I went to see this, the new Woody Allen film, on Sunday. I went mainly because it starred Larry David and I wasn't going to pass up an hour and a half of that. I went having often read and heard that Woody's films have been sadly below par for some time. But, delight of delights, I was pleasantly surprised.
First off, there's whole steaming buckets of bovine faeces I could chuck at this if I was feeling sullen. They relate mainly to certain Woody motifs wearing quite thin, occasional triteness of dialogue, plotting and character development and some lazy stereotypes. Myself and the two people I went with also found that we weren't sure of the first few minutes. That, however, was probably because an unannounced and awful short film had put us in a disgruntled mood and made us question if we were in the right cinema.
But I'm not feeling sullen, and the film has a lot to do with that. Despite the main character openly announcing to the audience, Brecht-style, that this isn't a feelgood film, actually it is. It was a lovely romp that made me laugh loads, it was well-acted and there was a reassuring satisfaction in the well-worn plot and character arcs, rather than a sense of groaning inevitability. Also, the misanthropy was of the best kind; a genuine love of humanity clouded by a false disdain generated by disappointment and disillusion. The love peeks through though, and for that reason, I recommend this film, inchworms.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
What Next For The Gay Village?
You can read my piece on t'above online. It was published in 'Things Happen' zine, which was launched as part of FutureEverything festival but which will continue independently. It's great. We like MMDC.
Here is the link:
http://issuu.com/mmdc/docs/things_happen_issuu_one
Here is the link:
http://issuu.com/mmdc/docs/things_happen_issuu_one
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Coco and Celine
I found an old notebook I'd had when I went to Spain in late 2008 with my friends Jon and Jim. A lot of what follows was a collaborative mind-spurt with them, and much fun it was too.
------
In the airport on the way there we spotted a small squat old woman who resembled Ann Miller as 'Coco' in Mulholland Drive. That is, if Coco had bleached her hair and been a nouty Manc with a long-suffering and hard of hearing husband in tow.
After perpetual squabbling at the gate we heard her exclaim, with a slight crack in her voice, "just SHUT UP!" Much, much later, safely ensconsed on the Costa de la Luz, we spotted them by the side of the swimming pool. "There's lots of brollies," the husband said reassuringly. "THERE'S NO BROLLIES!" she snapped.
We made it our business to track them.
By the delicious and varied soups in the hotel restaurant:
Husband: Fancy any of these?
Coco: [in world-weary tone] No...not really.
By the pool again:
Husband: At least it's a soft surface to walk on.
Coco: HMPH!
It became paramount that we got near them at baggage reclamation on the way back, but sadly they must have been staying another week to torment each other in the Mediterranean sun.
------
The PA around the swimming pool was highly unpredictable. Sometimes it would play a varied selection of music, other times it would fall silent. More often than not it played the same three Celine Dion songs on constant repeat.
It was soon obvious to us that Celine lived feral in the hotel grounds, dressed only in a filthy towel with a hole bitten into it for her head to go through. She would eat rubbish out of the bins and occasionally perform lightning raids on the kitchens, prompting the chefs to chase her maniacally with meat cleavers whilst yelling "¡PUTA!"
She'd forgotten how to talk but could still sing all her songs perfectly. At night she would go down to the beach and bay at the tide, trying to drive it back as she splashed in the surf, pooing in the wet sand.
------
In the airport on the way there we spotted a small squat old woman who resembled Ann Miller as 'Coco' in Mulholland Drive. That is, if Coco had bleached her hair and been a nouty Manc with a long-suffering and hard of hearing husband in tow.
After perpetual squabbling at the gate we heard her exclaim, with a slight crack in her voice, "just SHUT UP!" Much, much later, safely ensconsed on the Costa de la Luz, we spotted them by the side of the swimming pool. "There's lots of brollies," the husband said reassuringly. "THERE'S NO BROLLIES!" she snapped.
We made it our business to track them.
By the delicious and varied soups in the hotel restaurant:
Husband: Fancy any of these?
