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Monday 11 August 2008 11:15>>

late-time impulse

For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.

- Genesis 19:13

Ah, the old tears, the old and blinding tears
I gave God then,
When my town fell, and noise was in mine ears
Of crashing towers, and forth they guided me
Through spears and lifted oars and angry men
Out to an unknown sea.

- The Iphigenia in Tauris

Rumbling noises in the flat at around 11. The upstairs neighbour has his window open every night.

I have seen him once or twice, I think. I don't know them now, our neighbours. Not like the old days - with the ones from the olden age.

They had all been through the war. Some through both. They laughed and drank and had nephews who were bishops. They had done service, climbed the Eiger, had OBEs, written books, heard bombs fall, dined in country houses, went to church, been ordained, lost ranks of loved ones, buried the dead.

It was posh, not just expensive.

Few had children. One died aged 104. They are all dead now, bar one. Six flats. Seven deaths.

There are three of us left here. I'm in the room at the end; hermetically sealed, rarely showing my face; wired up. There are 14 plugs in three extension leads. Two empty sockets.

Dreams come readily now, and I can sleep any time. I dream of different places. Glastonbury. Holloway.

Goddess, may the days and their rude illusions fall away from me now. May the rattle and clatter leave go and something else rise up through. Look - I'll draw on the memory of the sky. Do you see it? Do you remember? The fields. The blushing nights. My Father came as a raptor. He was free and watching over me.

The room must have smelled. There are no pictures.

The sky was bigger then, it got bigger every day. You could feel it wrap around you, so tall you were. And in the end the moon got very close, and it came right near as if to touch me, and the sky made thunder and lightning - as if with great travail - and two cats fought on drapes in a window opposite Jo's room - where I came down. It was a world rendered in mythologies. To cast your senses on a scene was to draw a card from The Major Arcana. Life drew near...and fluttered as a swarm of butterflies could beat you with a magical cloud of silk paper alae.

Now the days roll by, in the death trance, à la Villa Borghese, in a lock step until the door closes, and no construction. I think of the sky because it seems so small and yet so far away and unreal. It's a tacky photograph to me now, one I barely notice...for all I know; a mawkish enhancement by a life culture spirit peddling shit.

Well, you know the story. Cast thy net and ye will find the fish of the waters. What the ocean gives no man may say, and verily, he spake unto them...et cetera - ad infinitum.

To live beyond illusion, or with it? that's the question.

Alae.

Observation of the evening: I wear brown so I can blend into the woods when civilisation collapses.

I can't fight a war from here. I've tried so hard to dream. I thought about seven women, then 12, then 25, my mind is 'fracted and corroborate'. I slaked a spade at the ashes of Deckard's apartment, on the 97th floor no less, after seeing that hell come true for three minutes on the morning news from the other side of the world. I recorded crazy metaphors, similes, analogies...; George Bush having a bull's penis grafted to his forehead so he can impale young Baptist girls and wash his face in their blood. Seven swank swans crazy with love. Nursing a broken arm on a submerged U-96 (the curtains on my bunk affording some privacy). And a thousand other sordid things; because the dragon can do anything.

I've had my fill of what was to hand. It turned to dust. It's dry bones now. As the dipsomaniac cried in the Mexican stew; 'It's never enough!' The light does not shine here more brightly, there is no great notion, the notes die with a dying fall, the films that get delivered every morning go unwatched, the memory unused, the shit piles up to a morning impasse, Malvolio's nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses.

The ghosts are laid to rest. And I am lonely.

So much so. How do you draw on this life? Do you award yourself the highest honour? Make the numbers up? Too much maybe; absolute power corrupts absolutely; but it solves a lot of problems.

Yes, the dragon then - the Weredragon. With just 36 witches, I could conquer the world. Splatter the tyrants and the killers.

How about the farm? Give me the twelve - Earth Goddesses everichon, through and through.

...

I took a walk down to the Green Futures field early on. I familiarised myself with it. It became a favourite place.

As I said, it must have been early, long before the gates opened, when I found myself sitting in the central area, near the Small World Stage. The surrounding venues - the cafés for example - were superb. It was the real deal.

The sun was shining, it was a beautiful day, and I was a little stoned. I appreciated it when drumming started up nearby. It was slow, very slow.

I cast my eyes in the direction of the beat, and noted with interest three young men performing what looked like some kind of dance. I walked over and stood nearby, facing the performance. There was no-one else around. I was the only spectator.

