The A Bao A Qu Mystery Revisited

Fanciful depiction of the A Bao A Qu found on the internet

IN APRIL 1993 I received a strange request in the post. John Hagedorn - an American educationist-cum- percussionist then based in Alexandria, Egypt - wrote asking me to research the Malayan origins of the legend of "A Bao A Qu." Hagedorn's travel-writer colleague, Christopher Green, had unearthed this obscure tale from Jorge Luis Borges's 1967 Book of Imaginary Beings.

Borges claimed he had found the "A Bao A Qu" story in the appendix of C.C. Iturvuru's 1937 treatise, On Malay Witchcraft. I finally tracked down Borges's version of the "A Bao A Qu" story in the University of Malaya library - so I can vouch for the reliability of Green's succinct summary of this hoary tale:

To see the most lovely landscape in the world, a traveler must climb the Tower of Victory in Chitor

King Kumbhakaran
aka Rana Kumbha

[Green says he found on a map of India a town named Chitor. For what it's worth, there is indeed a town named Chittorgarh in Rajasthan province where the legendary warrior king Rana Kumbha constructed a Tower of Victory in 1448.]

A winding staircase gives access to the circular terrace on top, but only those who do not believe in the legend dare climb the tower.

On the stairway there has lived since the beginning of time a being sensitive to the many shades of the human soul known as A Bao A Qu. It sleeps until the approach of a traveler and some secret life within it begins to glow and its translucent body begins to stir.

As the traveler climbs the stairs, the being regains consciousness and follows at the traveler's heels, becoming more intense in bluish color and coming closer to perfection. But it achieves its ultimate form only at the topmost step, and only when the traveler is one who has already attained Nirvana, whose acts cast no shadows.

Otherwise, the being hesitates at the final step and suffers at its inability to achieve perfection

["Its moan is a barely audible sound, something like the rustling of silk."]

It tumbles to the first step as the traveler climbs down and collapses weary and shapeless, awaiting the approach of the next traveler.

In the course of the centuries, A Bao A Qu has reached the terrace only once.

For some reason I felt sure that C.C. Iturvuru (what an amazing name!) had heard the tale from an Orang Asli. The first person I asked happened to be Seri Pagi (though I only knew him as Pak Diap then). I gave him a simplified rendering of the A Bao A Qu legend and waited while the rusty gears of his memory whirred. His brow furrowed and then he broke into a broad grin, exclaiming in triumph: "Abang Aku! You mean Abang Aku!"

But of course. The way Orang Asli slur their vowels (especially in the states of Negri Sembilan and Pahang), Iturvuru might well have heard it as "A Bao A Qu." My Elder Brother, Abang Aku.*

I felt a jolt of electrifying knowledge. Diap said he remembered hearing a story similar to that when he was very young. It involved a spiral stairway connecting one dimension to another. A stairway once used by visiting or incarnating stargods. They say some got caught out by the calamitous closing of the interdimensional pathways. Once brilliant stars in their own universe, they fell to Earth and became ensnared in Time. Some of them ended up just like poor Abang Aku alias A Bao A Qu. A spirit fragment of cosmos caught in the gravity of human karma; a glorious starbeing lying inert at the bottom of the stairway to heaven, dependent on messy human destiny for its own fulfilment.

Only one other Elder seemed to have heard of Abang Aku. Village shaman Sudin Aus kept nodding sagely when I outlined the A Bao A Qu story to him. Then he smiled and said, “My Elder Brother is a reference to the Orang Asli. Our spirit will not be free until the younger races achieve nobility of purpose and purity of heart.”

Almost everyone, however, was familiar with the cryptic image of the long and winding stairway to the most wonderful view on Earth.

THE A BAO A QU MYTH evoked images of chakras - energy spirals operating on macro and micro levels - primordial forces attaining self-awareness, and nebulous notions of some deep alchemical mystery - an H.P. Lovecraftian vision of the strange, chthonic thoughtfields from which our familiar symbols sprout. 

“Abang Aku” brought to mind the Great Old Ones, ancient squid-like beings central to Lovecraft’s Chthulu tales. (It also brought to mind Gurdjieff's Kundabuffer. This peculiar word was coined in the 1920s by the Greek-Russian magician-philosopher, G.I. Gurdjieff, to explain some "tragic flaw" in Man's genetic program which condemns him to futile lifetimes of Sisyphean** struggle, forever slipping back into robotic animality just when he's on the threshold of illumination. 

Some believe that this "Kundabuffer Effect" was deliberately installed by a somewhat insecure Creator God (or gods), to retard the evolution of human intelligence and thereby perpetuate a harnessable labour force on Earth. The Tower of Babel story lends credence to this notion of an "Almighty Father-God" who, feeling threatened by his mortal creatures' overweening ambitions, confounds them with a babble of tongues. Another scenario describes how humanity had its original 12-strand DNA reduced to two, to confine our consciousness within the physical world.)

I sensed that the A Bao A Qu story offered a key insight into the magical teachings of the Ancients. At some remote point in the infinite spiral of existence, an aspect of Spirit found itself trapped in a Promethean*** nightmare loop of recurring time. Only a self-realized and karma-free human could release the A Bao A Qu from its eternal yearning for perfection.

Tower of Victory in Chittorgarh,
Rajasthan, India

The Tower of Victory. Victory over death? Despair? Futility? The magic column of ascension, located in Chitor. Chita? Chita, cita, cinta, citta. Sanskrit for a quality difficult to define: essentially, citta means mindstuff, consciousness.

Chita or cita is closely related to cinta, romantic love - desire, emotions, feelings, longing, love, aspiration. (It could also, by invoking homophonic licence, be a slurring of cherita - nowadays spelled cerita - which means "story.") In effect one might describe chita as a poetic symbol for the Imagination, the Desiring Mind. But this is assuming it is related to Chitor, the town named in the legend of A Bao A Qu. And I assume it is, because myth is meant to be a malleable, dreamlike substance. 

The test of myth-entering keys lies in their emotive resonance when struck. Substituting “Abang Aku” for “A Bao A Qu,” “Chita” and “cerita” for “Chitor,” and “you” for “the traveler” - what do we get? A metaphysical conundrum that echoes in some barely remembered attic of our unconscious. A vague feeling of déjà vu, of “When did I dream this dream?” 

Was I the intrepid traveler, the hero, the messiah, redeemer of gooey amorphous geeks? Or was I Abang Aku himself, waiting eon upon eon for humanity to attain Buddha and Christ consciousness? Who else would have “already attained Nirvana,” whose acts would “cast no shadows” - in other words, be completely free of karmic consequences. And who might this Exalted Being be - if not our own Noblest Aspect, the Omega point of our Adamic Alpha?

