When somebody loves you
Its no good unless he loves you - all the way
I recently asked myself how I got here, how I came to start this blog (I can hardly bring myself to press the keys and form the word without cringing). It all unfolded one evening in front of a tv show about, well, bloggers, some two or three in particular—you’ll know the ones I mean—and there I was, surveying their sites, sampling with head cocked to one side, like a robin listening for worms... then, peck, peck, looking for clues. What were they writing and why had they written?
Happy to be near you,
When you need someone to cheer you, all the way
And I realised that whilst they were pretending to write a diary (the usual stuff packed and pricked with plots) something else was intervening, something that the lonely diarist, wracked with neurosis, scratching at the fibres of his page smudged both by ink and tears, only hints at. In theses texts the writers voice was not stitched behind the charming narrator; here the writers voice did not form the deftly woven tableaux through which the interplay of character and plot were teased and tricked. Here we were asked to be interested in… ah… the writer himself. And it was thus I realised—like a bird looking up, listening to what we do not hear, hearing what we do not understand—that stabled before me were some of the hungriest egos of our time, and this is why I was cringing… earlier on, remember?
Taller than the tallest tree is
That’s how its got to feel
Deeper than the deep blue see is
That’s how deep it goes - if its real
Funny… that night, I drifted off quickly from those first blogs… there were links of course, and comments and all the trappings, the stepping-stones if you will, that nimbly guided me from one site to another. I got a little splashed along the way of course, but I found myself, well, found some stuff that maneuvered my spirits, kind of fucked me over in a way… the way the curve of your lips could rewrite history.
I pretended I had found a community of people with blood and emotions, a society condemned to live by their confessions alone, a clan of neurotic individuals for whom the publishing of these coughings-up was a massage to their egos as the analyst massages the id.
When somebody needs you
Its no good unless he needs you - all the way
Through the good or lean years
And for all the in between years - come what may
I was astonished by the naked hunger demonstrated by these texts. So disenchanted was I by their rapacious and unquenchable thirst for glory that I ran for cover more quickly than I had arrived. Yet cowering—like mole, in his snowy tree-stump in the wild wood, longing for his dear friend ratty-—I heard a sigh, the sound that comes from a body expressing the emotion of absence. It was me… as if each of my breaths, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other. I was, sadly, unglued, drying, yellowing, shrivelling. It had only been fifteen hours and seventeen days since I took my blog away, I’d been out all night and slept all day, since I took my blog away. And unlike the seventeen-year periodic cicada, it had taken me only seventeen days to dissolve into amorous absence.
Who knows where the road will lead us
Only a fool would say
But if you’ll let me love you
Its for sure I’m gonna love you - all the way, all the way
Bring your lips to mine, so that out of my mouth my soul may pass into yours.
17
Seventeen years here. Here in the dark. No sound. Almost no sound. There’s the scurrying of course. Is it scurrying? No. It’s certainly, what would you call it, footfall? Yes, somewhere up there, dull undefined footfall. And the sounds here—scratchings, scrapings—all the sounds that reach this point below, which make their traffic through the leaf litter and the soil into this rotten retreat, if that’s what you could call it, are so vague as to be indistinguishable. In fact, you might say, that we’ve been here so long, that trying to distinguish one sound from the other is nigh on impossible. The result of a kind of apathy of waiting I suppose… what else would you call it? As sure as the diurnal relief of night giving birth to day (we know nothing of these matters here), the equinoctial marking of the seasons pass, the years unfold unnoticed.
Year after year of lying here
A serenading I would go.
Nymphs. That’s what they call us. And its not that anyone is around to take notice. Oh, look, those bloody nymphs are at it again! Nope, we’re not at anything. Actually the contrary is true: we're busy doing nothing, whatsoever. Waiting. Biding our time. Biding our time whilst nature awaits our deplorable gift. And as sure as the spring and autumn equinox measures the growing and shortening of the days, we wait. Getting fat.
Year after year of lying here
A courting I would go.
You can imagine it… complacency, boredom—call it what you will—a kind of tedium sets in, and the mind bluffs, beguiles, loses focus, is hooked on the mulling over of… is imagining (if such things are imaginable) is calculating the passage of time, the passing of the winter and summer solstice. One year, five years, ten years, fifteen years. It all the same. It all blends. Here in the dark. Hardly able to move. Breathing, feeling the tightly hugging earthy grave.
Year after year of lying here
A mating I would go.
Suddenly a shout goes out, a rasping call, there’s the scraping of carapace, against… something; the scratching of legs amongst grit, panic abounds and incredibly, after seventeen lonely years below, we claw with one ambition, tunnel and haul ourselves up—up to the drying rays of the sun, and with twitchings, and palpitations, crack out of dry casings to stretch our fresh formed slender still-damp wings. Flexing to yield our serenade of eros and eloquence that lasts for one night only, we fight up tree and branch, scramble higher, yes, higher, to find a mate, to sing, to audaciously flex our new formed wings, to seal our fate.
