I'm sat in Westminster Cathedral on set for the new Ridley Scott film about Napoleon. I’ve got some time so it seems more than a bit fitting to sit and ponder God. Brought up a devout atheist from a young age, the question of God and its being, never really interested me ‘cause as far as I could see, it wasn’t real. The Christians claimed that God was all knowing and all loving, and as an empathetic youth I could clearly see that if God loved us, it was doing a pretty bad job of helping us to feel and understand that love. Note here, my lack of gender pronouns for this thing called God. Labelling it up one way or another is divisory and I don’t think we need more of that now do we? Anyway, back to to the point. God, what is it? Im not here to argue that it is or isn’t real, I’m not trying to tell you what to believe, only what I believe, or at least begin to see. Because belief is a long winding road and, as already stated, my road to heaven started in the pits of hell. So, about late teens, early twenties I managed to break a cycle of ignorance started in my childhood. Not ignorance in a negative sense, I’ve always cared, most of my life too much. I wasn’t ignorant of virtuous teachings, I’m sure most humans by now understand that being kind to others is the only real way forwards in our lives and as a species, but I was ignorant of the bigger picture. The ‘Gods Plan’ if you will. I stumbled on God actually while reading about ancient aliens, old ‘Gods’. A beautiful picture was painted of the earliest civilisations and their worship of beings far greater in understanding than themselves. The kings were ‘righteous shepherds’ everyone was equal and everything worked fine. Lovely isn’t it? But just like most of history it all came to a crashing end. War and disease ripped apart the first culture and left in its wake a new culture of masculine dominance. Kings were now conquerers, no longer here to shepherd, but to take land and reign supreme. Not sure how that happened because it's a pretty dramatic shift in dynamic, however, Marduk and Babylon appear to be at the heart of it. I’m getting a little off topic. So I found amongst the aliens, God itself, or at least how to find it. There was this one God right, Ningishzidda to the Sumerians, Quetzocoatl to the Aztecs, Thoth to the Egyptians and Hermes Trismegitus to the Greeks. The Thrice God. This being, be whatever that may be, was accredited some pretty amazing stuff. Of bringing poetry and the arts to the people, of great sciences and the earliest luna calendars, and most notably, The Hermetica. The teachings of this book inspiring the renaissance artists to create some of the most important examples of Art the world has ever known. It was in these pages I found the first ideas that allude to a God. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you what’s in the book, if you’re interested, go read it, but what I will say is it portrays the universe in a way that speaks of God. Just like in Buddhism, all things are God, as well as everything that isn’t. It outlines the fundamental principles of the universe. Things, that when you actually think about it are pretty obvious, like Polarity for example. All things are on scales between two poles of absolutes. Hot/cold, light/dark, men/women, you get the gist. What’s not so obvious are the scales themselves. Like what scale does my empty coffee cup fall on? Maybe its empty on the empty/full scale. Seeing that there were indeed fundamentals that nature seems to follow suggests the existence of a God, for if there are rules, what set them? I always keep a healthy dose of skepticism to my study of life, and of God. Belief, to me, does seem necessary to reap the rewards of a higher plane, however discovery can only be made when doubt is allowed into the frame. Did the Catholic church not have the aptly named Saint Thomas, the doubter. Who doubted Christs resurrection and was canonised after jamming his fingers in to poor old Jesus’ spear wound. To approach spirituality as a science is something I think we miss in todays quest for truth. We have a world of believers and non believers and very few in-between trying to view the world objectively, and to try to prove through tangible parameters, things that people commonly assume impossible. Seek and ye shall find, but none will coz they know not what they are looking at. So, everything is God right? The table, the laptop, the coffee and the cup. I am, you are, everybody is and nobody is. A star is, so is a planet, all the stuff in between is and everything beyond our shallow perception of existence. Pretty simple right? All and nothing. Yet still there must be stages to the scale. See if there’s an overall God mind then its pretty brutal. It seems to specialise in fear and misery, and as much as there is beauty and hope in the world, the balance is always in favour of destruction and decay. How can this be right? I see the answer to this in the way we dream. So you’re asleep. Dreaming away about some mad stuff and in that moment you are in the dream but also creating the dream in your unconscious mind. You are everything in the dream. The classroom, the pupils and teachers, and the clothes you’ve forgotten to wear for school that day, to reference a common nightmare. All these things are creations by your mind as you sleep. You are unaware that you are creating these things and also experiencing them as a playable character. This to me is what our reality is. This is how God can be everything, it’s all created in a universal mind. Now, just as in the dream you are unaware you are creating the dreamscape, perhaps the God we talk of is unaware of our existence in its eternal unconsciousness. Is it too much of a stretch of the imagination? But that raises the question of, ‘what is the spirit?’ Because if the One God is blissfully sleeping, what keeps things under control in real time? Well, not time per se, as we material beings are the only things bound by this constraint. But like angels and demons, Boddisatva’s and Buddah’s, Jesus’, Oni and Yokai. These are things humans have experienced forever. Where are they on the scale of God? Using the principle of polarity I discovered something which I believe the church in all its power doesn’t want people to know. That we are the opposite end of the God scale and are therefore Gods ourselves. I know. Sacrilege right? They say we are made in the image but I believe that we are made as Gods. The problem with people is that most of them display no virtuous characteristics. The many spoil it for the few. But to understand the principles and to practise faith is to walk in the steps of the Godhead is it not? Jesus was the son of God but aren’t we all children of God? Maybe we are Gods in the sense that we are so opposite to God that we actually come full circle. Just as ice can burn and you can have black light. The opposites of the scale are in essence pure versions of themselves and each other. We have been given a gift as conscious beings to learn what it is to be God, not just to go “its a bearded dude. He lives in the clouds. Job done, what’s the next philosophically enormous question I can answer with two points?”. We have to learn how it works and the more we do the more it presents itself to us. So feel it and practise your Godliness. Just don’t go around telling people you’re a God or people will throw you in with Kanye and you’ll be trying to figure out how to eat with your hands tied behind your back in a straight jacket before you’ve had a chance to say ‘let there be light’. Re cap. God, the unconscious mind. I think the Buddhists call it the Brahman but it’s been a while since I read anything like that. It’s everything and nothing. God, us. We walk this earth as creators and destroyers bringing things into manifestation through our link to the God mind, through our minds. Made in the same image and all that. God, everything in between. The spiritual aspect of our existence, all the ghosts and ghouls, angels and demons. Also Gods because they transcend our realities and time. They are capable of great understanding and power, influence and manifestation. What they don’t have was the greatest gift given to humans. Free will. They serve in heaven, its our duty to rule in hell. It's your choice what kind of ruler you become. The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. The Thrice God. Walk the earth as its vessel. Choose love.

Let me start by stating, I know what you will say. “Autotune is for people who can’t sing and therefore shouldn’t be”. Very valid. I used to be of a purest mindset too, I hated the use of autotune. Although I secretly loved lil Wayne lollipop. Banger. Don’t care what anyone says. For me, a vocalist that used autotune was like a painter that just took pictures and printed them out, if Michelangelo had used a 3D printer for David, or if Joey Jordison was actually just a drum machine on the sly. Its so blatantly obvious when its on a track I couldn’t understand why people didn’t care. Like, we are putting these people on pedestals and they can’t even do the one job they have. An extremely well paid job with tons of perks. Imagine if you could just autotune things in life. There would be no more restaurants coz you could just bang a load of random ingredients in a bowl and get a Michelin star meal. You wouldn’t have to be good at anything ever again. I think that’s the point that really pissed me off about It now I’m putting it down on page. I was trying my hardest to be a musician. Practising instruments, softening the edges on the tone deafness I inherited from my mother. And what’s the point? Everything is midi, anything shit can be clicked, and then it's good. Probably should have found my passion in something that robots can’t do better than us, not sure what that is though. So I have this hatred for a thing, but not what it produces because I liked that lil Wayne song. Paradox right. Got loads of em knocking about in my head. Id say that I meditate on them but the reality is, every time I’m reminded of a thing, especially something I have a passionate hatred for, I try to figure out why I hate it. Its mindfulness of my opinions, what’s formed them, and whether I can I validate how I’m feeling. Or find reasons why my opinion is actually a bit shite, based on more understanding due to more experience as time goes on. That’s like an equation of sorts. Acceptance is equal to opinions plus mindfulness, multiplied by time or A=t(O+M). So anyway, there I was having all the same purest opinions about autotune, and how it was ruining the credibility of musicians, and taking a big chunk of effort and therefore, quality, out of music. I hate to break it to you but Mozart was actually just a guy that found one of those old timey saloon pianos you see in westerns that play themselves, behind his house dumped in mysterious circumstances. All the sonatas were already in it. Mumble rap was now massive and it seemed the love for musicians who couldn’t actually make music was reaching a climax. I mistakenly through Juicewrld in with this crowd. It was actually the documentary on Netflix, about the life and death of Lil Peep, that was the turning point of my opinion. If you haven’t seen it, I’m not gonna explain it to you, just go and watch it. These were no longer face tattooed twats cashing in on a hype. Well don’t get me wrong, most of them are, but the format they were expressing themselves in showed its truth over the course of that documentary. I was heavily influenced by the emo scene in my music, being of the empathetic mind, struggling to find my place as someone who cares in a world that seemingly does not. An artist forced into a system of bureaucracy like a star shaped peg in a square hole. And this was just that. Yeah it was weird dark rap music but it was just sadness really. And what goes well with sadness more often than not? Good old fashioned substance abuse. So this brings me neatly to the point. Understanding why Lil Peep meant so much to people brought me back to Juicewrld. They were the next generation of Blink and