Choices.

I’m sure someone has said once that choice equals freedom but I’d argue that in many cases they equal the opposite.

Trying to buy a bottle of shampoo for example staves any sense of ‘freedom’ from my mind like a drunken sheriff patrolling the perimeter on a penny-farthing firing crazy pistols of doubt and rage: Boots has three shelves of the stuff each boasting a separate magic quality and all assuming knowledge of my scalp I don’t have.

Last time I ran out I popped down the street for five minutes and ended up squandering my entire lunch break stood in the ‘hair products’ aisle with a bottle of Pantene Pro-V for Greasy Hair in one hand and a bottle of Herbal Essences for Straight Hair in the other shaking them like a pair of maracas. To anyone watching I must have resembled a Mexican street entertainer lost in the dreadful realization I had shamed my heritage to chase the tourist dollar moments from finally snapping and impaling myself with them to salvage some spiritual honour.

"Your hair is straight and greasy. Straight AND greasy. And what’s this? I have to consider dandruff too…!?"

In the end I just left. The choice had defeated me.

This is not an isolated example. Smug proclamations are something of a speciality of mine, and those with the dubious honour of being in my company regularly will be familiar with a cycle of worn bullshit that reappears whenever there is some new company I want to impress. One such turgid lump is ‘I’ve never bought a CD in 5 years because the internet lets me listen to whatever I want for free.’

A true post-modern grand narrative that: the internet has revolutionized music, removed the power from the dark corridors of the record companies, made art free, etc., etc. And it’s true: flick on the laptop and straddle the holy trinity of spotify, myspace and youtube and there are very few pieces of recorded music you can’t access.

But where does this boundless universe of choice most regularly lead me? Open-mouthed, frantic-brained paralysis, that's where, a glistening orb of drool formulating beneath eyes fixed on a blank search box. Presented with the option of anything the human mind settles very quickly on nothing.

We need limitations on our choices in order to make them - that is how we work. That’s why we take glee in dwindling our options by process of elimination when presented with a free Sunday afternoon:

‘What shall we do today love?’

‘Well let’s see, transforming into birds of prey and tearing holes through clouds in the midday sun is out, so is travelling back in time to witness the look in Man’s eye at the first accidental spark of fire – come to think of it, I’m pretty skint, how about just a walk in the park??’

Now I’m not advocating a switch to North Korean-style limitations on personal freedom. But it is interesting to reflect that the countries in the world with the worse mental health problems – depression, anxiety, OCD, eating disorders – are also the most ‘developed’ of Western democracies strapped into the rollercoaster of free market capitalism. American rhetoric during the Bush administration and indeed Western dogma since colonial times has been build around another grand narrative: that what would be best for the rest of the world is to become more like us. In most cases, this would mean having more choices.

Now choices like having access to quality health care and education are no-brainers, but does the developing world really envy our hundreds upon hundreds of trainers, or mobile phones, or television evangelists?

In our lip-licking, hand-rubbing sprint to expand our set of choices about what we can buy to wear and eat and been seen with, we’ve trampled on the things that used to matter and that still do in countries we perceive as behind us in history’s long story. Religion, family, community are now unfashionable, marginalized and scorned. We have so much choice about what spiritual path we walk, how much responsibility we take for our families, how we interact with our community that we usually end up doing nothing about them at all. And yet the statistics don’t bear out the idea that we’re happier for it, they suggest that as a population, we’re suffering from deep-set ills of the mind and soul.

I’m hardly the first agitated Westerner to ponder this: a curious solution was put forward by the author George Cockcroft in his cult novel ‘The Dice Man’. The premise is of a doctor who decides one day to make all of his choices by the random will of a dice, thus limiting his options to six at a time and alleviating him of having to make choices. The book descends fairly quickly into a sexual farce but the frustration at the heart of the text is worth paying attention to. Next time I’m buying some shampoo or a t-shirt or some other distraction I may well assign six of them a number, collapse into a lotus position and start rolling out the dice.

I might get escorted out for appearing like a mad man. But then I suspect that’s where all these choices are leading me anyway.

A Quick One

'Beach' Break Live the video is still in production - turns out, cutting a two hour-footage pie into a neat ten minute slice takes longer than I thought. Do bear with me though.

