I cross The Void beyond The Mind The empty space that circles Time I see where others stumble blind To seek a Truth they never find Eternal wisdom is my guide I am The Doctor Through cosmic wastes, the TARDIS flies To taste the secret Source of Life A presence Science can't deny exists Within, Outside, Behind The latitude of The Human Mind I am The Doctor My voyage dissects the course of Time "Who knows?," you say That I am right Who searches deep to find The Light That glows so darkly in The Night Toward that point I guide my flight As fingers move to end mankind Metallic teeth begin their grind With Sword of Truth I turn to fight The satanic powers of The Night Is your fate before your mind..?
No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
We will not walk in fear, one of another.
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve.
We can deny our heritage and our history, but
we cannot escape responsibility for the result.
There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.
As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the Defenders of Freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
"If y'want the position o' God, then tek t'responsibilty."
Stephen Baxter "LOTS of planets have a North..!"
Only in the North, and in Northern people and in Northern Hearts have I ever encountered have I ever encountered actual Englishness, the much-vaunted, much-lauded "British Values", Loyalty and Quiet Pride, Modesty, Warm Humour and Wit, genuineness, radicalism and agitation, GOTH, a sense of self, place and nation, bravery, stoicism and cheek.
They are our best and only Tribe of unrepentant patriots - but their loyalty, always is only to The Nation, and it's People, and to the story of this land.
Not to The Court.
Not to the usurped and tainted Crown or its office-holders, Mistresses and Favourites, Viscountesses, false-pretending Pomp and Circumstance
Not to the Privy Councillors and Toilet-Room Toadies in WestMinster
Not to The City, it's Banks and Guilds and Corporation or Toxic (Human) Assets.
And not to the bloody BBC LicenseFree Enforcement and Revenue Recovery Unit - Jog on, pal.
It's Grim Up North
by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
Bolton,
Barnsley,
Nelson,
Colne,
Burnley
Bradford,
Buxton,
Crewe,
Warrington,
Widnes,
Wigan,
Leeds,
Northwich,
Nantwich,
Knutsford,
Hull,
Sale,
Salford,
Southport,
Leigh,
Derby,
Kearsley
Keighley
Maghull,
Harrogate,
Huddersfield,
Oldham, Lancs,
Grimsby,
Glossop,
Hebden Bridge,
It's Grim Up North,
It's Grim Up North.
Brighouse,
Bootle,
Featherstone,
Speke,
Runcorn,
Rotherham,
Rochdale,
Barrow,
Morecambe,
Macclesfield,
Lytham St. Annes
Clitheroe,
Cleethorpes,
The M62,
It's Grim Up North,
It's Grim Up North.
Pendlebury,
Prestwich,
Preston,
York,
Skipton,
Scunthorpe,
Scarborough-on-Sea,
Chester,
Chorley,
Cheedle Hulme,
Ormskirk,
Accrington Stanley,
and Leigh,
Ossett,
Otley,
Ikley Moor,
Sheffield,
Manchester,
Castleford,
Skem,
Doncaster,
Dewsbury,
Hali-fax,
Bingley,
Bramall,
Are all in the North. EARTH + AIR + FIRE + WATER
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy lamb of god On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem built here Amongst these dark satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold Bring me my arrows of desire Bring me my spear, o clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built: JERUSALEM In England's green and pleasant land. THE NORTH SHALL RISE AGAIN
Popular Front to Build for The New 1945 needs your help, and we're up against the clock on this one.
I get pessimism and despair. I do.
Meaning that I can dig them - by which I mean that in the sense in which I "get" them, I recognise and appreciate them for what they are, meaning that I understand their nature and their role , as well as utility - as opposed to the "I often experience them" sense of getting them.
Or at least, with less and less frequency I have found at any rate, at least of late - long may it continue, God Wi77ing.
I have known, and I know depression, imimately.
Biblically, you might say.
She remains with me in all places and times as an old and constant friend with rare and highly dubious, yet undeniable benefits.
And she's always there, just out of sight, lying in wait to pounce right on top of my head and try with all her strength to f**k me as mercilessly as she can, regular as clockwork, as soon as I sense complacency or contendedness looming, as soon as she senses a gap or a breech in my vilgiance opening or the minute she calculates that my guard has begun to sag or started to slacken down.
