Friday, July 04, 2003
Bark Psychosis make me want to die. In a good way.
7/04/2003 11:57:00 pm
Thursday, July 03, 2003
That makes approx. 7,000 words this week. Aren't you lucky?
7/03/2003 02:25:00 pm
Bed
Spacebox
EMI France
2003
Mark Hollis said he wanted Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock to achieve both “complete intensity and complete calm” and they did somehow and what’s more they did it almost perfectly, a sense of fate (and man I don’t believe in fate; I read Nausea at 19 and my world melted, not this “solid into air” stuff, no way, solid into liquid, seeping into the ground, gone gone gone) and undeniability and rightness (yes, this is the point at which you all say “oh for fuck’s sake not another excuse for this English twat to wiffle wiffle piff piff on about fucking Talk Talk again, get over it already”). The thing is that so many people have taken from Talk Talk, heard them and changed their sound, begun something because of hearing them, whichever, and yet they all seem to take the “complete calm” strand of the thread, without realising that the “complete intensity” strand is just as important, that they each need the context of the other, that they work together, symbiosis. Even Hollis himself took the “complete calm” path on his solo record, sonically at least. The intensity of the man’s mind, his soul (there it is again and I still don’t believe we have them) is there; can you listen to “Westward Bound”, a song that’s probably about moving back to London so his kids can go to the cinema more easily, and not feel an overwhelming sadness and grief and openness? Because that’s the intensity of his soul and it is disquieting (and yet so quiet) and I cannot listen to it more than once every two months or so and then I have to have found that space, that need for it, because it is not comfortable music. Perhaps ‘O’Rang took the sonic intensity, Herd Of Instinct has many great and beautiful and wonderful moments when skronk and scree overtake the taughtness and tightness of rhythm, the comfortable flowing bedrock, and challenge you to take it and you can but still they are nothing like the moments in Spirit, the broiling, restless, drowning sea of percussion that tears apart “Desire” and fills up your lungs with painful salt, nothing like that in ‘O’Rang.
This music, this Spacebox, it is so quiet and low and full of holes (the space between the notes, yes we know how important they are now) that you wonder how it exists, whether Benoit Burello ever shouts, whether he has fire in his eyes and in his mind, so quiet you wonder how it got made.
Like Hood and Bark Psychosis this is the Talk Talk I can listen to whenever I feel the need for the sound and the feeling without the full-on catharsis and redemption and awakening (because I can’t do that every day, no, no matter how much I would like). No electronics here and of course that disappoints me but not too much because I can have electronics elsewhere (little moments of computer jazz, oh!). No, Benoit strips down and back, drums and double bass (returning to prevalence, how warm and fuzzy and reverberant is that sound, those big long strings and the strong fingers that foosh them), acoustic guitar, electric guitar, sparse and frayed piano, maybe a clarinet or saxophone, I thought I heard some strings but they remain unlisted so maybe I merely imagined them and I can imagine that Benoit would be pleased that I had done so because this is music for imaginings and dreams as much as anything else. See that candle? I was disconcerted (not always scared) by dreams when I was a child so it is now a boon to be able to find them in waking safety. Those pointillist melodies and drifting endings where the song circles itself like a cat bedding down, Benoit’s voice so often double-tracked and effortless (if not something I am completely comfortable with) fading away and allowing the mood to carry the song (such as you can call them songs). I know it’s a substitute, facsimile, I know I am only listening to this because I cannot bear to listen to that other thing as often as I would like to. But it still has value.
7/03/2003 02:07:00 pm
Manitoba
Start Breaking My Heart
The Leaf Label
2001
Tiny crocodiles playing robot jazz inside your heating duct.
[this is a good thing]
7/03/2003 12:33:00 pm
"All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within them, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours."
James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues
7/03/2003 10:07:00 am
The Great British Music Debate
Part 1
Two negatives make a positive, but two positives don’t make a negative.
Yeah, right.