The drummer was crouched down by the entrance to a big circular tent; inside could hold around 70-100 people, I guess. He looked important, this drummer, like he was in charge, and the three guys were his students. He seemed to project approval at their routines.

The three guys were all dressed in blue, as I recall, and they were not dancing. They were young guys; early twenties, all fit, good-looking, clean looking. One was dark, one was blonde, the other was Asian.

There were the moments when they assumed positions. They limbered a little, sometimes shared a silent joke, walked to their spots and froze...

...in a tableau.

They held the position for some considerable time, to the drum, then occasional smiles - a kind of corpsing, relaxation, then together they moved, swaggered even, like confident, healthy young men, to a new scene.

The tableaux had a consistent theme: they were usually composed of two of the men together, in opposition to, or in command of, the third man, who in turn was often suffering, struggling, squatting, begging, running, suppliant, alienated. One or two times he was throwing grenades and the like, as I recall. Sometimes two men were in conflict, with the third looking on - in shock or reproval, for instance.

I was rooted to the spot, soaking it up. Physical movement of this kind - with a deliberate and calculated motivation - puts me in a spin. With the drumming (and the draw) I was in a trance. A pretty woman in a dress, with long auburn hair, came gracefully out of the tent and stood close by. She was smiling.

"What do you make of it?"
I paused.
"I find it...fascinating."
"What do you think it is?"
"They're tableaux...with a common theme..."
"What do you think the theme is?"
"Subjugation...and...oppression..."
"That's right."

We talked for a while, about what they did, what they believed in, when the first performances were due. She said there were going to be regular talks in the tent.

She smiled: "Maybe you could give a talk?"

I told her I couldn't do that, that I didn't have the confidence. I added...

"Maybe in a couple of years..."

Days roll by with this damn broken arm, days imbued with a geist of endeavour and expectation. The summer seems past, resumed; the kingdom of rains. I'm locked in a northern city - "so vast and so strong", one of the richest peasants in history. They fight and toil in my name. I am alone.

Wednesday 23 July 2008 02:45>>

"I am haunted by no phantoms. It is rather that the ashes I stir up contain the crystallization that hold the image (reduced or synthetic) of the living and impure beings that they constituted before the intervention of the fire. If life has a meaning, this image (from the beyond?) has perhaps some significance. That is what I should like to know. And it is why I write."

...You've shown me how vast the world is. I never suspected it. You have opened my eyes. You know, I think about all sorts of things here. You have never laughed at me. Art is not a paradox, nor is it a witticism or a more or less amusing fashion. It is not a pose. It is a profound, obscure reality, a need that must be satisfied, like hunger, like love, and yet it is very difficult to satisfy. It is a phenomenon as complex as life itself, and in order to live one must toil and love and suffer.

- Blaise Cendrars

O Fortuna

Come and sit with me.

Let me talk to you.

I finished reading Nina Rootes' translation of Dan Yack. It's as close a thing to perfection as I know. I looked on in wonder - occasionally wept with laughter.

I broke my arm two weeks ago. I slipped on a ramp outside my office and broke the left humerus in half at the middle. My arm flapped around crazily. It was quite a sight. I went green.

The arm is interesting now; A sling, stained, the tan, the paler sun motif left on the back of my hand by the henna tattoo I acquired before Glastonbury, the massive black and ochre bruises, the brace with the little soldier's star molded into the shoulder. They gave me Co-Dydramol.

The Exile has moved, and Gary Brecher gave a radio interview. He is at the top of the game.

I am cold now. The fire is on. It might as well be winter. I feel cold after I take Warfarin. I feel cold after reading Dan Yack (the shack on the island, the ice floes, the crumbling and capsizing bergs, the ocean spray which freezes mid-blast on the cables with a hiss and crackle). Dan went to the Somme, as Blaise. And Blaise went to Champagne afterwards and got his right arm blown to bits. He held a gun to the surgeon's head at the field hospital, as a incentive to save his life, and they amputated the arm. Champagne was one long party...

Don't let it worry you. It all makes sense really.

Ah well...

This is the world. By that I mean right here. This actual moment. I'll drink and smoke and take the pills, and come back. I need these black scratches now. And I have all the time I need.

A long time indeed.

Rise up Old Slasher, and play out your part...

