So, you’re a Literary Agent? Hmmm. That would be your degree in English Lit. on the wall? No books to your name alas, but we can’t be good at everything now, can we? It’s enough for you to know what sells.

They are not all the same are they, these literary agents? These purveyors of men’s souls. And not all singing from the same song book. I don’t know you from Adam but, as a writer, whenever I submit my anguished-over script, the sacred substance of my living experience, my life and my soul, to ‘you’, I must accept that ‘you’ are an honest man guided by the spiritual ethics of ‘your’ profession. But, the perpetual wrangling over intellectual property and the plethora of vague laws that govern it (Steven Spielberg got off scot free from pilfering another writer’s work even though is was clearly and blatantly obvious to all, even to the blind, that he was guilty as all hell) suggests the following scenario is by no means impossible or even unusual. If you are acquainted with Hollywood I am sure you will have less diffculty believing it than most. 

“Jeff?  Sorry to waken you up, old buddy. But I got this fantastic story here on my desk and I am sure you can do something with it. Yea, it’s got winner written all over it. It will  be huge if it’s let loose. Nah, nobody knows who he is. Never been published before. Yea, just what I thought. You could do something duh…  ’similar…’ duh,  I’m sure. Yea, I know but we are allowed to laugh…. So, my lawyer tells me. Yea, it’s a novel, not all that well written. But, it doesn’t have to be. We can all write for chrissakes! It’s what’s in it, Jeff!  What’s in it! The guy’s a friggin’ genius. What a film it would make! or even a whole bunch of them, or a television series or any sort of a series for that matter! You gotta read this!  Meet me for lunch. Nah. Don’t worry about that. I’ll tie him to a dumb contract or something until you get it done. I’ll get him to download the contract too from the net. Never fails. Just in case he gets the bright idea of starting a paper trail some time in the distant future. Idiot might be a better word. They’re out there Jeff. Told me all I need to know about it too. Can you believe it? How dumb is that? And there are more of them coming off the conveyor belt all the time. I have almost completly given up thinking for myself, it’s so easy. Don’t worry. It’s okay. I’m your acting editor. I just make more radical changes than most, that’s all. I have a business to run, godammit!”

Writers have no reason whatever to trust an agent and yet all of them have to. The elusive Christopher Little is an English agent bivouacked in London who is presently being sued (so far as we still know) by the relatives of the deceased writer Adrian Jacobs whose work he, or his publisher ‘associate’ Bloomsbury, or both, allegedly pilfered. Innocent until proven guilty is Christopher. The law is on his side. He is J.K.Rowling’s publishing agent: One who shuns the limelight, being supposedly shy and sensitive, we are to believe, even if it is reported that he held a massively expensive birthday party for himself not so long ago. You will notice how careful I am in choosing the words to tell you this. That’s because this particular agent has a lawyer working in his corner who takes no prisoners. Rowling’s own lawyers, Schillings, are even more notorious. It is not that either are merely practising sound economic prudence in guarding their vulnerable charge from prowling fraudsters and all that; what they are actually engaged in is avoiding public scrutiny at all costs. Indeed, establishing a norm by repetition in the process. Reminds you of the invasion of Iraq, doesn’t it? To them and their ilk this is the way of business. Do it often enough and people will eventually throw up their arms and cry. “Not again!” And then they stop throwing up their arms because such behaviour however odious and contemptible has become the norm. Not another case against Rowling! To you and I and the Man Above, such practice is  mind control, but more of that some other time. And if they want to contest this and make moves to gagg us three and clap us  all in irons, well ……..  Indeed, they are most likely reading these very words and adding them to the munitions pile they have been amassing for years to use against us. It ill behoves us to hold such a dim view of our fellow man, or woman indeed, but…………..It seems that in the name of democracy you can hold any views you like so long as you don’t get the dumb notion that you are free to express them. In modern times, Shakespeare, Shaw and Wilde would be impossible. Think about that. There’s freedom of expression for you!

Interesting isn’t it? Well it is rather… from our point of view.
How interesting can be learned from; http://www.travelswithlipo.com .

What we have to say via the above link is all true….if you can believe it, of course…. and we can tell you, even before you start…. you won’t. Why not? Not just because you have accepted the ‘norm’ and may be blissfully unaware that you have but , more imp0rtantly, because what you have to do is trust someone you have never met……….Me, the communicator of all this.  An Irishman. A bridge too far is that for many. The wise and the sceptics among you will surely find it easier.

Just to let everyone know we have updated our Travels with Li Po website. This website is devoted exclusively to the book written by one of us ( William) all about a young orphaned boy who is lost in a parallel world and doesn’t know he is a sorcerer. Yea, sounds corny and fantastical and we made it all up, didn’t we?  It is in fact all true and alarmingly so. We KNOW it to be true. Find out for yourself  by clicking on the book icon. Then, be astonished. Be very astonished; and when you are done being astonished see if you can answer the simple questions the book  poses by its sheer existence and why it is such a hot potato for newspapers in general. Here is a hint……starts with ‘p’ and ends with ‘tics”.

We have placed a button on the pages linking to an abridged version of the numerous similarities between Harry Potter and Wills’ book for your instruction – THE  SIMILARITIES – Synopsis  it’s called. This is in deference to modern readers who find it difficult to read more than two sentences in a row without getting dizzy. Pay particular attention to the brief introduction that goes with it. If you have any other questions feel free to contact us.

