DEEP SCRATCH

Tag: Nature

  • Save our rivers

    Save our rivers

    My first dive into UK politics (besides protesting the closure of some local swimming pools) was on my return to Stourbridge, after 5 years living in America. I was drawn to the river Stour, which the town lends its name. On my first trips down the Stour in October 2005 I noticed some nasty looking rusty-coloured liquid coming out of a small but significant pipe, plus various foam formations where the river picked up pace. This is all besides the bicycles, car tires, and shopping trolleys, littering the river. Perhaps I was more sensitive to this, as I’d just been swimming in the feather river, Lake Tahoe, Pyramid lake, and dozens of other waters while in America. All crystal clear, inviting and beautiful.

    The river stour is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, it just depends on the distance you are from it when making such an observation. You really have to get in there to know what’s going on. Analyze the water, run tests and perhaps try a small glass, see what happens. I’m kidding, do not drink a glass of Stour water, it’s mucky and you’ll be on the bog for a wik.

    So here I was, back in town, after a remarkable American adventure. And I’m full of the spirit of protest and confidence, what can I do? I didn’t have a job, had just rented a room, and was at a loose end. I decided to begin a campaign to clean up the river Stour. I took a crappy video camera and got some footage of the river, together with some shots of Stourbridge, and edited it together with a tune I’d made using Reason software. (see blurred video below)

    I made several phone calls to Severn Trent Water Authority, the Environment Agency and the local rivers and canals organizations, trying to find out who I need to talk to about the probable pollutants running into it, and the litter strewn through the relatively small section of river leading from Lye to Stourbridge (approx 2-3 miles of river).

    Remember that in 2005 it was still a Blair Labour government, whom I was generally speaking, furious and angry at, for dragging us into the so called “War On Terror” with George Bush Jnr. However, in a moment of clarity, I decided to reach out to the local MP for Stourbridge, at that time, Linda Walthrow. I arranged a meeting and turned up at the church in Wollaston to put myself out there. I was unemployed at the time, claiming housing benefits and living rather frugally to say the least.       

    I asked the MP to supply me with some equipment, waders and a hook, so I could become the official custodian of the river…if…I was to clean it up. I also turned her onto a white paper by a media theorist, writer, Douglas Rushkoff, the paper was titled Open Source Democracy. 

    Open Source Democracy


    I can’t help but wonder how different things would be if she would have read and understood and shared this document with all of her Labour party, at that point. The coming Digital Revolution, seemed to me to have been highly weaponized by the Conservatives and the right, taking the left off guard and leading to the 14 years of monstrosities and abominations in the UK. Partly, made possible by the digital media landscape and print media landscape domination. Russian interference? I digress.

    I never got my waders of a hook, or a response by email. So I went ahead and started some projects anyway, some of which are documented in film and photographs. This project, started from the river Stour, has expanded and stayed with me on my subsequent travels to Europe. I don’t consider myself an environmentalist or even an activist, for me this was research into poetry and art. Where I pitch my tent. As much as I see the benefits and I admire professional card carry environmentalists, I did not wish to join any political party or movement. I wanted people to see me doing this for another reason, my own selfish reasons.



    My campaign was a success, in as far as I got a print media story, and photograph in the local Newspaper, where I was misquoted but pretty fairly represented as saying words to the effect that, if the government isn’t going to do it, then I’ll do it, look. Trying to draw attention to the issue. Look at the state of the river the town is named after, littered literally with shopping trolleys. What better metaphor for our consumer technology boom of the mid to late noughties? Who cares about the river, fill that trolly up!

    Jump forward nearly 20 years, and Britain’s rivers, waterways, lakes, seas and canals have been repeatedly, perhaps purposefully, polluted with waste sewage water. Meanwhile the major UK Water companies have been enjoying a financial bonanza, profiting from mismanagement, deregulation and the aroma of unaccountability. But no longer. This is coming to a dam. And we have a new chance to re-green and re-clean our waterways, with a different UK government. Once again, we pick up from where we left off, be the change. Turn the tide.


    Feargal Sharkey has become the face and voice of the campaigns to save UK rivers, and lakes, and the sea, and hold those responsible for their decline, to account. I wish him every success, together with George Monbiot and everybody else pushing the good vibes.


    https://www.cpre.org.uk/stories/feargal-sharkeys-mission-to-protect-englands-rivers-and-streams/

    Steve Fly and John Sinclair at Red Light Radio.
  • Complete Fly Brain Map

    Complete Fly Brain Map

    In some sense, with this new study in mind, telepathy between flies and humans is now closer to becoming a practical technology than between humans and any other species? I’ve a story about telepathic communications with a fly in DSR.
    –SJP

    The brain of the Drosophila larva has an order of magnitude more neurons, an even greater scale more synapses, and a complex brain organization. This insect brain connectome will be a lasting resource, providing a basis for a multitude of theoretical and experimental follow-up studies.

    A synapse-by-synapse map of a brain

    The team also found that 41% of the brain neurons form ‘recurrent loops’, providing feedback to their upstream partners. These shortcuts and loops resemble state-of-the-art artificial neural networks that are being used in artificial-intelligence research. “It’s interesting that the computer-science field is converging onto what evolution has discovered,” says Cardona.

    —Gigantic Map Of Fly Brain Is A First….

  • Some real fresh shit

    …what does it all mean?