And so, after three hours of Steve Lamacq and Kate Thornton and Simon Mayo and Stuart fucking Maconie and Jeremy Vine wringing their hands and complaining that fuck shit horror middle-aged crisis they don’t like what’s in the charts and nobody makes singles like what Marc fucking Bolan did (“in the old days it were all fields round ‘ere,” sez Maconie, “and me gran knew what was at number one!”) and *gasp* anyone can get a number one single with the right marketing team, we get Janice Long introducing five (count ‘em, five!) bright young things, hopes, saviours, futures of the British Music Industry © and yes yes yes the first one sounds like Ocean Colour Scene mixed with Travis, the second sounds like Texas, the third sounds like David Gray and by the fourth I have jumped into my car and driven into the wild blue yonder, safe in the knowledge that I’ve spent £120 in the last six days on music. David Gray! He’s called Rob. Some twat who heard a Bill Withers record once and thinks that if you can match the sound of his voice (like going down B&Q with a piece of blouse ripped from the last girl you dosed with GHB and then date-raped and saying “can you get me some gloss in this shade of slag pink?”) then you’ve somehow managed to capture the very essence of his soul. Cos that works. Oh for fuck’s sake.
“I’m sure you’re going to agree that we’ve heard five acts… [yes, true]… who, er, give us all hope for the future…” says Janice Long after the fifth pile of steaming derivative crap finishes. Oh for fuck’s sake.
“The future of great British music!” says Richard Alanson. And then he plays “Changing Man” by Paul Weller. Oh for fuck’s sake.
Record sales fell 4% in 2002 in the UK. And yet we still spend more per head on music than any other country in the world. But great new bands like Coldplay and David Gray and Dido and Badly Drawn Boy and Daniel Bedingfield are emerging… Oh for fuck’s sake.
I know I know I know I should just stop listening but you know, I spent £120 on music in the last six days, I love music, it’s the only thing that serves to give me doubt in my refutation of the human soul. What the fuck am I doing? What is this insipid MOR toss they’re playing at me now? Alisha’s Attic?! Oh for fuck’s sake.
You want to know why you don’t like what’s in the singles chart, Jeremy Vine? Because you’re 40 years old and you never fucking cared anyway. Yeah, I think you’re a decent journalist, yeah I’m glad that you like the British Sea Power record, but you can fuck off if you think I’m taking any more advice from you, not giving you any more credence. Your audience can’t even send a fucking text message properly then. The Thrills? Morcheeba? John Mellancamp? Stereophonics? These are the best you can offer? These are the alternative to the “plastic moulded popstars” you so loathe? Let me tell you something; they are no better. You fucking fools. You safe, middle-aged, conservative, traditional stuck-in-the-mud fools. If anything they are worse. How do you-
“Cloudbursting”! Oh thank fuck! Oh bliss… Oh heaven… This nonsensical sense, this sensuality, this strange and enfolded allure… “I just know that something good is gonna happen / I don’t know when / but just saying it could even make it happen…”
“Record companies don’t support the real talent; i.e.; acoustic musicians like myself…” DIE! Die die die die die! I kill you with swords! mark s I’m so sorry I thought The Clash could make people dance and give them an idea of how to make real, small, microcosmic revolutions in their everyday lives that would open skies for them and it would be beautiful but now I see that yes maybe you’re right and we need The Sex Pistols to smash things up and destroy peoples minds and thought systems in order to free their souls from the cages of their earthly, capitalism-riddled bodies, the shock, the horror, the escape, the final destruction of identity and the release that comes with that (but it is not mine and cannot be mine, 24, lives by the sea, solipsist, knows he needs to escape the self and is seeking his own way, can’t know the shock and horror because it’s yours and not mine, it can’t pass on a generation, it’s not a gene or even a meme…)… and now they’re playing The Stereophonics who are playing at being a lounge band, wanking wah wah on every surface, playing “The Littlest Hobo” and oh for fuck’s sake is this the future? Because it sounds like death to me oh god oh god oh god oh god…
7/03/2003 09:21:00 am
The Great British Music Debate
Part 2
“Pretty well heard all of it although I’ve been keeping an aye on the tennis as well…” and doesn’t that just sum up the whole fucking problem, eh? Keeping an eye on the tennis. We won that once too. Play The Smiths. That’s it. Oh, Blake was right, Jerusalem, oh yes, England’s green and pleasant land and he was seeing angels just like I am seeing angels and all you could ever do was put them in a fucking cage, you fucking hypocrites, murderers, fascists, this is not your culture anymore, it is OURS.
