Another think coming

Having survived the loss of many of my peer group in 2016, I still don't have much of a plan for getting through 2017.

Noticing that the KLF guys plan an event for 23 August 2017 gives me some sort of target - 23 years on from when they burned a million pounds, and deleted their back catalogue.  Actually, they seem to have reverted to the incarnation before the KLF, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (sic) - or JAMs.

Now for those of you who already have no idea what I am talking about, I can't recommend highly enough John Higgs' book "The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds"

This book enthralls me every time I read it, not only because it seems so well-informed, and has such a lucid style (for such an enigmatic subject), but because I remain a fan of everything that John Higgs has written (that I can get my hands on), and of Robert Anton Wilson (who I studied with online), and  the Illuminatus! trilogy (which I first read in the 1970s, and contains the first references to the JAMs).  I got my copy of volume one (back in the days when they got published separately) at the same bookshop (Compendium) that Ken Campbell got his, which inspired him to create a stage show out of all three volumes, starting in Liverpool at the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, and ending up in the National Theatre in London (where I witnessed the whole series of five plays in one day - something like ten hours).   Recently, Daisy Eris Campbell (who may have been conceived backstage of that show) has staged another of Robert Anton Wilson's books - Cosmic Trigger - again in Liverpool, and again coming to London, soon.

Too much for one paragraph?

Well, I will use this blog the way John Steinbeck used the left-hand pages of his ledgers, as a place to warm-up, make notes, write letters, etc - while actually writing his novel on the right hand pages.

Apart from anything else, Robert Anton Wilson encouraged optimism, and having dragged myself through 2016 I feel the need to renew my reckless cheerfulness.

Ten Good Reasons to Get Out of Bed in the Morning.  Originally published in OUI Magazine, 1977.
  (audio version).