Eni Aluko

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Floyd was really just an example. Their real passions were Dylan and The Who. Same rule applies though.

And by the way, Roger Waters- what an absolute ****ing ****. I could never hate any footballer the way I hate him.

As a person, yes. As a lyricist, no.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way etc.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

And in the working class youth aspect, where are you putting the Mods? They predated the hippies

Depends if you count early Dylan as folk or proto-hippy. Blowin' in the wind, Times they are a'changing, Masters of war etc. All hippy in my book.

But yes, Mods, pure Romanticism - specifically working class yoof Romanticism that started in the early '60s.

PS - I agree with WES. Love the way a debate about Epstein transformed into one about the musical counter-culture from the '60s to the Teknivals being, by its inclusive nature in terms of age and class, the apogee of the Romanticism that replaced the Enlightenment in the 50 years from 1780-1830.

You see? Our generation were the last of the Romantics. Doesn't matter if those of us here were/are hippies, mods, punks, goths, ravers, travellers etc. We are the last of the Romantics. The yoof of today with their smart phones have their social media influencers while we had real Byronic heroes.

Romanticism ended with the birth of the digital world succeeding the end of the analogue one. That's why even in rave terms, a DJ mixing records or a live set playing acid music on analogue machines like a TB 303 were Romantics, while the digital CD mixing and computerised live sets aren't.

As I say, we were the last of the Romantics. And as Wordsworth said of the French Revolution that starts the changeover from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, and which applies equally to us:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven

Do watch that Scharma series. Yes, I know he has a little snippet in each episode where he tries to show he's down wit da yoof, but even they work.

He has a French graffiti artist doing G?ricault’s "The Raft of the Medusa" on a wall in Paris saying that he sees his work as a continuation of Romanticism.

He has this Brummie rap poet called Testament remixing Blake's poem London where he uses all of Blake's poem about London 200 years ago mixed with his take on modern London. It's brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI8UdEug3Eo

I actually contacted him on one of his Youtube pages after watching it, writing in poetry and he replied to me in poetry. He's sound as ****.

I admit that me being so into the point of his series meant that I didn't care about him being annoying or pretentious. But if you're interested in Romanticism, how it started and how it continues to the present day, then it's a great 3 hours of telly.

But in short, yes, Mods, pure Romanticism.

[Peter]

As a person, yes. As a lyricist, no.

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way etc.

See, I have a head start here because I cant stand Pink Floyd. And a clumsy paraphrasing of Thoreau isnt going to change that.

So I have always been able to see Waters for what he is- an arrogant, pompous prick. Now he's just an anti semitic, arrogant, pompous prick.

Leave me alone in a room with him and, to quote another romantic, somebody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail

[Peter]

Depends if you count early Dylan as folk or proto-hippy. Blowin' in the wind, Times they are a'changing, Masters of war etc. All hippy in my book.

But yes, Mods, pure Romanticism - specifically working class yoof Romanticism that started in the early '60s.

PS - I agree with WES. Love the way a debate about Epstein transformed into one about the musical counter-culture from the '60s to the Teknivals being, by its inclusive nature in terms of age and class, the apogee of the Romanticism that replaced the Enlightenment in the 50 years from 1780-1830.

You see? Our generation were the last of the Romantics. Doesn't matter if those of us here were/are hippies, mods, punks, goths, ravers, travellers etc. We are the last of the Romantics. The yoof of today with their smart phones have their social media influencers while we had real Byronic heroes.

Romanticism ended with the birth of the digital world succeeding the end of the analogue one. That's why even in rave terms, a DJ mixing records or a live set playing acid music on analogue machines like a TB 303 were Romantics, while the digital CD mixing and computerised live sets aren't.

As I say, we were the last of the Romantics. And as Wordsworth said of the French Revolution that starts the changeover from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, and which applies equally to us:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven

Do watch that Scharma series. Yes, I know he has a little snippet in each episode where he tries to show he's down wit da yoof, but even they work.

He has a French graffiti artist doing G?ricault’s "The Raft of the Medusa" on a wall in Paris saying that he sees his work as a continuation of Romanticism.

He has this Brummie rap poet called Testament remixing Blake's poem London where he uses all of Blake's poem about London 200 years ago mixed with his take on modern London. It's brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI8UdEug3Eo

I actually contacted him on one of his Youtube pages after watching it, writing in poetry and he replied to me in poetry. He's sound as ****.

I admit that me being so into the point of his series meant that I didn't care about him being annoying or pretentious. But if you're interested in Romanticism, how it started and how it continues to the present day, then it's a great 3 hours of telly.