30 years ago it was not totally different, people won’t forget it anymore than people forgot whoever the fuck it is that you can’t remember from 1973 you fucking fuck, singer songwriters? Die die die die die. You are not the person who is meant to remember what is number one now. “Dance culture… very boring for some of us over a certain age…” You cunt. You are your father. You are the one thing you always said you would never ever ever be. Which means you failed. Which means get the fuck out. This is MINE. This is OURS.
I downloaded two Four Tet tracks a year and half ago and now I own all three of his albums and a Fridge album and two Manitoba albums and numerous singles and theboylucas and Prefuse 73 and Savath & Savalas and and and and and all because of those two tracks. People download because they want to hear things. You don’t understand how much I hate you. All I was doing was dancing on my own and I was happy and you can’t stand that. Is this how you want me to live my life? Like you? You never smile. For fuck’s sake don’t crush me like you got crushed yourself. It’s not the only way. I want beauty and fire and grief and hate and love and I do not want this cold cold resignation and bitterness. I hear this; Travis, Texas. The Great British Music Debate. I hear this; Travis, Texas. And I hear death. And cold cold resignation. I’m sorry your friends are dead but we are not yet dead. We’ve seen enough to know that this and now are what we have and what we are. We can mourn or we can turn away and live.
“There is so much to say about this music. I don’t mean so much to explain because that’s stupid, the music speaks for itself. What I mean is that so much flashes through my mind when I hear the tapes of this album that if I could I would write a novel about it full of life and scenes and people and blood and sweat and love.
And sometimes I think maybe what we need is to tell people that this is here because somehow in this plasticized world they have the automatic reflex that if something is labelled one way then that is all there is in it and we are always finding out to our surprise that there is more to Ginsberg or more to ‘Trane or more to Stravinsky than whatever it was we thought was there in the first place…
So Lenny Bruce said there is only what is and that’s a pretty good basis for a start. This music is. This music is new. This music is new music and it hits me like an electric shock…”
From Ralph J Gleason’s original liner notes to Bitches Brew. Yes, the liner notes that brought a tear to my eye last night.
Tell me where to go. Show us the roads. Marcello, Todd, mark, Gavin, Joe, Cozen, Karim, Simon, Ian, kate, Stevie, Sam… please… please… please… For fuck’s sake don’t let us die. Point us in the direction. We’re all fractured. We’re all scared. But we don’t want to be.
“And all the world is football shaped… /… one two three four five / senses working overtime…” XTC do it better. You’re all so tired. Give in and go home. It’s nearly midnight. It’s all happening. You can’t see it.
And here they come. Coldplay. “Let’s go back to the start…” Fools. Onwards. To go backwards… is to die. I’m not ready.
7/03/2003 09:21:00 am
A sunny morning.
7/03/2003 09:21:00 am
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
I hate music writing. Journalism. Writers. I hate it. I hate having to read it, I hate having to do it. It's an evil. A necessary evil perhaps, but an evil nonetheless. What is it? Why? I am compelled to do it because of... sins in a past life? Psychological weakness? I'm sure I'd be much happier if I didn't have to do this. You get no thanks, no nothing. Is it satisfying? No... What's it for? All these people who want to be Baudrillard or Borges or Burchill (god forbid)... Why? Why on earth would you want that? And why on earth would you see writing about music as the way to do it? All I want you to do is tell me what's going to soar my (non-existant) soul... Tell me how, tell me why... This is not the terrain of the romantic spirit... This is not the terrain of people who move through life as if through silken air... This is not the place for love and life and endless skies...
I hate it. And yet last night I was actually, briefly and strangely, reduced to tears by a piece of writing about music. What piece? What example of a medium, a form, that I hate, could reduce me to tears?
Ralph J. Gleason's liner notes to Bitches Brew.
Ridiculous, I know. I'll see if I can find them online somewhere, and copy&paste them into here so you can read them too.