After seventeen years of lying here
I’m dead of course.
Having found a mate, eggs laid, the seventeen year periodic cicada drops dead to the floor. Like a brittle carpet formed from twiglets, the cicadas lie crisp underfoot and return their macabre gift—the largest dose of fertilizer in the natural world; as eggs hatch, nymphs traffic through the leaf litter and soil, to their rotten retreat below, in the deep dark wood.
Seventeen years I’ll be lying here
Getting fat.
Year after year of lying here
A serenading I would go.
Nymphs. That’s what they call us. And its not that anyone is around to take notice. Oh, look, those bloody nymphs are at it again! Nope, we’re not at anything. Actually the contrary is true: we're busy doing nothing, whatsoever. Waiting. Biding our time. Biding our time whilst nature awaits our deplorable gift. And as sure as the spring and autumn equinox measures the growing and shortening of the days, we wait. Getting fat.
Year after year of lying here
A courting I would go.
You can imagine it… complacency, boredom—call it what you will—a kind of tedium sets in, and the mind bluffs, beguiles, loses focus, is hooked on the mulling over of… is imagining (if such things are imaginable) is calculating the passage of time, the passing of the winter and summer solstice. One year, five years, ten years, fifteen years. It all the same. It all blends. Here in the dark. Hardly able to move. Breathing, feeling the tightly hugging earthy grave.
Year after year of lying here
A mating I would go.
Suddenly a shout goes out, a rasping call, there’s the scraping of carapace, against… something; the scratching of legs amongst grit, panic abounds and incredibly, after seventeen lonely years below, we claw with one ambition, tunnel and haul ourselves up—up to the drying rays of the sun, and with twitchings, and palpitations, crack out of dry casings to stretch our fresh formed slender still-damp wings. Flexing to yield our serenade of eros and eloquence that lasts for one night only, we fight up tree and branch, scramble higher, yes, higher, to find a mate, to sing, to audaciously flex our new formed wings, to seal our fate.
After seventeen years of lying here
I’m dead of course.
Having found a mate, eggs laid, the seventeen year periodic cicada drops dead to the floor. Like a brittle carpet formed from twiglets, the cicadas lie crisp underfoot and return their macabre gift—the largest dose of fertilizer in the natural world; as eggs hatch, nymphs traffic through the leaf litter and soil, to their rotten retreat below, in the deep dark wood.
Seventeen years I’ll be lying here
Getting fat.
getting there
Whilst once again wondering what to write, where to begin, how it will end, where occurs the middle by which I may commence—as it were—the tormented countdown to some kind of conclusion; in what direction I will launch my address, by which I suppose I mean, who will be listening—yes, yes, we have briefly squinted at these questions before, dwelt several times on their impact, in fact I have already perhaps tired you out with them—it occurs to me that writing is like travelling, a journey without end where plots pass like moving landscapes, slipping predictably from this comma, to this ellipsis…
Scenes zip by relentlessly like the back-end of towns: backyards littered with broken swings, bicycles tossed to the ground, thrashing threads of strung out washing and sheds surveyed from the window of a train. Against the rhythmic clatter of train wheels on tracks, travelling assumes a kind of suspended disbelief, neither arriving nor leaving, crying or laughing, whispering or screaming; vista, town, ocean and mountain pass like plots packed with characters waiting to be cast, unfolding like a thousand stories waiting to be told. I love this no-where-ness of transit.
This getting-there of travel is a kind of floatation—the suspension of arrival—and the pleasure is the pleasure of reading not terrorised by foreclosure. Getting-there is so pricked with excited restlessness, like the book one cannot bare to finish, like the narrative, so ensnaring that one has to look up, stop reading, in order to release the delicious pleasure contained within the words so sweetly stitched. So entangling can be its spell that one despairs of the release wrapped up in the last sentence, afraid of the abandonment and the loneliness after the last word is cast, no further page to turn, but the cover left to close.
The suspended fictional world cruises us, then seduces us so completely, in so brutal yet enchanting a manner, that to finish is like arriving, like tumbling—at our destination—from it’s beguiling net, only to dream of travelling-on once more, wistfully into the night, the patina of the city’s dancing lamp-light calling us to suspend once again, and float away to that other place, away to Never-Never land, to The Wild Wood, to the Emerald City, without the muting, dulling anticipation, without the arrest that foreclosure affords.
Mummy, are we there yet?
Mummy, can you tell me a story?
Mummy, can you read it again?
Mummy, I don’t want it to finish.