The old strains play. England falls away. I sit like a statue made of mixed media. Skills and memories. Friendships and family. Possessions and allegiances. A set of commitments...reference points...

One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape. It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses, this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away.

Open the Pod Bay doors Hal.

There was there. The chair outside the marquee where I looked down the hill. You could throw a filter and hit the bar...a small acrylic duster would have made the food wagon, or the shoulder pad from my brace. Nuts were on the job again. Even the coffee was outstanding.

She was not there. I guessed she wouldn't be, and I didn't look for her.

That was that.

But sometimes I still think about her.

She's real.

So I'm sitting there, wasted. The sun is shining and I have finished my shifts. There is a bloke sitting nearby I am liking. Never seen him before, not to remember, even though he's clearly been around for many, many years. We have a mutual friend - Terry - but I don't know this bloke's name, and I never find out.

The first time I saw him was at the party the Earlies threw on Saturday night. It was a spontaneous affair. We were camped outside the fence and couldn't get in - all 400 of us. Vehicle Gates were open of course, but, as someone said; 'The Ped Gates need to be running - and we're running the Ped Gates.'

So there was fire, a big circle, and it got heavy.

I remember passing him a joint. I have a feeling it wasn't the first time I had seen him that evening. I had already noted the general tenor. He seemed pure festival material; country type, heavy tan, used to manual work, years of abandon. I knew I could never be like him - though the thought never coalesced, as such, in my mind.

Some time later I left the circle to take a piss, walking past the showers on the way. They were communal - women on the left and men on the right - handwritten cardboard signs hanging over the respective entrances signifying which was which. Between the two, a narrow corridor, leading nowhere it seemed, but both tents were part of the same structure. There was an aluminium beam over the gap.

Just as I'm walking by I hear a voice calling me in a stage whisper. It's the bloke. I can just make him out waving me over, crouching in a corner by the hog roast tent, he has a piece of cardboard on the ground and a big pen in his hand. He points to the signs over the entrances...
"Men."
"Women."
Here he points to the gap between the tents and holds up the sign so I can see the writing...
"Terry!"
We both screamed with laughter. I was already having trouble walking, and I waved him away and staggered on to the toilets, laughing hysterically. I was still laughing on my way back, where he was putting the finishing touches to the sign. When I saw his smile at me through the gloom I shrieked again and walked on, out of control.

So I'm sitting there, and this guy is close by, and he is plainly stoned and drunk, bibulous - probably worse than me. It's the classic booze and blow scenario all round, again. I think this time it had been running for me since the day before. I can't remember what time it was, even if it was morning or afternoon: But it was day time.

A guy caught my eye, walking towards me, I remembered him from Womad in '06; he was supervisor on the shift after mine. I handed over to him a few times. He had raved about Leeds, thought it was the best, underrated, etc.

He was square-jawed and stocky - healthy looking. Certainly not a smoker. Intelligent, caring, he wore on his face always a look of concern. Occasionally he rippled with what looked like a deep feeling of regret, which you could only see up close. You thought he might become a priest. He would be perfect. Women would go insane. He asked me how it was going.

"Well. I have to say I'm slightly toasted at the moment..."
"When did you get here?"
"Saturday. I finished my last shift yesterday. I've been on a bit of a bender since then. I've had about...sixteen hours of smoking, with the booze providing a steady baseline."
I heard a ragged voice say 'Snap!' beside me. It was the bloke. We started laughing.
I blathered on in a drunken way and eventually asked the would-be priest...
"So, how's it going for you?"
The bloke next to me shrieked at this. I cracked up again.
"I see you're both pretty much out of the frame at the moment. You even look like each other," the priest said, laughing himself, "Maybe talk to you another time."
"Yeah," I said, gripping my knee and trying not to cough, "this guy doesn't help."
"You both look wasted."
"Yes," I gasped for breath, "We go to work in half an hour!"
The would-be priest seemed suddenly shocked, his face clouded over...
"You're going to work...?"
I calmed down. A young woman with braided blonde hair piped up nearby.
"Guys..." she said reprovingly, but I caught a hint of something else, maybe it was the blow.
"No...I'm kidding...I finished my last shift on Monday, that was...yesterday, I think..."
He left, and after only a moment me and the bloke had lost it again. I couldn't stand it, it was getting too intense, perhaps too close, and I berated him for making me laugh and got up to leave.
"What's this...," he said staring at me, his eyes having focal problems, "...the Giggle Police?"