7/02/2003 10:08:00 am
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Album of the Year
Part2
Wrecking Ball Gillian Welch
“Just a little dead head” – Gerry? Or an unborn / bound / expired / imprisoned mind? Till now. Oh Gillian. This is release; by anyone else’s standard’s it is tame and lightweight. By yours it is anarchy and chaos. The acolytes of dead rulebooks squawk and balk and say this is blasphemy at those drums, organs, electric guitar. Gillian I love you.
Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story) !!!
Radio 4 had the aesthetic down pretty much but
oh no they didn’t do this. The bass is on the floor, crawling and grabbing, the guitar is less a postpunk scratch and fire than a synaesthetic implement. Nine minutes! “People always ask me / what’s so fucking great about dancing? / how the fuck should I know?” Less “Fools Gold” than fools told.
Maps Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The album moves from sexual/sensual tension and liberation and release into territory more driven by strung-out emotional tension in the second half. “Maps” is the highpoint. Karen O simply runs out of words and reverts to a low primal moan; even when she can find them they are hideously, beautifully inarticulate words – “wait; they don’t love you like I love you…” They work.
Snake Audio Bullys
They are not bullies; they are soft lads, mummy’s boys. He makes Skinner sound like Glenn Campbell and as such I can’t get through the album. The Specials? Maybe. This stares you down, thinks your jacket is shit, spills beer on your trainers. Fuck you.
Plainfield Bed
This stuff is manna to me. And what’s more it’s French. Pointilist guitars, electric and acoustic, drift above sparse piano, the voice fades (as it should; I am not familiar enough to love it’s double-tracked whaft yet), stand-up bass, scarce drums. Mark Hollis wanted Laughing Stock and Spirit Of Eden to achieve “absolute intensity and absolute calm”. So often followers choose absolute calm.
Uprock And Invigorate Prefuse 73
Ok Simon, so I was hasty and obnoxious. I’m 24 and you’re 40. I don’t have time to delineate everything. This is still good. Headphone hiphop. More stand-up bass, is that? Empty, for sure, but who’s bothered about content anymore?
Kid You’ll Move Mountains Manitoba
So the album is almost overkill, overexposed, a burnt negative, the colours too bright and lurid to take in every day – it’s still magnificent. Start Breaking My Heart gets better every day too. This goes nowhere; I don’t care for plot. Details, details everywhere, a stream of conscious given beats and flutes and glitch and momentum.
Where I End And You Begin Radiohead
Thom back at Glastonbury after how long? Last time I was unfussed. Spiritualized and Orbital were melding my mind. Thom is dancing this year, twitching and pirouetting like a crippled ballet-child, dancing like I dance when I’m taking the piss. Hail To The Thief may just be their best record. “I will eat you alive…” You wont, but thanks for trying.
7/01/2003 04:43:00 pm
And Sam makes five.
7/01/2003 04:42:00 pm
Album of the Year
Or rather a compilation of my favourite songs from the first six months of 2003…
Part 1
Ambulance Blur
Graham’s gone, nobody cares, Damon goes to Mali and translates the TechnoKrautGrooveMisery of 13 into something more melodic, maybe, a rescue vehicle? Canyon horns and amphibious bass. Get that falsetto – “I ain’t got nothing to be scared of”, false, fabricated, unreal. He’s not scared.
EZ Pass Har Mar Superstar
You are from Police Academy and I claim my £5. But that piano roll is perfect, those drums, the movement, the way they first slink up beside you for half a bar… “cash / dash / easy pass / gonna ride that tunnel till the babies hatch / keep it lock down / throw away the key / my second home is known as New York City…” You dirty bitch.
You Were Wrong Loose Fur
Jeff Tweedy sings from a liquor-induced coma. This is the ‘pop’ one from the eponymous album by this trio of alt.country and avant journeymen. “You were wrong / to believe / in me” and I break into tiny pieces. I could drown in his voice – he already has.
Move Your Feet Junior Senior
From the sublime to the ridiculous. How gay? Very gay. No verse – hook, bridge, chorus, hook, bridge, chorus. Relentless. Overexposure can leave you disoriented and nauseous. The horns are so obviously fucking fake (AR Kane’s shite moments?) and the chorus so obviously fucking rips off MJ (well, he can’t very well use it at the moment can he?) but we don’t care. “Move your feet until united.” Yes.
