him but he can be intimidating. Boo doesn’t care though. She’s attacking my feet as I write.

I enjoy the discipline of self taping these days. Learning is still a bugger, particularly with these tight turnarounds. And nothing beats the magic of being in the room live, so long as you have your lines well enough that you aren’t searching on camera.

I’m off to sleep though. It’s easy enough, but it still can be draining, and Lou is flat out. Seems like a good plan to join her.

A lovely meeting with an old friend and collaborator at The Curzon Victoria, although I hadn’t checked my maps and just assumed it would be accessible by car without going into the congestion charge, so I had to turn around and go home when I got to the red C and get a Lime bike instead. Still, she’s written a feature. There’s a bit of tell not show still left in it, so she’s aiming to get it read by actors so she can hear when it is slightly overwritten. Like when my character says “You’re drunk. smell of whisky”. All you need is “you’re drunk”. We know he smells of whisky, we’ve seen him drink it. We also can see how my character determines he’s drunk, by getting in his face and owning a nose. My character wouldn’t, in that instant, be particularly concerned about showing his workings. Even “you’re drunk” needs a target, a reason. That’s fine. But “smell of whisky”… it can be sold, sure. You can make my character a particular hater of whisky – maybe his dad was a whisky drinker and beat him. There are many ways of selling the line as an actor, because our job is to sell these lines as truth. Eat the lines until you don’t have to try and remember them anymore, then pretend to be someone else. Technically it’s you under a different set of circumstances. But you under a different set of circumstances is basically someone else. It’s all about terminology. There have been some right plonking alpha males who have tried to mystify the whole process of acting over the years, just as with improv. Given it a whole load of language and rules, governed massive self-referential cults, disapproved of anyone using other language idioms. It’s kinda weird. In the end we are just telling stories. People love to be in charge of chaos, to have sets of rules and if other people don’t know the secret rules they are wrong and you feel clever. It’s bollocks but it keeps people happy.

I got an audition for someone really exciting. A self tape. I have to do it tomorrow, it’s very short notice, and tomorrow I’ll have to wake up and shave off the beard, pick clothes, make myself ready. It’s pretty much a year to the day since the Deep Cover audition so I’m fucking thrilled about it and even though it is not a long turnaround I am gonna do my best to make sense of it and turn in something good. Thankfully I’ve got all day.

Lou had her first day of work today so I’ll be picking her up from the station shortly. A long day for her. I’m ready to turn in, even if largely I’ve been winding out the ceremony and coming back into the world. I’m hoping to get to bed pretty quickly once she’s back, just as I want to activate tomorrow properly. This is not an audition to trifle with. I’m tentatively going to thank the medicine for aligning the stars so well. I was dreading an audition coming in on Friday night for Monday morning, God knows what I might have turned in with grandmother rolling through my veins. Tomorrow I can slowly and thoughtfully shear myself like a sheep and then set up a wall somewhere and bang out a bit of energy that might snag into a really bright slice of life.

Corners. Post RSC, post medicine, and things look different.

Onwards.

This morning I woke in Glastonbury with Lou. An expensive hut in someone’s garden with expansive views. Lou got the train last night. “I won’t be much use,” I warned her, but she was right to come. She wasn’t working today but she’s about to start a long shift on a Christmas show. This morning we could spend some time. We had papaya and then a lovely hippy brunch. Then a bit of browsing the bullshit shops on the high street. I managed not to buy much. A bit of catnip and some dragon’s blood. My i-ching this morning talked of the dragon and once at a ceremony I was given a dragon blood bindi and it helped with my resolve.

Then a walk up the Tor. Grey day but no rain. Not as many hippies up there as usual. It’s a place about the heart, a place of power despite the fact that humans have absolutely swamped it in bullshit. Old weird beardy tutting douchebags being more spiritual than you at the white spring which IS ALWAYS CLOSED WHEN I GO TO GLASTONBURY, ALWAYS. I stuck my head under the outflow. I thought I was gonna get in. One of the volunteers had a piss in the stream of it as it rolled down the hills. Another scowled as I examined the gate. Amateurs everywhere are woefully bad at peoplerising.

Up the Tor it was clear though. The paggro was all at the base. And as Jimbo, my neighbour in ceremony, said: “You gotta be careful in Glastonbury. It’s full of all these wankers who think it’s clever to try and do black magic. They haven’t a clue either. Dangerous idiots.” I filled my flask with water from the wells and after we had breathed our fill of the four directions we drove back to London.

