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

Although I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking it was. I grew up with what I would call traditional arts; drawing, painting, sculpture, music et cetera et cetera. My dad went to art college and was always up to something around the house. He painted on canvas’ for the bathroom, sculpted concrete pieces for the garden, and wrote music on his acoustic guitar in his bedroom. As a kid id say stuff like ‘draw me Spiderman fighting green Goblin’ as I went to bed and woke up to it on the side in the morning. Dad knew his shit. Well he didn’t need to know it he just did it. Art for me was always about the doing, the creating. As I got older I found that Art needn’t just be what it is it could also have meaning. It could speak. I first found this in the music I listened to. A punk kid, I resonated with the the feelings and emotions in the songs, art wasn’t just the riff it was the words over it and that transcended what I thought Art to be at the time. See, for those that care, the question “what is Art” should be a constant and un answerable foundation in artistic evolution. Needless to say Art doesn't need us, at all, in its evolution. This is obvious from the Eons of creating things like bacteria through vegetation to living breathing awesome things like dinosaurs, all the way down to arsehole things like us humans. Nature is pure in its Art. We broken things have an affected beauty to our creations and although not perfect, that’s sort of the point. We have taken Art to many places over our short span on the planet, proved many things were possible, and healed ourselves and others through expression of our innermost selves. Art is everything and Art will continue to be everything when we are gone. Art is the product of Mind and Matter. I spent a long time on that quote. Its had 3 previous iterations this being the simplest and most pure I can get it. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think that trying to actually label something as grandiose as Art is a good thing, nor is it in any way necessary, but everything is something, and this is as vaguely specific as I can get to the nature of its being. As it suggests in its self, anything that starts as thought and ends up in the plane of our reality is, and should be classed as Art. I follow a page on instagram called inspired to write. It’s great. The author Amy McNee basically uses her voice to fight the forces of your procrastination demons, and all the creative anxiety goblins that live in the mind of any creative. For this I salute and thank her. She posted up something the other day that got me thinking and it ultimately led to me getting that mind shit down on this page thus fulfilling the thing I’m talking about whilst talking about it. Inception shit. The gist of the post was about the new wave of Art, Content, and its Artists. I did feel slightly nauseated at the thought of allowing in youtubers that review airlines and tiktokkers that do a 5 second dance into the Art club. I mean you can’t blame me for expecting a certain level of expression and beauty in the thing I hold closest to my heart, but I mean, these artists had the thought to do something. Then they did it. And even though id only just come up with my ultra profound, highly sophisticated new philosophy on Art, my first experience of Art was that it was about the doing. And no one can argue these post artists didn’t do something. I mean I don’t know where id be without videos of animals attacking people, life hacks or other artists sharing their art. Sharing and communication are some of the greatest traits our species has. Now I’m moving towards a place of sharing more of my work. I’ve been creating it for fifteen years, ‘bout time the world got some, but for me I only ever created because I wanted to. It was never about the validation. Turns out id just never received any. However, as willing as I am now, to extend the Art branch to any soul that feels they have something to create, I do still believe that like everything, creation is on a spectrum. And although I can pull my pubic hairs taught and twang out seven nation army, I am not Beethoven. I’m not even Nikelback.