my life as a artist
dawkins; my part in his downfall
Sunday 18th July 2010 8:58 PM
With the help of my old friend Steve, who lives in the South West, I've been trying to organise a comedy tour based on the St Michael ley-line. So far I'm booked in at the Ebeneezer chapel in Burrowbridge, Somerset on the 1st October, and the village hall in Avebury, Wiltshire on the 2nd October. Certainly a line has been drawn here, one almost contiguous with the aforementioned mysterious terrestrial current, but as it's not so much a tour as a two-er, it would be nice to extend it in either direction. Taunton, Okehampton, Bodmin, Redruth and Penzance to the west would all be appropriate, as would Thame, Dunstable, Luton, Royston, Bury St Edmunds and Beccles to the east. The blatant desire for geomantically inspired gigs in these parts must be so infinitesimally small that I'm not surprised that no one's thought of it before.
These days, in a culture where revered sages tell us that butterflies are randomly made by blind pitiless indifference, it's not an obvious money-spinner being a mystical troubadour. Gentle philosophy, nice little earner, not. However, the suffering can be fruitful and the hours are very flexible, as indeed are the weeks and months, and if truth be told, you could hardly call the years and decades rigid.
I don't have a pension plan as such, more the shimmering vision of a golden future set in a fruitful land of organic, unsweetened soya milk and ethically-produced honey, where music and laughter are found on the breeze and ready-made roll-ups hang down from the trees. When this present madness has been usurped by uncommon good sense, and a slim, sensitive Jeremy Clarkson smiles as he cycles past John Terry playing footy for fun, then my job as a shamanic bard will be done, and I'll be able to retire to the Happy Duck rest-home in Nepal and work on my memoirs.
The second leg of this future legendary two-er will actually take place inside the circle of huge stones that make up the temple complex at Avebury. No one really knows when it was built, but I remember visiting in the early seventies and it was there then, so goodness knows how old it could be. As for its function, there are three main schools of thought. The mystics maintain that it's a spiritual instrument that harnesses terrestrial and cosmic energies whereas the followers of Miss Tiggywinkle believe that it's just for beauty. Then there's the lunatic fringe of course, the archaeologists, who think that it's a collection of really large kitchen utensils. These two-dimensional, deluded spoon-finders, their minds strangled by neo-Darwininnyism, believe that we're on a one-way evolutionary climb, from the primitive savagery of the pyramids to the point where we can come up with concepts as sublime as the 'Kentucky Fried Chicken Mums-night-off Bucket'. After the meal there's no washing up to do and you've got an empty bucket to vomit in.
I don't suppose it'll be easy getting mainstream publicity for this St Michael Ley-line two-er, but Steve's got a few connections and he reckons we should be able to get the gigs listed in the Fortean Times. Perfect. It's almost as if… but then again, no.
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