For those of you not here to see yourself in my video-journalism debut, do please scroll down or pick a blog from the list on the right of the page. I truly 'aint one of these irritating, post-some-boring-crap-about-your-day types. My entries are usually carefully crafted symphonies with nice pictures and everything.

x

Live from 'Beach' Break 3

If you're one of the many excellent beach breakers we met over the past few days: fear not.  We were a genuine (if amateur) outfit and the video diary featuring your drunken impressions of the festival will be posted here within a few days.  Keep checking back!

As well as vox popping some cool people, we managed to capture some great bands performing and grab a word with them afterwards, including The Vintones, The Moulettes and Ed Sherman. As soon as I can can get in the editing studio and remove all the bits of myself rambling (since when did I have a voice like Darth Vader with false teeth?) I'll post the vid here and on my new blogging home, http://www.internationallife.tv

As for the festival, well myself and camera man had a great time, and not just sticking 'www.samparker.org' stickers in all the port-a-loos either.  Meeting Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip a few hours before their set was amazing (if brief) and the actual gig was one of the best I have seen in a long time.  Pip's lyrics and delivery were exhilarating, Dan's mixing top-notch and the tracks of the new album suggested the pair have a lot more to offer after 'Angles'.  

Overall, the best way I can think to describe Beach Break Live is as being a bit like a typical student in their second year (as Beach Break indeed is): disorganized, chaotic, a bit uncertain what exactly it's meant to be... but resourceful (switching sites in three days!), fun-loving and wonderfully open to new ideas.  

It may attract the odd sneer from seasoned-festival goers with their memories of Glastonbury, Glade, Secret Garden et al but as a student-friendly alternative that costs half the price, I reckon the founders of Beach Break are onto a winner.  Let's hope next year they make it back on the beach where they belong.  Just one more thing though guys, please leave the rugby balls back at home next time...

Love, 

Your intrepid reporters, SamParker.org and John 'I think I'll get into this Kopenburg like' Teedge 

x

Live from 'Beach' Break #2

Day one is behind us down in Kent: the safari park has digested its first 24 hours of live music, floating burger wrappers and determined student tom-foolery. Music highlights thus far have included a euphoric midday set by Red Light Company and Krafty Kuts filling the dance tent in time for Chase and Status.

We're beginning to suspect that the animals have been locked away in a slightly ominous looking grey shed situated about four fields away. Can only assume that the lions have killed off the other animals by now and are currently trying to dig their way out under the walls. Tactics for how to handle their eventual escape have varied: the best suggestion so far seems to be to clamour up the pillars holding up one of the stages, although 'not before raiding the bar' according to John Teedge...

We've managed to capture a good cross section of the festival's partiers and aspiring musicians, including the ever-excellent Moulettes and another four piece that sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs having a better day out somewhere. Today we're mostly excited about seeing sardonic rap/breaks duo Dan Le Sac V Scroobius Pip, and hopefully interviewing the pair for as long as they can bear our considerable festival smell...

More later.

Live from 'Beach' Break Live... #1

For the first time I'm going to blog here 'ad hoc' and in brief, rather then agonizing for a week on theme, structure, etc...

John Teedge (guest blogger and cameraman) and I are down here in a safari park in Kent, where the UKs only 'student' festival has been relocated (from a stunning beach in Cornwall...) due to some grumpy councilors. They've thrown it all together with about two days to go so kudos for that.

Thus far the sun is egging us on - it's rather like an egg yolk actually - as we make our soon-to-be-posted-on-samparker.org video diary. My presenting skills aren't quite going to have the producers of T4 knocking on my door but I think we're getting the jist over fairly well...

Later on we'll be allowed to stand on stage and film a few songs - going to try my best not to accidently pull out a guitar lead or trip up one of Dizzee Rascal's entourage.

Haven't seen any lions, tigers or monkeys yet. Certainly haven't seen any giraffes which, as some of you may know, I refuse to believe actually exist until I witness with my own two eyes. They're too ridiculous - I think it's all a scam.

Will pop back later with more.

Squatters.

Introducing samparker.org's first ever 'guest blogger', Mr. John Teedge...

Normal service shall be resumed shortly. For now, enjoy JT's account of what happens when squatters move in next door...