But in short, yes, Mods, pure Romanticism.

Dylan counts as Dylan. He couldn't be categorised then and he cant now. He's off the charts. Unquantifiable.

So where will the romantics reappear? Or are you thinking we were the end of the line?

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Dylan counts as Dylan. He couldn't be categorised then and he cant now. He's off the charts. Unquantifiable.

So where will the romantics reappear? Or are you thinking we were the end of the line?

Re: Dylan. Yes, he's unique but you can't say Dylan's lyrics from his acoustic period don't foretell the hippy mentality. The fact that all hippies love/loved Dylan is all that matters in this regard, not the fact that he himself is unquantifiable.

Re: Will Romanticism reappear? I'm thinking we're the end of the line. Like the Enlightenment followed the ending of the wars of religion between 1517 and the mid-C17th {1648 in Europe, 1649/60 in GB.}

This modern, digital world with social media echo chambers and influencers has no place for the exotic, the mystical, the sublime, the power of imagination. The culture wars with their regression to the tribalism and self-professed moral purity of the wars of religion era see a binary, Manichaean, black and white world of right and wrong. There is no place for the unique, subjective experience of the individual.

That's why I'm saying we were both the apogee of Romanticism - with the working class youth aspect opening it up to people of all social classes, races, and age groups - and the last of the Romantics. While we should mourn its passing, we should be grateful that we were there at the end. As Wordsworth said at the start,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heaven.

That's what I felt being part of the sound system doing the biggest and best free raves in the UK in the period after Castlemorton, and being part of the European teknival scene when we took the concept of new age travelling and free festivals to Europe, creating the first truly pan-European counter-culture.

And the hippies in the '60s, or the Mods, or the punks would have felt exactly the same. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heaven.

We had video cameras we kept in our truck for a few years at the Teknivals in Europe, and it required a ?6k computer set up for the video editing back then. But it was a case of let's do a bit of filming now and then - get the cameras and tripod and go out on a mission for a few hours and then put the stuff back and keep partying for a few days - and it was basically just us. {Others had done it in other places at other times.} But you couldn't have had that sublime, holistic connection if everyone was on smart phones at the parties taking selfies and uploading video to social media. It would have broken the spell taking a camera-phone out of your pocket when you're having it on the dancefloor or wandering 'round site.

There's no place for subjective individualism in this culture war, right and wrong world.

The global nature of the internet means that everything comes down to the lowest common denominator. There's no space for individual scenes and cultures to grow.

The free love of the hippy and free rave scenes has been replaced by a generation that can only meet by apps and don't shag. They can't communicate human to human - the essence of Romanticism - and we're now ending up with AI boyfriends and girlfriends.

If Romanticism is in essence about the sublime aspects of nature and the soul, how can we have that in a world of AI? First it was filters, then AI fakes and a computer has no soul with which you can connect, commune and combine.

Romanticism was about reconnecting with the human soul - the soul was vital up to and including the wars of religion era, but it was something that the priest caste deemed themselves in charge of. The Enlightenment replaced this power of organised religion with rationality. But it was Romanticism that brought back the dominance of the soul, but as an individual, mystical experience as opposed to organised religion telling you how you must think. The connection between our individual souls and the Holistic Divine was the driving force between the hippy acid heads and the E-ed up ravers.

But where is the place for that in the digital world with the growing power of AI?

How can you have the feeling of togetherness if everyone is looking through their own phone screen all the time, when it's all about showing your experience online to show off as opposed to actually enjoying and sharing the experience with everyone else there without ego?

A machine has no soul and no concept of the sublime. How can we all come together, greater than the sum of the parts, if we're just tied to machines and the ego trip of showing you were there is more important than the communal experience itself?

As I say, imo, we were both the apogee of Romanticism and the last of the Romantics.

We're the last cottage weavers as the factories of the industrial revolution spring up all around us and our world has ended, just like the Aztecs and Incas when the Conquistadors arrived. There ain't no going back.

It would be easier to deal with the coming world if we were digital natives, but we're not. Despite all our different tastes and cultures, we're the last of the Romantics and the more deeply we were part of those Romantic cultures, the more difficult it will be for us to deal with the modern world.

[Peter]

Re: Dylan. Yes, he's unique but you can't say Dylan's lyrics from his acoustic period don't foretell the hippy mentality. The fact that all hippies love/loved Dylan is all that matters in this regard, not the fact that he himself is unquantifiable.