I’m still feeling wrung out but it’s good too – there’s motivation tangled up in it. I’m a bit sad, a bit tired and happy to be back with familiar things, the flat the cat and all the stuff. The stuff is gonna be doing some shifting with me I hope now, especially in these dead weeks when I’m unlikely to see an audition. Christmas. Although it was this time last year that I sent the tape that led to Deep Cover, so the wheels are still moving.

Lou is fast asleep in my bed. I’m waiting until I’m tired, sitting up with Tom Bellerby and I’ve been flicking into my Joseph Campbell and playing silly buggers on the iPad. It’s ten now and likely I’ll get myself to bed soon as ideally I want to be up and good to give Lou a lift to Sloane Square for her first day on a new job. I haven’t promised her, but that’s my intention.

A different shaped Al in the world of the old shape. It’s familiar but it looks slightly unfamiliar too through these wide open eyes.

I’m actually looking forward to having a few weeks unemployed, even if it’s terrible for the bank balance. There’s stuff to look at and I think it’ll actually be fun to look at it as well, just so long as I break it into little tasks.

“How big?” the shaman asked. I know by now what it means when you do this: “I’ll have a big one.” He’s a checker. “A big one?” “Yes please.” He laughs to himself. He runs deep with mischief this man. Mischief is crucially important with this medicine. He is also, in this realm, a being of godlike power. I laugh with him. Had I known what was to come, I still would have asked for that big one. But I wouldn’t have laughed.

He pours me a little glug of this deep concoction of vine and wood, this brackish viscous physical heartbrew. He blesses it. Hands it to me. I shoot it down. He sloshes water in to catch the dregs and I shoot them too, then grab a tiny chunk of apple and put it in my mouth. It just… edges out some of that taste. Doesn’t do much, but you really mustn’t eat. Second night so my body already knows where this taste is going to lead, but for now it is vital to keep the stuff in. He wishes me a good journey and I thank him. I go back to my mat in the corner to sit up and breathe.

Lots of people are waiting to receive their medicine still. Atmospheric anticipatory rainforest music doesn’t feel out of place here like it does in most other contexts. We wait. “It’s not going to have any effect this time,” I’m thinking as it worms its way into my very fabric. “I reckon my big night was last night.” This is my brain. It is often incorrect.

Before long we begin a shared sound journey, opening the chakras with noises. A chance taken with gusto to try and make the wood behind us vibrate with us. All of us and the noises are huge and as I breathe and intone and breathe and intone it goes deeper and we have already danced for an hour in the afternoon and my body is open and connected but still mister brain is saying “oh well, you had a journey last night” and after the chakra chanting there is twenty minutes of absolute silence.

I positioned myself in savasana, dead man’s pose, with a blackout mask on my face. And somewhere in that twenty minutes, eternity blindsided me. The void came. The eternal argument of everything or nothing. The void comes and it pulls and it questions, it seduces us to its will which is ultimately destruction of everything. We are part of the light, it is complete absence, always there just out of sight, don’t stare, it sucks you in.

