Doc Strange

The Boulevard

I was on the CB radio before there was an internet. Before apps, before profiles, before any of it. And we figured out how to meet strangers safely anyway — because the community worked it out. Nobody wrote it down. Nobody had to.

The Blackburn eyeball. The Queen Victoria statue. The boulevard was wide enough that you could walk amongst people before committing to anything. We did it the way spies do it. And we did it with kindness.

Channel Nine

I used to do voices on the CB. Hari Budgie. Rachee Bumpo. Talking Lithuanian that was really just double speak. Mad as a box of frogs. But I knew I had listeners. Lurkers. People who didn't want to talk. Who just wanted to be there.

So every now and again I'd say: "I know you're there. You don't have to talk. Just give me a couple of clicks of your mic so I know you're there."

And I'd get clicks back. Bleeps. The quietest possible signal: received. I'm here.

Channel Nine on CB is the international emergency frequency. You might sit in silence for an hour. Then you key up — and a big booming voice comes back.

That is FeelFamous. That has always been FeelFamous. I just didn't have the infrastructure yet.

Kindness by Remote

Not everybody look at me and give me likes. Not "look what I've done." Not performance. Not broadcast.

Dead drops of kindness. You leave something for someone who needs exactly what you have. You don't need the audience. You don't need the credit. The lift is the point.

We are all Delta Force. We are all Autobots. Each person is whole, skilled, complete. FeelFamous doesn't complete you — it assembles us. One hour a week. See what it does to you helping others.

Just BE and share what you've got.

Culture is not your friend. It insults you. It tells you to sit down and shut up and not to dream. FeelFamous is the channel nine underneath the broadcast. — Terence McKenna pointed this out. Chaplin knew it in 1940. It's still true now.

The 42 Revelation

At 17, I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams said the answer to life, the universe, and everything was 42. I remember sitting there thinking that was the answer for me personally. Not a joke. A promise.

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3: "To thine own self be true." — Polonius. I named this whole thing a hamlet before I knew that line was in it. The Celestine Prophecy says there are no coincidences. Only signposts.

This is the year. I got on with it.

Dave and Sue

I used to disappear at lunchtime. Ten minutes on my bike, up the hill between Pleckgate and Blackburn. The bullies spent their lunchtimes looking for me. I was already somewhere else entirely. Dave sampled before sampling was a thing. He got so excited when a thunderstorm came. I still do things he did.

Brian

Brian would read your stars over a cup of tea. Then he'd tell you everything was going to be alright — and you believed every word, because he meant every word. He had two gears: warm and lifting, or protective when someone was being hurt. The angel and the protector. The tea cake and the twat.

Uncle Kevin

Kevin could tell you the pressing plant from the dead wax. He had that knowledge in his bones — been digging in crates since the seventies. And then he'd tell you none of it mattered as much as whether the music moved you. Anti-snob. PLUR to the core. Everyone's favourite uncle.

Dean

He makes vaporizers that look like Aladdin's lamps. Hand-built — the lamp AND the vaporizer, both his own work. Syrian heritage, German by birth, Gran Canarian by choice. He sat in one spot all weekend at Spannabis. I'd go dancing and come back, and there'd always be more people around him than before.

Basil

He had cancer. His voice box was removed. When he came round from surgery, he ripped the pipe out of his own neck. He says it's the best thing that ever happened to him — because in that moment he saw exactly how much his family loved him. Now he talks to kids facing the same surgery, as the proof that it gets better.