And as the various combinations of words and characters in our favourite plots never fails to give pleasure so long as they endure, so their repeated telling only reassures and cocoons us, casts its inspiriting world of images, and like our journey, it’s all about the getting there not the arriving. It’s about the writer’s ego-centric pleasure in the bric-a-brac of telling. We don’t mind how often the tale is told, just keep on telling it.
And like the authors of our favourite blogs, perhaps it is not the what they’re telling us that we listen to, but how they get there, the chosen mechanism of their transport, the grain of their voice.
We love getting there; it’s just that we don’t know where we’re going yet.
Scenes zip by relentlessly like the back-end of towns: backyards littered with broken swings, bicycles tossed to the ground, thrashing threads of strung out washing and sheds surveyed from the window of a train. Against the rhythmic clatter of train wheels on tracks, travelling assumes a kind of suspended disbelief, neither arriving nor leaving, crying or laughing, whispering or screaming; vista, town, ocean and mountain pass like plots packed with characters waiting to be cast, unfolding like a thousand stories waiting to be told. I love this no-where-ness of transit.
This getting-there of travel is a kind of floatation—the suspension of arrival—and the pleasure is the pleasure of reading not terrorised by foreclosure. Getting-there is so pricked with excited restlessness, like the book one cannot bare to finish, like the narrative, so ensnaring that one has to look up, stop reading, in order to release the delicious pleasure contained within the words so sweetly stitched. So entangling can be its spell that one despairs of the release wrapped up in the last sentence, afraid of the abandonment and the loneliness after the last word is cast, no further page to turn, but the cover left to close.
The suspended fictional world cruises us, then seduces us so completely, in so brutal yet enchanting a manner, that to finish is like arriving, like tumbling—at our destination—from it’s beguiling net, only to dream of travelling-on once more, wistfully into the night, the patina of the city’s dancing lamp-light calling us to suspend once again, and float away to that other place, away to Never-Never land, to The Wild Wood, to the Emerald City, without the muting, dulling anticipation, without the arrest that foreclosure affords.
Mummy, are we there yet?
Mummy, can you tell me a story?
Mummy, can you read it again?
Mummy, I don’t want it to finish.
And as the various combinations of words and characters in our favourite plots never fails to give pleasure so long as they endure, so their repeated telling only reassures and cocoons us, casts its inspiriting world of images, and like our journey, it’s all about the getting there not the arriving. It’s about the writer’s ego-centric pleasure in the bric-a-brac of telling. We don’t mind how often the tale is told, just keep on telling it.
And like the authors of our favourite blogs, perhaps it is not the what they’re telling us that we listen to, but how they get there, the chosen mechanism of their transport, the grain of their voice.
We love getting there; it’s just that we don’t know where we’re going yet.
oysters
Waiting tonight on Houndsditch for the 42, my bought tea stretching out the deformed Tesco carrier. I’m wrapped against the winter cold. The 78 passes, then the 100, and another one, a double-decker, the number - something or other - three of them, including a ‘2’. I left my gloves on a train a month ago, heading home for Christmas, and with no replacement the plastic carrier straps chop up the skin in the curve of my fingers and create numb swollen puffs between the white plastic. When I put down the bags and straighten my fingers, the rucks and puffs remain like the tired blistered hands of the decrepit.
The 42. I reach down with my right hand and fuss with the sloppy carrier now ranging across the floor and signal with my left. I look up – NOT IN SERVICE – ungh! I reverse the motion to lower the bag and prepare to recompose against the cold. Unexpectedly the bus shudders to a halt a little after my stop, it’s away from the curb, stopped in it’s tracks type of thing - there in the middle of the street. The doors wind open and the little wizened old lady I’ve previously seen driving the 42 - long died black hair, lots or rings, one signet - calls out to me from behind the wheel to hop aboard.
She asks where I’m heading and I say close to the depot, guessing she’s returning the bus after her shift, and we’re roaring off down Houndsditch, me on the raised little seat at the front by the driver – courteous - she at the wheel.
“If folks put vey’re arm aat when I ain’t in service, I always pick em up” she reassures me, in a foreign accent finished with East End polish, “if ah fink vey’re desprit”
As we approach Tower Bridge she is chatting about the daughter who has moved to Sydney with the husband and two kids. There’s a bit of cussing as the road narrows and she manoeuvres her bus vying for a place in the traffic stream telling me how she started on the buses sixteen years ago when she arrived in London from Greece. Her husband has been dead five years and she’s had enough. “It’s all crap pay and long haars in London, ain’t it luv?”
She asks me what I do and do I have kids, no I say, ‘What, never married ?” no, I reply. Past the Tower of London, The Tower Hotel – ka-bonk - as we rumble over the gap between the bascules of the bridge and downhill past Butlers Wharf and on and away towards Bermondsey. “I’ve saved up - gonna see Dawn in Sydney vis Friday, and me grandchildren, lovely. Gonna move aat vey’re when I give up va busses. Where dya want me ta drop yer love?”