That's why Abang Aku reaches perfection only once. However, his dream body or holoform remains embedded in the mythic realm as a timely trigger, to awaken anyone who chances upon the legend to the nature of his or her true purpose on this Earth.

 

______________

*  A. Ghani Ismail, an ardent scholar of Malay esoteric lore, offers some information which sheds a whole different light on the A Bao A Qu legend. He suggests that the phrase in question is actually a slurring of “Ibu Aku” (“My Mother”), explaining that in pre-Islamic Malay shamanism, the gateway to other dimensions was via an inner journey through the spiral staircase of the etheric umbilical cord which reconnects us with our pre-birth experience of oneness with the Mother. By voyaging beyond the point of our own conception, we break through the veils of time and space and regain cosmic consciousness. I thought this variation on the theme warranted inclusion, at least as a footnote.

** Sisyphean: from Sisyphus, in Greek mythology a cruel and cunning king of Corinth, who was punished in Hades by being made to roll a heavy boulder up a steep hill. Every time he got to the summit, the boulder would roll back down the hill, and Sisyphus had to repeat the process over and over forever.

*** Promethean: from Prometheus, in Greek mythology a first-generation god (or Titan) of Fire and Intellect, who returned the gift of Fire to Mankind (which Zeus the second-generation Olympian had withheld) - and for that was chained to a rock and his liver devoured by an eagle every day. Every night, the liver would regenerate and Prometheus would come back to life, only to have the eagle eat his liver all over again, and so on, ad infinitum. (It's less gory, but a lot scarier, when you approach this mythic morsel as a giant metaphor for compulsory reincarnation: Prometheus is the Soul, the rock is the physical world, the liver represents a lifetime, and the eagle is the emblem of Higher Authority or Spiritual Law. As a symbol, the eagle is interchangeable with the Indonesian garuda, the Chinese phoenix, the Mexican quetzal, or the Russian firebird, which represents Eternal Return. And Prometheus, the Fire-Bringer, is often identified with Lucifer, the Light-Bringer.) From the 'Management' point of view, Prometheus is a subversive element -  but 'Labor' would see him as a cult hero, a freedom fighter, a System-bucking Little Red Robin Hood!

[This essay was originally included as a chapter in my book TANAH TUJUH ~ Close Encounters with the Temuan Mythos, published by Silverfish Books in 2007. First posted 15 October 2022. Reposted 24 October 2025]

RELATIVITY IS NO THEORY (updated)

Almost everything is relative, isn’t it? Spent the better part of my life peeling off layers of middle-of-the-road, middle-class programming (my dad subscribed to Reader’s Digest and sometimes bought their mail-order compilations of bland music). Yup, I fancied myself some exotic species of Bohemian. But where I live now - in an Orang Asli resort village in the jungly heart of the peninsula – I’m certainly the most middle-class person around. How many other households here actually have peanut butter and toilet paper on their shopping lists? Indeed, nobody else in Pertak Village has even heard of a shopping list (although, 20 years down the line, quite a few now order stuff from Shopee).

I take a measure of pride, though, in the fact that ours is perhaps one of three houses without a TV aerial. My daughter did offer me Astro once but I didn’t want to pay a monthly fee only to get high blood pressure from watching the Bulldog Broadcasting Corporation and the Crap News Network and the icky ooze of putrid commercials. No doubt if highspeed broadband ever comes to the wilds of Ulu Selangor and I can actually stream Netflix, I might just relent and get hooked up - or simply get hooked. After all, I’ve already long relented on electronic word processing, the internet, cellular phones, emails and SMSes. In fact, I’m generally quite impressed by digital tech and, since July 2025, can claim to be on friendly terms with AI.

In my early teens I thought my musical taste was pretty outré (that’s French for astonishing and bizarre). I was picking up records by Edgard Varèse, Conlon Nancarrow, Terry Riley, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra (pictured left). The Beatles made pop respectable for me, and I began to ease off on movie soundtrack albums and progressive jazz à la Dave Brubeck and Charlie Mingus after turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. When a brain-damaged sociopath stole my entire LP collection in 2000, I figured it was high time I updated myself on the contemporary music scene. However, try as I might, I just couldn’t get into hip-hop, rap, or techno – and death metal made me wish entire sections of the human race would die horribly, especially those generating the noise. Another sign of maturity, I sighed, acknowledging my thinning top and thickening middle in the mirror. But the truth was, I now qualified as a mainstream musical conservative – not unlike that snooty classical music reviewer who once dismissed as “fluff” everything written after 1856. Shockingly, in 2025, I find myself listening a lot to slick jazz-soul fusion groups like Incognito and Cory Wong & The Wongnotes (and, I admit, even some AI-assisted jazz-ethno-fusion offerings on YouTube)!

Not long ago I ventured into a fashionable chill-out joint (more like a low-budget sauna it was) where the in-crowd let their hair down (and their deodorized sweat out) twitching to b&d (bass & drums) and brainless dj scratching and a whole slew of absolutely soulless post-industrial neo-existential yuppie punkfunk. Didn’t do a thing for me. Why can’t they play some really sexy Senegalese m’balax? Or some truly inspired millennial techno-rap like 1 Giant Leap? Could this possibly be the unfortunate result of being born in the 1980s and having to listen to the dumbest music in the history of the Universe? Or just a long-term side effect of chlorinating and fluoridating the water supply?

“De gustibus non est disputandum,” the goddamn Romans used to quip. Can you figure that out? That’s right. There’s no disputing taste. Perhaps not, if everything is relative after all. But I’m still convinced that after a couple of generations, humans who habitually ingest fast foods are bound to suffer acute tastebud damage.

I’ve often been accused of being an “intellectual.” Excuse me, that’s not at all an accurate description, even if I do have a penchant for polysyllables. But I now accept all labels, having learnt to peel them off before the glue dries. Now, the late dramaturge Krishen Jit - bless his huggable soul, may he relish his new job as Director of the Cosmic Theater of the Absurd – he was my definition of an intellectual. Somebody who can’t help conceptualizing reality. Yet, it sometimes occurs to me that if I had been living in China during the so-called Cultural Revolution, I’d probably have been frogmarched to a labor camp and forced to grow kumquats on stony ground, even though I don’t wear half-inch thick glasses (Look, Ma, no contacts either!).

