!!!!!CAUTION! THIS IS NOT A GUIDED TOUR!!!!!Saturday 21st June-----Housman’s
Bookshop, Caledonian Road, Kings Cross N1.
SAVAGE MESSIAH/ WE ARE BAD COLLECTIVE
NIGHT DRIFT: TRACING THE PATH OF THE RIVER
FLEET….@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@££££££££££££££££££££$$$$$$$$Meet at the bookshop 7pm for
Housmans booze up, will embark on drift approx 10pm.Lubetkin estates Bevin^Lenin
court/ proto coppers offed at the Calthorpe/ gastro pub vandalism/ Kurdish
communists/ Chartist insurrection/ St Bartholomew’s fair /rioting mobs/ Wat Tyler/
Smithfield all night cafs/ lisencing loopholes/ Blackfriars/ Bologna bombings/
Rimbaud and Verlaine......BRING… old maps, booze, lighter fuel, ropes, chalk,
codeine.!!!VIVA SAVAGE MESSIAH!!! DEATH TO THE GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS!!!!!!
www.housmans.com/events/index.htm
www.wearebad.net
www.savagemessiahzine.com
Obscured under buildings, the threads and tributaries of the Fleet are easily lost.
Multiple channels are dissolved, currents disappear and emerge simultaneously,
apertures are kicked open and the Fleet is glimpsed again. Traces of the Fleet can
be found in the architecture, signs and topography of the city.Prowling around
Smithfield in the first shimmering moments of a June day, I stumble into the post
clubbing delirium of the Hope. Licensing laws are turned on their head. There’s a
scramble for more drugs while pint pots smash and high voltage shrieking ensues in
the shadow of the meat market.Offal,congealed blood and viscera are smeared across
the cobbled floor.
It’s been one of those seamless days , episodic, hundreds of adventures, a massive
cast, no surprise in turning a corner and facing another lost acquaintance. It was
almost as if, for one moment the city broke free of its alienation.I’m assailed by
the raucous strains of punk rock the moment I’m shoved into the seedy red glow of
the Merlins cave. It’s a tableau of mirrored alcoves, tiled walls, distorted
acoustics and a population of déclassé deviants on smack. I’m sent reeling onto the
dance floor by a load of crew off the estate. We climb the squatted turrets of the
crumbling old market, a dusty red brick assemblage with eruptions of tenacious
ferns. Gaffer tape Anarchy signs are still visible in the upper portholes of those
chambers. The Fleet river ran red from here, a pestilential stream, attempts were
made to sanitise it as the canal and Holborn viaduct was built. You could call this
a form of denial, the blood and filth is hidden beneath the surface, the poor
dispersed and hidden from view. But the blood flows everywhere and riots erupt, the
endless performance of a ritual without consciousness.We’re observing the gangs of
Turkish communists and SWP hacks. I’m dreaming of the teeming multitudes, the black
flags and the proper kicking up, hordes of brutal skinheads booting fuck out of
banks and rich bastards. I go to the garage for cigarettes and get followed by two
old bill. The viaduct was built in the 1860s, the rookery was destroyed and
thousands of the poor were evicted from slums perceived as dangerous, their poverty
made them likelier to rebel & riot. The destruction of the rookeries did not erase
the poor but dispersed them, thousands of little rookeries cropped up all over in
unexpected places. The attempt to repress leads to uncanny rupturing, the accursed
share, nothing divided neatly but always a remainder, always something that can’t be
erased. Once you lose the sacrificial altar the whole world becomes an altar.Then
it’s cinematic as we drift from one enchanted interior to another through a
labyrinth of narrow streets and sloping valleys. . We wander through the shifting
topographies of Lovecraft and Escher, the old rookeries of Saffron hill .I climb
under the bridge where the Fleet disgorges into Thames. Spaces, voices and ideas
dissolve into a pleromatic realm. This is the dissolution of everything, the
channelling into the collective unconscious. This is the unravelling of the two
month bender, everything dissolving into an undifferentiated mess. I stand and look
out across the Thames. Water is the universal solvent. A perpetual shifting. I
consider the frail promise of the Thames barrier, the Fleet bursts its banks.Savage
Messiah issue 6.“Love affairs And endless strategies.I don't believe in a word they
said.City limits . No more information.Go follow navigation in your head.”Japan .
Suburban Berlin.