Coco: [in world-weary tone] No...not really.
By the pool again:
Husband: At least it's a soft surface to walk on.
Coco: HMPH!
It became paramount that we got near them at baggage reclamation on the way back, but sadly they must have been staying another week to torment each other in the Mediterranean sun.
------
The PA around the swimming pool was highly unpredictable. Sometimes it would play a varied selection of music, other times it would fall silent. More often than not it played the same three Celine Dion songs on constant repeat.
It was soon obvious to us that Celine lived feral in the hotel grounds, dressed only in a filthy towel with a hole bitten into it for her head to go through. She would eat rubbish out of the bins and occasionally perform lightning raids on the kitchens, prompting the chefs to chase her maniacally with meat cleavers whilst yelling "¡PUTA!"
She'd forgotten how to talk but could still sing all her songs perfectly. At night she would go down to the beach and bay at the tide, trying to drive it back as she splashed in the surf, pooing in the wet sand.
Old bones chattering
There is a long-ago project that my friend and I once embarked on, provisionally called 'The Condition of the Working Classes in Moston'.
It was going to be a for a magazine called Handpocket, which also never materialised.
In retrospect the concept had suspicious overtones of slumming, but since I'm working class this was clearly not the intention. It's hard to really express what the actual intention was - mythologising areas a bit like mine but not being too emotionally close? The Engels reference was also not accidental or detached from its context for the sake of it in a tedious postmodernist style. I hated that sort of shit as much then as I do now.
Anyway, I thought I'd recycle some extracts for ye old times sake. It's written in a self-consciously jumbled manner which can be explained by my obsession for all things Dada and surrealist back then. It should be stressed that it was not meant to be taken seriously; the very thought would make my toes curl so much that they'd turn into barbed claws.
Most of it took place in a graveyard. Spooky darling!
It was going to be a for a magazine called Handpocket, which also never materialised.
In retrospect the concept had suspicious overtones of slumming, but since I'm working class this was clearly not the intention. It's hard to really express what the actual intention was - mythologising areas a bit like mine but not being too emotionally close? The Engels reference was also not accidental or detached from its context for the sake of it in a tedious postmodernist style. I hated that sort of shit as much then as I do now.
Anyway, I thought I'd recycle some extracts for ye old times sake. It's written in a self-consciously jumbled manner which can be explained by my obsession for all things Dada and surrealist back then. It should be stressed that it was not meant to be taken seriously; the very thought would make my toes curl so much that they'd turn into barbed claws.
Most of it took place in a graveyard. Spooky darling!
On Arrival we spot Moston’s ‘World Famous’ Barber Shop I expect Davro and Norris from CoroNATION Street but am disappointed. At first disorientation, alleviated by sweet bike-riding boy who asks “…do we take photos of graffiti?” He extends kindness and shows us derelict housing estate – buildings not that old but metall-I-call-y boarded up rising with the fermenting odour of tarmac-ed vegetable soup.
To some a playground to others misery slated, actual slate piled up in yard - a dislodged metal plate NOTED AND REPORTED says the sticker. But no action taken. We peek to the dripdripdrip of the dank rotty-kitchen as violent sneezing echoes from somewhere nearby. Macca Daz Becca Chanel Carly lamppost piss territory.
Shuffle shuffle goes the pizza faced exertion man as his arms droop to the weight of his shopping bags, cross paths. With the orange pedal pusher woman limp-stick greaseball gent, the front garden’s plants wilting at the futility of it all. Richmond, Richmond. ///A-lway///s Richmond!
The ground swells up with the flatulence of the dead as you see the graveyard from the street, reminding people - they’re dying, you see! So said old lady in charity shop, milk and sugar mix up. A skip is on stand by, running out of space, chuck them in there. Piling up in the farmish mud a harvest of death. Wooden crosses like the sort you’d make for pets. Brown tiles white walls. The Edge has graffitied his name – he wants to ‘keep it real in Moston, maaan’ (PAULMCCARTNEYTHUMBSUPGRIN). The street that runs alongside – Millais, a malaise – the malady. The street is ‘un-adopted’ – nobody wants it. “Just a moment ago I was a useless cripple!” squawks Dawn French.
