A verbatim account of a former client of mine at Pitch Gym - a successful serial entrepreneur who's appeared on Shark Tank. I interviewed him about his next venture capital raise - the one that I helped him on. It didn't go well. It reveals a lot about his noble character. I transcribe our interview, anonymise revealing details, and read it aloud in my voice. This is a maybe project of audio portraits. Tell me if you dig it and I might publish some more.

Voices of Gallipoli is a remembrance project.

Its purpose is to remember the experiences of kiwis at war by speaking their words out loud at Anzac commemorations and events. This is the voice of Hartley Palmer, spoken aloud by Stuart Devenie.

Join me for my next live video in the app

Join me for my next live video in the app

An unsolicited Christmas present to the world.

Absolutely no one has ever asked me for the lyrics and guitar tablature for the Lonesome Buckwhips Christmas song. But that’s what you’re getting as my gift to you. You lucky, lucky subscribers.

The Tab is better formatted in the Substack article at arthurmeek.substack.com.

But if you're trying to play from shownotes... knock yourself out.

SANTA KING OF THE JEWS

by The Lonesome Buckwhips.

Tablature by Miri Buckwhip

Verse:

D A G D

On the twenty-fifth day of the holiday month Santa was born

D A

He had red pajamas and black gumboots

F G D

And a big white beard like God

Three wise men came a knock knock knocking

And gave him a sleigh

Said you can do what you like for the rest of the year

If you just work this one day

Bridge:

Am Bm

So Santa took his sleigh from Bethlehem

C D

To the heart of the cold north pole

Am Bm

Where he wrote the bible and made some toys

C D

Died on the cross and saved our souls

Chorus:

C D

Santa Santa Santa

C G D

Santa King of the jews

C D

Maybe the world would be a better place

F G D

If all the muslims knew about you

Verse:

Santa’s words are crystal clear

Matthew three verse six

He’ll rise from the dead to destroy the world and

Bring all the children gifts

Some smart arse kids round the age of ten

Think it’s cool to deny our man

But santa wipes that smile right offa their face

With the back of his jolly fat hand

Bridge:

Some might believe in invisible gods

Who might not exist at all

But you can see Santa from eleven til two

Down at your local mall

Chorus:

Santa Santa Santa

Santa King of the Jews

If it wasn’t for you, all I’d get for Christmas

Is a day and a half in lieu

Rock!

Benny’s solo

Miri: Hey

Gary: Said Mary…

Arty: Ho ho ho ho ho

Gary: Said Joseph…

Arty: Brrrr

Gary: Said the donkey

Arty/Gary: Hey ho hey ho, ho ho ho aHHHHH!

Chorus

Santa holy Father Christmas

Ho ho fricking ho

Sit on his knee and give him your heart

Because Santa Christ is lord.

I’ll write more about how this one-season wonder came to be.

But for now, just enjoy it. Context free.

Though I will say I got to make it with my hero, and now fellow Substacker - Matt Heath.

And/or RESTACK this thing. Restacking is a new and better commenting, because it goes into the Substack network and might get seen by people other than me.

I’ve always had a way with words. Today, Substack is my way.

You’ll find a great variety of things here. They’re all connected by my generative curiosity, and two short, clear and actionable ways of thinking.

Poets wish either to profit or to delight; or to deliver at once both the pleasures and the necessaries of life.

Horace, Ars Poetica

And one that I think comes from James Joyce, but I can’t find it, or anything like it attributed to him when I google.

A writer’s job is to experience epiphanies, and describe them.

What’s in it for you?

FREE SUBSCRIBERS

You get everything, the minute I’m ready to publish it - sometimes earlier. We’re doing each other a favour. I’m trying to work in a faster, freer, less fussy way. I’m trying to be open to inspiration, and surprise myself - and you. I have to unlearn some ways of writing I picked up for other formats. They caused me to slowly and methodically ‘edit’ over the course of a couple of years. ‘Edit’ basically means undo and redo. Better? Or just different? We’ll never know. Anyhow, not here. Not now. I’m playing with the possibilities of Substack. So that’s our deal. It’s free. It’s a bit more experimental. The publishing schedule is erratic. I have a couple of lists - you can get emails from one or both. Profit & Delight is my artistic one. Substackery is the technical, behind the scenes stuff I’m playing with to have a better reading and publishing experience on Substack. Both of them will be interesting and full of play. The keys words for what you can expect as a free subscriber are experimental, inconsistent and frequent.