One of my childhood heroes was the Russian-Armenian magician G.I. Gurdjieff aka Georgij Ivanovič Gurdžiev (pictured right), who enjoyed calling humans “those two-legged, three-brained beings.” There were no microchips or computers in Gurdjieff’s day, and nobody had heard of nanotech, or he might have said “four-brained beings.” However, Gurdjieff pointed out that to be whole beings we must connect our thinking, feeling, and moving centers and keep them functioning in dynamic equilibrium. The thinking center is located in our brain and neural circuitry. The feeling center is our emotional core, the metaphorical heart, where we experience empathy and compassion. The moving center is combination of ego, libido, and animal instinct (the solar plexus, sacral, and root chakras, if you’re familiar with such concepts).

An overactive moving center makes us dangerously and mindlessly impulsive (shoot first, talk later). Isolating ourselves in the ivory tower of the thinking center makes us Hamlets, beard-stroking theoreticians. And being stuck in the feeling center makes us compulsive consumers of melodrama (condemned to Drama Minggu Ini week after week).

Yup, it’s all a question of relativity. And you have to go through a hellish amount of relativity - demonstrating Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle over and over again - before you arrive at that point of Absolute Certainty where latitude and longitude intersect. But, have no fear, we’ll all get there yet. Then, finally, we’ll be able to hang a sign on our front door that says: NO RELATIVES, ONLY ABSOLUTES!

[Originally published in the May 2005 issue of VIDA! 

First posted 8 January 2007, reposted 15 November 2017]

CONVERSATION AT A TEA STALL (reprise)

Around midnight we were cruising down Imbi Road, headed for my usual tea stall.

The roti pan was still sizzling but empty and the small heap of unsold nasi lemak indicated that we had arrived ahead of the late night movie crowd.

“What will you have?” I positioned myself where I could keep an eye on the street life. The man came over with a damp rag to wipe the tea rings off our table.

“Boss, teh tarik dua, kurang manis.” I ordered two teas with sweet milk, pulled to aerate and cool the steaming brew.

I looked at her, probing to see if she felt comfortable here. She smiled, then leaned forward solemnly: “You know, I really enjoy talking to you.”

Our drinks arrived. I grinned and ritually raised my glass to her. “Cheers! The best conversations are held over tea.”

“I’m bored to death with my job,” she said. “The other girls are quite friendly, really. But they’re strictly lunchtime, you know what I mean? The guys there are corporate jerks. Well, most of them. David’s okay, he comes over to my desk every day and chats. He’s the only one who’s relaxed, who can be himself...”

“It’s the same everywhere,” I offered.

“Well, my pay will be reviewed next month, if I am confirmed. Another three months and I’ll have saved enough to move into my own place. God, I can hardly wait! No more explanations and excuses, no more nagging. Mother will probably turn on dad and drive him up the wall. Oh, I just wish working life wasn’t such a pain.”

“Look at it this way, you could have been born a Rohingya.” (My latest all-purpose consolation.) “Besides, you’re not exactly dumb. You’d do well in any job. Anyway, even geniuses have to put up with occasional employment. Take my situation, for instance.”

She giggled. “That’s another thing I like about you... you’re modest!" Her tone was teasing but I could tell she was sympathetic towards self-styled aristocrats-in-exile.

"One thing I know... you can't become a genius if you succumb to boredom," I added with a wink.

“My, my... I guess I don’t qualify as a genius yet. I felt bored, even more so, when I wasn’t working.”

“Maybe boredom’s not such a bad state. Billions of civilians find comfort and security in it. People like complaining, that’s all.”

“Oh well, if you’re going to be bored you might as well get paid for it!” She finished her tea with a flourish.

A few yards away on the kerb, two painted ladies were waiting for a taxi. Pointing with my chin, I remarked: “Look, there’s two people on their way to work who probably couldn’t agree with you more.”

“You’re terrible” She kicked me in the shin (but not too hard).

“More tea, madam?”

“Hmm.... okay.”

I decided to investigate the nasi lemak. “Want one?”

“No thanks. You know, it’s really ironic.”

“What? The nasi lemak?”

“No! I mean life. Life’s pretty ironic.”

I chuckled heartily. “That’s because so many people are still living in the Iron Age. Although, personally, I prefer to call it the Age of Irony.”

“Hey, I’m serious.”

“Sorry, carry on...”

For a few moments she absently watched me unwrap my packet of cold rice and I pinched myself mentally for having interrupted her so flippantly. “I’m listening,” I said.

“Well, take my parents. They’ve worked their butts off to be comfortable, so their kids could have all the advantages, you know. They’ve worked and worked and worked and now they’ve made so much money they don’t know what to do with it. They’re very generous with their children. I could ask them for anything and they’d give it to me. But there’s always a string attached, you know what I mean? That’s why I decided to get a job. The only reason I can find for working in a office is just so I can get away from my parents. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“You’re lucky. Some people have to work to support their parents. At least, you can quit anytime you want and you won’t starve.”

“I know... but what bothers me is that I really don’t need a job. My family’s well off enough to support the next few generations in style and here I am, taking on a job just so that I can enjoy a little independence. Well, that hasn’t happened yet, but it’s what I’m working towards. I mean, sometimes I can’t help feeling guilty about depriving someone else of a job - someone who might really, really need the money. It’s no problem for me to get employed. My dad has all kinds of connections.”

I nodded sympathetically. “You know, this nasi isn’t bad at all. Sure you won’t try some?”

“Positive. Well?” She refused to let me off the hook. She insisted on some kind of response.

“Supposing you give up your job. Do you have any idea what you’d do with your time and energy?”

She rested her chin on the back of one hand and pondered my question with mock profundity. Then she broke into an impish smile: “Well, for a start, I’d sit around and read and think and dream and meditate until I become a genius. Then I’d write a book or an opera or make an amazing film or just go about inventing wonderful things. What do you think of that?”

“You want an honest opinion?”

“Of course!” she frowned.

“Now what’s a genius? I think the whole concept is vastly overrated. Do you know where the word 'genius' comes from?”

“Uh-uh. Pray, tell me.”

“Okay, since you asked. It comes from the Arabic word jinn, as in 'genie' - remember the story of Aladdin and his lamp? Right, the ancients were convinced that everyone has a Guardian Angel or Muse, some spirit guide or guides, that can bestow gifts of inspiration. See, even the word 'inspiration' contains the word 'spirit.' This belief is just as strong today. People still go into trances, speak in tongues, and they ask for all kinds of favors. Some actually try and bribe the spirits. I’m not kidding! They do - and sometimes they get results (but corruption breeds further corruption and they end up paying in full). Anyway, there’s a hidden teaching the in the Aladdin story. The magic is always waiting within the lamp, you only have to rub it and the genie appears to grant your wishes. Well, the lamp represents your mind. Rubbing, however is open to interpretation.”

