Life after Life: Why do we belive....

As anyone who has read one of these blogs from time to time will have realised, along with being products of a generally aimless, wandering mind, they quite often they seem to focus on, well, why we are here and what's it all about anyway. One of those subjects involves our preoccupation with the afterlife and how, through our countless different cultures, we have constructed very elaborate belief systems that set this all out for us. It's almost as if we have hired artists, who, on the mighty canvas of our collective minds, have painted wonderful, beguiling, and comforting scenes whose grand purpose is to lay to rest our fears of the unknown (and unknowable) and to divert our thoughts away from that stark and very real possibility that, in so far as our lives are concerned, there is no “after” the here we are now living.

 

So why have we developed this conviction that, at the time we depart this mortal coil, our deaths are doorways to what is to be an endless (and perfect) after-life? Where did this after-life idea come from?

 

Is it perhaps routed in our fear of the forever; one that will be without us?

It is a fear grounded in our ability to comprehend the briefness of our own lives, that merciless realisation that we are temporary whilst eternity is not.

 

Our ability to comprehend the passage of time and our tenure within it means, perhaps uniquely amongst all living creatures, we have a deep comprehension of our own mortality. To perhaps numb ourselves from this and all that it entails, we have developed an alternative narrative; namely that when we die, we don't really. Our belief systems and rituals assume now that we go on to somewhere else where we carry on living, just this time, forever. That feels much better.

 

Most us us (but not all), sensibly accept that our tenure on this sand grain suspended in space and time, is infinitesimally brief. However rather than accept that this may be all the “life” we get, we put the very probable reality of this predicament to one side. Instead, our journeys into the nothingness of forever are tempered with imagined lands and places, sunlit with the smiles of our loved and departed, all gathered there and waiting to greet us in some magic world that we have been assured, since our childhoods, is as much a certainty as one day following another. In these places, forever shrinks down in its size to something that we fondly imagine instead being a long happy time that carries on and on, like a fading sepia-tinged memory of those seemingly endless days of long summer holidays from childhood. Eternity's truly remorseless, harrowing scale is instead seemingly contained within the comforting white picket fences of our imaginations, it's harshness ameliorated with our enduring beliefs that, eventually, soon even, all will be well. All we need do it believe it will be so.

 

Why then do we fear death?

 

Because doubts linger? It's there in those emotionally wrenching moments when we must comfort those nearest and dearest to us in the last moments of their lives. For, as our own parents and loved ones pass on from us, before our very eyes, so we must confront the cold reality of our own mortality. No fables or parables can disguise or mask this reality if we are honest with ourselves. It is at such moments we realise that the sweet beguiling comfort we have embraced has blinded us to such an important life-truth: "Your life is about a journey, not a destination". In that sense, we are only passengers with a temporary ticket to travel; there are no permanent seat holders on this ride.....

 

Yet time's vast span means little to these beliefs of ours. We do not understand it. We do not comprehend scale. It's means little to tell the fervently convinced that in a hundred trillion years all the stars that ever were and ever will be, will have burned away into nothing but scattered dust and the universe will be a black immeasurably vast cold place, void of light, life and heat and whose rendezvous is with emptiness alone.  What would it be like to spend this length of time in the so called heavens and paradise of our beliefs? We do not, and cannot imagine, for all things shrink away into virtual nothingness when set against such vast and withering scale. Perhaps we can dimly start to see ourselves truly for what we are?

 

Sometimes we turn to and take comfort from our Gods; we wrap ourselves up in the beauty and comfort of verse and parable that has endured over small centuries, imagining it as an armour against the vastness of infinite time. We imagine to feel the heat of faith dissolving our doubts about the great borderless frontiers of an expanding forever. Yet know this. Life and lives do not endure across these spans of time. Like our civilisations, our Gods too are for a few millennia at the most; they either morph or gather dust, along with the civilisations that called them forth in this endless cycle. They are products of time, place and map reference, although their interlocutors no doubt always have, and always will, declare otherwise. We see this, time after time after time, in the slow rolling wheel of historical fate.

 

So enjoy all the days in the journey of your life, for it is unique amongst all the journeys that have ever been or ever will be lived. There has never been another like you who has lived the life you lead. Your ticket tells you where and when your trip began on his strange train of life. Yet, it never tells you the secret and sudden future destination at which you must disembark, often unannounced and always alone, with no option of a return trip. It has been ever thus. So, instead of preparing for this moment, look to the windows, and enjoy the scene. Get to know your fellow passengers and immerse yourself in their stories and journeys. Celebrate the marvel of love and friendship and the warm glow of your life’s memories, revel in your moment of living and, to paraphrase  Etienne de Grellet, be kind to all those you meet along the way, for we do not pass this way again......