PAID SUBSCRIBERS £5 A MONTH/£50 A YEAR

You get LESS. That’s right. It’s a counterintuitive idea, but hear me out. I want to provide you with a less busy experience of my work. Less frequent emails. I’ll say that again. You get LESS. You’ll get one post a week, or more precisely, one a weekend. It’ll be a simple omnibus that beautifully collates what I’ve published on Substack this week - alongside some of the more interesting ideas that I’ve encountered. It’s a more digestible, more considered way of experiencing my writing, and discovering other stuff you might like. I’ll leave out the things that I don’t think are worth your while. You won’t feel anxious to see tons of unopened stuff from me pile up in your inbox or in your app.

PEN PAL £500/year

I don’t expect many people to do this. But those of you who do this are in for a very cool experience. We’ll write to each other by hand. Or rather, I’ll write to you and I guess you can choose whether or not to respond. I’ll send postcards, and longer letters, maybe even a book or two, and play with a form of novella as letter. You can respond as you see fit. There’s nothing mass produced about this, and I have limited time, so we won’t let this group get too big. But it means I can introduce you to each other, too.

If you read me in the app already then great! If you don’t you can try it out now by hitting the button below.

Welcome.

I met Justin Welby, the now or soon-to-be former Archbishop of Canterbury, at Methodist Playgroup a few weeks ago.

Not in person. Much more intimately. I found one of his books and read it.

He introduced me to the true nature and character of Mammon. And the anti-dote.

Hear all about it.

Arthur Meek lends his voice to Henry Lewis. An ANZAC soldier who fought at Gallipoli during World War I. Henry Joined from Wellington. He fought for Otago Regiment. He told his story to New Zealand novelist Maurice Shadbolt in the 1980s, more than 60 years after the events he recalls.

Recorded live at The Gallipoli Association Annual Conference 2024, at the RAF Club, Piccadilly on 2 Nov. Released today, a week later, for Remembrance Sunday, UK.

Introduction by Warren Smith - Communications @ The Gallipoli Association

“Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. no one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time....”

[Winston] Churchill by Himself, 574

This manifesto is a love letter to democracy.

It’s positively charged with optimism about the ability and the will of our collective conscience to most effectively serve the common good and to enable human flourishing. This manifesto is pro-democracy. It is anti-authoritarian, anti-communist, anti-corporatocratic, and anti-fascist. It is anti-oligarchic, anti-oligopolist, anti-kleptocratic and anti-aristocratic. It is anti-anarchic, anti-feudal, anti-plutocratic and anti-imperial. It doesn’t know what ergatocracy is and can’t be bothered to google. It is anti-ecclesial, anti-imperial, anti-kleptocratic and geniocracy-curious. It’s anti-plutocratic and surprisingly anti-technocratic. It’s anti-military dictatorship. It’s anti-tribal, anti-kakistocratic, anti-logocratic and anti-meritocracy (despite being geniocracy-curious). It may come off a bit anti-social, but it’s quite the opposite. It’s anti-bureaucratic. It believes technology has a simple but significant role in facilitating all this. It has a healthy respect for monarchy as the default political orientation of humankind, but it prefers the symbolic pomp of the British Royal Family to an active, decision-making crown.

It’s anti-mob. Mob rule is the bugbear that justifies all sorts of [pejorative]-ocratic appropriation of the means of government. It believes the architecture of democracy (to date) is designed to simultaneously glorify and thwart the will of the people.

There is a better way.

It was practised in microcosm, in Athens, the birthplace of democracy, during democracy’s formative years. I doubt it was the first born form. 

“It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election. -- Aristotle, Politics, Book IV”

I call it Lottocracy.