The Scrollbars of Empire

Eek! A ghastly fly! So huge, so bulbous! Eek!

Screaming: the most natural thing in the world, an emergent necessity. We learn that we can modulate our screams by controlling lung pressure, mouth aperture and throat constriction at a very early age. We are quick to observe the effects on those around us. Soon we begin to manipulate those effects and thus commences the dialectic of me and you, us and them - the fundamental relationship between the self and the other, Ich und Du, Man and God, me and my Mum.

Inside us is another ontologically emergent necessity: to be observed. This is revealed to us by the blush. We show our inner disjuncture with outer circumstance. We are caught out. Our nub of being laid bare. Caught out concealing or lying? Not always. A blush reveals a deeply felt truth. I love you, but I can’t admit it. You say something, and I can’t utter the truth, therefore I blush. Emergence of self-awareness is one obvious cause the blush. I know I am being watched. I become self conscious, and I blush. Revealing the inner to the outer. The evolutionary advantage of revelation. The group knows what is going on in your head. Your body reveals inner truths unbidden.

Google ogles our whole planet and our every dealing, even our hedges and our windows. 360 degree knowledge emerges freely. Get it done before people realise there is such a thing. Total Administration gives birth to Total Surveillance. Our very connections reveal our inner workings. A cyber-blush rouges the planet in our midst.

Now we have the thousand eyes observing the one or two. Revealing more and more. The compound gaze of the fly, an instant multi-verse. As individuals, we are blinkered in our monocular screen world. Together, we are the compound eye. In homage to Flatland, we offer up our two dimensions to the implicit third. The Third Eye. The three in one creates the ten thousand things, and the ten thousand things beget twenty thousand eyes. We are watching ourselves. No Big Brother, only ourselves. 'Watching me, watching you.. ahaah'. We each enjoy surveying our realm. We ogle with Google goggles, the Self-Other toggle.

Have you ever blushed at a thought?

What is the r/evolutionary potential of that?

(And, of course, to anyone who knows their Book of Enoch - the Watchers, or Grigori, are in fact angels. Terrible ones to boot.)

Colour scheme

Had to happen. I kept seeing rentinal afterglow angels when the background was blackground. This is much more mellow. Sun-faded acquiescence. Less intensity, more readability. Illity. Hills. Bart At.

Chango who art...

I went to see and hear Chango Spasiuk at Leeds Wardrobe, on the 25th Feb.

He sat down on his chair, spread out a crimson blanket over his knees and placed his accordion in position. Not a single note. Even the band tuning up sounded like thrumming angels organising a tour of a fleetingly divine lake. He could play almost anything he could imagine. He could imagine far more than the gathered throng, you would not be alone in surmising.

It is rare that you get to see a musician who digs deep into your spirit and raises it screaming and kicking into the air like a reborn babe. The passage was easy. There was nothing at all traumatic or trammeled about the performance, almost no struggle at all on the outside. Most of the time he was playing, his countenance was serene and blissful, streaked only occasionally with seismic spasms of yearning passion. The passion of the quest. The next note, the next note, and possibly the next.

The music spanned continents, geological rifts, time zones, time signatures, tonal landscapes, the earth and the divine. All terrestrial and celestial elements were cycled, phased and fused.

He made a short speech before the final piece, expressing his passion for music. It was laudably translated by someone in the audience as he spoke. He doesn’t play for the King’s Ear, or the Dancefloor Beat, he seeks something deeper in the mystery that is music. The mystery that brings us together. As it always has. Music is our collective beacon, it lights up our individual path.

Chango is Jesus. He wouldn’t like to be called that though.




Chango’s music is quintessentially live. I have not heard any of his CDs, there is no substitute for the live experience.

Go and see him!! (And his band - Spanish guitar, percussion - mainly cajon, and violin). Did I mention them? They were excellent!)

Here is his website: click

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Since writing this, I have have been provided with some extra information from Leeds promoter Andy Brown:

The translator was Katerina de Kapa, Chango's tour manager.

The percussion was: Peruvian cajon, caja hand drums, the pear-shaped udu & tin fiddle "n'vike"

Another review from the Leeds Wardrobe concert, see here

London concert review from Saturday, Feb 28th here

You can become a Facebook "fan" ! - here

CDs probably available only via Amazon, but we're working on that.
'Pynandi' here
'Tarafero de Mis Pagos' here