On a later occasion he told me about the 'tour' of the site he had given two young women, preppy types high up in the organisation. One of them wanted class-A's...and he took them to the Stone Circle and cut a deal with a Scouser. She thought she had been ripped for a while, but half-an-hour or so later she was off her tits. He had to get her and her mate back across the site. He smiled in his easy way as he finished the story...
"It was hilarious."

Give me five more years.

And here I am. Hermetically sealed, blooded bodies and wailing women on the silent TV behind me, the flat screen in front, the Thirties fan rocks and clatters a little on its roll. I must have the fan on. It is very important.

Deckard.

I want the night to go on. To play on the edge of The Fall. You are Man's man now. Play their game during the day, but play it out of focus, to shake it off the more readily. Here it is different.

Sunday 6 July 2008 23:30>>

It slipped away from me again. The meaning. What happened? I don't know. I took some notes. I can't face them. Surely it was another failure.

Smiling faces outside. Chefs and a giant chicken. Part of a dance performance at the gallery. Smiling faces, as I say, all round.

I tried to smile earlier, but it cracked, like a wince. I don't see the joke anymore. Goddess help me, I'm flat lining again. I can't cope with this. In the aftershock the faces round the fire on the backdrop of deep blue and black cloudscape and ocean waves of artificial light and campfires - well, that image means nothing, because I meant nothing to every soul there. Where I was, someone else could easily have sat, and with no difference, only perhaps it might have been better.

A woman just walked in. Jeans and a black leather jacket. Heavy round breasts under a white woolen top. A brunette. She paces slowly around the walls, looking at the patchwork of photos by homeless people. Her son comes through from the café - and hops on the stone floor. The husband enters. He is handsome, thin, with a look of concern and confusion, and carries a near empty bottle of Pellegrino. They join the crowd outside to watch the second performance. Clapping. The sky is brooding. It may rain on the performers, including the chicken. The weather was good for Glastonbury. I couldn't have asked for more. I came back alive - but empty to the core. I'm tired now. I've had enough. I don't want to see anyone. I don't want to talk to anyone. I want to retreat behind my dark-ringed eyes and watch myself run out of thoughts. I would be relieved if no one ever spoke to me again.

And Goddess help me, a heavy session last night. It got messy. It could have been worse. It could so easily have been worse. Just normal people - well, no, rogues really, whooping the sauce down their gregories and sucking on smokes. Talk of a nine bar, infra-red cameras, well known criminals, forging prescriptions and tits versus legs.

So-so.

Back in the roost. The white screen of despair. But hark! An angel sings...

In milky silky water
We swim further and further
We dive down... We dive down

The last blast then. Everything you can imagine is real, Picasso said, and I can just scratch enough dirt away to see the flashing axe-blade, made of mother's milk with filigreed black runes.

Hearing that rum went well with peppermint tea, I headed for the Tiny Tea Tent. I sat down next to two women, cracked open my flask of Old Pulteney and poured a healthy dose in the cup. I got out a small paper to roll a micro-joint with the skunk I had acquired ridiculously cheaply. The program was out. I really did need to check something. It was Thursday.

One woman left; the other I talked to.

She worked in medicine and wrote for a feminist magazine. She had children and had toured with a Salsa group years ago. She wore a low-cut top and had good breasts. Her chest was brown from years of sun, but not too brown. Her hair was short - rusty deep red, like dragons blood. Her teeth were in good nick. There had been some work. It was excellently done.

After a while...

"Are you single?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever had a relationship?"
"No."
"Are you a virgin?"
I paused here, and looked to one side and then back at her with a sad and nervous smile.
"I would rather not say."
I made it sound like a question.
She looked down.
"I'm sorry. No. Of course not. I shouldn't have asked that. Sorry."
"It's OK."
Pause.
"But if you were a virgin...women would find that interesting."
Pause.
"Why do you think you've never been with someone?"
"I don't know. I've...speculated...for a long time. I've had all sorts of theories."
"Like?"
"I used to think that I was unattractive to women. I still think that really."
She sat back a little in her chair and looked me up and down...
"Mmmm, I don't think so, I think you would be OK..."

We swapped numbers. She didn't smoke, but was eager to get hold of some cakes or truffles. I was swimming in blow by this stage and offered to help her out. We exchanged a few texts over the next 48 hours and there it ended forever.

So-so.