“Mmmmmm... sounds like a good practice!”

“Indeed! Anytime you need some inspiration, sister - just come over and I’ll gladly give your lamp a rub.”

“But....is it habit forming?” she asked, feigning wide-eyed innocence,

I managed to maintain a serious expression. “Let’s just say there are good habits and bad habits. If you keep your lamp well rubbed - in other words, if you keep your channels open – you’ll receive a steady flow of inspiration and turn into a genius. As more people understand this simple trick, geniuses will become a dime a dozen.”

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t think being a genius really means very much?”

“Right. There’s a difference between getting inspired and actually putting it to some use. For example, you might suddenly get a flash, say, a really grand vision - but if you don’t have the energy or the skill to put it on paper and actualize it, the vision simply evaporates. Follow through is what they call it. And believe me, it’s just as important as inspiration. A lot of people find it easier to turn into village idiots or they just stay employed.”

“All right, I get the point. Deeds not words, or something like that. So how does one begin?”

There was a brief commotion at the next table: a fresh group of customers, shifting chairs noisily about on the uneven ground. And to punctuate the interruption, the hideous high-pitched whine of a toy bike hell-bent for Puchong or Salak South.

My answer was a grimace, by the time the din subsided at least 15 seconds had ticked by. I glanced at my watch and said: “Now, we could easily spend the next 10 minutes venting our displeasure at traffic noise in general and attention seeking hell-riders in particular... and work ourselves into a foul mood, saying somebody ought to do something about it... and, of course nobody will. Which means we suffer a 10-minute energy loss. Or we could spend the time discussing something pleasant and beneficial which would give us a 10-minute energy gain. What I’m trying to say is that it’s possible - in fact, I believe it’s necessary - for us to get into the habit of making conscious choices about how we use our time and energy, how we interpret and respond to environmental stimuli. For instance, you can finish your cup of tea and see nothing but tea leaves, and all you can say is 'Ugh!' But you can also choose to study the dregs and catch a glimpse of the future. Do you get what I mean?”

She peered cautiously over the rim of her empty glass and squinted moronically. “Yes.....yes.... I think I see it now!” she hissed. “The future will consist of .... more tea! No, I think I’m about ready to switch to coffee, how about you?”

“Excellent idea. Eh, boss... kopi dua!”

“Don’t complain. That’s what you mean, right?” she beamed at me like the brightest girl in the class.

“Right! But let me qualify that. Sometimes, rather than just complain to no one in particular, you can try and present it as feedback - and, when you feed information back into the system, it usually does some good because it can help increase awareness and coherence within the system.”

“Hey, don’t get technical on me!”

“Aren’t you in the IT department?"

"I'm still a trainee," she explained.

"Well, okay, but let me give you a little background to what we’re discussing. Not far from here, actually just a few yards behind you (no, don’t bother turning around, you won’t see anything), up in one of those shophouses, lives an extraordinary man I called the Wizened Metaphysician. His friends called him George and quite a few regard him as their guru.”

She couldn’t resist looking around, as though expecting George to materialize behind her. However, when she turned back towards me, our coffees were steaming on the table.

“Is he a real guru... do you know him personally?”

“Well, I’ve chatted with him a few times – and I’ve picked up some valuable ideas through him, so I guess he qualifies. But he doesn't have a white beard down to here or a fluorescent halo. His hair is getting somewhat silvery and sometimes I notice he looks a little more ... er, radiant than you’d expect to find in the average coffeeshop clientele. The most extraordinary thing about him is how ordinary his life appears. By day, he repairs video recorders, gets nagged by his wife, and enjoys freestyle discussions on metaphysics. He smokes a lot and washes it down with Chinese tea. I think he’s also a massage therapist and a renegade Jesuit. He seems to know an incredible range of philosophies from Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin to Gurdjieff and Tibetan tantra.”

“Good who? The first two I’ve heard of, but who’s Good Jeff?”

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
(1866~1949)

“Goorr-chi-eff, Gurdjieff. Can’t spell his name offhand. A Greek-Armenian born in Russia, I think...” (I began to realize the enormity of her question.) Who’s Gurdjieff? Er... let me think. Well... I believe he was engaged in the smuggling of Sufi notions across the borders of Western Paranoia. Something like that.”

“I see,” she sniffed. “Very enlightening.”

“Look, I don’t even know how to begin telling you about Gurdjieff. Labels don’t seem to stick on him. You could say he was a mystery man, a magus – a student of life and limb, as another friend of mine would describe him – a shamanistic metapsychologist (hmm I like the sound of that!). At any rate, Gurdjieff attracted a small but influential following of aristocrats and intellectuals interested in the esoteric. They spent a lot of time devising techniques and terminologies to enhance and understand awareness. Some people dismissed him as a trickster but I think his work will prove very important in the near future. He died in 1949.”

“Where on earth do you pick up all this weird information?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s just like mushrooms, I suppose.” (I smiled at a private joke.) “As soon as you show an interest in them, they simply pop up all over the place.”

“This Goody-Chef fellow sounds intriguing. Has he written any books or something?”

“Remind me to dig in my library for something about him. But I was telling you about George, our friendly neighborhood metaphysian.”

“Oh, yes. Please do carry on.”

I looked at her, grinning. “Yes, I do carry on, don’t I?”

“No, no, I’m not bored at all. Bum’s a bit sore, that’s all.”

“By the way, Gurdjieff’s first name also happens to be George - but so what, right? Well, it was George, our George, who transmitted this very useful attitude to me: why complain? That’s really stayed with me and helped me emerge from the primal pits countless times. Now, don’t think it’s at all easy. Like everything else, you’ll find there’s a sort of learning curve where it gets harder and harder till, finally, you master it - then suddenly life becomes fun again!”

“Hmm... ‘why complain?’ You think it works for everyone?”

“Anyone who’s complained so much he’s sick of hearing himself moan should give it a go. Of course, you need to apply the correct visualization when you use this formula. You have to put yourself in the position of the pauper prince - do you know the story by Mark Twain? You have to be inwardly secure and insufferably superior, totally above it all. Be an extraterrestrial on a secret mission, a messenger from God disguised as an ordinary taxpayer, whatever. Okay, so the going is getting rough but why complain? You lined up to buy the ticket, you went on the tour, you wanted excitement, adventure, a blast of raw reality, so here you are... on Planet Earth! Am I making sense?”

