SOHO (1996-99) was my starting gun being fired on myself

SOHO (1996-99) was my starting gun being fired on myself, it was my Manifesto, my Communist Manifesto of 1999, my declaration of war and of my intent. Now MOLOCH (2020) is a statement of where I am 20 years later. Setbacks, slips back along the way, but overall 20 years of strong growth and progress, and blooming & blossoming. You can’t have the ointment without the fly. You can’t have the soup without the fly. You can’t have the eye without the mote. If you don’t want the ointment because of the fly, I do understand, but you’re missing out on some good ointment. If you don’t want the soup because of the fly, I do understand, but you’re missing out on some good soup. If you don’t want my eyes because of the mote in them, you’re missing out on some beautiful eyes! I said on page 1 of AUTISMUS (1999-2002) (what I thought was to be my first book but became my second!) this is ‘A MANIFESTO FOR FIGHTING. A MANIFESTO FOR GLEEFUL WAR. A MANIFESTO FOR REVOLUTION’, but in fact it is SOHO (1996-99) that now precedes it that I see is the most glorious manifesto for war, the most glorious setting out of my position AGAINST the society surrounding me on all sides. Surrounding me on all sides so they thought it easy to crush me and yet it was I who ran rings around them. It was I who played them like a piano. It was I who has increased his salary every year. It was I who now has 10 books to his name, and am lauded by such respected figures as Troy Francis as “one of the greatest degenerates of modern times” and by Nick August for “proper artful decadence and degeneracy” and “the mindset that conquers”.

SOHO (1996-99) is a monument to the time when the ‘Great War’ against me was unleashed

SOHO (1996-99) is a monument to the time when the ‘Great War’ against me was unleashed, like a dam bursting, and the ‘great separation’ began, when polite society “cast me out” thanks God. I don’t know if anyone is ever brave enough to cast themselves out. You need to BE cast out, be forcefully expelled, be exiled. This forces you to make a life in exile, and in exile you achieve your glory. Like James Joyce “exiled” from Ireland, Marx from Germany. For some of us, exile is when we are born, and only when exiled can we start our rise to power, and glory, and triumph. Only in exile can we bloom & blossom. It was the “comfort” of living in a society that never really liked me that held me back for so long. But—hard to cast yourself out! You need them to do it for you. So you provoke them to it. In relationships, too. I’ve been in relationships where I’ve provoked the girl to end it, because I knew I needed to be free again, but didn’t want to hurt them by doing it myself.

I don’t like reading fiction anymore

I don’t like reading fiction anymore. I want to read about the author who wrote the fiction, what was it really about. What really happened in his life that is the raw material for his fiction. I loved Ian Rankin’s BBC documentary exploration of the story behind Jekyll & Hyde and in particular his trying to work out where was Jekyll’s house. In the book it is stated as being only “in a Soho square” but which Soho square? Which house number? Wonderfully, Rankin tracked it down to No.28 Leicester Square, now the Moon Under Water Wetherspoon’s pub!

Maybe self-preservation led him to set the novel in London rather than Edinburgh. On the other hand, London was perfect. It had been the home of a Scots-born doctor called John Hunter. Hunter was known in all the right circles. He was married to a patron of the arts who would give grand parties at their home in Leicester Square. But if you continued through the house you came to Hunter's surgery. You might also be shown his vast (and growing) collection of weird and wonderful specimens. And eventually, you'd find yourself in the cramped accommodation used by his students, beyond which a door led out into a narrow alley off what is now Charing Cross Road. This was where, at dead of night, the grave-robbers arrived with fresh deliveries of cadavers.

John Hunter did like his little experiments …

When you read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde you will be struck by the similarities. (Jekyll himself purchased such a property from the heirs of a great medical man.)

What has now “become” my first book SOHO (1996-99) was never meant to be a book at all as that material seemed too inchoate

What has now “become” my first book, SOHO (1996-99), was never meant to be a book at all, as that material seemed too inchoate. AUTISMUS (1999-2002) was always meant to be my first book. Only as I was about to publish AUTISMUS, I thought let me just check the words I was writing immediately before, and there was such good stuff in it, I thought I have to try to pull this together. SOHO (1996-99) kind of naturally had an atmosphere of 1896-99 about it (in my head anyway), helped by my love of Ernest Dowson, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack the Ripper (not love in his case exactly), and I do think MOLOCH (2020-) will have the spirit of the 1920s about it. This could be a fantastic era dawning now—as Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings reshape the political landscape in a radical way, at the same time as I hope for a similar paradigm shift in my own life; my return to Moloch the first part of it. I love the defiance of it (SOHO 1996-99), the defiant arrogance of it, the declaration of war of it, the refusal to take a single step backwards of it—on the contrary, the deliberate marching right into the heart of the enemy of it. Before the rest of my books became more about my unrequited lovesickness for one unobtainable woman after another, AUTISMUS, LOTTA, THE COLD ICY AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS, CASANOVA LOST WANDERINGS and THE STRIPPER. MOLOCH will be a return to the cold defiant arrogance of SOHO.