 

 

 

The moral of the story is, you get one life, so do it all.

"Bobby ‘Axe’ Axelrod"

 

Artisan Teas, Sparrow's eggs and other trivia....

“Would you like an Artisan tea”, he asked me?  Blimey. You mean to tell me that artisans have their own tea of choice now? I mean, we've all heard of artisan bread, right. So, perhaps this is what you're supposed to drink whilst eating your artisan bread sarnie. Doubt it though, not at that price.   It was one of those rather poncy pyramid shaped tea bags too, to maximise diffusion, so I'm reliably informed. Perhaps it was designed by an ancient Egyptian architect who worked for a pharaoh and, in between building the world’s largest tombs, found a novel way of adding a little delicate flavouring to the otherwise bland waters of the Nile?

 

It seems that teas go by profession or trade these days, what with Builders' tea a traditional favourite with construction workers so they say,  being a strong cuppa brewed in a mug with a tea bag. Its no doubt not dissimilar to Sergeant Major’s brew (one so strong that the spoon should stand up in it unaided, so my old man used to say) and which should be dispensed at twice boiling point from of a large brightly polished tea urn. It should then be gulped down at a throat scalding temperature (pain is for civvies) between blood curdling roars of fury directed at poor souls gasping their last on Satan’s very own parade ground. 

 

Doubtless Doctors and other medical practitioners automatically prefer a more genteel experience, and are inclined towards that expanding universe of medicinal "herbal" teas. I tried one once; it was nettle infusion tea, meant to be good for hay fever. It smelt of old grass cuttings, you know the ones kept in a warm shed for too long. It tasted even worse. Hay fever was preferable.

 

What about teachers, or do they prefer whiskey (queue gales of laughter please at this prime example of distilled wit). Doubtless something of a more soporific nature to help them while away those long school holidays.   What about chemists? Perhaps a memorable mixture of leaves and other naturally brewed psychotropics.  It could be well worth trying in these politically stressful times for all of us.....

 

Restaurant and pub menus are often another unintended source of mirth. Saw one the other day in a pub; it was a Sunday roast, and the pork proudly declared itself to be “hand carved”.  I imagined some machete-wielding AI out back slicing up the roast pigs with atom like precision except on Sundays. For a Sunday treat however, the pork was being carved by a human – perhaps an award winning sculpture? Relief all round especially for the pig no doubt - at least that job hasn't been automated by a Google designed robot….

 

The biggest joke on the menu however was that claim made by those old staples under the "traditional meals" section, namely, of course, The Pies!  All insisted they were home-made, conjuring up quaint images of the publican's wife (sorry, "partner") applying some special recipe passed down by word of mouth for generations and rolling the pastry, hand prepared only minutes before, with one of those old rolling pins that your mum used to keep in the kitchen. All these fanciful illusions are cruelly dispelled the moment said home-made pie arrives, in the generic white baking dish and super-heated to the point it’s almost undergoing nuclear fission. The pastry crumpled and flaking like layers of burnt newspaper, threatens to blow away if you so much as prod it with a fork. Underneath all of this, the pie’s “contents" are a glutinous molten lava soup bereft of recognisable or edible solids save for the odd faded pea and shrivelled survivor of diced carrot. So much for home made.

 

One last anecdote.  I remember stopping for breakfast once in a Little Chef (big mistake), one of those road side Michelin starred temples to motorway haute cuisine. In a mad fit of over-expectation I order scrambled eggs on toast. Let’s overlook the fact the toast was no more at best than barely warm bread, the portion of scramble looked like it had been conjured up from out of a single sparrow's egg. Curious as to its miniaturised avian origin, I asked the immensely tired and monumentally disinterested waiter why the scrambled nano-egg portion was so small. He lethargically went off to check with the so called "chef" returning with the biologically illuminating feedback that that was all you got in the packet!  Well, well, and there I was thinking all my life that scramble was made from an egg that came in a shell laid by a hen.  Never trust what they teach you at school.
 

Thank the stars I didn't ask for any bacon....

  

Beauty and the Beast: Shameless propoganda of sin....