“You’re making me feel tired! Must we always be forging on, chin up and all that ... can’t we be allowed to just throw a tantrum once in a while? You must have been a headmaster in a past life!”

“Oh, dear... I was just getting to the good part. A little trick George taught me. How to get yourself recharged directly from the Sun and redistribute the healing energy to your environment... never mind, let’s save it for another day, okay? It must be the coffee.”

It was her turn to chuckle. “You’re not exactly romantic - but I like your intensity.”

“I know. I get so intense I tend to overload people’s circuits.”

“Well, right now my circuits aren’t the only thing that’s overloaded. My bladder’s ready to burst!”

I wagged my finger at the empty glasses on the table. “That’s what tea does to you! It’s a dangerous substance - I ‘m about to explode myself. Let’s pay up and rush back to my place. You can do it in the loo while I pee on a tree.”

She giggled and then winced. “Ouch” she said. “It hurts when I laugh!”

“Patience and fortitude!” I cried, directing my thoughts immediately to more pressing affairs.

26 March 1985

[With thanks to Margret Voon, who kindly retyped the yellowing photocopied original and sent it to me so I could dedicate this to her father's memory. First posted 31 July 2013, reposted 28 June 2015 & 3 September 2016]

Talking the Not-So-New Age Blues (Once Again!)

An epic freestyle poem by Antares

---

"What's truly funny is that something momentous is happening, and it's so real that the media can't see it. Here it is, the biggest story of all time, and it goes unreported. If you're continually focused on this and that media event, the latest celebrity scandal, the scattered wars of duality, the deceitful maneuverings of selfish politicians, and the shifting state of a false world economy, you just might miss the greater story. And this greater story is why we are here and what gives our lives meaning."
- Solara, How to Live Large on a Small Planet, 1996

---

Here are a few questions you could ask
(If you haven't already done so ages ago):
How old is the New Age?
Is it really NEW?
Huh? WHAT New Age?
Isn't it always "A New Age" every time a century turns?
How about a stiff shot of HISTORY (while it lasts)?
Because serious rumor in the mystery circles says
History ends when we break through the Veil of Time
And find ourselves (our True Selves, I mean)
Beyond Euclidean Space.


TWENTY TWELVE, the Daykeeper nods, consulting his cosmic
Calendar, the Mayan Tzolk'in. (Turn the world around and you'll
See Linear Time's expiry date: 21 DECEMBER 2012.)
And then what? GALACTIC SYNCHRONIZATION!
We reconnect to the core of the Milky Way,
Though what that means I cannot say.

"Excuse me, Sir, I am begging to differ," declares Mr Thambyvelloo,
"Actually our Tathu Year will be TWENTY FOURTY-THREE."
But Mr Gopala Das interjects: "Nonsense! MY calendar says 5113!"
"FOURTEEN THIRTY-THREE is how WE put it,"
smiles Professor Haji Abuhasbin.
"Nevertheless we conduct business by the International Calendar."
"In other words," Pope Gregory grins, "you mean 2012 A.D."

Doesn't matter WHEN, it's happening NOW!
Though it may not be happening to everybody
At the same time.
Or in the same way.
But as the Beatles say:
"Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all."

[A QUICK SCROLL DOWN THE SCREEN
TO SEE HOW LONG IT'S BEEN...]


A New Age might have been in sight
When Pharaoh Akhenaton ruled Egypt,
Thirty-three hundred and seventy-nine years ago
(If historians are correct) in 1370 B.C.
But alas it was not to be,
For the King was poisoned in his palace
By ruthless generals and greedy priests
Before his mission was complete.
Akhenaton's task was to prepare the world
For the arrival of Lord Sananda,
The Cosmic Christ foretold.


And so, fourteen centuries down the line,
Another attempt was made in another land
To restore Love as Law and the Path of Light
Upon this Earth: Palestine under Roman rule,
Where corruption and hypocrisy reigned supreme.
Some middle-class Jews were put to shame
When the Messiah came and castigated
The merchants in the temple.
"Oy vay, don't rock the boat!" they pleaded,
And as their pious petitions went unheeded,
They charged him with subversion and
Crucified him with unholy haste.
And once again all hope of a Golden Age
Was brutally laid waste
(Even if, as some aver, the Crucifiction was
Just a Catholic joke in very poor taste).


However, the Christ Seed had been planted
In the human gene pool - though it must have felt unwanted.

Rewind the tape of time five centuries or so
To ancient China, where "Old Boy" Lao-tze
(Archetypal wild sage of the mountains)
Successfully summed up reality in 81 verses
Called the Tao Te Ching.

While in Greece Pythagoras held the Beam
With his mathemagickal mystery school,
Using tools like the Golden Mean
And hypotenuse rules, even as he danced
To the Music of the Spheres.


In India Queen Maya bore a Prince:
Siddhartha was his name. Instead of fortune and fame
He sought enlightenment and freedom from the game
Of personal karma. As Buddha he taught us the dharma,
That this illusory world is just 4D melodrama.

Rather than beat an ignominious retreat
Sweet Socrates (that old pederast)
Took his hemlock neat (and his die was cast);
To his health we shall drink eternally.


All these heroic individuals have been named
As Keepers of the Sacred Flame
That came through the Sun
From beyond the stars: they were
Beacons of truth and harbingers
Of an approaching New Aeon.

Bold troubadours in post-Arthurian tales
Sang to us about the Quest for the Grail:
How the valiant Knights of the Table Round
Sought the greatest treasure to be found -
That pot of gold at the Rainbow's End -
The descent of the Dove
And the Rule of Love,
As enemies turn to friends.


The most fleeting glimpse was all we were shown
As we drew the sword of intelligence from the stone;
And then the vision of the Holy Grail
Vanished behind a misty veil
Of nightmarish mayhem and massacre.
Rival factions plunged the world into bloody war,
Screaming, "Dominion over others by fang and claw!"

Meanwhile in the Middle East the stage was set
For yet another crusade on this poor planet.
The portals of belief saw heavy traffic.
As images of love turned pornographic.
The Spanish Inquisition was thrown in purely for luck,
To ensure that the status quo didn't come unstuck.
"Nine Hells have arrived," Aztec priests cried,
"Exactly as Quetzalcoatl prophesied."

Came the Renaissance, a brilliant flash
Of inspiration, giving rise to a dream
Of a world reborn through Alchemy, Science and Art.
The Word now passed from ear to eye
As scriptures were read instead of heard.
The past age of spiritual darkness and doubt
Gave way to Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo -
Who advocated logic, reason and laboratory testing
As the most reliable method of finding out
What Life on Earth was all about.