But we all each have our demons and she just happens to be mine - in the Chymical Wedding that occupies what I suppose must pass for my brain, we're joined at the hip and stuck with one another now, no matter how much we might tear at one another and try to wage unholy war for momentary, transient domination and subjugation of the other, neither one of us is going to get anywhere, so much as a single step away on our own against the wishes, will and consent of the other. Til Death Us Do Part.
It's after all isn't her fault, after all, not really.
She can't help being what she is any more than I can choose to be what I am, within a certain bandwidth of degrees of freedom of choice, at least for the time being, and I realise now, my future options and odds-on likely best hope to achieve my next Level-Up are just a complete non-starter, ball-breaking deal-breaker unless I can ensure her complete cooperation, take a firm grasp on my Depression, break it to my will and keep it on a tight leash - which turns out to be very fortuitous that I was able to achieve this milestone of self-discovery in order to reach this key resolution as firmly and concretely as I have, given the fact that she's actually really into all of that, as luck would have it... The filthy, witchy little wenchy whoremongering slut of a hell spawned succubus that she is - I don't see why that should even have come as a surprise. Not that it did, as in fact turned out.
So I live with depression every waking minute of my day, and for as long as I can remember, and will until the day that I die, and probably even after beyond that - she'll try her damnedest (literally) to drag me back down to Hell with her and lie for all enternity caught locked in her excruciating embrace, lost an entangled forever in her arms and by her legs where she is free to inflict upon me never-ending pain and spiritual torment and agony, as she tortures me so exquistly, like a small boy savouring the pure thrill and relish of the experience of power of slowly pulling each of the legs off of a captured and terrified spider, stretched out over the course of an æon.
If instead, I succeed instead in dragging her up behind with me by a collar or her hair only so far Up as even one of Mormon Heavens, it'll have some sense of victory at least, or so it seems like, on days when I feel as though I'm tiring. Like today, actually.
I can't lie to you and pretend that Mormon heaven wouldn't be a disappointing achievement, should I end up making it there, but consider all the extra weight I'm carrying here on the journey, not to mention the endless setbacks, complications and distractions that have to be dealt with in turn, as the arise (and they will) en route along the way.
All of which also applies with reference to Degree, Mum and Dad, by the way, if you somehow are reading this right now - I know how it sounded, and I realise that it wasn't quite what you had expected of me (admittedly, to be fair, not that you had actually, y'know, TOLD me what you had expected of me, either at or, - ideally - y'know, sufficiently and generously ahead of such time as I might have been still able to actually, y'know do something about it, but never mind), but I forgive you.
A 2:2 is what it is and I Yam What I Yam, and knowing that and those things and all the rest , I know that I did well.
Michelle from Eastenders got a Third.
And she wasn't dragging a malevolent daemon halfway up her hill as she went, she just shagged Dirty Den and had his iligitimate teenage love-child... In which case, actually, I retract that last critical completely.
A Christian Demon may be a Djinn or malevolent spirit, or a fallen and disembodied Angel sworn to plague men's souls in service to Lucifer or The Enemy, but a Greek or Hellenistic Dæmon is guardian animal, some supernatural beast or monster brought forth into The Flesh, as a created creature of the Olympian gods to protect and keep safe some great horde of treasure, some secret roadway or path, or some equally precious and valuable thing, as like the gorgon Medusa and her two sisters, the Gryphons and millions-strong swarms of wingèd serpents of Scythia that guard the Crimean Tree at the End of the World from which hung the GoldenFleece of the epic ode of Jason and the Argonauts, the Giant Ants of India that dig up Gold dust out of the sands of the earth, or the man-eating ThracianSphinx of the tragedies of OedipusRex, the she-monster lying in wait by the side of the road, waiting to devour any who failed to answer her cryptic riddle and supply her with the correct passwords.
I didn't understand it then, but now I do - my depression is a part of me, a part of who I am.
It is me - an equal and opposite aspect of me gone mad, created to protect me, to keep me safe, mindless, savage, pure instinct, a legendary, deathly dark black, monstrous vision of me and all that I am, that I made up somewhere, some time, for some reason a lifetime or maybe more ago, like some kind of psychic Doomsday Device to marshall all of my strength and will and courage and rage to fight myself free from some place and time and situation where there seemed as though there was absolutely no last shred of hope left, as I was being backed down into a corner, checkmated in every direction, with no room to manuvere, no end in sight, no other way out, no options open and no help on the way and no cards left to me to play.