Thus thundered Russian lawmaker Vitaley Milonev, demanding that the latest cinematic incarnation of Beauty and the Beast be banned in Russia for its apparent gay propaganda.  Well, who would have believed it, I mean I never realised that Disney, the production company, went in for that sort of thing. Times must be changing.  It may have come as a bit of a surprise to most of us as well to discover that Beauty and the Beast has, apparently, been infiltrated with subtle scenes of gay propaganda aimed at subverting modern society and… er...er….

 

Apparently there is a mildly gay moment that seems to relate to the hero's manservant rather fancying his boss. I think. On balance, it’s probably fair to say it not quite plumbing the deep and dark depths of dangerously polluting sexual innuendo that, in Mr Milonev’s fevered imagination at least, could cast a generation of young Russians into some form of moral turpitude from which not even Vladimir Putin could rescue them. However, to prevent viewers succumbing to such a calamitous doom, it has been given a "16 and over" age restriction. Disaster averted.

 

It does all sound rather shocking and I'm not sure why it's hasn't been banned in more right thinking countries. Surely Turkey too should follow suite, after all they banned Eurovision one year because of a gay kiss that was, informed sources reliably report, probably responsible for the 2016 attempted putsch (honest - it was on CNN). But perhaps the news hasn't reached President (for life) Erdogan yet because he has locked up every journalist in his country (for life) and replaced the Internet with an abacus.

 

But back to Beauty and the Beast being age restricted for its gay overtones. No doubt the ever jocular Mr Putin will appreciate the irony of this. After all, following his 2009 Siberian holiday when he rode a horse bare chested, he unintentionally became a gay icon himself. A case of Beauty on the Beast?

Hollywood Oscars and the genuinely horrific

It was televised live. In fact it could have been a movie. Tragedy or farce. Slapstick comedy more probably. It was produced by Oscar and directed by well known showbiz titans, PwC.

 

The plot was based around a movie which wins an Award, but doesn't because another one does, only then to find it has. In scenes of high drama, the error is realised and the prize is passed on to the correct team. Hooray. Amidst emotional tsunamis and scenes of heart-breaking pathos and bitter sweet “what-might-have-beens”, actors and actresses recount the emotional roller coaster journey of the evening as platoons of post traumatic award counsellors rush to the scene to offer assistance to bereaved celebrity luvvies whose mantle pieces will now remain slightly less cluttered than, only moments before, they thought they would be.

 

It could have been real life. Wait a minute. It was. Yes, we really did hear an actress describe the award mix-up scenes as horrible. Poor creature. What a sheltered life she must lead. Horrible, horrific, or whatever adjective you wish to deploy, is not appropriate for the rather silly faux par committed by PwC, which is small beer by their lofty standards. After all, this is the lot that gave Tesco a clean bill of health whilst they were busy misstating their profits by £250 million, so what's mixing up a few envelopes.  Horrible (defined as something that causes horror) is children being repeatedly barrel bombed in Syria, an event that is hard to recall Hollywood marking with indignant protest. Horrible is thousands of people in West Africa dying of Ebola or the fate, not that long ago, of children born out of wedlock in Ireland that were placed in the so called "care" of the Catholic Church.

 

This is not to deliberately shout down award ceremonies or cynically taking pleasure at what for some would have been deeply disappointing and embarrassing evening. However, there is an important point, and it's called a sense of proportion. It's gone missing.

 

So, where is our sense of proportion? Why is it that when the, by comparison,  well off and healthy suffer a misfortune, an inconvenience (an awards ceremony mix up)  or even a wrong (being denied a visa, say), is it so much more newsworthy than when the "masses" far away suffer some chilling fate or terrible catastrophe that should be an affront to all of us. So Donald Trump talking about building a wall or being invited to tea with the queen or whatever, has proven more newsworthy that the execution by Syrian dictator Assad of 13000 people who dared object to his dictatorship. That’s not people killed on battlefields or bombed into oblivion by his (or Russia's) air force. Thirteen thousands executed by hanging in the cellars of his prisons.  Many city centres have been stopped by demonstrators in recent time, but not a single one to do with the barbarity of these executions. Travellers stuck in an airport because of bad, mad or unnecessary new visa requirements and scenes of foaming indignation follow. Far away impoverished people (almost certainly all Muslims) in another land are being brutally executed with industrial scale efficiency by the thousand and barely a whimper of protest or concern from us. Someone (not) getting an award for best film of the year has generated way more media coverage.