Angels and demons filled the atmosphere,
And spoke to Michel Nostradamus the famous seer.
They told him of the long dark night
Of humanity's soul in its headlong flight
Towards the final Apocalypse.

Mountebanks and sorcerers, mystery men and mages,
Took their turn upon the stage of history:
Cagliostro and Saint-Germain,
Eliphaz Levi, Messrs Kelly and Dee
Held sway in the courts of Europe,
Hinting of a New Jerusalem and the
Rebuilding of Solomon's Temple.

Christian Rosenkreutz published the Rosicrucian Manifesto,
Heralding the advent of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality;
While in 1776 Adam Weishaupt of Ingolstadt
Founded the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria -
Whose illustrious members, apparently,
Included the likes of George Washington, Tom Jefferson,
And Ben Franklin - progenitors of the American Dream
Of Novus Ordo Seclorum - a New World Order, no less:
A New World for a New Age -
Governed by a global Freemasonry!


Another page turns in the Book of Changes:
America the Dream goes to Hollywood,
Gets hijacked and featured in National Geographic,
Serialized in Reader's Digest;
And now the movie rights are owned by Walt Disney,
While the Bill of Rights waits at the Gates
of Heaven.

In Persia the Bab was born: and in May 1844 proclaimed
The imminent approach of the Imam Mahdi,
Ultimate prophet of God - but the Shah had him shot
For disrespect towards Worldly Authority.
Then his followers established the Baha'i movement,
Which advocates world government on a Unified Earth,
And a new age of Universal Justice.

Newton, Darwin, and Faraday were an ad agency for
Progress through Science: understand how the universe works
And a New Industrial Age begins.
It all started with a Big Bang and everything since
Has been winding down like a clockspring.


At the height of our collective infatuation
With Machines and Automation,
Blavatsky, Leadbeater, and Olcott - NOT your typical firm of
Chartered Accountants - went to India and Tibet where they met
Ascended Masters of the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood,
And were assigned the task of introducing
Ancient wisdom to the modern world.
Proclaim the advent of a New Aeon, they were told,
And groom Jiddhu Krishnamurti for the role
Of planetary savior.


Their Theosophical Society was inaugurated
In 1875 and found an eager following in the West,
While in the East the Sun still rose
And shone upon the sleeping millions.

Secret Societies sprouted like mushrooms
In the moldy moral ground of Victorian times, and
Ritual magic enjoyed a fairly brisk trade.
Messages from the Spirit World
And all varieties of psychic phenomena
Caught the fancy of bored housewives and
Wayward intellectuals.


The Who's Who of arcane knowledge and esoteric lore
Included names like W.B. Yeats and Claude Debussy,
Victor Hugo and Conan Doyle, Bulwer-Lytton and Liddell Mathers,
Aleister Crowley, the Marquis de Sade, and many more.
"Practitioners of Evil, Satanists, Lucifer's Friends, and
The Antichrist" were epithets flung at some of these pioneers.
But the tide of evolution was rising fast:
It spawned the glamorous Order of the Golden Dawn
And magickal offshoots like the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) and
Argenteum Astrum (the Silver Star).


Some followed Rudolf Steiner into Anthroposophy,
And joined the tug-of-war between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman.
Others were captivated by G.I. Gurdjieff and his school
Of Modified Sufi Dance, but found themselves bewildered
By his Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: a rambunctious and
Somewhat Rabelaisian dissection of the human experiment
Seen through the extraterrestrial eyes of a former
Colonial Administrator of Earth.


Adolf Hitler and Company had their ill-fated Third Reich:
Hoping to govern the world by high-tech voodoo and
A fanatic belief in Aryan supremacy.
But the Fourth Reich (propounded by Wilhelm,
Psychoanalyst and discoverer of Orgone energy
Who authored Function of the Orgasm)
Might have been a lot more fun
If Dr Reich hadn't been hounded out of Europe
By his erstwhile colleagues in the psychiatric profession,
And finally assassinated in a US prison by
What he called the HIGs - Hoodlums In Government.


(We're not talking ancient history here:
This happened in the 1950s!)

Anyhow Reich tried to alert the US Air Force
To the suspicious activity of UFOs - only to be subjected
To intense harassment by the FBI and the MIB
Who, for some reason, wanted to see Reich discredited or dead.
In retrospect, it appears that Reich was perceived
As a threat to the Military-Industrial Complex's covert program
Of "scientific collaboration" with the Zeta Reticulan Greys -
A technically advanced but spiritually retarded race,
Desperately seeking a cure for terminal infertility
Before their species became extinct.


Which brings us to the era of Star Trek, Star Wars,
Close Encounters, ET, X-Files and Virtual Reality.
Also crystal gazing, holistic healing,
Wheeling and dealing gurus,
Group meditations, Earth activations,
Celestine Prophecies and TM levitation,
Swift mutations and transmutation...
Hey, are there any experts left with reputations?
When there are more Channels than TV sets,
You find more confusion than the United Nations.
What you believe is what you get;
Anything goes these days.. who knows?
Anything can happen yet!


"Oh, the Sirians will save us!" some Brethren shout.
"No, only Jesus Christ can!" the Born-Again spout.
Others laugh: "It's the Pleiadian Plan - a total rout!"
"Save our streams before there are no more trout!"
The angelic anglers scream.
So is the New Age just a dream
From which Old Age awakens
With a terrible hangover?

Wait and see, nothing will change -
That's what the so-called Realist thinks.
Life will always be unfair,
You gotta be quick and grab a chair
(Let the rest drop dead, it's their affair!)
Money, not love, makes the world go round -
Excuse me, can I convert my ringgit to pounds? -
Gotta ride that crazy merry-go-round
Till you're six feet underground.
Let me ask you: is there any proof at hand
That God can also be a Man?
You say every woman is the Goddess,
But all I care about is the size of her bodice.
And I wanna know just how many Harmonica Virgins
Blew their minds at Harmonic Convergence!


Don't talk to me about Tectonic Plates,
Electromagnetic Grids, Pole Shifts, Zionist Plots,
Precessioning Equinoxes, Photon Belts, and
Why your paternal grandma was a Celt.
Do you wanna know when I last cried?
It was the day my pet canary died.

Well, well, well, what have we here?
Keep your mind and heart open
And have no fear.
The worst that could happen is...
NOTHING.