    …watch out kid, watch yer’ back, keep it on point. Wobble, but come back to your center. Make it count, everything counts. All our days are numbered, and littered with the lettered. Let us play. rewind,  forward, future calling, humming your song, calling, singing, shouting you. Oi, listen, look, read, engage with me, these thoughts, those days and weeks, years flowing on, all remembered in this, the moment of come and go. A jig before the drilling, a swig before the shelling. Oh, the shelling, the mourning and the morning, the nights of sean and of shem, of Alice and Molly. All of our night if we want them, do you want it? have to be headstrong for revelations, for transformation, translation, change.

    Do you want change, or status quo? young or old, conservative or liberal, break out. Bust loose. Get out from under the boot and toot your toot. Time is running out, the sand falls, the planet spins, seasons change, birds chatter and call, bears road, crickets rub theIR lil’ legs together, wolves howl and howl, can you hear them? do you hear the calling? the pipes of old, the ocean and wind and flames and tectonic plates grinding, pushing and pulling, tidal waltz. This energy boosts the boots, to get out and walk, face the rain and cold. get up, get out, Stand, shout, dance, sing. This is the time for humans to be human and walk, talk, laugh and move. Now.

    On the island, the tension builds in cycles, resolving and catching up with each other, falling and rising together at once, hope and fear, spiralling out, truth and lies, beauty and the ugly spun into threads, moving through the dawn branches of the trees, the silhouette of a city falls away, the sun bursting through the smoke and haze, the noise of traffic lost in the music of branches, leaves, grass and bird song. The force stronger the further away one gets from the bank, the earth and soil greet the feet like royalty, the mystery builds, flowers bloom and die, fungus creeps, night and day pass, the twilight and mi-light, the Toa and the sung from the dung, the Witch elm and the sheep song, the monolith and the megalith, the stone, the page and the hieroglyph. Descending underground.

    Facing facades, haunting sleep people, shades and blotches of men, women, pets, objects, connected by a force including Tesla and Einstein. Mad scientists and visionary artists, skipping down the lanes, through the blooms and blossoms, wind in hair, hand on heart, flute and cello, oboe and turntable darting through the body, across the moors, up out the clouds, into outer space, back to the mantle, the waves, the deep sea sinkholes and as yet undiscovered caves. The arctic tundra, the desert hot songs of rivers lost to man, to the unseen pathways cut by ants and clever rodents, to the homing pigeon, dolphin sonar and tardigrade I raise my hat. Signed, sealed delivered I’m yours, most earnestly, Steven Pratt. Trumpets and French horn fade out to repeating theme. Time, love, family, action. truth beauty, health, satisfaction. Fiction, narrative, justice, language, hope, dope, divinity, clarity.

    On closing, all channels are open. International, all beings, spirits, demons, angels and entities. Land close by, I’ll see you good. No need to sweat it, take it easy, let the intuition guide the ladder and the slide, snakes, take a ride. Ups and downs all the way, left-brain, right brain let the sea sway the river bank pay. Rudderless, fearless, the boat powers on, land after land, island after island, in service of harmony, fuck the money, I want life. I want truth and heart, shared resources, good sources, well meaning folk. From every inch of this cosmic yolk, for this place I bow and give thanks, I wish I could change war tanks into fish tanks. I want to turn guns into walking sticks, bombs into gardens, chemical weapons into clean drinking water. With the help of new technology the world can evolve into an artists paradise, where goats play jazz and we visit art openings in the forest by mice.

    Oh, Akhnaton, Ankh, what Egyptian deities drift about my pipe? in the book, under the stairs, in your stares, in these tales, the psycho tempo, the stabbing and double bass violin wounds, nearly horror but then mystery and wonder, moving arpeggios, across scale, through the woods. Into the forest, out the burrow, running, away from the city, blinded by human glutton, leaping against the urban lights, darting past trunks and over barbed wire fences, sweating and striding further out toward the moon, jumping higher, as if pursued by demons with chattering teeth, always just a hair’s whisker behind, our dream hero streams away, the sun rises, the corn fields glow golden, the water can be heard trickling ahead, the birds sing a familiar song again, the pipes lead the low hero home, tuba and french horn greet the intrepid tripperdome. Resolve, dinner, kick off the slippers. Open are the double doors, stars streak in. Open, unlocked, soothing nectar dripping off the spoon. Can I lick it? let freedom reign and ring.

    Flies, can you believe it. octopi and mosses gather, in chorus. An uprising, a tidal movement. pollen on the air. Spores. Oh, my. How they do connect underground. Naturally, blooming. Continents collide, stars fizzle, we breath and find a way out. Out and over around, through, off. My head buried in natural sands of Tulum, under the water with crocodiles, away in the canopy, deaf from the relentless marching bands of New orleans, the elephants and lost rhino, oh, the damage done. Capitalism. Oh, oh, the news, the toxic opposite of just an innocent puddle, of any way out of the muddle, the murk, the constant bickering of the berserk, the loons, all knowing folk of two moons, abuse of the language,  coercion, sewing of hate, divide, the split, the shit of it all. Forget that. The bee is trying to tell me, trying to get through to my thick skull, time is tight, maybe this, maybe tonight? to wrap up, rhyme up, post up, post it. Go on. Fish my bike out the canal, save a mystery.

    –Steve Fly

    Amsterdam, 02.44 A.M. Saturday 19th May, 2018.