Night of the Burning Masks

Addendum to Track 8 - Burning Masks, monsters, and new connections at The Backyard Comedy Night

After publishing the previous Track 8, I realised there were a few things I wanted to add. Part of this may form part of the ‘drawing some conclusions’ section of my album.

On June 21st 2021, after half a bottle of Jack Daniels, I set fire to a couple of crisp blue medical masks on my patio. I’d picked them up in a shop, and kept them in my cupboard for posterity.

I wanted it to be an angry inferno, blazing against the disgusting, inhuman muzzling, but it was the most pathetic fire you’ve ever seen. It was the equivalent of what I imagine Matt Hancock’s erections are like: disappointing, stringy, and pale blue. It took an age to burn, and you can see bits of plastic dripping off – cos we’ve got to protect the environment. Sure, guys. A few dystopian looking weeds and a couple of ants make their screen debut in the first Roberts Patio Production.

I called it Night of the Burning Masks and it went viral on my old Twatter account. I chose The Soup Dragons - I'm Free as the ironic lyrics about being free to do what you want are comically painful, given what the muzzles represented, and the track has always been a firm favourite since my student days.

On a human note, it has served me well as I’ve shaken my tail feather in the mosh pit of life’s tribulations.

I didn’t say nearly enough about the UK’s then ‘health’ (stealth) secretary, Matt Hancock – an example of the actually rather mediocre bootlicker we see appear throughout history. Hancock oversaw the draconian lockdown (house arrest) ‘measures’, increased ventilator, midazolam and morphine use, and the ‘vaccine’ roll out with the unbridled glee of a schoolboy about to go on his summer holidays. How he is still walking free and unpunished, along with many others in positions of power, is bewildering to say the least.

But as much as we want to paint him as a monster who is not remotely like us, the inconvenient truth is that Hancock is a stark kick in the cunt that within each one of us there is the capacity, however slight, to become an authoritarian.

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.'“

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

If you learn no other lesson from this period, let this be the one. No person, particularly one with any level of influence, is immune from the dangerous notion that he or she holds the absolute truth, and the desire to protect the power in this ‘truth’ is worth any paralogism. That is why, over time, I have increased my reading of political prisoners, philosophers and theologians. These men, and women, have been at the mercy of, and wrestled with what it is to navigate this painful, and simultaneously beautiful, human existence.

Everything we have witnessed during this recent ideological frenzy – including BLM, Trans, Climate etc is all part of the tyranny of ‘truths’. Being ‘awake’ doesn’t mean you are superior, far from it. If you believe that, then the irony is you have a hell of a long way to go. I sometimes find myself wondering, for instance, if certain groups within the Freedom Movement were suddenly given enough power, they might insist that selected ‘conspiracy’ theories be taught in schools as absolute fact; and, in this new world, what might the punishment be for questioning the legitimacy of these theories?

In 1887, Lord Acton wrote to Bishop Creighton that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

This does not mean that we should stop addressing and fighting against the worst injustices, quite the opposite. We must be ever vigilant about this propensity for power, influence and money to poison the well of goodness. Greater heads than my curly-haired one have thought about this stuff, and all the conclusions about certain influences on human behaviour are pretty much consistent.

Chase ye not glittery baubles, for thou wilt fall off thy high horse and land upon thine arse.

Like the illusion of Left and Right, there is the illusion that seeing symbology in absolutely everything will lead to ultimate enlightenment. I believe it’s the reverse. An obsession with symbology often leads to a dark place, not because being aware of patterns is not helpful, (I have written a great deal about spotting patterns in the authoritarian’s creep), but because it means you are only living half your life. I have often said that being down rabbit holes is a dark place, and while it may be addictively intriguing, the digging is, by definition, in ever decreasing circles downwards, where there is the weight of more soil, moles, worms, and fuck all sunlight.

Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere (take note)

And the odd bunker built by the elites for when the apocalypse comes.

No human is immune from herd thought, or the lure of the idea that they, and they alone, hold the key to the secrets of despicable human actions over millennia. Nothing discussed at length in 2025, has not been thrashed out before whether in public baths, ale houses, or hallowed quads. For me, the key is to keep the art of reason (see Kant) alive, and the understanding that we have feet of clay. If you for a second think that your shit doesn’t stink like everybody else’s, you are doomed to a lifetime’s delusion of grandeur.

In any argument, we should try and use the chisel of reason as our tool, and if one feels confused, lost or alone, remember that Christ said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”.

Warming once again to my human theme, as I often do, I look back with immense fondness and gratitude at The Delingpod Comedy Night at the famous Backyard Comedy Club on 4th December 2022. Organised by my inimitable pal

CharlotteEmmaUK

it was a packed out, roaring success. Hosted by the witty, twinkly-eyed, moustachioed brother of James,

Richard Delingpole

it featured

alistair williams

Carl Vernon

Bob Moran

and

Tania Edwards

.

I’m wearing my own pink Tits/Arse pronouns t-shirt, and the pleather trousers I wore just over a month earlier when I called Malhotra a cunt in front of 800 people.

You can watch The Delingpod show in all its glory here

The great Danny Rampling DJ’d the after-party at a nearby Tapas place, and we took all sorts of fabulously illicit substances, and danced our arses off to this banger:

Alison Limerick - Where Love Lives

I met some great folk there including my pal, the wonderful

TheJules

and her hubby, Dek,

ShoutyMum

and many others who have become part of the Abi Daily fam. I look forward to meeting more of you on the grassy plains where the wind sings, the sun shines, and the buffalo roam.

Get busy living, and always keep that furious passion burning against those actions that seek to diminish the light. That’s what makes you a wonderful, flawed human swaying precariously along the invisible high wire walked by so many souls.

MORE TO COME…

Be seeing you!

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