C-dogg shouts graffiti; a pound-shop version of Snoop. Between the Graveyard and the Giant Inflatable Snowman ballroom. What do we have here, Catholic guilt? OSTentatious graves, Patrick Kathleen O’Reilly. Pretty picture of dead scally boy with that Police song become tribute to Notorious B.I.G. lyrics emblazoned. Flowers in wire grates – bargain bins? Italiano Cav Domenico; he once was the knight of the crown of Italy but now he stands opposite a stone that looks to be from a Joy Division front cover.
A crow swoops down, hovering in the in-between. People’s extremities whetting its aPPetite. Beheaded Virgin Mary didn’t pay her council tax whilst headless cherub abused systematically in Care. Corpse-breath and lavender emanates as photographed granny ghost dodders toward you; “Give us a kissy, love!” A tallying with them wanderers before who smelt of shit and perfume.
Trade-off, face off, stand off – the stone says ‘you gave your son, so here’s our mamma’. Was it a fair swap then? Henry Salter’s sovereign ring looks to be grave robbed. Legal language wife of the above. She was, she did NOT fall of the back of a lorry I’ll have you know! Eeeh, dear. Family gatherings. Families with the name Bunbury – Oscar Wilde’s relatives? Tacky ornamentation, reminded of Victorian cats on sale on eBay. They’d thought on to give the deceased a Christmas card though.
Bus back grunts, another celebrity in Moston there looks to be. ‘Ank Marvin’s Bakery, lonesome highway-flavoured buns of despair. A fellow passenger this time oldish woman, her hair a peachy-orange colour. The sound it would make - reality warping at the corners as a metal bar stretched, or a tape slowing down; “Aaaaooooooowww.” The smell of her perfume corresponded exactly to the colour of her hair. Sadly the hair didn’t make the noise. Last sight of North Mancs – a climbing frame amidst debris, the potential site of a Throbbing Gristle video surely?
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Hidden depths
Walking through the park I happened upon a stout old woman twatting a tennis ball with a hockey stick for her pug, which was wearing a pink collar.
Just as I was revelling in this vignette, the pug came and sniffed around my feet and the old woman erupted with the voice of a dominatrix, "Get. The. Ball!"
I imagined the dog as some kind of substitute for previous debased and exhausted human victims.
Just as I was revelling in this vignette, the pug came and sniffed around my feet and the old woman erupted with the voice of a dominatrix, "Get. The. Ball!"
I imagined the dog as some kind of substitute for previous debased and exhausted human victims.
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Jacky
"Presently there was a noise on the staircase. He shut up Margaret's card in the pages of Ruskin, and opened the door. A woman entered, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all strings and bell-pulls - ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clicked and caught - and a boa of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes, and there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead. The face - the face does not signify. It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white. Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that prime may have been. She was descending quicker than most women into the colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it."
E.M. Forster, Howards End
E.M. Forster, Howards End
Friday, 11 June 2010
Neoliberal crocodile tears
This morning I attended the first part of a three-day careers fair for postgraduates put on by the university. I admit that my levels of cynicism were so high from the start that I was already wondering which type of little cakes Food On Campus would wheel out come lunch time. Perhaps it would just be fruit.
As it happened I wasn't there by lunchtime. Using the opening inanities to scour the wasteful plastic folder full of irrelevant paper for anything of interest, I discovered something. Out of the forty or so people speaking (the first day was presentations by people with PhDs who are now employed), maybe around five came from the humanities. Only three of those came anywhere near to having studied something that would in principle lead to similar employment opportunities to my own work. And we're talking comparing 15th century pottery with late 20th century sexual, cultural and political radicalism here.
