Out of here
We're out of here
Out of heartache
Along with fear
If the plane crashes
I have been on airplanes since before I can remember; one of the few benefits of growing up between two countries. Every time I've ever got on an airplane, I've had it in my head that it might go down. It's probably normal. What I think about is, will you know it happens? Will there be a lead-up to it happening? Will you just awake from your slumber with wreckage and flames around you as you fall?
These things are going through my head right now, as are many others.
I have many regrets; I am sorry for the friends I have lost, whether it was my fault or theirs. I am sorry for the things I have done which hurt other people; these things are often on my mind. Although my life has not been one of greatness, I have more recently tried to be a good person. I don't know if that is ever enough.
Monday, 19 January 2009
Saturday, 20 December 2008
She's Lost Control
She gave away the secrets of her past
1. "I"
Up there with "How are you" and "What do you do" in the pantheon of bollock-crushingly boring icebreakers is "Where are you from". If my father had had his way, that would have been quite a simple question to answer - I'm from Germany. However, memories of the fatherland are fourfold: sitting on my grandfather's knee in front of his liquor cabinet, which had a spiked helmet in it (although I doubt it was his); crying at the dinner table after putting my finger into a candle flame and discovering that, yes, fire is hot; racing down a motorway crammed into the back of a Porche going at a ridiculous pace; ice-skating on a frozen pond in Beckum. Also, assorted hazy memories of breakfast, inevitably involving small white rolls with cheese and/or ham.
When pushed, I will say Londoner, or even Crouch Ender. I have a certain amount of pride from growing up in Crouch End. It is certainly not an unpleasant part of town, picturesque, filled with advertising execs onto their second child and artists whose husbands work abroad a lot. It is definitively well-to-do, a place where apparently by law pushchairs can only have three wheels. I have a certain pride because those are the reasons people have heard of Crouch End - its mid-30's Volvo bohemianism, clock tower, and lack of tube station the only memorable things about it. I grew up on the bad side of town, in a large house with eight families in it, sharing a room with my brother, avoiding the burglaries (seven in five years) by being away or sleeping through them.
My mother always wanted to be a well-to-do artist.
There's nothing wrong with aspirations like that really; to want to be a certain sort of person is the reason most people make judgements about most things in life. We judge others on - are they like us? - are they acting like they want to be how we want to be? Perhaps it's just me.
I could say, I grew up in England and Turkey, spent some time in Bali, became a man in Holland.. but oh what is the point, selfish autobiographic muse of mine?
The point is a simple one: I have moved around a lot, while staying still. Fundamentally, I'm an adapter, a chameleon. If you could mate a chameleon with a cat, the offspring would be me. I seem to remember a horror story Asimov wrote featuring a similar creature, which ate parrots by firing its nose into them.
The point is a simple one: I've booked my ticket out of here, and halfway through January will find myself stranded to some extent in New York.
A grand feeling.
I've been in a sentimental mood lately. Part of the hopeless panic I feel when people go out of my life is to do with my changeability. I often develop certain personas around people I care about. Being very aware of that, I've managed to limit how much I care about what people think of me 99% of the time.
As there is only one person in my life now who has known all sides of my life, as it has been for the past four years at least, all the iterations and mistakes, loves and lustings, and perhaps even moreso that that person is someone who I will hardly ever see although conversation takes place nearly daily, I have shed my skin.
Who am I? I have never known. I have known who I have wanted to be, often very badly, badly enough that nothing else seemed worth it if I could not be that person. Even recently, wanting the love of a good woman (but not being a good enough man to cope with it when she said no), wanting a partner in the wildness and exploration that has taken over my life (but not one who'd take that quest for exploration - internal and external - and turn it on its head and say anything goes), all these things are things that I have enjoyed wanting more than I have enjoying having. I have been as a mirror and a mannequin, words dressed to please - through genuine care for those I love, but also genuine lack of self-awareness. I have no doubt that there could have been happier endings all round if things involving other people had gone my way.