And on, as the blackness calls, and another dream of being on site.

Monday 2 June 2008 22:00>>

I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

No dragons here. No owls probably, although I heard them once, and I saw the dragon in my mind long ago; a black-hooded man-form as shadow on a stone bridge. No: It's tight and bare in the crystal of cultural convention, and I can only see grey skies through the paste. In this light you cannot get contrast. Words again fall flat. They fall as flat as the days and nights, because the dreams seem dry, and the dragon flew west long ago.

Glastonbury in less than three weeks. I expect it to be rough, but I feel pretty good now; physically confident. We have a small party on the Saturday night for the Earlies, and a bigger party on Tuesday, when my work should be finished. Then I'll have six days to fill the SD cards with photos. Six days, hopefully, of transcendental tent episodes, warm cider, fresh salads and square pies. I'll try to see some bands.

So I'm down there for...what - ten days? And I hope the weather isn't bad again. I really do hope that.

I've been sitting here looking at this screen with blurred vision. Eleven scratchy lines of nothing. But there is nothing. The cards over and over, the boards again, the bottle and the smoke.

Nothing. At night I call for the dragon. I call for its help. My mind dances in the dark on the tip of a dagger. Twenty years ago it was war, then it was women, now I grab for everything and anything because every single thing morphs to a nothing. I play the games over and over, but even when I win I lose. It isn't right. Winning feels like cheating. Something tells you that the heroes' feast is wax root on the other plane where your double dines. The women never seem real, hard as you try, and the money is old chocolate buttons and foreign change...and someone else lives in the big house, a dry man in misery. You are in the dark dreaming of the light: One day this; one day that; and when you die you may meet Hunter Thompson in prison on the other side and make him laugh at a joke of how fat you are going. To make the Doctor laugh would be something, but you know in this life only what they tell you: that now he is a memory that cannot change; his day is done. How, in a way, I envy him such knowledge.

Another day looking after the gallery, long gone into yesterday. A day off tomorrow, which is to say, today. It's nearly two, and I feel I want a solid wall, like the flat side of an axe blade. I feel I can breathe life into the old dragon, make it take a few steps further. If I can make a wall, a wall of words, that is, then I could sleep easy: Get the stains off the homepage; the dead memories. Reorientate myself, reengineer the enjin, reforge the blade.

Not so easy, as the day unfolds and night casts its hand over me again. Just more words to momentarily calm the alarum and hoo-ha for the wired morning after the espresso and the cigarette and the boot-up into the daily charge. But it's only 19:00 as I type this. Five hours at the forge to get old muscles going, to get the blood moving.

I see yellow from the duster, yellow from the light dashed highlight around this line of text.

Times. There was a time of me as a boy in Camac Road. That time has gone. I remember sliding doors, falling down the iron stairs, the outside toilet and the German Shepherd who chased a fly out the window. I can see the sea of maggots in the bin and my mum bathing me in the kitchen sink. I remember the old man in the basement who made me a sausage sandwich, dents in the bread where he had pressed his thumbs, and a boy swimming in The Dip after rain, and the girl with curly hair who jumped me to the ground at Archdeacon and kissed me on the lips.

And the last day, when my mother drove us away.

Then the estate. Butts Farm. Seven years. No, more like nine years. Nine years of mostly hell - until the end, when I made it to the tertiary college to recover my failed education - and my world opened up.

Work, and then Uni. And freedom. A life I will carry with me to the grave. The more invisible they are, that band, those times, the stronger they grow in my heart. One day I may try to put it down again, and make more than a pothook.

Then recovery, work, uni again and more work.

So many times.

No owls, but the parakeets chirrup behind me on the riverside. A moment ago I had my head out of the window to smoke...and a drop of rain hit my face. Heavy rain tonight, they say, and storms. I hope so. Sleep tonight, but not in her arms. When I was the dragon, I could sleep with anyone.

Blow on the coals. Move your hand over the embers. Watch the ash riffle and purl. Watch the time flow away from you. In fact, watch the universe die.

Geese now, calling out, and flecks of rain at the edge of the storm.

A sunlit stream leading down to the beach. I walked the sandy channel and spoke in my mind for the first time.

The airing cupboard where I used to hide, invisible, silent.

A bridge over the road in the west. I sat there after I had seen her, after the police and security had thrown me out. I was blown away and penniless, waiting for my parents.

It's dark here. Talk to me if you want.

...

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