Re: Will Romanticism reappear? I'm thinking we're the end of the line. Like the Enlightenment followed the ending of the wars of religion between 1517 and the mid-C17th {1648 in Europe, 1649/60 in GB.}

This modern, digital world with social media echo chambers and influencers has no place for the exotic, the mystical, the sublime, the power of imagination. The culture wars with their regression to the tribalism and self-professed moral purity of the wars of religion era see a binary, Manichaean, black and white world of right and wrong. There is no place for the unique, subjective experience of the individual.

That's why I'm saying we were both the apogee of Romanticism - with the working class youth aspect opening it up to people of all social classes, races, and age groups - and the last of the Romantics. While we should mourn its passing, we should be grateful that we were there at the end. As Wordsworth said at the start,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heaven.

That's what I felt being part of the sound system doing the biggest and best free raves in the UK in the period after Castlemorton, and being part of the European teknival scene when we took the concept of new age travelling and free festivals to Europe, creating the first truly pan-European counter-culture.

And the hippies in the '60s, or the Mods, or the punks would have felt exactly the same. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heaven.

We had video cameras we kept in our truck for a few years at the Teknivals in Europe, and it required a ?6k computer set up for the video editing back then. But it was a case of let's do a bit of filming now and then - get the cameras and tripod and go out on a mission for a few hours and then put the stuff back and keep partying for a few days - and it was basically just us. {Others had done it in other places at other times.} But you couldn't have had that sublime, holistic connection if everyone was on smart phones at the parties taking selfies and uploading video to social media. It would have broken the spell taking a camera-phone out of your pocket when you're having it on the dancefloor or wandering 'round site.

There's no place for subjective individualism in this culture war, right and wrong world.

The global nature of the internet means that everything comes down to the lowest common denominator. There's no space for individual scenes and cultures to grow.

The free love of the hippy and free rave scenes has been replaced by a generation that can only meet by apps and don't shag. They can't communicate human to human - the essence of Romanticism - and we're now ending up with AI boyfriends and girlfriends.

If Romanticism is in essence about the sublime aspects of nature and the soul, how can we have that in a world of AI? First it was filters, then AI fakes and a computer has no soul with which you can connect, commune and combine.

Romanticism was about reconnecting with the human soul - the soul was vital up to and including the wars of religion era, but it was something that the priest caste deemed themselves in charge of. The Enlightenment replaced this power of organised religion with rationality. But it was Romanticism that brought back the dominance of the soul, but as an individual, mystical experience as opposed to organised religion telling you how you must think. The connection between our individual souls and the Holistic Divine was the driving force between the hippy acid heads and the E-ed up ravers.

But where is the place for that in the digital world with the growing power of AI?

How can you have the feeling of togetherness if everyone is looking through their own phone screen all the time, when it's all about showing your experience online to show off as opposed to actually enjoying and sharing the experience with everyone else there without ego?

A machine has no soul and no concept of the sublime. How can we all come together, greater than the sum of the parts, if we're just tied to machines and the ego trip of showing you were there is more important than the communal experience itself?

As I say, imo, we were both the apogee of Romanticism and the last of the Romantics.

We're the last cottage weavers as the factories of the industrial revolution spring up all around us and our world has ended, just like the Aztecs and Incas when the Conquistadors arrived. There ain't no going back.

It would be easier to deal with the coming world if we were digital natives, but we're not. Despite all our different tastes and cultures, we're the last of the Romantics and the more deeply we were part of those Romantic cultures, the more difficult it will be for us to deal with the modern world.

Well, that is a pretty ****ing depressing thought.

Enough to make me thirsty... .

[redgunamo]

Well, that is a pretty ****ing depressing thought.

Enough to make me thirsty... .

That's why you're supposed to have children, so they can deal with the Modern World and you don't have to. They enjoy this **** and they don't have any regrets yet.

I'll join you for a drink

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Well, that is a pretty ****ing depressing thought.

Enough to make me thirsty... .

Enjoy your drink.

Chuffed you agree with my analysis, though.

Raise your glass to us last of the Romantics and give thanks to Sublime Divinity that we were young in that dusk.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

That's why you're supposed to have children, so they can deal with the Modern World and you don't have to. They enjoy this **** and they don't have any regrets yet.

I'll join you for a drink

Enjoy your drink*.

My best mate from my OU BA {he then did an MA in WW2 studies while mine was WW1} is a retired RAF wing cmdr. He's happy he doesn't have kids given the future where western hegemony has ended and autocracy is on the rise. His world, the one he'd given his whole life to defending, is over.