I am arguing once more for existence, fighting the void, moving to colour and possibility, the fire and the light so blinding in the blackout mask and it is all I can do to come back to my body occasionally and remember to breathe, and that just barely, gasping like a stuck fish occasionally before departing once more. All the time I’m distracted by the void, grandmother is winding through my bones and finding the bad things. Back and forth forever and finally from the silence a chord on the piano, low and minor key. It develops into majestic requiem, something deep and vast and terrifying played live out of the silence but not forgiving, this is work music not a lifeline and it goes into my heart and all the grief and all the things denied and all the blocks and the fear and inadequacy and frustration and sacrifice it all comes right up to me in my eye mask and I’m howling for everyone I’ve ever loved and generations long dead and all the bad things and it is impossible it is too much and there’s no escape and there it is the void the void asking me seducing me and I know it wants me and then there’s nothing and I’m going to it and I realise I can pull off the eye mask and I claw at it and pull it off and FUCK I’m somewhere else, a peaceful place, less colour less light here in the world. I can’t see the 2p piece of the spark of life, the void doesn’t want me to find it, I know where it is though and I reach through a wall of foam and check it out of the library and I’ve got it in my hand and my eyes really aren’t giving me any useful information but I can feel the jagged edges and it’s all still in me that history but I can’t see it anymore I can just see this tiny box I’ve been put in and it closes in on me and my ears are weeping and my nose and face and my hands are shaking. I growl for jaguar but I’m on my own here and I don’t know where my feet are and the edges of sight begin to shiver as reality splinters and behind it is the void the void and all of it pushes up up and it is so close so close as I flip my body and the bucket is under me and it all comes out and then it all comes out again and the music reflects the purge and the purge reflects the music and I can’t stop I have to get everything out all of it the whole fucking universe and I’m weeping into that bucket and it isn’t stopping it’s that familiar gargling wretching sound and the taste and what the fuck is even in this now and I can see nothing but the bucket and I’m not okay and I’m crying and shouting and snotting into the bucket and a hand on my back just gently and two words “you’re okay” and yes, she’s right. Fuck. I’m okay. I’m okay. And she takes the bucket and I let her. I NEVER LET YOU TAKE THE BUCKET. I clean my own purge. Control freak. She took it and I thanked her because there was nothing I could do but turn around and lie down in savasana and Condor comes, almost immediately, appears at the edge of my sight dancing with feathers and Condor and I pull things out of my neck and throw them in the fire and I give her the badness and it burns and the badness and it burns and I can’t find any more badness but I offer her the weirdness and she nurtures it and she strokes my chest and I hug him and he says “Sorry mate I felt that was the right thing to do,” and tell him it was, it was. The next morning he tells me how he started working with Condor. “You came at the right time.” “She pulled me to you suddenly. I was just sitting there and suddenly I knew.”

So I lie there weeping like a stuck faucet and I’m thinking about my mother dying alone and all the things that have been knotted up inside me. I’m weeping again about them but I can’t feel them hiding in me and the lack of them feels like a loss because we build ourselves shells made of our own damage and we think that’s who we are now. I lie and I look at it and I talk to the dead and it’s going to be ok and the music is more upbeat and I can be part of this light part of the spark, and I’m safe, we are safe, so I check the coin back into the library and a bell rings and it’s the shaman “anyone who wants another cup, come up and I’ll serve in the order you come” and oh for fucks sake Al really? “How big?” “Not as big as before. I just want to check it’s all done.” He laughs again, gives me about the same. I look at with shock. “You okay with that?” “I trust you.” And I do and I do. In this room in this eternity of colour, he is a strange force for work and change and pain and heart and love.

It was almost all done. At the end of that journey a gentler time, an easier purge, I cleaned my own bucket again. Fractals. Memories. Calls to action. And then dancing until soup.

I’m shattered. I still keep occasionally crying, and I think that’s just gonna be my jam for a day or two and about time too, there was a lot of stuff hiding under that plug.

Who says this stuff is supposed to be difficult? Seven men have just sat in a boiling hot sauna singing icaros, iboga songs and various krishna bajans. Brian has a show on in the West End which is about exactly this phenomenon. People, in this case men, singing together. It was much more common a few decades ago, before TV talent shows and the market started to frame public singing as a competition. As a species we have sung together for aeons. The world was sung into being in many cultures. Song and shared breath carries deep meaning and power. It is the heart of how we make magic in groups. Football crowds know this, rallies know this – tribes can be divisive but we are a tribal creature in a global world. It happened quicker than we could evolve coping strategies, which is why so many of us waste so much of our time being indignant about someone else’s life choices. Politics, gender, sports, opinions, which paper they take …

We men in the sauna didn’t change the world, but we breathed together and last night we all went to the edges of the universe and turned ourselves inside out. It is a beautiful and seriously strong healing medicine, I’ll always stand by what I’ve known it to do for people and myself. The people here, many of them have experienced or are experiencing great traumas. We all carry stuff, this medicine really helps with a sense of perspective and of knowing. Inner and outer wellness. Most of the people here are healthy and effective, pushing the world in one way or another, chasing an accountable solidity in themselves, grounded. You’d expect a load of air, but largely they’re earth, dropped weight, physical.

I’m in bed with the blanket on in my Black Sail cabin. In an hour we will go back into circle and see where next. I’ll probably have to get up soon though as I’m thirsty and my flask is in circle.