Probably, I assume, or I am guessing, that at or before (I must have been) around the age of six (back when I was still counting birthdays [ like that matters ]), I can only conclude, having given it much thought and rumination in order seek out, hunt, stalk and chase down each of the clues that have led me to reconstruct this particular Truth, that reveals to me the Origin Story of my Dark Heart and the Blackness that encircles the very centre of my soul......
[I'm] a walking study,
In Dæmonologie...
If we can survive 5 years under Winston Churchill's 1-Party State during the Blitz, Wartime Austerity, a Police State and Rationing, I am prepared to suffer through a similar fate to bring on the new 1945 and the next NHS.
Britons Can Take It.
You've just named the core leadership of Churchill's Cabinet in the One Party State of 1940-45.
Clement Attlee led the Churchillian Coup of May 1940 as the ranking member of New Welcome Lodge No. 5139, created at the behest of the Head of British Masonry at that time, the Nazi Prince of Wales.
As for Nye Bevan - as for how he was able to get the Doctors, GPs and crucially, the British Medical Association on-side and on-message and on-board with the NHS in the first place : "I stuffed their mouths with Gold."
He paid them off.
The BMA is also, as one would obviously imagine for such a ruling class institution, somewhat Masonic...
Don't misunderstand me - training, studying and qualifying as a junior doctor is expensive, lengthy, stressful and incredibly hard work.
But there is a galaxy of difference between the labour intensity, over-work and burden of professional responsibility a junior doctor on a ward working overtime, understaffed back-to-back irregular shift patterns in A&E, a surgeon or specialist and a General Practitioner with a cosy private county practice.
They basically get £100-150,000 a year from the State to essentially perform the same tasks as a skilled administrator, perform triage, risk assessment and make referrals and pastoral care.
Because of the way it was negotiated in 1947, in a such a damned, chaotic, heist-like rush.
That was such a worthy caper, the Lavender Hill Mob would have been proud to have pulled it off.
GPs essentially have picked up much of the slack left behind by taking on the major aspects of the functions formerly provided and carried out by the parish vicar prior to 1940.
And vicars generally don't cost the public purse £150 grand a year (plus final salary pension).
Junior Doctors and front line emergency staff (which mean NURSES AND AMBULANCE DRIVERS, too) ought to earn A LOT MORE.
But the money has never been there for anything other than below poverty-level wages, training or recruitment because the General Practioners TAKE so much and contribute so much LESS.
All this furore over The Tory Government vs. The Junior Doctors is nothing but The Pledge towards The Prestige, when that was never the issue - The Turn has always pivoted around question of the real battle it has always been between The General Practioners and the Nurses et al. over All The Money as to who gets to keep the heat on and eat meals that come in tins vs. who gets to grow laconically rich and upwardly mobile, socially.
That's why we need a NEW 1945.
Better than the last one, better prepared (we've got the next 5 years to get it right), coolly calculated rather than patched and cobbled together out of desperation and pieces of old sticky-tape and string, free from all of the dangerous compromises embedded, deep-rooted within the core foundations of the first one.
The Wise learn by studying the mistakes and errors of others.
Don Corleone's patròn swore "I believe in America".
Sod that for a lark - why not try believing in yourself, your friends and neighbours and going out to try and inspire them to feats of grandeur?
So how about we all just agree between ourselves to say that we each affirm that I believe in you, you can have confidence in me, so roll up yer sleeves y'great jessie, ye, and come on and let's all get stuck in, lad.
There's work as needs doin'.
"This time, there'll be a THIRD Covenant - and it's going to be written by each and every one of you.
"If you look at cave art – the first art was done; the first writing that was done, basically as art.
And if someone wanted to make something happen; like, if you were in the — like, if you were some fucked up caveman in a cave somewhere, worrying about your dinner.
What do you do? You draw a bison on the wall; stick some spears in it.
Go out, and the bison dies filled with spears."
Grant Morrison
"Do you know much about voodoo? That's a fascinating practice.
No real doctrine of faith to speak of - more an arrangement of superstitions; the most well-known of which is the voodoo doll.