If I'm honest this was no surprise, but the starkness of the bias towards mostly marketing, business and science subordinated to business was still hard to swallow. I looked at a session on working in the public sector - everyone speaking at it specialised in the above. These kinds of discoveries went on. And on.
As if to hammer this home, we were given a keynote speech by a self-important stuffed shirt from the upper echelons of university management. Laughably, he was wearing a purple tie, as if in formal and pseudo-political allegiance with the university's garish colour scheme. As he droned on and on about how research is vital to the reproduction of advanced capitalism (he may as well have expressed it like this), I zoned out, my ears only pricking up at particularly huff-inducing claims like "a Chinese reading of Victorian literature will be no different to an English one". My mind made up that I would rather forfeit my free lunch than sit through a day of this crap, I was just waiting for it to be over so I could go home and mark exam scripts.
Then it happened. Prior to this point, imagine the atmosphere in the lecture theatre as being like that of any speech that no-one really wants to be at. It's a formality, everyone knows the score, the speaker's mannerisms, intonation and the structure of their talk are all well-worn and predictable. Suddenly this man goes,
"And I'd like to conclude with an anecdote about a PhD student of my wife's. This might be seen as a political comment, but I really don't mean it in that way at all.
The student in question is Chinese, and had grown up like all of us shaped by and not questioning the society in which she lived. She said to my wife that doing a PhD had set her free. And I think that's the most wonderful thing, what more could you ask...forgive me for my emotion,"
he concluded as his voice broke and his eyes welled up with tears. The atmosphere had gone from half-arsed to knife-edged in what dramatists might call a 'beat'. I was staggered.
Here was gross indoctrination in action, in a really uncharacteristic way. I've found that the common experience of the encroachment of neoliberal logic on the academy is nearly always creeping, insidious and utterly banal. Yet this man was willing to dramatically allude to the spectre of totalitarianism, von Hayek-style, and weep crocodile tears, to provide a crass emotional underscore to his tedious management-babble.
What's especially telling about the anecdote, apart from the assumptions that it isn't political and that we don't question the society in which we live, is that the bloke can't even see the contradictions in his example: China is a repressive state, yet it has operated on economically neoliberal lines since 1978. Free markets don't equal free people. On top of this, how does coming to 'free West' and doing a PhD 'set you free' if knowledge must now always be directly relevant to furthering the project of globalised capitalism, as he and his ilk also argue? Is it just me, or does that make researchers into complete drones?
In this situation it's not surprising that people in subject areas like mine either convert to a 'safe' profession like law, go into PR, marketing or advertising, take up an advanced but boring bureaucratic position or more often than not end up on the scrap heap. We either squeeze ourselves to fit or we're discarded, after having been falsely encouraged in order to boost league table results on performance, student numbers and funding awards. The same utilitarian-capitalist logic, it almost goes without saying, lying behind such league tables.
What does this man's anecdote signify more widely? Was he just having trouble with the anti-depressants? Or might it, on some micro-level, be a hint that in the current economic recession, neoliberalism is facing a crisis of legitimacy? On top of dull 'common-sense', we also need 'moving' exhortations. I wonder how much of this will go on as justification for the Con-Dem plans to raise tuition fees. It has to remembered, however, that such a crisis of legitimacy in all areas will pass pretty quickly if no effective opposition forcefully manages to put an alternative viewpoint across.
Whatever the case, it's not what I needed to hear on a Friday.
As it happened I wasn't there by lunchtime. Using the opening inanities to scour the wasteful plastic folder full of irrelevant paper for anything of interest, I discovered something. Out of the forty or so people speaking (the first day was presentations by people with PhDs who are now employed), maybe around five came from the humanities. Only three of those came anywhere near to having studied something that would in principle lead to similar employment opportunities to my own work. And we're talking comparing 15th century pottery with late 20th century sexual, cultural and political radicalism here.
If I'm honest this was no surprise, but the starkness of the bias towards mostly marketing, business and science subordinated to business was still hard to swallow. I looked at a session on working in the public sector - everyone speaking at it specialised in the above. These kinds of discoveries went on. And on.