Midnight, Friday. Eyeballing a weeping crack user out of my bedroom window who looked like a cross between Willow and Jonas Gutierrez, I had to wonder where it all went wrong.

It all started a few months ago with a fairly innocuous three foot hole in the front window of the empty house two doors down. Then the drum and bass started. Pimped-up alloy rides came and went and then we noticed the cleaning products in the kitchen window. The squatters had undoubtedly moved in.

Seasons came and seasons uneventfully passed bar the odd vacuous disco glare at the bus stop.
Then the night of my twenty-fifth birthday arrived. Friends talking party shite over break beats and swapping jokes, jibes and amateur cocktails. The next morning, as we basked in the afterglow of the party, Rich came back from his van to report it had been ‘’pimped’’ with a six-inch gash to the back off-side tyre.

Ignoring the obvious and blaming the pavement, we left it at that and carried on with our sardined existence in a terrace house designed for a miner and his stunted chimney sweep kids, not five fecktrosexual twentysomething Geordies.

Last week the first summer sun drew our sofas into the yard and we toasted ourselves in what felt like the presence of an old friend. The capricious kind, inspiring and full of tales from lands afar that you promised yourself you would emulate when you eventually pay off that credit card.
A pleasant delusion that was soon shattered by the squatters fending off a brick-wielding assailant, probably irked by some scrawny bag of rat poison or vitamin C, come-on-thens and hes-not-worth-its rapping over our soundtrack from ‘The Harder they Come.’

Like the shark in ‘The Beach’ it was a precursor of further bad shit.

This is where we came in.

As I sat smoking out of the window of my basement room trying to look cool, getting to know an exciting and beautiful woman over half a bottle of Strongbow I became aware of an intermittent scuttling noise. At first I thought it was a rat, then my dickhead flatmate. But this was much worse.

As I stuck my head out to investigate I disturbed the midget Jonas on his hands and knees in the litter I hadn’t been arsed to tidy up. Startled, the exchange went something like this:

‘’What the F*CKING HELL are you doing?’’

‘’Ah..erm…sorry mate…there’s been a raid…’’

‘’Get the F*CK out of my yard, right now.’’

‘’Mate, you don’t understand…I’m a drug user…there’s been a raid-‘’

‘’Get out of here!’’

‘’But…I chucked it down here somewhere…I’ve got to get it back. I need a torch…’’

Midget Jonas was eye to eye with me in the darkness, the romance burning out with the fag-end, me controlling the situation like Gordon Brown, as my fingers hovered over the hammer in the drawer. Midget Jonas started to cry. The stand-off was like a nurse-patient argument over dinnertime gruel in the psychiatric wing. He evidently wasn’t going anywhere though. So I passed him a lighter and he ducked back out of sight. Seconds later he returned, his street-hardened grimy mits brandishing a crack-rock the size of the blood diamond.

‘’I’ve got it! I’ve fucking got it mate! Look I wasn’t lying! Awww I could hug you!’’

‘’Don’t.’’

‘’Matematematemate how can I pay you back?!’’

‘’Give me my lighter and f*ck off.’’

And with that he skipped away giggling with all the poise and psychosis of Wastey, the ostracised eighth dwarf who stole Doc’s silver pieces while the rest were out down the quarry, leaving me to ponder being able to listen to Tupac’s ‘’Changes’’ with that bit more moral authority.

I didn’t realise that our area of Leeds is colloquially known as the ‘War Zone’ by my social worker colleagues and with three more weeks to go on the tenancy from hell, I’m beginning to get it. If heaven is a place on earth, then surely hell must be too. Either that or the state of mind that finds you in Burley, on purpose, at night-time, scratching around desperately in a stranger’s beer cans and fag-ends risking everything for that crystalline relief.

As for the squatters, I suppose stealing a house so easily must give you a feeling of invulnerability. But to paraphrase Homer Simpson, there’s such a fine line between invulnerable and stupid.

John Teedge helps run a charity that supports disadvantaged people in Uganda: check out his blog for more information www.spoweuganda.org/

Glastonbury: The Prelude

I was on the front cover of the Guardian once.

I’d love to say it was in the by-line of an article that brought down the government, or in a photo linking arms with Scarlett Johansson, but alas: it was the tip of my £20 tent peering above a sea of sewage and shit, 3 inches of material cowering beneath the lashing rain, bewildered as a camel on an ice-cap.

