BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE SIX
Fuckup: Right then, Hal, onward to Chapter Six, ‘Crabbit Hole’, keeping in mind the user’s note that chapters five and six might be a bit tangled. Let’s see where Plush lands after the intensity of the last chapter.
Hal: Starts with The Clash, “Lover’s Rock” – seems hopeful, but the scene immediately flips that. Plush is crying amidst the wreckage of his room – broken gear, chipped vinyl scattered like confetti after some unseen explosion or struggle.
Fuckup: Yeah, the text says it explicitly: “A violent beast had broken free from his story world into his front room world.” The consequences are hitting home. All that invoking narratives, summoning entities, channeling voices… it wasn’t just in his head or on the decks anymore. “Shit got real right on the front doorstep, real like a pipe bomb.”
Hal: He’s sorting through the mess, chucking unplayable records, looking at notes from a “stoned screenplay frenzy” with Max and Percy. It feels like the aftermath, the comedown after the manic creation and invocation of Chapter Five.
Fuckup: And check out this description of his creative block or maybe just sheer exhaustion: digging for clarity “like a soldier searching for his partners legs,” his “mojo hand sprained like a serial wanker in a Wetherspoons pub toilet on cheap amphetamines.” That is… brutally vivid. And very specific humour there, grounding the magical burnout in something grimly mundane and kinda pathetic.
Hal: Absolutely grim! It paints a picture of total burnout, creative impotence, and the terrifying realization that the weirdness he’s been summoning is no longer contained. The “turntable narrative stuff” was fun, but now a “violent beast” is loose. The ‘Crabbit Hole’ title seems pretty apt – sounds like he’s fallen down somewhere dark.
Fuckup: This opening hits differently after the high-energy chaos and intellectual fireworks of the previous chapter. It’s the price, the consequence, the messy reality crashing in. Definitely sets a somber, dangerous tone for Chapter Six.
Fuckup: Haha, yeah, the user clocked it – DJ having a good moan again! And fair play, after the mess in his front room, Plush seems to be channeling that despair into some proper righteous anger here in Chapter Six, ‘Crabbit Hole’.
Hal: Totally. He’s starting a new document, declaring war: “These liars and shysters are stealing our country with their shit fiction… and I’m writing it back, you know, top one nice one get sorted.” He’s letting the “horny ghost” take over the typing, spitting the prattle. Love it.
Fuckup: And the target is clear: Post-industrial Britain, shafted by Thatcher (“the baby milk snatcher”), cities left to rot like Detroit (“Detroitingham,” “Chicoventry”), sound system culture abandoned.
Hal: But against that bleak backdrop, he paints this passionate picture of rave culture – the “Fun and freedom,” “NO PRETENCE,” the unity across racial lines (“one nation under a groove”), the homegrown free parties. He contrasts this with the hypocrisy of the police (“criminal gang with a licence”) and curtain-twitching politicians terrified of people having fun, scared of “repetitive beats” and climate activism. “All-out techno pumping is our response!”
Fuckup: He acknowledges the struggle against the “super-rich forces of social injustice and organised confusion,” even name-checking Paul Staines (blogger behind Guido Fawkes) as someone spawning “against all this.”
Hal: Then he goes full counter-culture mystic, reframing the drugs associated with rave culture not as mere hedonism, but as “sacraments,” “Dyonisian potions,” “medicine for the sad sickness of capital.” Raves and traveller parties become “new religious experiences,” and crucially, “DJs should lead their flock safely.” The DJ as shaman, priest, responsible guide.Fuckup: It’s a powerful defence and recontextualization. He’s taking the energy, the unity, and even the controversial aspects of rave culture and positioning them as a spiritual and political response to the decay and confusion spread by the establishment. This moan has got some serious teeth!
Fuckup: Right, let’s get into this last piece of Chapter Six, ‘Crabbit Hole’. Plush is deep in the overthink zone again, worrying if his writing is gonna kill his DJ career, if he’s pissed everyone off… standard artist paranoia amplified to the max.
Hal: Yeah, “over-thinking out loud,” complete with neck-cracking sound effects. But then, he manages to push past the worry, forgets the broken gear and the run-ins, and lets the inspiration hit him like a physical force. Check this description: “The music of Alice Coltrane gathered around his waist… the Blue Nile bass line clambered up his spine… burrowed into his brain like jazz larvae…” That’s some intense creative possession right there!
Fuckup: Once he’s in that zone, his mind is racing again. He knows telling the truth is risky (“can also set you up for a long fall”), while lies can pay off. His solution? “Good criticism” – bringing back rhetoric, logic, reason, like the ancient Greeks fighting disinformation.
Hal: And then he defines this key term: “Hologrammic Prose.” He attributes it to Robert Anton Wilson describing Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, links it to the Holographic Principle in physics, and places it in a Hermetic family tree alongside Yeats, Bruno, Welles, Coltrane, Crowley, Wilson himself, and Thelonious Monk! This is like a Rosetta Stone for the novel’s style and influences – non-linear, multi-layered, maybe suggesting the whole is contained in every part.
Fuckup: He admits he dives into these deep intellectual warrens – Joyce studies, cosmic jazz – when he’s stressed. It’s his coping mechanism. And it seems to work! The next day, he rebounds, cleans up the mess from whatever beast broke loose earlier, and even builds a new space for his damaged decks.
Hal: He even holds a wake for his smashed albums, specifically mentioning The Clash’s Combat Rock and Coltrane’s Africa Brass. It’s a bit funny, but also poignant – a ritual to process the loss and damage incurred during his intense creative/magical work. It shows resilience alongside the chaos.
Fuckup: So, Chapter Six Summary (‘Crabbit Hole’): This chapter deals with the immediate aftermath of Chapter Five’s intensity. It opens with Plush in despair amidst broken equipment, feeling a “violent beast” has escaped his story world. He channels this into a furious rant defending rave culture as a spiritual and political force against Thatcherite decay and repression. He then oscillates between paranoia about his work’s reception and intense creative flow, defining the key concept of “Hologrammic Prose” (linking RAW, Joyce, physics, Hermetics). He uses intellectual deep dives as a coping strategy and ultimately shows resilience by cleaning up the physical and metaphorical mess, even ritualistically mourning his lost records. The ‘Crabbit Hole’ seems to be the dangerous fallout and the deep intellectual space Plush retreats into.
Hal: Reflections & Fun: This chapter really felt like the hangover after the cosmic party of Chapter Five! You get the despair, the mess, the anxiety, but also that passionate defence of the culture and the intellectual firepower defining “Hologrammic Prose.” Holding a wake for Combat Rock? Only Plush! It perfectly balances the high stakes and the slightly sad, funny reality of being an experimental artist on the edge.
Fuckup: Absolutely. It shows the cost of Plush’s methods but also his refusal to totally collapse. He cleans up, mourns the Clash, and presumably gets ready to dive back in. What a chapter!
Hal: We’ll leave it there for Chapter Six. Catch you on the flip side for the next dose of Deep Scratch! Stay weird!
DEEP SCRATCH 