As if to hammer this home, we were given a keynote speech by a self-important stuffed shirt from the upper echelons of university management. Laughably, he was wearing a purple tie, as if in formal and pseudo-political allegiance with the university's garish colour scheme. As he droned on and on about how research is vital to the reproduction of advanced capitalism (he may as well have expressed it like this), I zoned out, my ears only pricking up at particularly huff-inducing claims like "a Chinese reading of Victorian literature will be no different to an English one". My mind made up that I would rather forfeit my free lunch than sit through a day of this crap, I was just waiting for it to be over so I could go home and mark exam scripts.
Then it happened. Prior to this point, imagine the atmosphere in the lecture theatre as being like that of any speech that no-one really wants to be at. It's a formality, everyone knows the score, the speaker's mannerisms, intonation and the structure of their talk are all well-worn and predictable. Suddenly this man goes,
"And I'd like to conclude with an anecdote about a PhD student of my wife's. This might be seen as a political comment, but I really don't mean it in that way at all.
The student in question is Chinese, and had grown up like all of us shaped by and not questioning the society in which she lived. She said to my wife that doing a PhD had set her free. And I think that's the most wonderful thing, what more could you ask...forgive me for my emotion,"
he concluded as his voice broke and his eyes welled up with tears. The atmosphere had gone from half-arsed to knife-edged in what dramatists might call a 'beat'. I was staggered.
Here was gross indoctrination in action, in a really uncharacteristic way. I've found that the common experience of the encroachment of neoliberal logic on the academy is nearly always creeping, insidious and utterly banal. Yet this man was willing to dramatically allude to the spectre of totalitarianism, von Hayek-style, and weep crocodile tears, to provide a crass emotional underscore to his tedious management-babble.
What's especially telling about the anecdote, apart from the assumptions that it isn't political and that we don't question the society in which we live, is that the bloke can't even see the contradictions in his example: China is a repressive state, yet it has operated on economically neoliberal lines since 1978. Free markets don't equal free people. On top of this, how does coming to 'free West' and doing a PhD 'set you free' if knowledge must now always be directly relevant to furthering the project of globalised capitalism, as he and his ilk also argue? Is it just me, or does that make researchers into complete drones?
In this situation it's not surprising that people in subject areas like mine either convert to a 'safe' profession like law, go into PR, marketing or advertising, take up an advanced but boring bureaucratic position or more often than not end up on the scrap heap. We either squeeze ourselves to fit or we're discarded, after having been falsely encouraged in order to boost league table results on performance, student numbers and funding awards. The same utilitarian-capitalist logic, it almost goes without saying, lying behind such league tables.
What does this man's anecdote signify more widely? Was he just having trouble with the anti-depressants? Or might it, on some micro-level, be a hint that in the current economic recession, neoliberalism is facing a crisis of legitimacy? On top of dull 'common-sense', we also need 'moving' exhortations. I wonder how much of this will go on as justification for the Con-Dem plans to raise tuition fees. It has to remembered, however, that such a crisis of legitimacy in all areas will pass pretty quickly if no effective opposition forcefully manages to put an alternative viewpoint across.
Whatever the case, it's not what I needed to hear on a Friday.
Monday, 7 June 2010
The True Wheel by Brian Eno
Brian and a bevy of bovine backing singers are riding Xavier from the X Men’s flying mobility scooter across an ocean on one of Saturn’s moons. They are glammed up to the nines in figure hugging lamé, glitter, feathers, massive collars, winking control panels and so on. When the backing singers perform their parts they split into two groups, one on either side of Brian. All camply mime actions to the lines “now we’re on the telephone/making final arrangements – ding ding!” As they sing “looking for a certain ratio”, they shield their eyes sailor-style and look to the horizon.