The location was Glastonbury festival and the year was 2005: the one where the rain ‘really’ came. June’s entire average annual rainfall burst from the heavens that morning like the impossible tears of a cuckolded teenager, coating Pilton in grief inside one small hour. The images were beamed out across the nation of the worst affected corner of the camp sites: the school-boy-error spot at the bottom of a hill we had chosen in the previous day’s deceitful sunlight. In the foreground of the shots, someone with a comic’s sense of preparation was captured floating by in a canoe.

I remember being coaxed in and out of sleep that morning by the thudding pitter-patter above, brain reeling from excess and vaguely registering the water seeping the in the edges of my hot little hovel, body curling into a smaller and smaller ball in meek defiance. I suppose for the hour or so it took me to realise what was going on it was a little like regressing back to the womb. If so, my subsequent ‘birth’ was the kind mothers must have nightmares about.

We all emerged from our tents and stood dumbly for a second, mouths open like sallow fish as the rising tide of sewage swallowed our festival from the feet up. I remember my friend Kimmy fumbling down for his car keys, shoulder-length hair floating in the water like dead weeds along a river bank. The source of the smell became apparent: the nearby toilets were over-flowing and carrying with it the unspeakable detritus of drug-addled arseholes, casually coating what in a blink of an eye ago was a scene of pastoral innocence: guitars poised on backpacks, disposable barbeques dying gracefully in the sun, polite bags of rubbish nestled between cans of lager…

It felt biblical. Unreal. We trudged to the edge of the flood with what little we could salvage and watched chaos lick its way through the narrow passageways between our tents, consuming our entire Glastonbury - my first - like a snake. Shivering, soaking, stunned, we slapped our way through the mud to the nearest shelter and stood sharing cigarettes. For about half an hour of teeth-chattering, it seemed the only option was probably to go home.

Then someone threw on ‘Nice Weather For Ducks’ by Lemon Jelly. Suddenly, a crumb of sunlight landed obscenely on a puddle a few feet away. We all began to laugh. Someone began to dance. What followed, via a trip to an emergency refugee camp set up by the Eavies farmhouse, free jam sandwiches, cups of tea and second-hand clothes provided by the good people at Oxfam, were three of the best days of my life. Being stripped of your possessions, it transpired, was the best possible preparation for Glastonbury. For me at least, it meant racing through the next few days feeling more care-free than an adult has any right to.

And there’s the point. The need to save money looks set to keep me from attending any music festivals this summer, and yet my year will be poorer for it. There is something Wordsworth says in The Prelude about looking over the countryside where he once roamed as a boy, knowing that he can never rediscover the essential and instinctive rhythms of freedom that propelled him at that age to explore, climb and leap through the woodlands. In adulthood it is not possible, he says, to enjoy the world in same carefree way again.

Perhaps if Wordsworth had been able to convince Coleridge to split the petrol and drive to a field somewhere that summer, struggle through the gates of a music festival with three crates of Strongbow and plonk down in a field for four days of drinking, wandering, listening, learning to play the bongos and taking free yoga classes, chatting to strangers and stumbling between burger vans, he’d have forgotten for a moment the pressures of iambic pentameter, the Lake District rent and Dorothy’s gout and relaxed.

There has to be a good reason that thousands of us spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds each year simply to be allowed to sit in a muddle of our own rubbish, unable to wash or defecate comfortably, rain poised like the sword of Damocles above our heads. Put simply: it unshackles us from everything that makes the rest of year so wearisome. It allows us to be children again.

Glastonbury 2005 demonstrated to me like no other festival quite how true this is. In relative terms, our homes were completely destroyed, and in real terms, we woke up in a river made up party of sewage and human waste. Yet still the good times rolled. So to those people lucky enough to be off watching Springsteen and Blur while I’m glumly counting out my £200 – good luck to you.

I hope it absolutely pisses down.

for a review of Newcastle's very own answer to Glastonbury by yours truly, check this out: http://www.thecrackmagazine.com/index.php?section=1&category=7&page=1658

and for an interview with Dizzee Rascal in which I try my best to be cool, see here: http://www.thecrackmagazine.com/index.php?section=1&category=9&page=1659