My Chem for the next generation of youths. Their disenfranchisement and sadness was palpable through their music, it feels real. I actually love Juicewrld, I think he had more talent and understanding of himself than many other artists I’ve looked up to through the years. In his melodies I hear Tom Delonge from my past and in the beats i hear the future, or at least the present. I realised while listening that the magic is vulnerability. Juicewrld songs often open with the energy he is finding to the energy, a glimpse through the finished product to the making of. Brave stuff. And you can hear, in some tracks at least, that he is absolutely battered. This is where autotune becomes a Godsend. It takes his raw, vulnerable vocal and sweetens it up a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he could have come back sober and done the takes without autotune but that’s not the point. Real music connects you to feelings, and real musicians connect you with them. Those tracks are perfect because they sound great, and you are transported into his darkness. A piece of true Art that would not be possible without autotune. Peace

We stand at the crux of civilisation. Encompassed by the world. Exposed completely to all of her woes, like no other generation of human beings in all the histories known. And it’s a bit of headache really. Feelings run high in our times. In desperation, it is human nature to search for the answer of today in a sort of sepia tonal, vinyl crackling reverie of how good the past was, as well as, forward thinking utopian visions of just how good things could be in our future. These days, you’re one or the other. Ive always found it funny that here, in England, “our” culture is held in such high regard. As a nation we are all sons and daughters of settlers, refugees and conquerers. We are the combination of many religions, traditions, ideals, artistry and philosophies and these cultural exchanges created generations of scholars, Artists, scientists and businessmen. An academic elite, ultimately culminating in control over almost the entire world. We owe our success to the sharing of ideas and ideals. Our island has been shuffled more times by the hands of fate than the dealer at the rain mans table, that’s why it’s a joke, the thought that mixing with other cultures is ever a bad thing, long term. I think one of the biggest things a Utopian Dreamer forgets is that historically the inhabitants of this island have always met the countless migrations with malice and fear. The first vikings were looking for fertile land to farm and look at the how that panned out. It’s a muscle memory our fragile nervous systems haven’t work out yet, maybe fear of the unknown will never truly leave us as a species. Our Sepia Toners on the other hand need to remember that although new people can bring with them negative traits, they also have a lot to offer. So like yeah, these viking dudes may have scary new ideas about how there’s many gods and how we must appease them through bloodshed and sacrifice, however, they do have much better boats than us so maybe let's see if they’re friendly? We have forgotten why culture was created, and what it means. Two people are chatting over a bar a few pints deep. One turns to the other and exclaims with reckless abandon “bull fighting is totally uncivilised and morally bankrupt! Now ill have another pint of Carlsberg and a packet of pork scratchins” to which the second replies “who are we to question the Spanish culture? People have been bullfighting for generations. And no, not until you compensate me for the stain you left on the pool table.” See the thing about culture is, its an ongoing process. The earliest ideas of it concreting itself into societies at a time in where a civilisation needed to find ways for its commoner to connect with each other, and serve the purpose of entertaining and relaxing them in-between hard days of building mad shit like pyramids. Because positive action can only happen in a happy kingdom. We, as people, have built our colosseums based on pop interest. We as human beings have always needed to find that connection with others. It makes us feel more comfortable knowing our neighbours have similar interests, and that when you eventually bump into each other it won’t be awkward because you both watched Siochain of Gaul narrowly sidestep the blade of Tibernius Pagan Scourge before thrusting his spear through his thigh and repeatedly smashing his head on the ground, so you will definitely have something to talk about. Its more common practise these days to heatedly debate who deserves to be in the champions league but the feeling is the same. All of our cultural outlets serve this purpose of bringing people together and giving us things to discuss, but unfortunately for the 21st century inhabitant it serves only as another reason why we cant get on with each other. We deem the culture of others to be wrong and it drives the wedge in further. Take the earlier example of bullfighting. Now as a person that abhors cruelty and injustice of all forms, I should take great pleasure from those moments the bull gets that perfect head flick in to plunge his horn straight through the throat of some dressed up bastard who gets his enjoyment from publicly torturing an animal in an arena where the odds are dramatically in his favour. And you know what, I do. But as a person that finds pride in a wider understanding of things, I know that this practise of savagery comes from a time when society said it is acceptable to do this kind of thing, and human beings being lovers of brutality and fixaters on Death were happy to go on with the show. At the end of the day we all look to society to tell us what is right and wrong. But times change. For the better, always. I believe that a new form of moral maturity definitely exists, but it is wrong to expect it in everyone. Whether your politics are left or right, you are a sepia toner or utopian dreamer, the emphasis now should be on understanding each other. We all have a lot to learn.