 

How have we got to this point? That chilling quote of Stalin's comes to mind. When listening to an official enumerate the mass of deaths due to the great famine in the Ukraine, Stalin interjected, saying that, "if only one man dies of hunger, that’s a tragedy. If millions die that a statistic".  Although Stalin would not have known (or even been remotely interested), there is something here about how our response to moral outrages seems to be limited, even silenced, when confronted by the terrible fates that befall large groups of people.  We identify acutely with individual suffering and tragedy, which is why charities will hone in on stories of individual distress (just think how even animal charities will deploy heart rending accounts of the mistreatment of a poor horse or dog or cat etc.). However, its seems our ability to emphasise with intense emotion quickly trails off as the tragedy moves from the individual on to the many and thousands and the hundreds of thousands.  This is quite a well-researched area that even has a term - genocide neglect. Perhaps that’s why no one is out there demonstrating about 13 000 executions or the hundreds of thousands killed by Assad in that civil war.

 

So next time we catch ourselves venting our indignance at some slight or pettiness reported by hyperventilating talking heads on the box or on line, we should, from the comfort of our heated (or air-conditioned) homes, spare a moment to think about those almost infinitely greater but under reported outrages occurring simultaneously elsewhere. It’s the least we can do - there won't be any demonstrations.

 

Fake News and Fake Views: It’s all a lie. And that’s the truth…..

Well, it’s been quite a week. The POTUS has accused those media outlets that are less than effusive in their praise for him of being fake news outlets and enemies of the people. We are, if you believe it, (woops, apologies) being overwhelmed with false reporting, fabrication, misreporting, honest reporting of fake stories and dishonest reporting of the truth. It seems we are awash in leaks from unnamed sources, all reputable but hidden.

It reminds me of an old AC/DC song that went "And its an eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Its a lie, and that's the truth"

Let’s face it, the truth has always been a rather elusive concept when it comes down to opinions and perceptions. It's a bit like its sibling reality - everyone's is slightly different. Today though, it seems it's gone from elusive to almost mythical and perhaps even unrecognisable. The speed-of-light transmission of breaking news leads to saturation before verification. Common sense filters are swept away in in-coming waves of competing stories where instantly perceived facts are blended with the detritus of hastily informed opinion and convenient assumption which is an easy morph away from fabrication. All are put through endlessly spinning media centrifuges and spat out for consumption by the masses 24-7, 365 repeat.

The proliferating choice of endless, competing news outlets means we have ever more options in choosing our particular brand of the truth. Invariably we gravitate to that which chimes most with our perceptions of how we would like the world to be. So CNN viewers will avoid Fox, just as Daily Mail readers won't agree with much that the Guardian reports. Some may even believe Russia Today (Ok, I’m exaggerating for effect). But does listening to the views we expect to hear really give us a fair perception of the world? In a sense we are having comforting conversations with ourselves; no one benefits from such warmly agreeable, sterile non-exchanges of views. And without a variety of views to challenge our assumptions, we risk becoming set in our thinking and instantly intolerant of the opinions of others. That last point seems a particularly chronic condition at the moment but please feel free to violently disagree.

 Much is being said about us being in an alternative fact, post truth sort of world and that this is all sort of conveniently synonymous with the rise to power of Donald Trump. Really? We do have short memories. Anyone remember the Iraq war, dodgy dossiers, Tony Blair and his army of spin doctors as just an arbitrary example?  The truth (apologies for using the word again) is that this has been going on for just about as long as civilisation, for as long as we have had language, lived communally, had social hierarchies (and had to explain our behaviours to others). We decide what we would like to believe and then look for the facts to prove it, when it should be the other way round. That applies to politics as much as it does to creation science.

Once we have settled on our views; our "truths", we are rarely then disturbed by the facts or unsettled by the absence of that extinct beast known as common sense. How many suicide bombers ever change their views?  This is not some new post truth or post fact development. It was ever thus. Perhaps what is new is the fury at being confronted by an alternative view point. How dare we be challenged? In a sense, as we insist on all our inalienable individual human rights, so we demand and exercise the freedom to believe in all the delusions and ridiculous notions of our choice and how dare anyone try to wake us from these dreams of the unreal.

 So here we are, grown bloated on our diets of confirmation bias and its after-effects of angry intolerance.

 

·         In a world of a thousand different viewpoints, it seems we only want to hear our own.

 

·         In a take on Orwell's animals all being equal but some being more equal than others, we demand the right to our free speech, but insist on the right to silence others whose views we “know” are wrong. 

·         The truth is become some spectre that haunts us with its absence in a world deafened by the vulgar shouting of those defined only by their angry, competing ideological dogmas.  