We spin off the Bricklayers roundabout and head towards the depot, “Just on the corner here is great,” I say. A hiss and groan, and we come to a halt outside my flat, the doors whip open with a slap and the breaks fart. “Cheers luv, best a luck” and I step off the juddering red bus at my front door - I’m home. The bus hauls itself off on the final leg of its journey to the depot and I jangle the keys in the lock of the gates, with a wry smile. My own bus to the door, I haven’t left anything onboard, she’s off to Sidney, Dawn and the kids, I’ve my tea in my bag and the flat’s as warm as toast.
And I didn’t have to touch in or out with oyster.
The 42. I reach down with my right hand and fuss with the sloppy carrier now ranging across the floor and signal with my left. I look up – NOT IN SERVICE – ungh! I reverse the motion to lower the bag and prepare to recompose against the cold. Unexpectedly the bus shudders to a halt a little after my stop, it’s away from the curb, stopped in it’s tracks type of thing - there in the middle of the street. The doors wind open and the little wizened old lady I’ve previously seen driving the 42 - long died black hair, lots or rings, one signet - calls out to me from behind the wheel to hop aboard.
She asks where I’m heading and I say close to the depot, guessing she’s returning the bus after her shift, and we’re roaring off down Houndsditch, me on the raised little seat at the front by the driver – courteous - she at the wheel.
“If folks put vey’re arm aat when I ain’t in service, I always pick em up” she reassures me, in a foreign accent finished with East End polish, “if ah fink vey’re desprit”
As we approach Tower Bridge she is chatting about the daughter who has moved to Sydney with the husband and two kids. There’s a bit of cussing as the road narrows and she manoeuvres her bus vying for a place in the traffic stream telling me how she started on the buses sixteen years ago when she arrived in London from Greece. Her husband has been dead five years and she’s had enough. “It’s all crap pay and long haars in London, ain’t it luv?”
She asks me what I do and do I have kids, no I say, ‘What, never married ?” no, I reply. Past the Tower of London, The Tower Hotel – ka-bonk - as we rumble over the gap between the bascules of the bridge and downhill past Butlers Wharf and on and away towards Bermondsey. “I’ve saved up - gonna see Dawn in Sydney vis Friday, and me grandchildren, lovely. Gonna move aat vey’re when I give up va busses. Where dya want me ta drop yer love?”
We spin off the Bricklayers roundabout and head towards the depot, “Just on the corner here is great,” I say. A hiss and groan, and we come to a halt outside my flat, the doors whip open with a slap and the breaks fart. “Cheers luv, best a luck” and I step off the juddering red bus at my front door - I’m home. The bus hauls itself off on the final leg of its journey to the depot and I jangle the keys in the lock of the gates, with a wry smile. My own bus to the door, I haven’t left anything onboard, she’s off to Sidney, Dawn and the kids, I’ve my tea in my bag and the flat’s as warm as toast.
And I didn’t have to touch in or out with oyster.
ok
Today, during an afternoon management meeting, the Director of Front of House Operations recommended that OK magazine be utilized as a tool to keep tags on our current customer base.
Ok Brad
Ok Oprah
Ok Victoria
Ok Scarlett
Ok Angelina
Ok Madonna
Ok Colin & Justin
Ok Vanessa
Ok Robbie
Ok Nicole
Ok David
Ok Billie
Ok Ant
Oh - fuck off Jade - didn't see you there.
Ok, that's better.
Ok Brad
Ok Oprah
Ok Victoria
Ok Scarlett
Ok Angelina
Ok Madonna
Ok Colin & Justin
Ok Vanessa
Ok Robbie
Ok Nicole
Ok David
Ok Billie
Ok Ant
Oh - fuck off Jade - didn't see you there.
Ok, that's better.
when
And so once again dear reader I turn from something to almost nothing as I consider this, my address to you, and in doing so realise that in addition to not knowing the 'what' and the 'why' of writing, the thing that now plays heavily upon my thoughts is its 'when'. I don't know 'when' to write. I don't know when you are ready, you don't say, because of course you don't ask me to write. It is my choice to decide upon the right time, the time that you are ready to read. I don't want to display an over zealous adolescence, an ever ready urge to provide a relentless prattling discourse upon nothing-in-particular, pumping out the words with scant disregard to their piquancy, to the 'spice' of their meaning, the delicacy of their impact upon you, casual reader. But, like others I imagine, I want to seem spontaneous; I wish to avoid the laboured delivery of one merely performing a scheduled function, obliging his diary with pedestrian punctuality.