I have started work on a new book MOLOCH (2020)

I have started work on a new book MOLOCH (2020). MOLOCH will feature the flourishes and adornments I always wanted to put into SOHO (1996-99). If SOHO was the chrysalis then MOLOCH is the glorious iridescent butterfly. My life has absolutely followed a pattern of 7 year eras: 1992 "discovering" Soho was the occasion of an incredible flourishing, blooming & blossoming in my life, erotically, musically, artistically, spiritually. When I tell you I'd never even seen a naked woman before, then you will appreciate the effect on me of descending those steepling deathtrap Sunset Strip stairs, watching the curtain squeak open and then seeing this young woman stripping to Tallulah. 1999 "discovering" Europe was occasion of a new flourishing, blooming & blossoming etc as I discovered "new Sohos" that gave me the erotic excitement Soho had once done. 2006 Flying Scotsman, 2013 post-marriage Vienna & Brussels. 2020?
For me SOHO just crackles with electricity, furious indignant controlled rage at anyone daring to try to crush me, and hilarity at them being so stupid to think they could. I love the exaltation in it; I love the tone of SUPERIORITY in it. The fact that in real life I am really so shy makes my tone of SUPERIORITY in the book all the more thrilling! Of course even a morbidly shy person can feel innately superior to every other person in the universe. The two things are not mutually exclusive, and certainly not in my case. My innate feeling of superiority is something I constantly have to suppress, to hide, like a Victorian lady with huge bosoms had to suppress them, as such overt exhibitions of “sexuality” and “erotic invitation” would wreak havoc on the world around them! (Turns me on just thinking about her, you little beauty you!) I love the RAGE and the VICIOUS TRIUMPH of every word of SOHO. I don’t know if this is normal but I re-read SOHO (start to finish) about five times every week and it thrills me every time. I enjoy all my own books, but they don’t give me a punch in the guts like SOHO does every time. 1998-1999 was the time I was under most pressure and this pressure produced my most powerful writing. In some sense I see myself at the start of SOHO as a caterpillar just entering the chrysalis, and I’ve been in it for more than 20 years. In MOLOCH I see now as the moment I finally emerge as the butterfly. But I shall find out—the idea of a book at the start is not necessarily where I will end up.

Started reading Friedrich Nietzsche's The Dawn of Day (1881) and was immediately struck by its aptness to the current struggle to free ourselves of the tentacles of the European Union

Started reading Friedrich Nietzsche's The Dawn of Day (1881) and was immediately struck by its aptness to the current struggle to free ourselves of the tentacles of the European Union. I could not help transposing every mention of the word 'morality' to 'the EU':

"...in the presences of the EU, as before all authority, we must not even think, much less speak: here we must obey! Ever since the beginning of the world, no authority has permitted itself to be made the subject of criticism; and to criticise the EU--to look upon the EU as a problem, as problematic--what! was that not--is that not--immoral?--But the EU has at its disposal not only every means of intimidation wherewith to keep itself free from critical hands and instruments of torture: its security lies rather in a certain art of enchantment, in which it is a past master--it knows how to 'enrapture'. It can often paralyse the critical will with a single look, or even seduce it to itself: yea, there are even cases where the EU can turn the critical will against itself; so that then, like the scorpion, it thrusts the sting into its own body. The EU has for ages been an expert in all kinds of devilry in the art of convincing: even at the present day there is no orator who would not turn to it for assistance...The EU has shown itself to be the greatest mistress of seduction ever since men began to discourse and persuade on earth."

"The right answer would rather have been that all philosophers including Kant himself were building under the seductive influence of the EU--that they aimed at certainty and 'truth' only in appearance; but that in reality their attention was directed towards 'majestic EU edifices,' to use once more Kant's innocent mode of expression, who deems it his 'less brilliant, but not undeserving' task and work 'to level the ground and prepare a solid foundation for the erection of those majestic EU edifices'".

"He, too, had been bitten by the EU tarantula, Rousseau;  he, too, felt weighing on his soul that EU fanaticism of which another disciple of Rousseau's, Robespierre, felt and proclaimed himself to be the executor: de fonder sur la terre l'empire de la sagesse, de la justice, et de la vertu. (Speech of June 4th, 1794)."

"And if this book is pessimistic even in regard to the EU, even above the confidence in the EU--should it not be a German book for that very reason? For, in fact, it represents a contradiction, and one which it does not fear: in it confidence in the EU is retracted--but why? Out of morality!...here, if anywhere, are we still men of conscience, because, to put the matter in plain words, we will not return to that which we look upon as decayed, outlived, and superseded, we will not return to something 'unworthy of belief'...we will not permit ourselves to open up a lying path to old ideals...opposed also to [that] which would fain make us worship where we no longer believe...opposed, in short, to all this European feminism (or idealism, if this term be thought preferable), which everlastingly 'draws upward', and which in consequence everlastingly 'lowers' and 'degrades'."

If Nietzsche said God is dead, Christian morality is dead, nowadays we say the EU is dead. The once noble idea has been revealed as a pernicious, poisonous motivation & methodology. It has become truly rotten at the core, and deserves to be burned to the ground. Great Britain to our eternal glory is trying--trying--to be the first to strike the blow.

What would Karl Kraus make of the EU! What would Friedrich Nietzsche make of the EU!