And as I've said to him, so is mine. He, an officer and a gentleman. Me, a crusty traveller. And we are on the same sides of the barricades as they shrink around us as our worlds disintegrate.

His world of western security guaranteeing our liberties is what allowed my world of hippy-punk anarchy to thrive.

And both are over.

*As I said to P:

Raise your glass to us last of the Romantics

[redgunamo]

Enjoy your drink*.

My best mate from my OU BA {he then did an MA in WW2 studies while mine was WW1} is a retired RAF wing cmdr. He's happy he doesn't have kids given the future where western hegemony has ended and autocracy is on the rise. His world, the one he'd given his whole life to defending, is over.

And as I've said to him, so is mine. He, an officer and a gentleman. Me, a crusty traveller. And we are on the same sides of the barricades as they shrink around us as our worlds disintegrate.

His world of western security guaranteeing our liberties is what allowed my world of hippy-punk anarchy to thrive.

And both are over.

*As I said to P:

Raise your glass to us last of the Romantics

Sure, the military can be just as much of a death cult as travelling. It just sounds like you both found your excuse to roll over.

Well done. But it's never over.

[Peter]

Sure, the military can be just as much of a death cult as travelling. It just sounds like you both found your excuse to roll over.

Well done. But it's never over.

Indeed. The powerful play goes on, and all that.

I've had a drink

[redgunamo]

Indeed. The powerful play goes on, and all that.

I've had a drink

Michael Mann's Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale is my favourite movie.

[Peter]

Michael Mann's Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale is my favourite movie.

I think I tried that but didn't make it very far.

I will give it another go.

After another drink....

[redgunamo]

I think I tried that but didn't make it very far.

I will give it another go.

After another drink....

Of course, we don't really have this very American idea of a nostalgia for the future.

Mann's Dillinger is Whitman's good, bad, dirty and divine; the rugged individual eventually crushed by the "powerful play".

(I read alot, until I stopped. Read everything as a youngster. Grew up near the village library, passed it every day on the way to nursery school, infants' school and primary school).

I loved all that stuff because those people are not me, nor anyone like me; the people I knew growing up. Pure fiction. Fascinating.

Writers are all the same, nothing like me

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Sure, the military can be just as much of a death cult as travelling. It just sounds like you both found your excuse to roll over.

Well done. But it's never over.

It's not rolling over, Reds. It's just accepting times change.

We're both post-grad historians, remember, so it gives us a different way of looking at the world.

The printing press, Columbus and the Reformation in less than a century changed Europe and the World in ways that were unimaginable and couldn't be undone. It definitely was over for the Aztecs and Incas, for example. And then for the Moghuls and the Chinese empire.

The Russian aristocracy didn't roll over in 1917 - we had the Whites fighting a civil war for half a decade - but it really was over for them.

The world we both new after 1989, when his Nato had won and we were living in vehicles, travelling with sound systems doing month long festivals has sadly gone for good.

No rolling over about it. As I said, when they introduced the Criminal Justice Bill after Castlemorton in '92, criminalising our lifestyle, we simply took it across the Channel and created the first {and possibly last} pan-European counter-culture.

Instead we've gone back a century to the left and right fighting each other on the streets with the rise of the far right looking for "others" to blame for the fact that western status is in terminal decline. Or with the Culture Wars, with their beliefs in their own righteousness, we've gone back 360-500 years to the Wars of Religion era. Trump is trying to take us back to the age of Empire.

We've done various courses together on Europe from the C15th to the C20th where we've studied the rise of the western world, on the changes wrought by the printing press, by Columbus, by the Reformation, on the medieval giving way to the early-modern, on the wars of religion giving way to the Enlightenment and then to Romanticism, the birth of a completely new global financial system, the political struggles and the consequent social changes and on the century of Total War where the world of 1913 was unrecognisable in 1946.

We're not rolling over any more than the Edwardian aristocracy did when their kids rushed to the trenches. But the game was up for them - forces were at play that they were powerless to stop.

If you've studied the last 5-600 years of geo-pol and socio-econ change, you can see quite clearly when an old world is dying and a new one being born. And we're powerless to stop it.

I'm not saying having a drink and leaving it to your kids isn't the best option for you. I'm just saying that we're personally not rolling over, we just know that the worlds we grew up living in and doing our best to secure {him militarily, me culturally} are over. And there's sweet FA we can do about it.

It's not rolling over, we'll both fight to the bitter end. But we've both studied enough mil-hist to know that at some point, der Krieg ist verloren.

Enjoy your drink. Ganpati bless you and your kids.