ISSUE 10 SUNDAY 7 JUNE 2020 IN THIS ISSUE • Camilla Blackett exposes the lie that is “Over There” The wonder is how everything, • The Art of Junior absolutely everything, anyone Tomlin can name that makes our so- • Lunch with Andy called civilisation unique has a Warhol scared source – a sacred purpose. • Gnostic golf epiphanies + more Peter Kingsley, Catafalque It was the week summer officially started, although it felt like it had been summer forever. And finally, in a cruel irony only nature could orchestrate, the rain came down, ‘Like the angel come down from above’, as Steve Earle sang. Collectively, looking in horror at what’s happening ‘over there’ as Camilla Blackett powerfully reminded us in these pages, so the reckoning with a failing state and a changing country that has refused to change sharpened in focus. We have reached astonishing new depths of achievement when it comes to introspection; while even still this week at The Social Gathering marks our 10th iteration as a collaborative blog. Tom Noble, our designer, marketing guru and long-suffering Leeds fan, wanted to do something big to celebrate that moment (the 10 issues, not the introspection, that is). Perhaps, although this would belie his commitment to the hopeless West Yorkshire cause, there’s something hopeful about reaching double-figures. But how do you define BIG in a world that seems to be getting smaller? Carl, who runs the bar and whose vision led us to this place, said fuck it, let’s celebrate #23. The milestone meant little to me until I started to think about it as the week unfolded with its usual manic energy; up at 5am writing, editing, reading, communicating with authors, catching up with correspondence, procrastinating, drinking tea, sorting through records, listening to reggae, eating eggs, eventually walking the dog at 7am with my 8-year-old girl whose innocence has been a balm in the darkness then eventually ‘starting’ the day. I was taken to a place far from celebration and haunted by the word decimation, which Wikipedia helpfully reminds us was ‘a form of Roman military discipline in which every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort’. As a ritual acknowledgement in honour of our 10th issue, I think we’ll wait till the bar reopens before putting Robin through this indignity. But how do we celebrate these occasions when we have temporarily lost the means, the methods and the madness that facilitates the ‘normal’ way we come together to celebrate or mourn as a community? It is almost three months since I ventured into London. I am 48 miles away in a hamlet nestled in the triangulated gusset where Essex meets Cambridgeshire and rubs up flirtatiously against Hertfordshire. It is beautiful. I have no complaints and nothing to complain about, even though I frequently do. I defiantly celebrate it (even though I am a Yorkshireman) as Essex but it could be any of the Shires: peaceful, comfortable, genteel. I am woken by the crack and croak of pheasants just after 4am. Most days I don’t resent it and I start the day with a mix of excitement and the trepidation of Bill Murray in one of his most celebrated roles. My last two visits to London were during that week you might, if you’re a wanker, describe as liminal: the second week of March 2020 when every reasonable person had decided lockdown was inevitable with the acceptance of the Dear Leader – I refuse to embrace him with the determiner, Our. The first was a celebration which I had feared might be muted in the context of a cancelled (and mishandled in the process) London Book Fair: the launch of my new imprint, White Rabbit. It felt like we were getting the hugs in before last orders. By the Thursday of that week and my last visit to the metropolis, those hugs felt risky, transgressive even; the elbows were out (not code). It was Andrew Weatherall’s funeral. If ever an occasion demanded hugs surrounded by dance music royalty like Dave Beer and David Holmes it’s the burial rites of an Acid House Shaman. A celebration of the birth of something and a Wake. We don’t need to force the symbols; life delivers these determined moments to us like lessons from the Ancient Texts. Like Tony Soprano’s ducks. This enterprise and collaboration between a bar and a new publishing imprint began as a response to Lockdown. But Lockdown, we’re told, is over. What the hell do we do now, we thought? Remember those frantic first few weeks? The adrenalin, the hope, the fear, the weird sense of entropy. So ten issues and ten weeks in, with lockdown ‘fraying’ to coin a verb from the tabloids, What the hell do we do now? I have found it difficult to read these past few months, which is troubling for someone whose principal (only?) professional requirement is to excel in this department. But one book, recommended by my therapist, has helped me enormously, ‘spoken to me’ as they say. It is called Catafalque by Peter Kingsley. I doubt you will read it (though I recommend you do!) so there’s no harm in me sharing the final line: ‘It is only by shedding everything, including ourselves, that we sow the seeds of the future.’ This national crisis and the reckoning to come has seen contrary impulses pulling at us from all directions. The fear and suffering has meant we gravitate towards universals, ideas about change and the betterment of society, an end to injustice and abuses of power. All of which at the risk of going woo-woo, starts by looking within. Carl Jung said, ‘The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. But he can make no progress until he becomes very much better acquainted with his own nature.’ We are insistently told by our ghoulish government that they are Led by the Science. Right now I dare to dream, and imagine a world where we are Led by the Sacred. To where, I have no idea. But only faith and trust in the things you don’t understand can lead you to enlightenment. “OVER THERE” CAMILLA BLACKETT At the end of last week we asked friends in the States if they could paint us the view from there as part of our regular series and also what we could do as The Social Gathering to help. Screenwriter Camilla Blackett responded by holding up a mirror. Please read and consider what she’s saying. And to state the obvious, this is us at the Social stating categorically that Black Lives Matter. As a Black British woman living in the US I was asked to help provide guidance on “ways in which people in the UK can help with the situation over there the US”. And yet it is that particular phrase that sticks in my teeth. “Over There.” Those two little words “Over There” have been present in all of the genuine and well meaning texts from white British friends as they express abject horror as they watch coverage of American cities burning in protest of a week of killings of Black Americans. “Over There.” So let us talk about “Over There”. “Over There” is a deft deflection. “Over There” is a minimisation. “Over There” is a lie. “Over There” is a denial that London didn’t burn for nights in rebellion against the killing of Mark Duggan and decades of violent racial profiling. “Over There” is a pivot from the fact that in a pandemic, Black Britons are dying at four times the rate than their white counterparts due to structural inequality. “Over There” is to silence Kayla Williams, a black mother of 3, dying from Covid after being ignored by paramedics. “Over There” is ignorance to Cann Hall Police bragging on Twitter about increased powers to harass black and brown bodies in the full view of the public. “Over There” is to ignore Desmond Mombeyarara being tasered, unprompted, by Greater Manchester Police in front of his small child. “Over There” is to dim that black paramedics are detained and harassed simply for standing outside. “Over There” is to suppress that Belly Mujinga was killed by the man who spat upon her and British Transport Police have still, done nothing. But what’s most jarring about the phrasing “Over There” is that the supreme wealth of the British Empire was built upon going “Over There” and that the violence of that habitual impulse is at the very rotten root of what you see on fire in cities across the US today. So my guidance to my white British friends is not to look “Over There”. It is to look at your feet. At the place where you stand. And to ask yourself, not how to assist in a rebellion overseas but to grapple with the one brewing in the proverbial teacup of home. Camilla Blackett is a screenwriter based in LA WHERE DO WE LIVE NOW? #5 WILL BURNS Will Burns contemplates nature, Chequers, raving and detritus in the Chiltern Hills Lonely, fraught, strange days. I am up at four with the sun and the birdsong. My days have taken on the rhythm of these non-human things, beginning in dim light and settling into the long lull of the afternoon before a brief flare of energy as the evening turns into the night.