You see, a mockup of an individual is subjected to various pokes and prods.
The desired result is that the individual will feel those effects."
Loki/Kevin Smith
"The Black Ark was too black and too dread. Even though I am black, I have to burn it down, to save me brain. It was too black. It want to eat me up!"
Lee Scratch Perry
" “This is part of human experience. It’s a part of human experience that has been described to us for thousands and thousands of years – but for the last two hundred has been hidden and made occult. For some reason that we don’t understand – but it seems to have something to do with the industrial revolution and corporate culture.”
So these things happen. Magic works. And I found out when I was doing the comic that you could actually make magic happen by writing things, and changing the operating system of the universe. It works, and I’m here to tell you to try it when you go home tonight. Because it fucking works.
And what happens if we all do it? If everyone in this room decides to take control of reality? I’m talking about reality; I’m talking about quantum physics; I’m talking about taking control of things from the quantum level up, from the molecular level up – and it works. This magic works.
So I’ll tell you something you can do, while I’m here. You know one of the best techniques, and one of the easiest techniques, to prove that this thing works is to practice sigil magic. The technique is simple: have a desire, tonight.
Go home and do this! Don’t listen to this shit! Don’t listen to my bullshit and think “yeah, we are the fucking counterculture!” DO IT! Do it – and we will change the world.
Because I did it. Coz I didn’t trust those guys. I didn’t trust Wilson and all those people who told me we could do this stuff. And I’m here to tell you: it works. And you can do it; we can all do it.
Bacon's New Atlantis,
beyond the Pillars of Heracles
Number one: first thing you do is, you write down a desire. Make it something easy that’s likely to happen. Something possible, rather than say, y’know, “I’m going to be king of the moon” – which you may want to be, as we all do, but.. it’s kind of hard to be king of the moon. You’re gonna have to get a rocket and go up there.
Something easy. If you want to sigilise for a lottery win, make sure you buy a ticket or else it probably won’t work. So these are the conditions within the material universe that we live in.
What we’re really dealing with here is, as I say, some kind of operating system that can be hacked, using words. Words seem to be the binding agent of this.. thing. Whatever it is.
So I wrote this comic book – and as I wrote it, it became true.
Things I would make the characters do became true.
The main character was.. I gave him a bald head and a leather jacket, because I thought people would like me when I they read the comic. Bald heads were really uncool back in 1992.
The Shakes-Spear Tulpa
(w. skullet)
Avatar of the High Priest and Devotee of Pallas-Athena,
The Spear-Shaker
The Golem of Avon
And it worked. I found that if I put the character through a situation where he’d been tortured; where his lungs had bust and he was being held in captivity; subjected to all these awful things. Two months later: I’m in hospital, two bust lungs, dying of blood poisoning; facing exactly the same shamanic trial that I put my character through.
So once I figured out that, I thought: the best thing to do is to give this guy an easy time in the future.
King Mob/Gideon Stargrave/Grant Morrison
So as a result of all this, I’d just split up with my girlfriend. And I was like: “okay, I want a new one and I want her to look exactly like this chick in the comic, coz she’s cool.”
So I did a sigil; a month later, the girl turns up.
Then another one. Then another one. Then another one; then another one.
All aspects of this character. And then [I was like]: “Oh fuck, this is insane. Because it works and I’ve done something ridiculous. Because now I’m dealing with all these women who look like the character, but who I don’t get on with, or I can’t talk to, or I can’t deal with.”
And I began to realise a little bit about how this stuff works.
So beyond that, I decided: I won’t just use it to get laid, because it seems a pretty low-grade kind of way of dealing with magic. But man, it works! Believe me.
So I thought: how much could you effect reality by writing a comic that mimics reality, but pushed it in weird directions? So round about 1997, I decided that I would really seriously turn this thing into a super-sigil.
And it was based on the idea that: if you look at cave art – the first art was done; the first writing that was done, basically as art. And if someone wanted to make something happen; like, if you were in the — like, if you were some fucked up caveman in a cave somewhere, worrying about your dinner. What do you do? You draw a bison on the wall; stick some spears in it. Go out, and the bison dies filled with spears.
“Hey, man! We can make this happen!”
