Through a recent long and sleepless night, caused principally by a combination of CF and CF-related diabetes symptoms, as well as the high dose of steroids I am currently on, I spent two of those early hours listening to The War of the Worlds album on my headphones, and what a strange and wonderful experience it was. It seemed eerily prescient, and I was also struck by just how bloody good it is. Richard Burton is, of course, sensational as the narrator. His voice just gets me every time. The depth, the richness, the faintest trace of a Welsh accent, and, of course, the melancholy. 'Forever Autumn' is a wonderful song, and hearing it in those ghostly hours on my headphones reminded me of another uncanny experience I had back in October 2019. For one morning, as the autumn sun shone a dazzling white through our window, I heard Lydia suddenly "shooshing!" me to turn the music down as it was too early to have it that loud. It wasn't me that was the cause on this occasion, however, it was the bin collectors outside. For they were playing 'Forever Autumn' at full blast from out of the cab of their lorry, and that was what we could hear reverberating around our flat. Words can't really do it justice but it was a strange, haunting sensation, almost as if the aliens had arrived and The War of the Worlds had suddenly become reality. The other thing that struck me was the piece that is called 'The Red Weed' actually sounds remarkably similar to Bowie's "Berlin-era" track with Eno, 'Art Decade', and even some Krautrock from a similar period. As The War of the Worlds could be seen as a prog rock nightmare to the punks and cooler types, this appeared to me as being a connection they perhaps wouldn't have anticipated (or desired).
But the main thing that has struck me is just how eerily The War of the Worlds tapped into my current fears of impending doom and disaster for our world and society. There is such an ominous atmosphere to the music and the storyline, from the very first moment when missiles start departing Mars, on their long journey across "a million of miles of void," and which then proceed to cause so much calamity to Earth, despite the astronomer, Oglebee, trying to reassure humanity that there's nothing to fear, as the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one. But... still... They Come...
But, of course, it's not Martians that are responsible for the nightmare we are facing today and who are threatening to destroy our entire social fabric, which was so painstakingly built up from post-war gains, such as the National Health Service, a nationalised railway and utilities, and a fully functioning safety net for our country's citizens known as the welfare system. Oh no, it's full throttle, cut-throat, extremist neoliberal capitalism that is on the verge of sending our culture and world up in flames. And this situation made me recall the scene where the Parson (a brilliant performance from Phil Lynott, incidentally) wrongly believes, in his delirium, that the Martians are actually devils, and that he must cast them out to save mankind. His wife, Beth, tries to make him see sense:
And that's when I remembered another, quite terrifying picture, also from the artwork on the LP, (see below) that I poured over for hours on end as a boy, but I would imagine that what Beth would be saying to the Parson now, and this picture could surely represent the naked truth, made visible, behind every decision that our government (and the right-wing think tanks behind the scenes that influence everything) is currently making around public services, public expenditure, and its insistence on torching any institution that represents the community or the poor, under the hateful, extremist ideology of free-market capitalism...
"But they're not Martians, they're Tories (neoliberals!")
Such is the feeling in my mind as we enter the beautiful season of autumn, with class war being waged and a palpable sense of dread and fear in the air. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way, despite Margaret Thatcher trying to convince everyone that there is "no alternative" to neoliberal capitalism. But H.G. Wells defeated the Martians in his story, and who knows, perhaps capitalism will be dumped in the bin, and one day historians will look back in horror at the mayhem and inequality it ravaged on the human and non-human world alike. Hope has to Spring Eternal. We shall see what unfolds during yet another winter of discontent.
All part of the same establishment,
As slept within the shadow
of your power
Have wandered with our traversed
arms, and breathed
Our sufferance vainly. Now the
time is flush,
When crouching marrow in
the bearer strong
Cries of itself 'no more'."
- William Shakespeare,
Timon of Athens
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