What the New Age really means is a Quantum Leap -
From Global Village to Local Galaxy at the sound of a beep.
Better get ready or go back to sleep...
Carry on, Mr Accountant,
Count your sheep.

[Written in June 1996. First posted 2 August 2009, reposted 1 July 2014  & 15 October 2017]

Kevin Ayers, Meet The Whole World! (reposting a special tribute originally published 20 June 2007)

May I? - KEVIN AYERS & THE WHOLE WORLD (featuring Mike Oldfield on bass and Lol Coxhill on soprano sax)


Way back in 1971 or thereabouts I found an LP called Shooting at the Moon by Kevin Ayers and the Whole World. It was in the cheap bin (I remember paying something like 5 bucks for it!). When I put the record on back home, I was immediately hooked on Ayers' totally laid-back, basso profundo singing style, especially on a song called "May I?" A couple of hours ago I stumbled on this video clip on YouTube, featuring the original Kevin Ayers and the Whole World line-up, including the legendary Mike Oldfield on bass, and Lol Coxhill on soprano sax. Treasure to share!

I figure not too many are familiar with this great singer-songwriter who was truly a pioneer in his day, forming mythical bands like Soft Machine and hanging out with the likes of Daevid Allen of Gong. So here's an interview with Kevin Ayers I unearthed, slightly dated but it gives a pretty good overview of the man's work.

THE KEVIN AYERS INTERVIEW
by Jimmy James (May 1998)

As bassist, frequent songwriter, and occasional vocalist in the original Soft Machine, Kevin Ayers was a key force in early British psychedelia and progressive rock. In just two years the group had evolved from the goofy, effervescent psychedelic pop of their 1967 debut single "Love Makes Sweet Music"/"Feelin' Reelin' Squealin'" to the dada jazz-rock minimalism of Ayers' infamous "We Did It Again." After the Soft Machine opened for the Jimi Hendrix Experience across the States in 1968 and recorded their first studio album, Ayers left the group to establish a long-running solo career with more pop-oriented material, delivered in a witty, near-bass profundo voice.

On most of his albums he explored the little-trod midpoint between weird pop and the most accessible, humorous face of prog-rock, crafting bouncy songs of indolence and whimsy that often tapped island rhythms. Leading British experimental musicians like Lol Coxhill, David Bedford, and a pre-Tubular Bells Mike Oldfield passed through his band while he veered between sunnier variations of Syd Barrett and dissonant experimental jams. He never did land a hit album or single in Britain, despite issuing numerous LPs on Harvest, and in the US he was a definitive '70s cult artist. He's only recorded sporadically in the 1980s and 1990s, with his more recent efforts even harder to locate in the import bins than his early solo material.

Now 63, Ayers made a rare visit to the States to play a few gigs in California in May 1998. Backed by the SF band Mushroom at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, he was in merry form as he went through a set of some of his more well-known vintage tunes, such as "Lady Rachel," "Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes," as well as the Soft Machine cuts "Why Are We Sleeping?" and "Save Yourself." Before soundcheck he found a few minutes to talk about the Canterbury scene with a few local fans and writers.

Q: What was unique about the Canterbury scene?

KA: Mike Ratledge from the Soft Machine had a degree in Oxford University in philosophy at 22. I mean, he won a scholarship and then said, fuck that, I'm going to play the organ. This was unique in pop. You don't find many people with honor degrees playing pop, even from that kind of literary background. Normally it was sort of art school. England is so defined, the class system, your education. I think what was unique about the Canterbury scene...these were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people.

Q: Did you have a similar kind of literary upbringing to Robert Wyatt?

KA: Not from my parents, no. Robert had his from his parents, 'cause his parents were middle-class intellectuals. I was brought up in Malaya. But that is the difference, that this was the first time that anybody from the middle class, well-educated, joined the pop scene. This was comfortable kids who went to university.

Q: I'm surprised you call it pop.

KA: Well, I don't know, what else would you call it? Plop? (laughs) The whole thing about Soft Machine was that it had all these people from, as I said, middle-class literary educated backgrounds, suddenly going "fuck it, I'm not going to join med school, I'm not going to become a lawyer or a doctor. I'm not going to be a professional." And this hadn't happened anywhere else in pop. That's why the Canterbury scene was unique, because that is what happened there.

Q: You started off in the Wilde Flowers, then you showed up in Majorca to find Daevid Allen to put the band together. What made you go find him?

KA: Daevid Allen was the first hippie that I'd met. He was straight out of the beat scene, and he was very convincing (laughs). He read a lot. He was articulate. He turned us on, Robert and me and Mike, to all this - especially American - beat literature. And we suddenly thought, wow...you have to imagine, just out of an English private school, and suddenly you get this sort of exotic person coming through, who says, "fuck this, fuck that. Smoke pot, read this." He actually had something to say, he actually had a viewpoint. I suppose everybody else had no idea. All these people just came out of school, sort of wandering around in the job market, "what do I do now"- suddenly Daevid Allen's going, "Smoke pot now, peace love and fuck your neighbor." That was something. As opposed to nothing.

Q: Is that hippie ethic something that still motivates you?

KA: I think that the basic philosophy was very good. It was just be nice to each other, and don't step on other people's toes and infringe on their freedom. I think that's still valid. It just made sense, especially when... I keep talking to you about English schools. Unless you've been to one, you have no idea how bad they are. I mean, you just would not believe them. You only start learning when you leave school.

Q: The Soft Machine had a whimsical feel. Was that influenced by your literary background?

KA: We just had different references. We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it. If you have the same background, it doesn't matter which school you've been to, if you've read the books, have the knowledge, and you have the intellectual curiosity, you can talk to anybody who has the same thing, and you know what you're talking about. So you relate that way.

The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different reference areas. They'd read different books. So we actually got away with making a lot of crap. I don't mean crap - I mean that it wasn't professionally as good as what other people were doing. Other people had much better sound, and they had good producers. We worked alongside the Pink Floyd, we played gigs together, and we suddenly saw them go, whooosh!! with huge sales. But we were just dancing in the dark. There were groundbreaking ideas, musically and intellectually. Post-war generation asking serious questions.

Q: When you made your first solo record, you were obviously still on good terms with the Soft Machine, since they play on a lot of it.

KA: It was family for me - the only family I knew. We all lived together in one house.

Q: When you went solo, was it because you wanted to play and write different material than what the Soft Machine were doing on their first album?

KA: Soft Machine were going more in the direction of fusion jazz and I didn't like that. They were going more in the direction of jazz, which didn't interest me. I was strictly pop. They were into what I consider really to be incredibly self-indulgent music. It's stuff you play for yourself, and "fuck the audience."