Slowly, those things become words; they become abstractions – complexes of meaning. And you can take that basic idea, and – as we’ve seen – people like Austin Osmond Spare, the magician from the early part of the century, or Crowley, or the chaos magicians of the eighties who were a big influence on me – they used this stuff. And like I say, what you can do is this: go home, write down a desire; it’s quite simple, what you can say is: “It is my desire that my cat wins the Olympics.”
Take out all the vowels..
- Write this down, for fuck’s sake! Don’t just listen; do it! Right? -
Take out the vowels, and you’ll be left with a string of consonants. Take out all the repeated consonants, and you’ll be left with a string of consonants with no repeats in it.
X, Y, A, D, whatever.
Turn that thing into a little image.
Take the D, draw a big D.
Then you’ve got a T; draw a big T on it.
Keep reducing it down until it looks magical.
And there are no rules for this thing.
Do it until it looks magical.
At that point you now have a sigil.
The sigil will work.
You can project desire into reality, and change reality.
It works!
Those must be the people who’ve done it.
So please, I mean, write this down, go home and do it. Check; verify the results.
Because – I was reading this thing in New Scientist this week and it said: the difference between bad science and good science is.. Scientific procedure has three criteria. And the criteria are:
that you can verify results; you can talk to other people who’ve done the thing and make sure that, you know, it works out.
You can duplicate results.
And also..
some other thing; I’ve forgotten.
But yeah, two things is pretty good, innit?
Two outta.. yeah.
This is verifiable. People have been telling us about this for thousands of years. The Tibetans have been telling us about this. The Mesopotamians have been telling us about this. And why has it been made ‘occult’?
Because: Coca-Cola have got the secret.
What you do is you create a sigil.
Coca-Cola is a sigil. The McDonalds “M” is a sigil.
These people are basically turning the world into themselves, using sigils.
And if we don’t reverse that process, and turn the world into us using sigils, we’re going to be living in fucking McDonalds.
But McDonalds have no more power than us, apart from the fact – like what Doug [Rushkoff] said earlier – they’ve got some money.
Fuck it; who cares?
At the top levels of this stuff, no one’s using money anyway.
You think Rupert Murdoch, or the Queen, or Bill Clinton, or any of these fuckers use money? Of course they don’t.
They’ve realised that money is only useful to sell to the middle classes – the people in the middle who make things happen; who make things run.
We’ve been sold a fiction.
There’s no such thing as money.
Ignore it.
At the higher levels..
No.. YEAH! HEY!
There is no money.
These fuckers don’t use money.
If Rupert Murdoch wants a Rolls Royce, they give him one.
Because he’s Rupert Murdoch.
And if they see him in a Rolls Royce, it means they get some status out of it.
So you’ve gotta understand, these people on the higher levels are operating on a hierarchy of exchange and barter.
On the lower levels – where I lived in Glasgow, which is one of the poorest cities in Europe – people are operating on a hierarchy of exchange that’s quite different: they steal shit, and then they sell it back, and they have their own little money.. and they have this complete black market economy.
There’s only us in the middle who think money’s worth anything – and we chase it until we drop.
So forget it.
Where was I?
(And the other thing is: I hate talking at people, so if anyone wants to join in just put your hand up. Coz I fucking hate just talking at people.)
So… having figured these weird things out, having thought about this and having been through this experience, which was exactly the experience I’d been promised by Wilson, McKenna, Philip K. Dick – everyone, they promised this thing, and it works. You can get the experience.
Do what they told you to do, and it will happen – I promise you.
You will meet the aliens; they will talk to you. The Golden Dawn called this “Knowledge & Conversation Of The Holy Guardian Angel”.
So it’s been around for a while; it’s accessible to everyone.
Magick is accessible to everyone.
The means of altering reality are accessible to everyone.
And when everyone starts doing it, we’re going to start to get to see desire manifest on a gigantic scale. Everyone’s desire.
What happens when *everyone’s* desire becomes manifest?
Does the universe have to split up into a billion to accommodate it? Do we all have to suddenly understand that we’re all in the same place, and that we can all share in each others’ desires?
I don’t know.
I’m just here to talk about this stuff.
LEE PERRY and the BLACK ARK STUDIO
In 1973 Lee Perry was having a nap in the backyard of his family home in Kingston and had a strange dream, hearing the strangest sounds and music never heard before. After awakening he reflected on the dream, took it as a singn from the Almighty and decided to build his own studio on this very spot. After completion in 1974 it was named 'THE BLACK ARK' and one of the biggest mysticisms of Reggae music - and music in general - should have it's origin there.