I’ve been a long way already. There are many ways of brewing this medicine but often it must boil for three solid days. Out in the Amazon you can see and smell it gak as it is literally boiled, attended, on coals. What active property gets boiled away might perhaps be replaced with the energies of the attendants. This medicine is boiled at a lower temperature, using ultrasound, thereby not losing so many of the alkaloids and active substances. It’s a new technique, a blend of ancient and modern, and it is astonishing. Normally my first night is about getting out of my left brain, calming down my thought noise, getting into my heart so the second night can work. Last night I was swept out quickly.

Here we all are experiencing grief experiencing joy and otherwise just existing and forgetting for a while to experience until experience comes for us. We happen through life and occasionally some of us need something big to help us take stock. 36 people receiving, 20 people around the shaman, assisting with buckets and cleaning, giving healings, making sure everyone was ok, and showing their work. How many hours, weeks, years, decades to learn piano like that, to hone that singing voice? How much life spent with tribes in Africa to embody those chants so completely? Live music all night, different voices, the men like waterfalls the women like stars. I can barely finish purging before someone is there to swap my bucket and rub my back if I want. I always wash my own, it’s a control thing but also I always want to see off some of what I’ve purged, these things the medicine has dredged into the light, pulled from the hidden places inside. Send them back to Pachamama. There’s always much more than I’ve eaten – but I’m monkish and eat just a tiny amount at the latest twelve hours before first purge. 9am, say. I reckon my first yak was about half eleven this evening, my second around 1.30am. Two doses though. Purge and get a second dose pretty much right away. The purge doesn’t leave you bad, it leaves you enervated. It’s a cleaning out. I think it’s why I’m so comfortable with tactical sick before bed when I’m drunk. Demystifying vomit, the Aya way.

I think I sat for quite some time wrapped in a very very large curious cold yellow boa constrictor snake, using me for warmth. I think this definitely actually happened. Eventually it moved on to someone else. I remember his weight, thicker than my arm at the thickest, head tiny by comparison.

The music helps the journey. I found a place in the corner, where I thought I could hide, but I still had people checking on me loads which was a good thing. I like to know we are held, it helps me relax into things. They have tinctures, some literal – (willow, oak, dandelion) and some created intentionally with animal spirit names – (elephant, spider, jaguar). My mission last night was little things, the black sails, noticing. I went with Nettle – you don’t notice them but they’re everywhere. And they sting. That and Bumblebee. Busy little thing, you know it’s there buzzing, largely fluffy but can sting, makes things better. These tinctures are really for our own imagination. They helped me.

This morning I found a note for myself. It looks like it is written in crayon. “YOu WoRK WIth SYMBOLS yoU must BE a SyMboL. Take A ShApe.”

Alright Ayahuasca Al. So I’m too ill defined for your liking… I’ve been doing it on purpose. But yeah it’s good to nail your colours to the mast. Time to change the black flag. Put up a pennant. Sail the seven seas. Yarrrr.

I’m all dressed in white in a beautiful converted barn. They’re playing the old South American woowoo tunes. It’s the hooneyquin probably, who have become so terribly fashionable with all the rich folk who can afford like me to go and figuratively blow the top of their heads off on a December Friday when most people are having to knuckle down and watch the pennies. It’s grey here as it is everywhere at the moment, and the ground is soaking wet. I’ve drenched the bottom of my flared white jeans. They’ll dry soon though as it is warm in here. I think there might even be underfloor heating. Luxury indeed. These guys specialise in hosting retreats like this, and they’ve got it all sorted out. Normally I like to sleep in circle, but with these guys I’m sleeping in a pod on my own. I chose it by name – it’s called Black Sail. I thought it might be pirate themed, as at the time Brian was going to come with and it’s two single beds. It isn’t pirate themed. It refers to the myth of Theseus, in terms of the things we come to feel sorry about in our lives. I had a ladybird book of it at the time and it used to really upset me, the black sail moment. Perhaps that’s part of why I’ve ended up there.

Every year the ships from Crete would take the youth of Athens and feed them to the minotaur. One year Theseus decided to get rid of the damn thing, so he persuaded his dad the king to send him as one of these offerings. With Ariadne’s help and a ball of twine and all that he put paid to old cowface and returning triumphant in stolen Cretan boats he made a very costly error. The ships from Crete used to come with black sails. “If you succeed, when you return, fly white sails,” his dad had asked him. He forgot to change them. Easy to do when you’re swept up in monster killing and falling in love etc. But his dad saw the ships with black sails coming in, and since he was on a cliff at the time he decided the best option really was to jump off it in despair. So then Theseus docks and says “Where’s dad?” King Aegeus chucked himself in and got the Aegean Sea named after him. Ach. Just a simple oversight, but there’s no accounting for folks.