I know a little of these fecundities, as I am myself a reader and I glean a certain pleasure from observing the anticipated and rhythmic 'clocking' of my newsreader, the invigorating bubbling-up to the surface of fresh feeds, like oxygen, as they are polled and logged. I measure my reading list and hence my favorite writers by this reassuring pulse of publication. The palpitations of the site which suddenly, after slumbering silence, throws up six new feeds, clocking up unread entries arrhythmically, engenders a kind of neurosis of reading - what is the author trying to say in this hiccupping publication, what literary suspension needs to be applied to his or her bumpy off-piste course? I look at the list of my favourite sites and take delight in the ping-ponging of names from unreliable to beautiful from cheerful to scandal from pandemian to humdrum from six words to ... as feeds flicker and flash, fizz and futz, one here, one there, like the half-broken neons flickering above the neo-decrepit streets of 2019 Los Angeles in Bladerunner. And in observing this flickering, this rhythmical blossoming, I recognise the flicker of meaning contained in these texts. That not only do my favourite writers deliver their messages, craft from language - credibly, politely, poetically, drearily, intolerably, uncertainly - like potters at the wheel forming an elegant vase from a soggy spinning mass of clay, not only do they 'handle' language, but their writing oscillates and trembles with a meaning not conjured up by the author at the writing stage, but which is bound up in the frequency it's publication.
As I gloss over this text or that, I consider the story told by this 'when' of writing. Is the writer deploying a kind of suave authorial nonchalance by measuring and staggering the release of his babblings, and does this apply a certain sexy sheen to their reading, like the final addition of butter to a sauce? Or, does the author not care-a-less about such scheduling, throwing out his texts at random, unhindered by punctiliousness, like burps and farts released at will. And like the unhindered expulsion of these burps and farts, what are we to learn of his avoidance of good manners? Like an automatic golf trainer, firing balls at a predetermined interval, does measured publication remove the flamboyance to be found in unpredictability, remove the skill exercised in reading? Is the newsreader then no different to the lover - always listening for the phone (he has not called because he is stuck on the tube, his battery is low), always alert for the postman's footsteps (he has not replied perhaps because he did not receive my letter), like the lover who checks his mobile because he did not hear an alert (perhaps it is MY battery that's flat, perhaps I did not here the tone because I was in the loo, perhaps I inadvertently set it to silent, perhaps he did not receive my text - perhaps I should resend, perhaps I missed his call because I was talking with another). Like the writer of an earlier post who does not know his reader, this lover does not know his loved, guesses at his movements, tries to trace upon his eyelids the shadows of his dreams, tries to outwit his next and every move, anticipating and seeking out every sign of that love. And like our lover, the writer seeks the same response. Like our lover - ever questioning, ever demanding, too often building the verbal discourse of his plight, trying to earn sympathies, and in doing so, alienating himself from the loved object - so the writer, begs the sympathies of his reader.
How often is too much, what is not enough, and when will we learn?
And in anticipation, how soon is now?
I know a little of these fecundities, as I am myself a reader and I glean a certain pleasure from observing the anticipated and rhythmic 'clocking' of my newsreader, the invigorating bubbling-up to the surface of fresh feeds, like oxygen, as they are polled and logged. I measure my reading list and hence my favorite writers by this reassuring pulse of publication. The palpitations of the site which suddenly, after slumbering silence, throws up six new feeds, clocking up unread entries arrhythmically, engenders a kind of neurosis of reading - what is the author trying to say in this hiccupping publication, what literary suspension needs to be applied to his or her bumpy off-piste course? I look at the list of my favourite sites and take delight in the ping-ponging of names from unreliable to beautiful from cheerful to scandal from pandemian to humdrum from six words to ... as feeds flicker and flash, fizz and futz, one here, one there, like the half-broken neons flickering above the neo-decrepit streets of 2019 Los Angeles in Bladerunner. And in observing this flickering, this rhythmical blossoming, I recognise the flicker of meaning contained in these texts. That not only do my favourite writers deliver their messages, craft from language - credibly, politely, poetically, drearily, intolerably, uncertainly - like potters at the wheel forming an elegant vase from a soggy spinning mass of clay, not only do they 'handle' language, but their writing oscillates and trembles with a meaning not conjured up by the author at the writing stage, but which is bound up in the frequency it's publication.