The studio was equipped with comparatively simple equipment through all it's time: a four-track 1/4-inch TEAC reel-to-reel, 16-track Soundcraft board, Mutron phaser, a Grantham spring reverb and a Roland Space Echo. But with these means only, completely independent ways of production and lots of time to experiment Lee Perry created the 100% unique sound and style that will identify him forever.
He shot pistols, broke glass, ran tapes backwards, and used samples of crying babies, falling rain, animal sounds and TV-show audience to create music and cleaned the tapeheads with his T-Shirt and blew Ganja smoke into running tapes to alter the sound.
With records like 'DUB REVOLUTION' or 'BLACKBOARD JUNGLE DUB' the dirty and magical quality of the BLACK ARK sound was formed, never to be re-created.
In these surroundings only Lee Perry's production skills reached a new level, he played the mixing desk like an instrument (roll over the pic above!), modulated everything with phaser and delays and made the 4-track-machine sounding like a 20- track:
"It was only four tracks on the machine," Perry explains, "but I was picking up twenty from the extra terrestrial squad. (...) I see the studio must be like a living thing, a life itself. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves - you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls and the knobs or you jack it into the jack panel. The jack panel is the brain itself, so you got to patch up the brain and make the brain a living man, that the brain can take what you sending into it and live."
The aura of the BLACK ARK studio attracted many musicians, newcomers and veterans alike, and countless timeless classics were created there. The 'OPEN THE GATE'-Box on Trojan is an extraordinary document for the productions of that time and one of the best Reggae records ever put to vinyl. Check out tracks like 'WORDS', Leroy Sibbles' 'GARDEN OF LIFE' or the milestone 'CONGOMAN' by the Congos (recently re-edited by Carl Craig). Each song - great in themselves already - comes along with a dub version that all have a deepness in them with no words to describe it. An absolutely essential release!
Additionally to his achievements of stretching Dub over it's breaking point and defining a new musical dimension of its own, Lee Perry was also a gifted riddim- master and song- writer. Loads of classic riddims were created by him in this era and - like 'POLICE AND THIEVES', 'SOULFIRE' or 'I CHASE THE DEVIL' - even reached Top Ten status in England. And that is the big difference between him and King Tubby: while Tubby RE-CREATED (in this time) Lee Perry CREATED. The music done by him in the BLACK ARK studio present the pinnacle of Jamaican creativity, Reggae at its highest heights and greatest power.
But constant production and constant use of weed and booze took its physical and mental toll in the late 70ies. Additionally the overall political situation in Jamaica became almost civil-war-like, the streets being dangerous, looters hanging around the studio and local gangsters pushing Scratch for protection money. Unable to take that strain his wife and children left him and Perry started to walk the slim line between reality and fantasy, reason and madness. Visitors and journalists arrived at the Black Ark to find Perry worshipping bananas, eating money or spouting long and violent diatribes. So in this time the BLACK ARK as a 'living brain', as he described it before, ceased to function.
Perry spent much of his time vandalizing the Black Ark then, covering the once colourful decor in bizarre and profane grafitty and splotches of black paint. Reels of master tapes lay strewn on the floor, and the recording equipment was next to useless due to water damage from a leaky roof. The once proud studio was now little more than a junkyard.
Then in 1979 Lee Perry burnt the studio down and left Jamaica for good. The whole story of it is not clear until now, it's one more legend surrounding the mythos
Perry, but as a reason for this final step - and point of no return - he said:
"The Black Ark was too black and too dread. Even though I am black, I have to burn it down, to save my brain. It was too black. It want to eat me up!"
He spent some time in New York and England in the 80ies and finally married a Swiss bussiness woman, who became his manager afterwards. The releases he turned out after the death of the BLACK ARK never reached that quality again. He now lives in Zurich / Switzerland.
RECORDS:
Additional to the records mentioned before check out 'SUPER APE', an unforgettable dub session with the Upsetters, 'JAH LION', 'HEART OF THE CONGOS' by the CONGOS, 'ITAL CORNER' with Prince Jazzbo or 'KUNG FU MEETS THE DRAGON'. All highly recommended!