In the meantime, Adrian Jacobs’ posse  is preparing to begin its charge on Rowling and Co. for a mere half billion pounds, declaring, in so many words, that that is what the deceased would have been worth for his contribution (?) to the Harry Potter bonanza. De plot tickens, as they say down South.  Mind you, the Rowling boys have had a decade to prepare for just this eventuality. And with so much preparation and mini-rehearsals you have to wonder why they haven’t had a go  at us, as we have no doubt whatever that we are the main event, Rowling’s worst nightmare indeed, as you will quickly learn if you visit the site.  What are they afraid of? Evidence my friends. Evidence that would damn them all. It is a rhetorical question indeed, one of the best. And of course, the scandal. What would the neighbours think? Especially those American neighbours who have capitalized hand over fist on the Potter ‘phenomenon’ and its Britanic  pedigree that stretches all the way to the  corridors of  ‘smarter-than-thou’ Oxford, every Yankee egghead’s pet fantasy, albeit paling into nothing beside the enshrined American Dream…  Hugh Hefner’s throne.

It will be mighty interesting indeed to see what comes of it all, especially for us who are privy to the real truth that no English paper dare touch or Irish paper for that matter. Cowards all! So much for freedom of speech. As for freedom of the press…that depends on who can threaten the responsible editors most efficiently. The toy bear in that regard goes to Schillings, Rowling’s lawyers, based in London who have a knack of frightening the life-insurance out of everybody they go near in the manner of Darth Vader in a barrister’s wig.  We pause here to wonder if we got that right. Maybe Schillings  have jumped ship in the meantime and we get a letter from them in the morning telling us to recant our “inaccuracies’ and ‘false statements” or face ruin. Dat’s the way dem dudes work …. like a police-helicopter tracking a suspect vehicle, at night, all lights blaring, its deafening megaphonic words soaring over the rooftops. Pensioners awake in their beds searching for the lamp-switch wondering who the hell has the right, etc, etc.  One cannot be too careful these days.  

Scrutiny, all joking aside, is what the Rowling gang are avoiding, pure and simple. Incredible to us how this obvious fact, this necessary but deplorable, puerile bloody strategy they have been implementing for years  is either ignored or swept under the carpet by the  media in toto. But then, we are talking about jolly old England, old bean, Rule Britannia and all that…. and Harry The Prince Potter, of course, who is but John Bull Junior on a stick flying the old Imperial flag over the subdued and conquered with all the fatuous panache of an ageing Caesar in a squeaky chariot doing a triumphal circuit of the Circus Maximus just before the games, strapped to his vehicle in case he falls off.  What ever happened to good old TRUTH? we ask ourselves.  Has it been sacrificed in our ‘post-modern world ‘ to the shenanigans of Chaos Theory? Truth, like art, is whatever I decide it to be, or so we must subscribe to if we wouldst call ourselves ‘contemporary’, (fancy wording for ‘Trumpism’ or economic expediency-whatever-the-cost-to-others. “You’re fired boyo! Take up your dreams and leave the premises!”). ”Greed is good” indeed says Wall Street, even if on film, just as genocide is ‘ethnic cleansing’ effected with duster and polish and a nice clean apron…. and Harry Potter is the real deal.  Maggie’s ”ugly face of capitalism”, in other words, is whatever mask you choose to wear and whatever script you choose to espouse that will enable you to stash your pile  in the big steel box down at the bank. Our view is simple…. TRUTH WILL OUT, sooner or later. It goes on. It never goes away.  And we all  must stand up for it or cease to be human. 

Like Noah it is best to build your boat BEFORE the rains fall and let the beguiled drown in their own stupidity calling you ‘paranoid’  than to take risks with the worst possible scenario and the precariousness of a fragile future. Smart dudes buy insurance and leave the psychiatric game to the professionals. We, The Bogside  Artists, speak, not from delusional fantasy but from direct experience, as over the years we have been victims of shameless, character defamation, identity theft, social marginalization, calculated denigration of our selves and our work, wholesale, organized targeting of our lives and our achievement and accordingly labelled pro-active capitalists on a par with Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch, supporters of American imperialism, and ideologically to the right of Genghis Khan. All of it lies and damned lies at that, conjured up by jealous minds and hate-driven hearts hiding behind masks of social acceptance and  ‘revolutionary’ zeal.

This has been our ‘reward’ for having given our town, and the world indeed, one of the most profoundly socialist art displays in existence – one that world-renowned playwright Brian Friel declared, quite rightly “Diego Rivera would be proud of.”  Victimized and targeted we have been and still are, let it be said,  by people who live in fine houses, have salaried jobs, lucrative careers, positions of influence in government and the media and who feel free to sell their articles to a gullible world and their books on the net while we have to forego any sort of an income in order to survive as a group.  We shoulder our wheel daily not to plan holidays or extend our private interests in the name of business masquerading as ‘social concern’ but in order to survive as a group. Simple as that, facts that visitors we speak to find incredible and disgusting, just as we do. We are a registered charity to boot, a salient fact that our adversaries choose to ignore as it kinda gets in the way of the big, fat, labels of denigration they have pinned to our backs.

Yet, like Noah, we have built our boat regardless. It is called The Bogside Artists’ Studio and it serves the community and the sacred aspirations towards individual freedom and artistic expression that The People’s Gallery , that we three created, makes manifest to all who come to see it. Capitalism be damned! say we.  Our enemies and transgressors are a hundred times more ruthless in that regard than we could ever be .. or want to be. We, at least, get to sleep at night, soundly as we adhere relgiously to a simple philosophy – Live and Let Live, something these people seem to be cogenitally incapable of doing.

We take leave here to state our position once and for all and to let you the reader know that if you believe anything else to the contrary of what is here stated by us, you have been lied to, pure and simple, and most likely, lied to by people holding positions of trust and authority who have no right to be there.

Our studio is our refuge and all are welcome. It floats. We sail on. And neither the dark clouds above our heads or the hounds snapping at our heels will ever deter us from hoisting our bright, clean flag of independence and claiming the right to be who we are and always have been –   THE BOGSIDE ARTISTS