As I gloss over this text or that, I consider the story told by this 'when' of writing. Is the writer deploying a kind of suave authorial nonchalance by measuring and staggering the release of his babblings, and does this apply a certain sexy sheen to their reading, like the final addition of butter to a sauce? Or, does the author not care-a-less about such scheduling, throwing out his texts at random, unhindered by punctiliousness, like burps and farts released at will. And like the unhindered expulsion of these burps and farts, what are we to learn of his avoidance of good manners? Like an automatic golf trainer, firing balls at a predetermined interval, does measured publication remove the flamboyance to be found in unpredictability, remove the skill exercised in reading? Is the newsreader then no different to the lover - always listening for the phone (he has not called because he is stuck on the tube, his battery is low), always alert for the postman's footsteps (he has not replied perhaps because he did not receive my letter), like the lover who checks his mobile because he did not hear an alert (perhaps it is MY battery that's flat, perhaps I did not here the tone because I was in the loo, perhaps I inadvertently set it to silent, perhaps he did not receive my text - perhaps I should resend, perhaps I missed his call because I was talking with another). Like the writer of an earlier post who does not know his reader, this lover does not know his loved, guesses at his movements, tries to trace upon his eyelids the shadows of his dreams, tries to outwit his next and every move, anticipating and seeking out every sign of that love. And like our lover, the writer seeks the same response. Like our lover - ever questioning, ever demanding, too often building the verbal discourse of his plight, trying to earn sympathies, and in doing so, alienating himself from the loved object - so the writer, begs the sympathies of his reader.
How often is too much, what is not enough, and when will we learn?
And in anticipation, how soon is now?
idol
During the pilot stage of a televised audition and casting show conceived to pluck a short list and crown this years blog idol from a circus of thousands of mostly dismal applicants, the self-appointed (and some would say, rashly opinionated) judging committee abandoned their project in it's rudimentary stages over an irksome argument that developed whilst deciding the final name for this award. The following short list formed the battleground upon which no reliable conclusion could be arrived at:
jack idol
cheerful idol
beautiful idol
unreliable idol
revolutionary idol
humdrum idol
pandemic idol
goldfish idol
flux idol
I myself, being bone idle, thought this a more accurate moniker for these ever reflexive activities.
It was subsequently muted that a runners-up show filmed at Elstree studios would be considered, in which these candidates would be encouraged to blog in and out of each others lives in pretended domestic intimacy and these interactions be monitored and commented upon. The working title of this show is Celebrity Big Blogger.
jack idol
cheerful idol
beautiful idol
unreliable idol
revolutionary idol
humdrum idol
pandemic idol
goldfish idol
flux idol
I myself, being bone idle, thought this a more accurate moniker for these ever reflexive activities.
It was subsequently muted that a runners-up show filmed at Elstree studios would be considered, in which these candidates would be encouraged to blog in and out of each others lives in pretended domestic intimacy and these interactions be monitored and commented upon. The working title of this show is Celebrity Big Blogger.
jouissance
And so once again I turn my attention from almost anything to almost nothing and start to write, but write what? It occurs to me that there is a stock of themes here from which I may draw my scripts trajectory, templates if you will, with plots and characters waiting to be directed and named. Here is the mother of all templates of course, the journal. If this is blogging then ostensibly it’s in the fashion of a journal, but with what protagonists and plots will I spin my script, provide my hook? What images, gestures or encounters plucked from the bottomless pit of daily life can I assume robust enough for you, docile reader, to resonate with, be ravished by, dip into, share? But of course you don't know me, perhaps I have provided no clues. Were we old friends perhaps you would be hugging your ribs anticipating a script of almost intolerable comedy, asking yourself on this as on other similar occasions, how you will cope with the gut-wrenching pain of uncontrollable laughter in the face of such comic torment. You might say to yourself, oh, that one, he is as funny as ever, he makes me roar. But you don’t. You know nothing of me, to be reduced to tears by my tragic prattlings, saying to yourself, oh that one, he's so reflective, he always trawls my secret depths with his knowing, searching prose. Oh, that is so him, he's so wan. Alas, these longed for warm recognitions, anticipations, or responses, do not form the texture of my unfettered mutterings.
The very fact of my writing, of my searching out and locating this space for text, for wringing out my jitterings before you, rustles-up an anxiety in me of a prolific response: who does he think he is, writing these things here, in this space? This place of all places which we baptized with our words, this place where we were just getting comfortable when he trolled along, poking his words around in our eeks, our familiar things twinkling reassuringly in the half-light. Really! Putting his words here, words which trip us up, distract us, as we tread our path through the deep dark wood. His words cause us to veer from the path. What does he want to tell us and more to the point, why does he want to tell us? Why has he waited this long and why has he chosen this as the time for his irritating outburst?
And of course, it seems, after all my blatherings, my lexical coughings and farts, it seems that I am capable of telling you nothing. I seem to spin a fabric, a whispery web of something-but-nothing, barely knitted together. But nothing holds still for long enough. Everything seems to slide. Slippage seems to be my thing then, glissage, as the French would say.