·         Facts are selectively assembled to support preordained conclusions and we brand as heretics and cast out those whose mean biases differ from our own.

 And since I’m in the mood to quote literary giants of rock music (don’t you dare disagree), I’ll paraphrase Roger Daltry of The Who….“Welcome to the new reality. Same as the old reality”

 

So, believe what you will, for it shall be your truth

 

 

(I wrote the grimy lines below long ago in another time (1990s) and place but they seem oddly appropriate at the moment)

THE NEWS

PARALYSED

I GAZE UP INTO THE

UNBLINKING EYE OF TELEVISION

GROPING FEEBLY FOR MEANING

BETWEEN CAREFULLY SELECTED REAL TIME PICTURES

AND VOICE-OVER QUASI-TRUTHs.

THOSE IN-THE-KNOW SMILE BENIGNLY

AND SPIN ELEGANT JUSTIFICATIONS ABOVE MY HEAD,

TURNING FAILURES INTO SALVATIONS AND WATER INTO WINE.

ELSEWHERE ON-THE-SCENE NEWS JOURNALISTS

ANALYSE AND DISTORT FRACTURED FACTS AND FRAMES

FORCING SOME DISTANT AGONY NOT MINE

THROUGH THE CORRUPTED PRISMS

OF THEIR MASTERS’ POLITICAL MYOPIAS.

 I GRAB FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

ONLY TO FIND

THAT WHAT WAS SAID

IS NOW EMPHATICALLY DENIED

THEY ALL SPOKE BETWEEN THE LINES

THE TRUTH WAS ONLY EVER IMPLIED

 I GOT

EYEFULLS OF ADVERTS NOW

SPECIAL PILLS

THAT WILL MAKE ME LIVE FOR EVER

OR I’LL GET MY MONEY BACK

The 4th Industrial Revolution: Now is getting faster ....

When many tens of thousands of years ago, those first twigs were rubbed together and a guttering fire produced, it was no doubt uttered shortly thereafter, in whatever crude grunts passed for language, that change was afoot. Similarly, when that first set of crude and probably not very round, teeth-loosening wheels rolled forth, onlookers would have pronounced, in more sophisticated tones, that a great change was taking place. We've always been saying it. And it's always been true. In a sense through its always been seen as a reasonably steady gently accelerating process, with the odd spasmodic jerk and a few localised and depressing plateaus like the dark ages. But the pace of change feels different now. That hardly needs to be written or said, for if you haven't noticed this in the last few years or so, it can be safely assumed you're living an exile's life in outer Siberia.

 

We are now in the 4th Industrial revolution. It is being driven by a technology revolution the likes of which we have never before experienced and its impact is sending transformative shock waves through every aspect of our lives. Much of this is being driven by rampant progress in the field of artificial intelligence ("AI"), which, having suddenly erupted into the public consciousness, underpins much of the recent progress in machine learning, automation and robotics. This alone is already changing our world in ways which not so long ago we would have considered almost unthinkable. This has resulted in a plethora of eye swivelling warnings and predictions about the imminent demise of the biological human through to us all living in a state of permanent holiday from work. The nature of this rapidly accelerating technology means that it will probably develop in many ways that, from today's vantage point, we simply cannot foresee or imagine.

 

This is because we have entered the era of exponential technological change, and it's not just an AI related phenomenon; its happening everywhere. It's there in the speed and power of our super computers with Exascale computing (a billion billion calculations per second) predicted to be with us by the early 2020s. At the same time quantum computing, and the race for quantum supremacy, may be even closer and could even eclipse the journey towards Exascale computing. True quantum computing could well deliver a further shockwave to a world already in the midst of its own technologically induced future-shock. Again, this could have the potential to change our world in ways which are very hard to predict.

 

Just for a moment, consider that entity which we used to call the Internet.  Can you even remember what it was like 20 years ago, aside from being comically primitive by today's standards? In 1996 could you ever, in your wildest dreams, have imagined what it has become today along with all its tangential impacts upon our lives. Now try to imagine what it will be like in 2036, or even 2026. The technologies about us are moving at such speeds and in such interwoven and unconventional ways that such predictions are almost impossible now. It's as if our forward windows of prediction have slipped from decades to years towards months.