The Only Road Richard Hawley
And back to the sublime. Who’d have thought he’d have this baritone? Longpigs string-stroker turned guitar-for-hire. Mature, resigned, beautiful, it should be crapulent. “I water flowers in the rain / I dance beneath your silver frame / … I’m crippled by the sound of love…”
Little Eyes Yo La Tengo
First I’ve heard from them, Summer Sun. The younger lads at Stylus, weaned on their noisier, more alt.pop moments of triumph and recalcitrant squall, were unimpressed, bored even, by it. I like it; nothing spectacular, but grown, unfurled, comfortable. This is subtle, whirrs and glistens and delicate voice.
As Serious As Your Life Four Tet
Rock’n’roll recontextualisation, doing a sinewave tango, a quantum foxtrot, taking a riff and tearing it into constituent parts, move them, shake them, curl them about a lamppost, reduce it to bits and bytes and processors. In how many ways do I love you, Kieran Hebdon?
The Lonely British Sea Power
I don’t reckon to like indie. Balls. Balls. Fact is British Sea Power are very good. This stays the right side of noise and melody, nothingness lyrics that force you to ask questions – what does this mean? – that you then have to find answers for. They tear apart what a song is for, why we love it. Any song. This song.
Soul Cry Susumu Yokota
Moved away from The Leaf Label (how much do I have to be thankful to Graham Sutton for? – lots) and from his beautiful ambient music, painted with a different palette of sound and texture to almost anyone else, to Play and Over Head and (almost) his dance roots, far from a masterpiece but still more accomplished then you can imagine.
7/01/2003 03:47:00 pm
Despite my complete and utter state of rage with Blogger for not being able to handle large posts, my life is not all that bad. Yesterday lunchtime I was thwarted and angered by Exeter's record shops because they are all hopeless, badly-stocked dystopias of crapulence (no Cold House by Hood, no David Sylvian at all), and so proceeded to order David Sylvian's new LP, Super Are by The Boredoms and the aforementioned Hood LP from Amazon at approximately 2.30pm. This morning they arrived at Emma's house. Good lord Amazon! That was quick.
I assume they have an ulterior motive for dispatching to me quickly though - as I order so much stuff off them they are keen to speed up their service so I in turn speed up my orders and the merry-go-round of my CD spending at Amazon increases in velocity and veracity until I just transfer my fucking paycheck straight to them at the start of every month in return for a constant stream of randomly selected crap.
7/01/2003 02:35:00 pm
BIG POST ERROR, POST ID 105705572342899850
REPORT IT
This post was meant to be a 1,300 word track-by-track piece about a compilation of songs from this year I'd put together recently. It was oblique, amusing, passionate, irreverent, occasionally beautiful, and I was very happy with it. Unfortunately Blogger ate it. This piece was unsaved, as I'd typed it straight into the 'Edit post' function box due to not having Word or Notepad on the PC I was using this morning. So now it isn't here and you can't read it. Fucks to Blogger.
7/01/2003 11:35:00 am
Monday, June 30, 2003
Who reads my blog? If you read my blog, please email me (nick@beatbay.co.uk) and say "I read your blog Nick". You don't have to say anything more than that!
Thank you.
Edit (Tuesday 9:44am); two people read my blog.
Edit (Tuesday 2.19pm); four people read my blog.
6/30/2003 02:24:00 pm
Epiphany 2
Disillusion
January 2002…
Part 1
Oh come now. What was I thinking? There’s still this moment that owes a bit more to Zappa than Smokey or Carole or Noel and it just jumps from the middle of nowhere and peals back a cloud and for once they sound like they’re actually enjoying themselves (you’re playing music for fuck’s sake, do you realise how many other people want your job? How many other people are better at your job than you are and don’t get half the success? - oh sweet irony; the success is long gone now boys) and at that point, the profundity aimed for and missed but closer this time, close enough to not be gauche and vaguely embarrassing (I always felt it, for heaven’s sake, I just had a desperate need to believe and you were there, you know, to believe in and that’s why I never said it till now). I don’t even like Zappa, but at least it’s pushing things a bit.