Perhaps it turns out that I haven’t actually got anything to say at all. I don’t have a story to tell you. No, there is no catalogue of links waiting to be posted echoing my hobbies, no mappings, no postings, no photo-sets story-boarding my weekend reveries. Here you will not find me unfolding lewd sketches of tender moonlit entanglements under the disused signal boxes of London's over-ground railways stations. You will not find my drawn-out tales of dining experiences with friends and colleagues cataloging the significant restaurant openings of 2007. You will not find mindless aphorisms or pendulous dragging narratives detailing the inconsequential meandering thoughts that plague us all when sleazing in the dark zone. And you will certainly not find the churlish comic-tragic posturing doused with rhyming couplets and folksy popular songs so overused by the amateur auteur.
And so you don't know me at all. And why would you want to bother?
And so once again I turn my attention from almost anything to almost nothing and I start to write. Write for who? It occurs to me that there is a stock of basic readers here for whom I may draw my scripts trajectory, blank canvases if you will, waiting to be directed and named. Thus in order to connect, in order to unfurl this text (we've already observed it forming a trajectory in an earlier passage) I must address it, and I address it to you. Taking refuge in the reassuring knowledge that we must have met, I write this to you, I write this for you, for in order to write, I must have already invented you. Your charms and foibles, your fay approach to reading, glossing the text, grasping a phrase here, a word there, looking up, your head cocked to one side, staring out to space. I do not expect that your reading should be devotional; it is this cut-up reading that excites me. Ah yes, you are looking down again, you are reading on some more, good. Sliding, slipping, skidding through the words, lovely!
What can it matter how much you take in, what you sieve out, what remains? For without you, I am nothing.
Thank God I found you.
I think I love you.
The very fact of my writing, of my searching out and locating this space for text, for wringing out my jitterings before you, rustles-up an anxiety in me of a prolific response: who does he think he is, writing these things here, in this space? This place of all places which we baptized with our words, this place where we were just getting comfortable when he trolled along, poking his words around in our eeks, our familiar things twinkling reassuringly in the half-light. Really! Putting his words here, words which trip us up, distract us, as we tread our path through the deep dark wood. His words cause us to veer from the path. What does he want to tell us and more to the point, why does he want to tell us? Why has he waited this long and why has he chosen this as the time for his irritating outburst?
And of course, it seems, after all my blatherings, my lexical coughings and farts, it seems that I am capable of telling you nothing. I seem to spin a fabric, a whispery web of something-but-nothing, barely knitted together. But nothing holds still for long enough. Everything seems to slide. Slippage seems to be my thing then, glissage, as the French would say.
Perhaps it turns out that I haven’t actually got anything to say at all. I don’t have a story to tell you. No, there is no catalogue of links waiting to be posted echoing my hobbies, no mappings, no postings, no photo-sets story-boarding my weekend reveries. Here you will not find me unfolding lewd sketches of tender moonlit entanglements under the disused signal boxes of London's over-ground railways stations. You will not find my drawn-out tales of dining experiences with friends and colleagues cataloging the significant restaurant openings of 2007. You will not find mindless aphorisms or pendulous dragging narratives detailing the inconsequential meandering thoughts that plague us all when sleazing in the dark zone. And you will certainly not find the churlish comic-tragic posturing doused with rhyming couplets and folksy popular songs so overused by the amateur auteur.
And so you don't know me at all. And why would you want to bother?
And so once again I turn my attention from almost anything to almost nothing and I start to write. Write for who? It occurs to me that there is a stock of basic readers here for whom I may draw my scripts trajectory, blank canvases if you will, waiting to be directed and named. Thus in order to connect, in order to unfurl this text (we've already observed it forming a trajectory in an earlier passage) I must address it, and I address it to you. Taking refuge in the reassuring knowledge that we must have met, I write this to you, I write this for you, for in order to write, I must have already invented you. Your charms and foibles, your fay approach to reading, glossing the text, grasping a phrase here, a word there, looking up, your head cocked to one side, staring out to space. I do not expect that your reading should be devotional; it is this cut-up reading that excites me. Ah yes, you are looking down again, you are reading on some more, good. Sliding, slipping, skidding through the words, lovely!
What can it matter how much you take in, what you sieve out, what remains? For without you, I am nothing.
Thank God I found you.
I think I love you.
hello
It was recently suggested to me by a friend that reading Hello magazine would give me the advantage at work of knowing which celebrities were in town and whom is dating whom.
Hello Kurt
Hello Pete
Hello Kate
Hello Kylie
Hello Justin
Hello Renee
Hello Goldie
Hello Jordan
Hello Britney
Hello Jennifer
Hello Victoria
Hello Sir Richard
Hello Your Royal Highness
Well now, isn't this nice...