When the ‘snake guitar’ kicks in, it provides an auxiliary energy surge to the mobi-scoot, represented by magenta lightwaves and a jelly-fading screen effect. As light-speed is reached, the surroundings whizz past Star Wars-style with a focal point directly ahead. The small craft is buffeted by gaseous eruptions. The rattling percussion is played by bizarre little figurine ornaments of the Modern Lovers and nosy neighbours, including a net-curtain harridan and a thick-set old man with a scowl who is equipped with a pair of secateurs as a drumstick.
The lines “certain streets have certain corners/sooner or later we’ll turn yours” prove prescient as the vid concludes with them swooping down a deserted road full of sedate bungalows, the rush of air from the mobi-scoot tearing up roses from their beds and pansies from their hanging baskets.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Coach trips
Some bits and bobs I thought about on the coach on the way to and from London this weekend:
At first I think that the romanticism of the journey is dented somewhat by passing through Stoke. Still, I saw Patrick Wolf play there so some stardust might have rubbed off.
Later I get on an observational/psychogeographical roll in the old notebook:
Factory-allotment-scattered council houses-abandoned double toddler buggy-roundabouts-railway bridges-secluded passages network to a soundtrack of Atlas Sound covering 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart'. Monolithic pebbledash, tessellating concrete as base for superstructure of soured dreams.
Someone I meet in London tells me that they briefly lived there and that when a football match was on, all the electricity would go out in the houses surrounding the stadium.
Perhaps a video with my face replaced by an arts and crafts pottery sun ornament. I'd skip between the cumulus cloud paths, keeping watch on the parish below. Plotting. Occasionally descending to lurk in the oil seed rape.
A sign for a development in nowhere-land: 'Prologis Park Rugby Phase II'. It reminds me of the one on the way to Liverpool Airport: 'The Omega Opportunity is opening up'. A virtual encirclement with vague yet very real void-power. All very Iain Sinclair, or Stanley Donwood.
On the way back I'm not really conscious but get awoken right before the end of the journey by an eruption of conflict; a man deciding to tell two kids that their constant bubble gum blowing has been driving him berserk. After five hours. Soon a near-riot ensues on the back seat after the coach driver aimlessly circles round the centre of Manchester about three times before depositing us on Chorlton Street. "Fuck's sake, go *that* way! NaaaaaaaaOOOOOOOOO, *THAT* way!"
Coach Trip this was not.
At first I think that the romanticism of the journey is dented somewhat by passing through Stoke. Still, I saw Patrick Wolf play there so some stardust might have rubbed off.
Later I get on an observational/psychogeographical roll in the old notebook:
Factory-allotment-scattered council houses-abandoned double toddler buggy-roundabouts-railway bridges-secluded passages network to a soundtrack of Atlas Sound covering 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart'. Monolithic pebbledash, tessellating concrete as base for superstructure of soured dreams.
Someone I meet in London tells me that they briefly lived there and that when a football match was on, all the electricity would go out in the houses surrounding the stadium.
Perhaps a video with my face replaced by an arts and crafts pottery sun ornament. I'd skip between the cumulus cloud paths, keeping watch on the parish below. Plotting. Occasionally descending to lurk in the oil seed rape.
A sign for a development in nowhere-land: 'Prologis Park Rugby Phase II'. It reminds me of the one on the way to Liverpool Airport: 'The Omega Opportunity is opening up'. A virtual encirclement with vague yet very real void-power. All very Iain Sinclair, or Stanley Donwood.
On the way back I'm not really conscious but get awoken right before the end of the journey by an eruption of conflict; a man deciding to tell two kids that their constant bubble gum blowing has been driving him berserk. After five hours. Soon a near-riot ensues on the back seat after the coach driver aimlessly circles round the centre of Manchester about three times before depositing us on Chorlton Street. "Fuck's sake, go *that* way! NaaaaaaaaOOOOOOOOO, *THAT* way!"
Coach Trip this was not.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
It begins
You have reached the end of the Somebody's Old Tat blog.
You haven't really, it's the start.
I set this up to encourage myself to write rather than rot like the speed eater in Taxidermia, gradually fusing with my chair.