What did you do? Took everything back to zero, stripped away how you made music and put it back together again from the bottom up in the simplest terms. What was I looking for?- “the width and whoosh of The Verve, with Noel Gallagher writing the tunes” (I don’t even like Oasis either, for that matter, except for “Slide Away” and “Columbia”, a punch in the stomach and slap round the head done very slowly again and again until you get the message, and maybe “Bring It On Down”, just cos Bonehead tried to break a piano and not by throwing it out of a window, but rather by hitting it, in the same place, over and over again until it got the message). I caught about a minute of the chorus on the radio one evening after seeing something, live reviews, in NME, palpitations and really bad sweaters and greasy hair, and that was fine, more than fine, because you couldn’t afford clothes and I desperately wanted my hair like that too for about a month. Promise, promise, potential, potential. Oh I hated that word at school because people always used it about me. “You’ll never do anything, but you really could.” When you die, kids, there’s just darkness.
And I was writing, just starting out, what do I write, how do i do this, why does no one explain how to do it or who can help or whatever, so I wrote to them and them and them and you, and you wrote back, and hence a love affair was born. I remember Bristol. Richard made sure I had beer. The singer from Santa Cruz was in the bar. God they were shite. Gomez sat on some stools and got given an award for it. Mickey wasn’t even in the band yet and I stopped him on the stairs and asked about his other band and he was shocked that anyone would know (“WE ARE LASER BOY!” damn right you are).
The 7” I got direct from the bloke’s kitchen for £2.50 and played side a ten times in a row on my dad’s record player (cos back then I didn’t have one), and it was the only time I ever got into recording stuff off the radio. “Blind” on Mary Anne Hobbs at midnight and I was in bed with the volume really quiet, not 18 yet and still in so many ways so naïve and innocent, much as I’d smoked my brain out since I was fifteen I’d still been climbing trees and running round ponds not long before. And I didn’t know it was you, did I?, cos she didn’t say till after it had finished but I had the idea that it might be and that was hideously exciting because it was good and blue and metal and crunch crunch crunch, made Johnny Dollar deaf you know. Cost him £50,000 in lost earnings.
But it was the talking, the other bands, the stuff around the outside that really got me. Beastie Boys, Beach Boys, Sly, Otis, Marvin, Chemicals, Prodigy. Not fucking Oasis treading water and Cast having a right good swim. My Bloody Valentine and J&MC (god, you fucked that one up something chronic, didn’t you? Even that bit that sounded like The Clash didn’t redeem it). That first proper EP wrapped in pale blue and people sitting on a fence, BANG shush BANG shush, that first bang a shoegazer miasma, all strident though and thumping chains and riding a bike, the first shush a delicate cinematic sweep, airy and pretty much formless and with trumpets so fake as to be beautiful, that gentle percussive bass quite unlike any other sound you made (trumpets and piano were the key to those early bits, and guitar, reckless, twitching guitar played by a kid who liked setting fire to things and waving his hair around like a loon; yes, we liked that, our own little rock god jumping off bridges onto railway tracks and playing with a broken hand). The second and third EPs were governed by the law of diminishing returns but the live stuff (taped off the radio!) suggested things were good. Little snippets and hints of what was on the album (if this isn’t their best stuff then what the fuck are they holding back?!). Talking about the May 1998 single on the radio and underneath the instrumental piece of music was some electronic thing and I was so excited in case it was yours, in case it was the single, in case you’d thrown everything out and blown everything up and totally done what nobody expected you to do, making “Fools Gold” following The Stone Roses look like logic, yes yes yes, the only way to truly do something amazing then is to do the totally unexpected and impossible and do it well. And what was the single? “Come Back To What You Know”. The title alone is evil and regressive and backwards and safe and conservative and weak. What’s it smashing? Nothing.
