What is it about the climate movement that it can’t come?
When is someone going to totally lose it?
“The eternal body of the person is the imagination.” -W Blake
A while ago, I travelled to Glasgow to speak at COP. I knew what I was going to do. I listened to Pink Floyd’s Echoes at Pompeii 10 times on the way up – one of the most immersive pieces of music ever recorded. I was ready. A force was moving me. It was going to happen. I think I said fuck 15 times in my “talk” that night. The explosion that comes from reading each day for five years science articles going everything will be fucked. And then just sitting there. There comes a point…
I’ve been lying on my back with a leg broken in four places for four weeks in a semi-morphine-induced haze, and I imagined being asked to speak at the Big One. I saw myself push to the microphone and scream, “What the fuck are you doing – what the fuck is going on” on repeat 20 times before my time was up – spit and tears sticky on the microphone. I was crying, lying on my hospital bed thinking – really, is that what I have to do for this fucking movement. As if I have not done enough. I have to do this as well. Like some old testament guy being told to go and kill his son by God – what, I have to do this for you to prove my faith – after all, I have done for you. God goes, “Yep”. Fucking Life.
Fucking Life. I’m 57 – there’s a good chance I will spend a good chunk of my last years stuck in some dark chasm of the empire of pain. And then die. Like millions of us. What a joke. Nervous breakdowns? The surprise is that the human race isn’t running around stark, raving mad – clinging onto this mortal coil.
And the climate movement – knowing what it claims to know – and still not wanting to fuck. What could be more necessary, what could be more justified, essential? Ecstasy amidst the debris.
People have been going on about the “Big One” – the media did not cover 60 000 nice people making the visceral bloody sacrifice of walking around London for an afternoon to stop the rotting corpses of tens of millions of refugees in the next decades. Of course, they will not cover it – you can’t seriously think they would.
Do you watch a film where the guy goes up to the girl to give her a sheet of information about why he wants to make love with her? And then he goes home? What plot line is that? He’s got to stand in front of her, stare into her eyes, and go, “Look, I cannot fucking stop thinking about you; I am totally in love with you. I cannot live without you”. Everyone’s on the edge of their seats. That’s a story. To have a story, you must have people come – there has to be a climax.
Sex is not separate from Life – in the ancient history of Revolution, this was 101 stuff – check out Marcuse and the 60s. It’s all one thing, a Revolution, great pop song – A great piece of art – The Passion of Christ. Music, Art, Religion – they all come. The climate movement cannot come.
It marches up to the walls, turns round and marches back again. It’s fooling no one.
Like my friend Ramon, a great London queen, would say– “stop fucking apologizing. Get a life – go and get fucked up. Life is Death. Yes, it is, baby. Free yourself from mental slavery.”
Like Aaron on my Novara interview. Right through, my riff is – “let’s just go and fuck”, and each time he goes “, But we need to deconstruct “fuck”, we have to discuss fuck in China, we have to do Marx on fuck”. No, Aaron, we just need to go and fuck – then he goes, “That would not be wise” – the ultimate bourgeois Freudian slip. A generation betrays the life force.
I’m hoping some young person reads this and decides to be “unwise”, and they go and lose it. Properly lose it, ideally, on Newsnight.
As a teenager, I was nerdy tall and spotty – prime bully bait. Once, I was getting pushed and kicked. I then just lost it – something came through me, and my body went berserk. That was not roger hallam. Nothing so mundane – that was Life’s rage for itself.
Rage – Life’s rage for itself – with that, we would win in a fortnight. Really. Take it from me – I’ve studied this shit.
During Tahrir Square in the Egyptian Revolution – this woman goes onto youtube and goes along the lines: “I am going to the Square, and I don’t give a fuck what happens to me. I’m going to the square. You guys can sit around and do nothing, but I’m fucking going”. A million guys saw the video. Their shame overcame their cowardice. They went to the Square. And won.
To come, you have to go to the Square and not go home at the end of the afternoon.
This post was written listening to Prince – Kiss. Listen to the last 20 seconds. “I just want your extra touch” … the next 10 000 generations are crying out through me – they want me to tell you they want to feel your extra touch.
Go and give them that extra touch.
Read this next time you have to decide whether to do an action.
Kiss