To begin with, here's something I wrote on one of my albums of last year, 'Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age':
Wind-up toys chatter in a strangely-lit nursery, then: “Raaah rah raaah, raaah rah raaah”, intones Trish, her eyes misted white with second sight as she whirls around the secondary modern science lab. In her right hand she holds a telescoping pointer that swishes metronomically in time with her theme. Amorphous blobs of multicoloured lights overlay the tableau, along with animated symbols and patterns from Open University textbooks, spelling out an arcane ritual. The last ruse of a collapsing Keynesian consensus, ironically enlisting its children’s mysticism as its very English modernism comes under attack from a far more zealous and altogether noxious formation. Or perhaps this is a doomed but beautiful attempt, by way of musty excavation, to magick that world back into being. Whatever the case, it’s hard to avoid basking in the aureole created where these two strategies reach forward and backward into each other.
Then you’re listening to spam fritters teatime hidden in the wall. No, you’re walking down the high street as an Austin Traveller roars past. To your left, a wall of TVs in the window of Rumbelows are blaring out the Rubettes’ ‘Sugar Baby Love’ and...and...somehow you’re trapped in the picture, the glam thrust unbearably loud as you microscopically shin up Mick Clarke’s leg to safety, yowling in hallucinogenic terror.
A moment of calm. Krauty ascendance into space is followed by the local pervert’s swagger through a scrubby patch of grass, bushes and dubious carrier bags which passes for a recreation ground. And...the lark ascends, the east wind blows, the seagulls chatter and a toothy gentile who you met on the promenade demonstrates his amateur pastime on the Moog. We are transported, though not physically at this stage, to a sun-dappled glade. An ancient pagan Englishness which says, “I’m only perverse because you’ve repressed me. I’m not the parish.” You try and process this information but it gives you a slight headache. Your afternoon nap is disturbed by the strains of Science Workshop and a creeping sense that something is not quite right. Someone’s holding your hand now. The fever breaks, and the dales roll and undulate, an oscillator thrumming in the background.
Reconvened theosophy séance in a pebble-dashed council house on a windswept moor. Dusty cardboard boxes with more memories than you can reasonably be expected to recall. A few doors down is the old lady with denture breath and long, fine white hair that you’ve only once seen out of its tight bun. Tea in a willow pattern cup and saucer, untouched. A segment of suburb you never knew existed. Playing with children you don’t know out of obligation. A panel missing on the streetlamp. Everyone’s against you. Time to rebel. Drop a tab. Chew this thing you found in a field.
Time passes.
Euphoria attempts to set in. Everyone’s yapping and mithering. Analogue signal. They’re not tuned in at the greengrocer’s. Your mum’s friend’s shed is more like it. Wandering through the woods at the end of the garden down a path seldom noticed. It’s getting dark. A derelict mansion rears up. The windows are aflame, gothic and certain. The stars are out and floppy-bodied freaks with long smelly hair are cavorting in the grounds. “Yeah!” they drone. “Come join us!” Abandoned pots of lentils, scum caked around the rim. Is that the vicar running down the corridor in suspenders, laughing like an eighteenth century lunatic?
The Birds is on in the other room.
It’s the next morning. Or the morning after. Someone who understands is singing a lullaby. The glade beckons. You know you can’t stay. There’s a nest above you. BANGBANGBANGBANG. The doorknocker shocks everyone from their reverie into a unified moment of pure clarity. The rozzers. A final dose of the horrors.
In the parlour, trinkets and tat in an ‘heirloom’ cabinet. Bought at Affleck and Brown’s in the sale. Afternoon tea for show. Something dreary on the radio. Your mind drifting to that violent film you saw last week. Kicking up a right stink. Or the night at the funfair. What’s that sorry?
Back down the high street, we need teabags, luncheon meat, a pint of milk, two turnips. Don’t forget my Dunhills. You won’t forget. You hear that voice. The sunlight slants down and you smile.
You haven't really, it's the start.