6/30/2003 09:13:00 am
Part 2
What were you holding back? Two limp rockers (like I said above about MBV, J&MC and The Clash), a “Hey Jude” rip-off and a couple of rock ballads. What the fuck did you spend so long doing? Those two tracks in the middle that were going to be the total highlight, soaring, epic catharsis x2, done inside 3 and a half minutes each, why did you not realise how to do them? I listened to it again the other night for the first time in a long time and you know what struck me? How fascistic it is in it’s imperative, it’s adherence to its own orthodoxy and goals. We must we must we must do this like this and this like this and that like that. This is the chassis, this is the skeleton, this is the destination, this is the shortest route. So much emphasis to “make people cry with every tune”, such nastily narrow-minded adherence to that ideal that you entirely missed the fucking point, the beauty in the details, the punctum, the enjoyment, the little twists and turns and cul-de-sacs and mistakes and idiosyncrasies. Because it’s so completely militaristic and uniform and characterless. The character was that there was no character, and how at odds is that with the statements, the ambitions, the humanity and personality and pain and passion you were so desperate to impart and express? Plan, repeat, sidestep, repeat, plan, repeat. No build-up, no tricks, no possibility of stepping outside the diagram. And live it was so different. “That’s All Changed Forever” rolled on and round and round and up and got messy and loud and on the record it’s A + B + A + C + A again, no change to the melody lines, no alteration, no freedom. Oh I gave it 10, of course I fucking did, how stupid would I have looked if I’d admitted it wasn’t what I wanted, eh? You were making it for me.
And then I was displaced and lost and shoved aside and had my soul killed, utterly killed, and that year was so awful but I grabbed hold and hung on and hung on, through the shit the pain the absolute emptiness and futility, because you were going to make a record that was going to end all records. “Is the second album still gonna be psychedelic?” “Shit, we said the second one was going to be psychedelic.” “We’d better make it psychedelic then.” And you nearly did, and I thank you for it. Oh, there was a great record in their somewhere (I’ve just told the world via Stylus exactly what that great record is too) and fuck me if it wasn’t great fun running round the country, the sweaty nights of tears and booze and song, waking up on strangers’ floors, having people declare their love for me, opening up doors of chance and lunacy and opportunity that I’d always assumed were closed for people like me (people like me? – like there’s anyone like me, like I’m like anything, like I’m anything at all, that’s the thing you see, reduce all angles to zero, become nothing, because with becoming nothing comes the possibility of being, well, anything, if not quite everything [though I’ve tried that one too], taking any path, any idea, changing who you are – yeah, it’s the thing about the Buddha and the void again but I think it’s true, as true as anything can be), Blackpool and Hanover and Wolverhampton and the Astoria and a fucking forest glade by a lake where they tested the fucking bouncing bomb, as if that afternoon wasn’t perfect! (“Hippies!” – “Nick and J are here at last then…”) Oh I opened my heart and spilled my guts and we all did. I wasn’t the only one with chest pains that March (mine were from drinking too much, yours were from what? – holding your guitar weird?). I had to kick down somebody’s door. I fucked a ballet dancer because of you. I was, I think, mad there, for a while. It was good.
My problem is that I don’t need the straightforward signposts to emotion. You don’t either. I only just found out what its name is, but I’ve had the punctum for ages. I get it in the bits everybody else waits for to finish. The happy accidents. You found it most effectively when you stopped so earnestly searching for it. You’ve got an empty jar (your soul [if such a thing…]), the best way to fill it is not with pebbles (big, significant experiences, life-changing profundities) but with sand… Pebbles leave gaps. Pebbles get stuck in a jar; they cannot move and breathe and dance. If you shake the jar to try and get the pebbles into ever corner you cannot do it. Always some areas of the jar remain untouched by joy and sadness and punctum. Sand of even just the same mass as the pebbles which leave gaps, in the same jar, shaken, touches it all like bits of solid air. But even more than that, you can fill a jar with sand and have no gaps. This is, of course, a very long and boring and confused and ultimately stupid metaphor but I know what I mean and what’s more I think you do too. Yes. Sand.
6/30/2003 09:08:00 am
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Part 3
And so we continued but by this time I’d “found a nice girl to calm [me] down” (wise words, Pollyanna, wise words) and I wasn’t in the midst of it anymore. Too much water, too many bridges. And fuck me if that opening track wasn’t just far-and-away the best thing you’d done, a towering albatross, and behemoth, and not ungainly this time, actually infused with that baroque grandeur and catharsis you’d been chasing so hard. And I remember that misty morning when I got on my bike and peddled out to the end of the Warren and I was the only man in the world, mist and water on all sides, and I remember that first listen, thinking you’d maybe done it… No. No. You messed up “Redemption”, for a start. You took the looped piano hum out of “Make It Last”. You played everything a little too smooth, too plain. It’s the Coldplay fucker’s fault. You had so much more humanity and joy and grace and playfulness than he would allow you to express. Or maybe than you would allow yourselves to express. Pleasure is never a guilty pleasure.