Q: What about playing "We Did It Again" for half an hour for Brigitte Bardot?

KA: That's a serious statement. I think she said to get those wankers off or something.

Q: In an interview you said all your songs, except for a few romantic ones, were pataphysical. Where did you come across pataphysics?

KA: I think that was just a literary thing. The fact that you actually string a few sentences together was important in those days. Soft Machine became famous in France before anything else happened. They adopted us. The French like arty things, they like something a little bit different. In fact, what made Soft Machine was an article in Nouvelle Observateur, which at that time was a very... in those days, things like Melody Maker and NME, it mattered then. If someone wrote something about you, it could make or break you. Now it doesn't matter at all. We got written up, I think, 'cause Mike was fucking the journalist, actually. So we got a good review, and that was it. Suddenly France just opened up. We were the darlings of the literary scene there.

Q: Who were your main literary or formative influences?

KA: Philosophically, the only person that influenced me was Gurdjieff. What he said made sense to me. What I really liked about him was, he was a total charlatan. He didn't make any bones about it. His thing was that you cannot present the truth to people in simple form. You have to elaborate. Otherwise they're not interested. Did you ever read his book? It's just bullshit, absolute bullshit. But he says, you have to write 100 pages to say one sentence, to make it interesting for people. Otherwise they won't accept it as real. You have to say a lot in order to get a little across.

Q: Are you still inspired by things like that when you write?

KA: It's still there. I mean, I still think he was absolutely right. His two premises were, you have to say a lot to get a little across. you have to excite people. The other thing was, we're only working at five percent of our potential, which made total sense. What I loved about him... he came to America, you know, and he was very good at raising money. One of the things he did here was, he was in New York, he invited a bunch of people, saying, "this is the time of your life." And he made them have sex, and charged them a lot of money for it. And they were saying, "Wow, thank you, this is the best night of our lives." He just talked dirty to them, so they all had sex with each other and [said] "wow, this is so good," and they gave him thousands of dollars. What he did was say, "Look, this is what you really want to do. I'll organize it. Just give me the money."

Q: When do you think you most fully realized your own potential with your music?

KA: I don't think I can answer that. It's hypothetical, one will never know. I mean, some days you wake up and you think, Jesus, I could be a really good comedian. Then half an hour later, you forget the idea. People who really want to make money in this world make it. You have to have tunnel vision. You have to say, this is what I want to do. I believe that. If you wanted to make money, you would make it.

Don't you ever wake up in the morning and think, geez, I could really do with a lot of money? You think, I have a brain, I could use it, I could actually do this, I could play the stock market, I could be a televangelist or something. You could actually do it if you really wanted to do it. But you would have to really want to it. So basically you wake up in the morning and say, "oh, I don't really want to do anything."

Q: Is commercial success something you still aspire towards?

KA: No no no. It's all been a total fluke. I would have liked to have made more money, 'cause I think everybody has a creative period, normally between about 19 and 30. That is the time when you have to establish yourself in life. If you haven't made it by the time you're thirty, you never will, basically. Okay, forty (laughs). If you wind up forty and you don't have a house and a car and life insurance and health insurance, you know, you're fucked.

Q: Was it frustrating for you not to have much success in the States?

KA: I didn't really have that much exposure here. It would have been good. Basically the idea is to make a bunch of money with the creative talents you have before you're forty. I'm not answering your question, am I? This is the underlying thing, this is what is behind it. Whatever it takes, whether it's America or Holland, I don't know, it doesn't matter. You have a certain window in your life where you're intellectually curious, you have energy, and you're not blase, and you're not tired of life. That's when you have to do it. That still doesn't answer your question. It does, actually, really.

Q: You're talking about hitting thirty - were you conscious of the British underground that had started around '67 losing momentum around that time?

KA: You only become conscious of things that you have things to compare them to. You can't make assessments if you don't have something to compare them to. I think that what happened with post-war society - suddenly young people were going, we don't like what our parents are doing. We don't like war. The war was over, people had money, and they had time. It was like a one-off. My youngest daughter says to me, geez dad, I wish I'd lived in the sixties. I know what she means, because there was a whole bunch of stuff happening. People were pre-video and people read books in those days, and talked to each other. It was a unique time. In fact, if you check the history of human beings, you'll find it's the only time that young people ever got up and had any effect at all. What happened was that the establishment moved in and discredited them - "they're hippies, they don't wash, they smoke pot." But there were huge advances in human rights and basic freedoms. It never happened in the history of man, never.

Q: Are you going to do more stuff with the people you worked with in the Canterbury scene?

KA: No.

Q: Do you communicate with them?

KA: No, I don't know where they are these days. It's very sad, 'cause we were very close to start with. That's okay, it happens to the best of lovers.

[Reposted 21 February 2013 & 6 October 2014]






Kevin Ayers, founder of Soft Machine, has died aged 68
By Alice Vincent

Kevin Ayers, an influential musician in the Sixties psychedelic scene, has died aged 68. The English singer-songwriter was found dead at his home, where he lived alone, in the South of France around lunchtime on Tuesday by a neighbor. It is thought he died on February 18, 2013.

Bernard MacMahon, from Ayers's record label Lo-Max Records, told the Telegraph that the musician had not been ill, but had "lived a rock'n'roll lifestyle." A note was found by his bed which said, “You can’t shine if you don’t burn.”

MacMahon said that Ayers was “the ultimate product of the Sixties generation,” and that he was a “proper artist,” not motivated by the prospect of fame, but by a “turmoil to create something he was happy with”.

Ayers founded Soft Machine and played early gigs with Syd Barrett's band Pink Floyd in the Sixties, paving the way for a wave of psychedelic pop music. Soft Machine's self-titled debut album is considered a psychedelic classic, and music critic Nick Kent said that Ayers and Barrett "were the two most important people in British Pop music. Everything that came after came from them."

When Jimi Hendrix moved to London in 1968 he became good friends with Ayers. Hendrix encouraged Ayers to write music, giving him a Gibson guitar to do so, and the two musicians toured America together that year.

In 1970, Soft Machine made history by being the first band invited to play at the Proms. Ayers’s first solo album, Joy of the Toy, was very influential for future rock bands Sonic Youth and Teenage Fanclub. He went on to write music with Brian Eno and Elton John, before retiring for 15 years in the 1990s, when he moved to the South of France. In 2007, Ayers released critically acclaimed album The Unfairground, but was reluctant to perform.