"No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind" - so spoke the remarkable John Maclean, who died 100 years ago today.

Thread -> His death was not in the natural order but the result of poverty, prison brutality and the kind of chronic illness that systemic inequality breeds. He was 44.

A radical teacher, he was once paid by the State to teach Marxist economics to Glasgow workers.

->

A thread follows about an experience of MIGHTY HUMAN KINDNESS in Glasgow yesterday. It involves a locked carpark, a taxi driver, a temple - and a minding that many folk live with the judgement of others every day of their lives and still choose to be open and generous.

-> I was working @DandelionScot in Kelvingrove Park. It was a BIG day. First ever live outing for @Hen_Hoose + an inspiring workshop + loads of people to talk to.

It was full.

Time ran away …

->

Receiving and holding the stories and experiences and emotions of others is a massive part of my job as a musician. Like many musicians I go out front to meet audiences after a show. It’s beautiful, inspiring, curious. It puts faces, bodies, voices to an audience. I love it. -> It can also be quite overwhelming, unnerving, moving. Because in that space after music and story, when all our cells are alive, and our hearts are blown open, people often share BIG things. Sorrows, losses, dreams, secrets. Right there over a merch table or a mailing list ->

1/16
What might the longest-lived plant @rbge say for itself, after 200+ years, on the eve of its own felling?

‘I was an inflorescence once,
then a black seed dropped by a spreading Crown,
packed up and shipped off across the sea.
Perhaps we’re not so different, you and me?’
-> 2/16
‘To the Port of Leith, via who knows where,
from a crate to a cart to a house of glass,
did the townsfolk stare when they saw me pass
through the streets of Canonmills?’

In 1822, the young palm travelled to the ‘New Botanic Garden’ from its old home at Leith Walk.

(one day late) in minding of Stuart Adamson -

Glasgow was far away then. The 18 miles between the Stirlingshire village of Banknock and Buchanan Street Bus station might as well have been eight hundred. We travelled to Glasgow twice a year, via the back roads ... of Banton and Kilsyth, whenever we’d outgrown our skins and needed shirts from Goldbergs, Day Glo socks from What Every Woman Wants. That number 14 bus, in its northerly return from Glasgow, was marked Dunfermline. We never once travelled across the river to Dunfermline.

I saw her first between my thighs, a sticky mess of black curls, before the final push. And then a great cry, and she was nestled on my breast, the loveliest of all from the moment she was born. My Andromeda.

She was open-faced and limber as a child, curious and kind. Not once did I detect a trace of pride or conceit, nor any sense at all of her self as others saw her. And maybe that is where the greatest beauty lies. She was sweet as molasses. She glistened like a star.

Praise Aphrodite, Queen of the Gods. I meant no disrespect.

I embrace my pals when we meet, even if in a slightly Presbyterian fashion.

I cuddle my bairns a lot on the days they live with me.

Occasionally strangers hug me after gigs, when their shells are broken & their hearts are soft.

I shake lots of hands in my line of work.

contd. And once every few months I pay someone to manipulate some aspect of my ageing body. Crooked hips. Tight shoulders.
These are transaction all about fixing.

And then there’s feet on wet sand, or damp moss, or elbows deep in fairy liquid.

contd