And then that morning in January. In The Guide, of all places. Damascus never came out of something so deliberately irreverent. I forget the words now, of course. Did they mention Paul’s Boutique or was that me? “We want this and this and this and what’s more we can do it…” And I believed you. And you tried. But you couldn’t. Nobody ever made truly great record by trying to make a truly great record. What’s great anyway? The punctum is, you fule… An epiphany? I felt like I’d been sleeping with someone for four years and just woken up and realised they weren’t the person I thought they were, the person they said they were. Did I feel cheated? No… I felt bewildered and a bit stupid. It’s alright. It’s alright. I’m still waiting for the next record.
HA! HA!
And you know what the really funny thing is? It’s that she said this, about me, all those years ago. Oh for fuck’s sake. Not enough mystery… Well I tell you baby, there ain’t enough time in all creation to find what’s inside me. Cos there’s nothing there… Not enough mystery.
The other funny thing is that Steve, of all people, once got it and said it. That thing about Lyra and Will and losing yourself in something, in the task, finding the magic, the secret, by accident and as soon as you try and control it, you lose it. So you have to become it. And guide each other. And Steve told us this about “I’ve Been Running”. If only you’d read those three books then, maybe it’d have all been OK…
Because it’s nothing personal. It’s just me. Isn’t it. You’re all fine people. Good people. And we had a time, didn’t we? A mad one. And yes, I always went to the toilet during the slow ones. But there was that one time when the other bloke pissing in the trough was whistling what was being played outside. And that worked.
Don’t get me wrong. I love yer. I just don’t… It just doesn’t… Ah… I’m still waiting for that next record.
Unfortunately the all-new, more efficient and effective Blogger seems to be unable to handle posts of more than approx. 1,000 words. Hence I've had to cut up this second Epiphany piece into small bits and posted it across three posts. Rest assured I've had a bitch at them.
6/29/2003 03:40:00 pm
ABOUT SCHOOL
Anonymous
This poem was handed to a grade 12 English teacher in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Although it is not know if the student actually wrote it himself,
it is known that he committed suicide two weeks later.
He always wanted to say things. But no one understood.
He always wanted to explain things. But no one cared.
So he drew.
Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn’t anything. He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky.
he would lie out on the grass and look up in the sky and it would be only him and the sky and the things that needed saying.
And it was after that. that he drew the picture. It was a beautiful picture. he kept it under the pillow and would let no one see it.
And he would look at it every night and think about it. And when it was dark, and his eyes were closed, he could still see it.
And it was all of him. And he loved it.
When he started school he brought it with him. Not to show anyone, but just to have it with him like a friend.
It was funny about school.
He sat in a square, brown desk like all the other square, brown desks and he thought it should be red.
And his room was a square, brown room. Like all the other rooms. And it was tight and close. And stiff.
He hated to hold the pencil and the chalk, with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor, stiff, with the teacher watching and watching.
And then he had to write numbers. And they weren’t anything. They were worse than the letters that could be something if you put them together.
And the numbers were tight and square and he hated the whole thing.
The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys. He said he didn’t like them and she said it didn’t matter.
After that they drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about the morning. And it was beautiful.
The teacher came and smiled at him. “What’s this?” she said. “Why don’t you draw something like ken’s drawing?
Isn’t that beautiful?”
It was all questions.
After that his mother bought him a tie and he always drew planes and rocket ships like everyone else.
And he threw the old picture away.
And when he lay out alone looking at the sky, it was big and beautiful and all of everything, but he wasn’t anymore.
He was square inside and brown, and his hands were stiff, and he was like anyone else. And the thing inside that needed saying didn’t need saying anymore.
It had stopped pushing. It was crushed. Stiff.
Like everything else.
6/29/2003 03:38:00 pm
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