I set this up to encourage myself to write rather than rot like the speed eater in Taxidermia, gradually fusing with my chair.
To begin with, here's something I wrote on one of my albums of last year, 'Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age':
Wind-up toys chatter in a strangely-lit nursery, then: “Raaah rah raaah, raaah rah raaah”, intones Trish, her eyes misted white with second sight as she whirls around the secondary modern science lab. In her right hand she holds a telescoping pointer that swishes metronomically in time with her theme. Amorphous blobs of multicoloured lights overlay the tableau, along with animated symbols and patterns from Open University textbooks, spelling out an arcane ritual. The last ruse of a collapsing Keynesian consensus, ironically enlisting its children’s mysticism as its very English modernism comes under attack from a far more zealous and altogether noxious formation. Or perhaps this is a doomed but beautiful attempt, by way of musty excavation, to magick that world back into being. Whatever the case, it’s hard to avoid basking in the aureole created where these two strategies reach forward and backward into each other.
Then you’re listening to spam fritters teatime hidden in the wall. No, you’re walking down the high street as an Austin Traveller roars past. To your left, a wall of TVs in the window of Rumbelows are blaring out the Rubettes’ ‘Sugar Baby Love’ and...and...somehow you’re trapped in the picture, the glam thrust unbearably loud as you microscopically shin up Mick Clarke’s leg to safety, yowling in hallucinogenic terror.
A moment of calm. Krauty ascendance into space is followed by the local pervert’s swagger through a scrubby patch of grass, bushes and dubious carrier bags which passes for a recreation ground. And...the lark ascends, the east wind blows, the seagulls chatter and a toothy gentile who you met on the promenade demonstrates his amateur pastime on the Moog. We are transported, though not physically at this stage, to a sun-dappled glade. An ancient pagan Englishness which says, “I’m only perverse because you’ve repressed me. I’m not the parish.” You try and process this information but it gives you a slight headache. Your afternoon nap is disturbed by the strains of Science Workshop and a creeping sense that something is not quite right. Someone’s holding your hand now. The fever breaks, and the dales roll and undulate, an oscillator thrumming in the background.
Reconvened theosophy séance in a pebble-dashed council house on a windswept moor. Dusty cardboard boxes with more memories than you can reasonably be expected to recall. A few doors down is the old lady with denture breath and long, fine white hair that you’ve only once seen out of its tight bun. Tea in a willow pattern cup and saucer, untouched. A segment of suburb you never knew existed. Playing with children you don’t know out of obligation. A panel missing on the streetlamp. Everyone’s against you. Time to rebel. Drop a tab. Chew this thing you found in a field.
Time passes.
Euphoria attempts to set in. Everyone’s yapping and mithering. Analogue signal. They’re not tuned in at the greengrocer’s. Your mum’s friend’s shed is more like it. Wandering through the woods at the end of the garden down a path seldom noticed. It’s getting dark. A derelict mansion rears up. The windows are aflame, gothic and certain. The stars are out and floppy-bodied freaks with long smelly hair are cavorting in the grounds. “Yeah!” they drone. “Come join us!” Abandoned pots of lentils, scum caked around the rim. Is that the vicar running down the corridor in suspenders, laughing like an eighteenth century lunatic?
The Birds is on in the other room.
It’s the next morning. Or the morning after. Someone who understands is singing a lullaby. The glade beckons. You know you can’t stay. There’s a nest above you. BANGBANGBANGBANG. The doorknocker shocks everyone from their reverie into a unified moment of pure clarity. The rozzers. A final dose of the horrors.
In the parlour, trinkets and tat in an ‘heirloom’ cabinet. Bought at Affleck and Brown’s in the sale. Afternoon tea for show. Something dreary on the radio. Your mind drifting to that violent film you saw last week. Kicking up a right stink. Or the night at the funfair. What’s that sorry?
Back down the high street, we need teabags, luncheon meat, a pint of milk, two turnips. Don’t forget my Dunhills. You won’t forget. You hear that voice. The sunlight slants down and you smile.
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