Dave Clake

Dave Clarke & Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com) 20/11/05

Dave Clarke¹s Meaning Of Life: Soldiers Get Their Awards Posthumously

³You can only truly become an adult when you stop blaming your parents; you
make your own waves and are in control of your own destiny; politicians
generally are cunts; big business runs everything; capitalism is the new
Christianity, nature can be sublime, and people can have incredible passion
and heart in the hardest of circumstances.²

Coming 36th in DJ magazine¹s latest Top 100 DJ poll, techno overlord Dave
Clarke told the magazine in his accompanying interview that his specialist
subject on TV quiz show Mastermind would be Rthe life and times of John
Locke¹ and speaking to Skrufff today, he¹s more than happy to explain why.

³ We must not trust Authority¹ is one of Locke¹s concepts that for some
reason seems to stick out,² says Dave, ³He challenged a very conservative
society and came through and has inspired many people from Chomsky to
probably (Stephen) Hawkins.²

³He had an ability to explain linguistically the very process of thought in
a way that cuts through in an extremely logical way that¹s very dry and
unemotional,² he continues, ³and it¹s precisely because he¹s so dry and
anatomical that his works read so well, despite him being from the 1700s.²

One of Locke¹s concepts was to encourage the individual to use reason to
search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or
be subject to superstition, prompting Dave¹s proceeding outburst of what
he¹s learned so far, though he¹s equally candid about his own lack of
knowledge.

³I would love to say I had an incredible education where I had the time to
sit, learn and discuss the pros and cons of Locke, I would love to say that
I mused over Voltaire's respect for Monsieur Locke, however I wasn't privy
to the cosy echelons or further education, so I have to come clean and say
my attention was drawn to Locke and "An essay concerning Human
Understanding" via a TV broadcast in the mid nineties,² he confesses.

³Occasionally a documentary can be so well done that you sit up with your
ears pricked, eyes on fire and mind on dry sponge mode thirsting for
knowledge, and that happened to me with this particular programme, it turned
me on to him.

So I subsequently bought the book, and due to your interest in a humorous
(well I thought it was funny) remark in DJ Mag I dug it out again and I am
looking forward to making friends with it again in the dark evenings to
come. However, Locke really did hit a note with me and despite my
protestations and self-pity about a personal lack of further education, who
can say that they talked about the Pro's and Cons' of Locke over a take away
pizza with John Peel; me!²


Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): DJ's poll is very much a marker of success: how
much are accolades and recognition necessary for success?

Dave Clarke: ³Well if capitalism is the new Christianity, Van Dyk must be
God¹ and Tiesto Jesus¹. The recognition that means the most to me is a
room full of bouncing booty and happy faces whilst listening to music that
is alternative to the scrote that trance DJs Rplay¹. I am writing this two
days after hosting my own room at I Love Techno; the place was rammed;
May/Bone/Hood/Fixmer and McCarthy all had grins like a cheshire cat, and
that for me is exactly what it is all about; being bankable but keeping it
true, following your belief and yet still being successful all over the
world. Soldiers get their awards posthumously.²

Skrufff: Much of Locke's work is characterized by opposition to
authoritarianism and he was a revolutionary- could revolution ever
realistically happen in today's world in your view?

Dave Clarke: ³I was in Paris in June and saw some shit that disgusted me
(basically police being out of control and heavy-handed with under 16s) and
I said to my girlfriend that there will be riots here. I also spoke to a
taxi driver and he further underlined the vibe I had. The very fact
politicians can't see this means that they are tending to their flower
displays in the cosy Royal like Hotel de Ville's to much. In Holland, the
police can eavesdrop into any phone conversation without a warrant; where is
the trust there, why is that deemed necessary? As a society we need rules
but they have to be fairer and more utopian than they are now. The French
have to act first and not react and now say Rwe will invest in these areas¹;
now it¹s too late to regain the trust of this generation.

The only revolution that I would love to see is education as a right for
everyone, and not state sponsored idealistic education either. The history I
learnt is how proud we should be to be British because we singed the king¹s
beard in Cadiz and because we won the 2nd World War (conveniently forgetting
about the Russians, Americans, Indians, Canadians and Anzacs). The history
we should have learnt and spent the most time on instead is why we went to
war in the first place and why did we make the same mistakes again. Sure, we
can learn about these matters when we are older, but most of us are too busy
trying to live and to make ends meet by then. So education would be my ideal
revolution.²

Skrufff: How optimistic are you about the world's future in the face of
global warming and peak oil?

Dave Clarke: ³Humans have an instinctive ability to survive, that is why we
have so many on planet earth right now, I'm sure it will change though, the
petrol industry had supported the food industry to such a degree that we
probably have 3.5 billion people on earth that wouldn't be here without food
distribution, fertilisers and drugs. The energy that we consume now is
mostly biological, but it is also posthumously. Petrol and gas are all from
old forests and dead animals, due to humans being resourceful we have
managed to exploit that, but we are keeping the world alive with stored
fuel, we are not restocking the cupboards, we do not have enough landspace
to supply the same energy when we run out. I have to have faith then that
there will be a new technology that will safely replace oil and gas but why
aren't governments promoting this? Why are we hoping for oil fields in
Russia and Alaska, we should be building more wind plants, solar plants, I
am sure for example that Australia could do this. It seems that governments
run everything into a state of crisis until there is a massive knee-jerk
reaction.²


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke (John Locke: Locke wants each of us
to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of
authorities or be subject to superstition . . .¹)

Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)


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