boredom is always counter-revolutionary

I nearly commented on this yesterday but thought it best to confer with Charlie Radcliffe first. Maybe the email reproduced here is a hoax you’ve constructed and if so apologies for this comment. However, in case it isn’t, then perhaps someone has been hoaxing you.

This doesn’t sound like the Chris I knew, and Charlie confirms that it screams FAKE to him too! Charlie says Chris would have told him about an activity like a near daily email to a stiu site, but this is the first he’s heard of it! Chris also hated the net, email and mobile phones. He told both Charlie and me that if we wanted to contact him we should use his landline or write a letter. My recollection is that he did have email when I first contacted him but he didn’t like it and stopped using it about 5 years ago. Charlie can’t recall ever having exchanged emails with him.

I put Chris and Charlie back in contact because they’d drifted apart over the years (they’d both known my mother but through different scenes), and once they were back in touch Charlie was in more regular contact with Chris than me. Like me, Charlie thought the words you quote sounded nothing like Chris he knew. Chris was very articulate and liked to be very clear in his speech. He was a no unnecessary verbiage and absolutely no bullshit guy.

Charlie, who has read a draft of the book Chris was working on about acid, also tells me that Chris’ recent writing was very straightforward and clear in its construction. So we think it extremely unlikely the stuff you quote above was written by the Chris Gray of King Mob and the Situationist International.

That said, thanks for passing on the sad news about Chris’ death to readers of your blog. I’ve been enjoying your posts for some time!