Getting drunk with Ben Fairhall...

... Alright geezer, mine's a pint of Guinness extra cold. That's extra cold, geezer. What about that man King, what? What an imagination...'Even in a world, where nothing stays the same.' Sorry boss; when I start singing praise and worship songs at the bar, that's when I- Ben Fairhall- start getting pissed. Getting hammered, as it were. 'This is our God, the Servant King.' Anyone here a papist? Come on, matey; admit it... You're a papist!

Me? I love Benedict XVI... My name's Ben... I often think we're related...

Let's have it, mate... Let's get queer. (Come on, fucker!) What about cricket, mate... What a change. What a paradigm shift. I've sat there- in my day- enjoying the cricket; the days of Athers, Tufnell, Hussein... Look at it now! Indian-fucking-Premier-League; a sad day for cricket... Twenty twenty. Here you go, mate: check this out... This is a song, matey; this is a tune. (This one makes me gay, mate.)

'There is a light that never goes out.' Have you ever been to a Morrissey gig, mate? I have. I've been gay for him, mate... Voting for the British National Party, mate? Me? Yes... Only one rock and roll star this nation ever produced, matey boy... That would be Morrissey. What a fucking leg, mate. Fucking leg.

I'll be gay for Morrissey, matey boy... Gay for the big thick meat. What about Jackson, mate? I've said it before; I'll say it again. When I saw Jackson at Wembley in 92, that was the best gig I've ever been to... (Omitting Morrissey, at this stage.) Paedo? Arse, mate... ARSE.

Anyone a Papist here? Come on, fuckers..! Let's march on those Proddy bastards, come on fookers!

Mine's an extra cold, mate... That's an extra cold.

The truly magical man is not in touch with reality; or rather, with none except his own, the inner reality he wishes to manifest. (To convert from the Imaginal to the Actual.) There is a sense in which he lives only in his own head; depending on the level of magical force upon which can draw, he may be said to be trapped there. If young, energetic and keenly alchemical, the charge flows; snaking from one objective to the next towards a vanishing point of progressive exaltation. But if his will falters, and the charge stagnates, the sense of incarceration in a world of fantasy may increase to a point where it is obvious not only to the failed magician... but to his peers.

His experience, at this point, is one in which the divide between his projections and his circumstances has assumed gaping proportions. Depending upon the nature of these projections, and his willingness (or ability) to discard or modify them, the difference may amount to a form of psychosis, temporary or permanent. Unable to reconcile his inner world with the outer, yet still possessed by the former to the latter's exclusion, this state approximates those induced deliberately in victims of mind control. (Project Monarch being the best-known example.) Implanted by a programmer, the forms are then 'animated' through hypnosis; and reinforced, where necessary, with recourse to certain tailor-made environments. (The original function, it is claimed, of theme parks like Disneyland.)

It is interesting that much of the artwork favoured by the recently deceased Michael Jackson evokes images of inner worlds... An expression of his own deep immersion in a pseudo-reality from which- whether as a result of failed alchemy, or programming systematically applied- there was to be no escape.

The Television Years

It's been a quiet couple of days for the beast (and its host.) Money, by far and away its favourite subject (closely followed by sex), evoked in it some preparatory squawking, as I struggled to persuade it that my father's decision to pay off my credit card bill (of £350) was the consequence of an agreement we had fleshed out together. The discussion had been a minor triumph, or so I thought at the time, an example of whole sentences spoken calmly, inviting the same in response. But the beast is an uncannily gifted mimic, and the mere appearance of agreement should never be mistaken for the thing itself. The host reserves (and very often exercises) an inalienable right to revert to type within seconds of terminating dialogue; so familar and so pressing are its learned responses.

This will engender great confusion in the mind of anyone unfamiliar with the First Rule of Entity Management... namely, that The Beast is not sane. Remembering this simple maxim will bring great comfort to those obliged to share their lives with a host (or hosts.) By this, and only this, can any sense be made of its endless, unfathomable squawking. The host is not a complicated, suffering soul; a changeable, mercurial artist; or gifted with hunches fascinating for being so totally unpredictable. (Nor is she a narcissist, bi-polar, Borderline-Schizoid, nor any other of the headshrinkers' prognoses.) In almost all cases, she (and I'll stick with gender specifics for now, for reasons that will very shortly be revealed) was a calm, highly rational and intelligent human being, reduced to squawking insanity by the intra-psychic conflict waged relentlessly inside her.