Hello Kurt
Hello Pete
Hello Kate
Hello Kylie
Hello Justin
Hello Renee
Hello Goldie
Hello Jordan
Hello Britney
Hello Jennifer
Hello Victoria
Hello Sir Richard
Hello Your Royal Highness
Well now, isn't this nice...
hyperopia
It's greyer out than in. Flat winter sea-side light that won't allow a texture in, stops forms from etching in the gloom. It's floodlit, but not like a photoflood. No, not warm, it's dank, fills every empty pool with a banality that depletes me. It's SAD light. Inside it's tungsten yellow, a warm mellowness, for matinees, muffins, and fireside hostages. I'm walking to the river, as it's suicide composting on the sofa. The traffic, like rain before it develops character, drizzles it's way along the road. There's a kind of slow motion here in strolling to the river. Dull days are like bewildered grammar. Today is like one long sentence without punctuation slipping and sliding uncertainly between unrelated clauses and random prepositions. I slide into the eventuality of this insular indulgent mood and hope to make sense of it by averting my gaze uncharitably from the grizzly faces of passers-by with whom I'd rather not relate.
Suddenly, also sliding, two protagonists come into my lonely little play as one black and the other silver Mercedes cross paths, smack, headlights crack, wings fray and the scene, no injuries, conveys the exclamation mark so far missing from my day. Pepped-up by a little vigour, I turn with jolly gait, into Queen Elizabeth Street, and head for Maggie Blake's Cause, and the river. I've been coming here for years to sit, contentedly, looking out blankly, not quite to sea - not awaiting the French Lieutenant exactly - but it amounts to the same thing really. In London I seek structured opportunities to expedite these vacant episodes of staring. There's Primrose Hill and it's unfolding vista rolling sight lines grazing Westminster, Canary Wharf and fading into Greenwich Park where this picture is reversed but just as blissful. Richmond Park, Wimbledon Common, I suppose even The Eye provides this visual nectar, but for me, my window on the river is where I effect a kind of sensory dumbing down. I recently considered moving onto the twenty-second floor of Aragon Tower in Deptford Creek. Here, you pay for height not space, the chic sun-kissed twenty-second floor costs twenty to thirty thousand more than the dingy lower level flats. It's expensive to eschew the floor in favour of the sky. But I end up on Butlers Wharf, and where the river swings north-east - The Pool it's called - and passes Wapping, the sky and river meet. It's not exactly what the Time-Out guide to London would call breath-stopping, but as my eyes trace the distant silhouettes of cranes, church spires in Rotherhithe and Millwall, the thrusting towers of Canary Wharf, and old warehouses, now apartments, cladding both banks, I feel that I could sit here long into the night whilst the landing planes of City Airport are reduced to pretty blinking lights.
Through the bascules of Tower Bridge, the prettiest City view of all: The Gherkin, Lloyds, Nat West, The London Port Authority, Custom House, St Paul's.
Close up, in a corner, underneath a nearby bench, some abandoned orange flowers, green stems wrapped in fine gold leaf ? I put on my glasses, oh, an empty Veuve Clicquot bottle, left from New Year's Eve.
Suddenly, also sliding, two protagonists come into my lonely little play as one black and the other silver Mercedes cross paths, smack, headlights crack, wings fray and the scene, no injuries, conveys the exclamation mark so far missing from my day. Pepped-up by a little vigour, I turn with jolly gait, into Queen Elizabeth Street, and head for Maggie Blake's Cause, and the river. I've been coming here for years to sit, contentedly, looking out blankly, not quite to sea - not awaiting the French Lieutenant exactly - but it amounts to the same thing really. In London I seek structured opportunities to expedite these vacant episodes of staring. There's Primrose Hill and it's unfolding vista rolling sight lines grazing Westminster, Canary Wharf and fading into Greenwich Park where this picture is reversed but just as blissful. Richmond Park, Wimbledon Common, I suppose even The Eye provides this visual nectar, but for me, my window on the river is where I effect a kind of sensory dumbing down. I recently considered moving onto the twenty-second floor of Aragon Tower in Deptford Creek. Here, you pay for height not space, the chic sun-kissed twenty-second floor costs twenty to thirty thousand more than the dingy lower level flats. It's expensive to eschew the floor in favour of the sky. But I end up on Butlers Wharf, and where the river swings north-east - The Pool it's called - and passes Wapping, the sky and river meet. It's not exactly what the Time-Out guide to London would call breath-stopping, but as my eyes trace the distant silhouettes of cranes, church spires in Rotherhithe and Millwall, the thrusting towers of Canary Wharf, and old warehouses, now apartments, cladding both banks, I feel that I could sit here long into the night whilst the landing planes of City Airport are reduced to pretty blinking lights.
Through the bascules of Tower Bridge, the prettiest City view of all: The Gherkin, Lloyds, Nat West, The London Port Authority, Custom House, St Paul's.
Close up, in a corner, underneath a nearby bench, some abandoned orange flowers, green stems wrapped in fine gold leaf ? I put on my glasses, oh, an empty Veuve Clicquot bottle, left from New Year's Eve.
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