So I guess part of why I’m here is to look at the things I let pass just by simple acts of neglect. The little things I didn’t do that turned into big things for others. The little things in thinking and in behaviour and in speech and in diet that, individually feel so small they needn’t be minded but they accumulate and accumulate. That’ll be part of the tapestry of these two nights here when the world is cold. To examine some of these little parasites. I’m up for that. I’ve got a literal infinite amount of time.

First out I’m gonna switch away from digital and do my intentions, Florida water, maybe a bit of palo Santa and get someone to blow some yopo up my nose. Oh God here we go…

—

Great. It’s buzzy in here now I’ve got the quilt Lou made, and a big cushion. I’ve got a stone from La Hougue Bie and the 2p piece of the spark of life. I’ve got half a bottle of Florida water and some Yopo which is active hapé, with a self applicator in case I fail to find someone and one for someone to blow it to me for preference. I’ve got the holy wood for stealth burning. A blackout eye mask so I can go deep if I want. A flask of water, some paper and a pen. A cigarette lighter, questionably wise given how I’ll be cosmic shortly. Don’t really need anything else though. Don’t need most of what I’ve got. Switching off my phone.

///

Just as I went to switch my phone off, literally as pushed the button, it rang. An estate agent to ask about what I’m doing with my flat and am I going to rent it. Timing?!!?

Off

I’ve been tidying and trying to work out what to bring. Out tomorrow morning to drive somewhere off in the middle of Wales. There might or might not be mobile reception. I’m sure they’ll have WiFi although there’s no mention of it on any of the info. Could be that I’ll be totally cut off. I’m only off for one more Bonanza Ayahuasca Weekend! Brian very nearly came with, but going the first time is considerably bigger than going the umpteenth time, so I get that he decided against it. It means I’ll have a long solitary drive over there. I offered to take some of the helpers but they don’t wanna go with the punters, and I remember the last time I went finding myself thinking I need to stop being a punter at these things. But I feel I want to complete this corner turning that started as I was heading into Othello, and continued as the frontmost age number shunted into a great big hairy 5.

Habits. I am a creature of habit in some ways, but a lot of my patterns and coping strategies have helped hugely over the years but are becoming unhelpful. The sudden sale of Eyreton got me clinging to stuff. But I’m weighed down by it now. And there are plenty of obliviating habits I’ve settled on to help me not really have to think too deeply, and none of them are gonna be my friend in the long run. It’s always helpful for me to bludgeon myself occasionally. So it’ll be two nights again in the infinite and I’ll go with strong intention and find out what sticks. Lou will be here when I get back, and staying until after New Year, which will help with putting a different spin on the old “get as drunk as I can for a week” way of coping for the dark days of Malcolm, between Christmas and New Year.

If I go silent it probably isn’t because I’m running the hills of Wales naked and covered in wode, shrieking in the language of the eagles, wreathed in trout. It’s probably because I haven’t got reception, so don’t you panic. I mean sure, people occasionally die yada yada but it’s not my first rodeo and I’m pretty careful going into it. Which reminds me, I’ll need to have a good breakfast as it’ll be the last thing I eat tomorrow. I don’t think there’s much in…

I ordered a Japanese floor mattress on Amazon and they totally lied to me about delivery time. It’s fucking annoying. I honestly thought it would come in time. It’ll probably come in handy on Christmas.

Boo is playing in the bedroom. I’ve made a pile with most of the things I don’t want to forget. I’m bound to forget some of it. Don’t need much though frankly. It’ll be all-reet.

Early start though tomorrow so I’m gonna try and get to bed. It’s already past midnight. Never been very good at this sleep racket.

I’ve really got swept up in this latest story from across the pond. It’s remarkable, very very now, and it responds to itself.

The CEO of a major healthcare company in the US was shot outside his hotel room in Manhattan.