 

This revolution is all around us. It's will be in the exponential increase in distances that will be traveled by driverless cars and fleets of trucks. It's the rampant increase in the interconnectedness and smart-chatter of the so called Internet of things, the full implications of which may not yet be really understood. We see it in the rapidly vanishing size and expanding power of our hand held devices, which we still whimsically term "mobile phones" when they are packed with enough technology to have filled a car boot only a decade or so ago. We can sense this sudden change is the arrival and power of deep learning and learning machines and of social robotics. We have seen it is the seeming emergence out of nowhere of the "Cloud", with all its implications and how so much of what we used to possess, hoard and store has migrated away into the intangible but ever accessible. We read about astonishing medical developments like the emergence of 3-D Bioprinting and the ability to artificially construct living tissue..

 

It seems wherever we look, this multitude of strange new technologies is expanding, converging and multiplying with hitherto unprecedented speed and in increasingly unpredictable ways. And even as we recognise it for nothing like we have ever seen before, we may well remember this time as it being in its infancy.

 

For years this revolution has been expected. Initially it was foreshadowed by the authors of hard science fiction and a few lone Cassandras but gradually it has gained momentum as more serious intellectual and industry heavy weights, like Stephen Hawkings, Bill Gates and Elon Musk spoke up. Now it is entering mainstream consciousness as those respected periodicals of the establishment like the Economist are suddenly talking about AI, Uberisation and a universal basic income. Even still, this emerging wider awareness is still lagging behind the speed of developments, we still think of our future world according to our models of the past, yet it's not the rules of the game that are changing - it's a new game and very few of our "old world" institutions and mind sets are geared to keep up.

 

Our science fiction is quickly losing its fiction. Now, year by year, month by month, technology is accelerating with relentless speed with new developments seemingly rushing towards us. Despite this, technology will never move this slowly again. And that old, calmer world of just a few years ago will increasingly seem like some lingering twilight memory of a distant childhood, where everything seemed so much safer and more stable. Yet, like our childhoods, that is gone for good now. This is the new normal.

 

"Now" is getting faster and it will never slow down.

Killed by Death: Lemmy remembered

 

 

 

When Motörhead's  Lemmy Kilmister died in December 2015 part of rock music died with him. Lemmy was the only really, true rock n roll star. The rest have only ever been pretending.  

 

Since I was about 14 I've been listening to Motörhead and Lemmy week in week out.  I was a typical scrawny kid with a cheap cassette recorder listening to badly recorded music on dodgy tapes but I've always loved rock music and it's Lemmy and Motörhead who have, rather discordantly and bombastically, been the sound track to so much of my life. Like so many fans of the band, it a life long thing, it's part of you. You don't grow out of it or move on to quieter more sensible or conventional music. As your tastes change, so they stay the same....

 

When you went to a Motörhead concert it was like the annual gathering of a strange, dark tribe beneath a pyrotechnic sky of swirling lights and amidst a primordial storm of volume. It didn't matter who you were or where you came from, whether you were a hustler, or a brain surgeon, a biker, an anarchist or an auditor. You were part of the tribe.

 

Lemmy seemed indestructible and uncompromising in a horrible, vulgar world, impoverished with its vapid fashion and  cheap shallow instantly disposable music. He was a snarling voice of anger cursing an increasingly Orwellian world that would like to decide how each individual should think and act and speak. It's free speech for all as long as we as we all agree that none us disagree. He was no respecter of all those systems and beliefs that we fool ourselves into thinking give us purpose and order in our over managed, over cautious, over insured and under-lived lives. His voice was a gruff roar, with his bitter telling lyrics curled around snarling low slung riffs, monster-clanking bass runs and the thrashing beat of the world's most terrifying drummer.

 

Yet we knew this moment was coming. His frailty over the last 2 years of his life was a haunting but very real harbinger of what we knew was inevitable. He was fading away before our very eyes. This pale and drawn old man, standing on stage, in a way bidding his goodbyes with each passing show in the only way he knew how. Even from within the maelstrom of the music the final silence was not far away.

 

Motörhead have played their last show now and Lemmy is long gone. Yes, we will still play those songs but there will be no new music. This is not just a silence that is the absence of decibels. This is the sadness of memories that stretch over a life back to a 14 year old kid sitting with his best friend trying to decipher the lyrics to a hysterically bad Top Of The Pops recording of Ace of Spades.

 

Lemmy was once asked what the secret to a long life was. The typically pithy response was "not dying". Tragically, in 2015 he ignored himself for the last time. The world is a sadder, and slightly quiter place as a result.....

 

"You know I'm going to loose, and that gamblings for fools, 

But that's the way I like it baby,

I don't wanna live forever......"

 

 

Lemmy Kilmister 24 December 1945 to 28 December 2015.