In the UK we still, just, have the NHS. This is despite the Tories trying to ruin it, because there is a huge amount of money to be made if we shift to the “don’t call an ambulance!!” system in the USA where, if you slip through the cracks, you lose everything and more when something goes wrong with your health. I’ve heard Americans talking about “oh but you get delayed in your socialist system,” and yes, if it’s not considered urgent, you get delayed. I waited a whole year for varicose vein surgery. But had it been something more urgent, likely I would have been seen much quicker. If you’re rich or cautious and willing to spend, you might have health insurance too. When I had spondarthropathy as a twenty one year old taking my university finals, faced with a year on a ward or a “private” injection of steroids for about two grand, I opted for the steroids and dad paid. I had the privilege of a wealthy dad. Either way I would have been looked after, and the ward option would have been free, just costing time. The doctor wanted me in his ward. It’s a very rare condition I had, with extreme symptoms. A year of pain and virtual complete immobility while being studied, or a quick fix. I took the easy way out because I could. Three months was enough for me.

Insurance companies, we all know, are about finding the loophole that means they don’t have to pay out. The people running this system for profit are doing their best not to think about the individuals – just the bottom line. Maybe you don’t get back the flight you had to cancel, someone somewhere gets a bonus. Maybe your boiler conks out and because you were slow scheduling a free service they say it is invalid. That’s a boiler. That’s a flight. Luxuries.

In America, health is a luxury.

I’ll just say that again.

In America, health is a luxury.

If you’ve got a good job, you’ve maybe got good healthcare. If you’re rich maybe you’ve got a plan. Luigi Mangioni was from money though. And he still fell through the system. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So the CEO of a healthcare insurance racket got shot. Sure he had a family, but so did all the people who lost everything or died because of profit impulse and shareholders. The shooter, aforementioned Luigi, looks to be a well off young man who took the time to carve “Delay” and “Deny” into the bullet casings. He successfully evaded the law until he was recognised by someone in a McDonald’s way way away. They called the police. There’s a $60k reward on Crimestoppers, but it looks like the guy at McDonald’s will be ineligible on a technicality as he dialed 911. Oh the irony. I like to think Luigi was eating there under sufferance as he thought it would be anonymous ordering through a screen etc. The branch of McDonald’s is getting review bombed.

So this boy is in custody.

He has had a history of extreme back pain, and there have been operations in the past. I’m waiting to hear what fuckery he had to put up with, but there’s no doubt the man is in pain. Also too dumb to shave his head and pluck his eyebrows, grow a beard and stop wearing a mask. He hadn’t planned his safehouse and got in food until the memory was faded, or gone back hard to an old existence. He’s reactive, maybe in too much pain to think things through. And the American internet is going mad writing joke alibis for him and attacking the McDonalds because even though Luigi committed murder in cold blood, he keyed into something that everyone who has been exposed to that terrible terrible system which they want to bring over here can understand. He’s framed as a folk hero for taking on the system. Because the system is fucked. There’s the likes of Musk saying how CEOs are necessary, but they really are just creaming money off the top of the monolithic enterprises and maybe that’s ok if it just means people don’t get the flight back or the boiler fixed, because Capitalism. But bring it into healthcare and it is people’s lives vs profit. This is not a good system. There’s Michael Moore’s Sicko – it’s a bit dated, made before the Tories started trying to deconstruct the NHS and replace it with the fucked system. But it’s a clear watch.

This kid looks like he’s smart, evolved and charming. When you are in constant pain it’s hard to think, so the thoughtlines to “I’m gonna kill the CEO” are straighter. He’s done it now and he’s in the legal system. There’s going to be a machine clicking into gear to destabilise his image – lots of CEOs have a vested interest in paying to make him look bad, and by definition they are the richest people in the world because they have all your money. So the smear machine will come into play and he will answer for all his badness beyond the murder. Ideally they want him to look bestial. If he kicked a puppy as a kid, we will see someone crying about it. But this is because he will be a rallying point for some. Because actually, maybe being the CEO of one of the healthcare companies … maybe that makes you the real monster here.

His name reminds me of “Luigi’s Mansion” which is a seminal Nintendo title where you play the forgotten brother of the famous Super Mario. This forgotten member of a famous dynasty has to go into an old house full of ancient evil ghosts, and suck them away into his ghost vacuum. A lost kid, pulling ancient unobserved invisible badness out of institutions just because it’s his job.

This story will go on and on and it won’t stop being relevant.