Truthfully, I believe I have the best life of anyone I know, and I want to share it. Adaptable and chameleonic, I fit into underground fetish clubs, fashion shoots, high society, luxury restaurants, squats.. I am not judgemental of the people I meet. I simply don't care. My life is good. It could be better if a few other people were still in it, and there are hundreds of things I do that I'd love to be able to share, but on the evidence at hand.. the ones who fall by the wayside only get left behind. Will Lilian whore herself to a few thousand and get down to South America? No chance. Did Jenni go back to college, get the self-respect she always thought it'd bring? Last I heard she'd moved to Kent. Did Willow find a place for herself amongst the rubber men and vintage girls she so aspired to? The only times I've seen her in such places, she's only been accompanied by the quiet boy she'd known since she lived in Ireland. I don't begrudge them their inevitable failures, although obviously it still stings to see people I'd wished to share great things with disappear under the morass of average. I wish things had worked out different, but ultimately, it is far more their loss than mine.
2. The only time I know who I really am is when I take pictures.
Do you know the feeling, that greatness is happening now? I have very little use for people telling me they like a particular picture I have taken, unless I have taken it with them in mind, in which case their affirmation or rejection of it is simply a measure for me to judge myself against - how well have I done?
As a younger man who thought to become a writer I was able to put myself into a state of mind of near total concentration simultaneous with heavier and heavier use of narcotic substances. Typically, I would lock myself in a room for three or four days, with a bag of dope, four packets of cigarettes, a bottle of whiskey and a little speed and/or acid. After four days I'd have something like this on my screen:
Headlights searchlight through the winter night -
police flashlights cast jagged shadows of street fights.
Underground, the Underground rumbles under concrete mounds,
the last train, making wind in the drains, aching like growing pains
through the unsleeping city, awakening with no pity
the light sleepers, disturbing the midnight daydreamers,
spreading beneath the ground like jungle creepers
reaching out to throttle cheetahs and all the wildlife,
hunting with good looks, smart suits or a knife,
pounding beneath the pavement like bad breath
the night before the morning after, rails squealing
like mouse laughter, or a knife sharpened,
the closed stations darkened, rats martyred
under the steel wheels, dodgy deals done
in the first carriage, sex before marriage in the last,
in the blackness impossible to say how fast or slow
they go, how high or low, if it rains or snows
above. A standing couple declare love
under fluorescent bulbs flickering
like St. Elmo's fire, loose wires
crawling from a broken hole,
the groaning metal mole
burrowing between buildings,
glimpsing stars through the skylight,
glass towers reflecting moonlight.
People on the platforms look
like ghosts
in the tubelight.
which I wrote when I was 20, I think. I don't know how I'd evaluate a poem like that now, but certainly the state of mind I was in when I would write - and I wrote a lot - was very similar to how I feel when I'm in the midst of taking pictures.
It works like this. My mind is full of concepts; I spend at least an hour every day reading the news, sport, wikipedia, whatever. Information for the sake of information. The more I read the more it is like wrapping strands around candyfloss; ideas in my head swell up, often totally unrelated to anything I've put in there. For writing it might be - for the example of the poem above - a rhythm that stuck in my head for about a week, like being on a never-ending train journey. I could not stop thinking with it, and it was not a metered thing, more organic than that, but clattering along either way.
When I take pictures the elements are a bit more vague than with writing, especially poetry (which in my opinion is probably the most condensed, signifier-heavy form of art) but the same ideas of structure and time fill me and are translated by the click of a shutter.
The perfect moment of intersection between the elements (framing, speed of subjects vs shutter speed, movement of light within the frame, planar & perspective shift from moving the camera etc.) is always going to be a subjective thing. It is true that anyone can take a great photograph; what must be learned is that we must be objective with our subjectivity, which is a stupid and roundabout way of saying we must know what we like. When you know what elements would go into the perfect photograph you want to take, you chase it every time you pick up a camera. And then, if you are good, and have the technical skills to capture what you want to, then your mind is filled with the changing of the elements in the frame, and your whole world becomes focused, but through a lens.
I don't know that I could ever stop taking pictures now; it is only when I look through the lens that I truly know if I like what I see. All I know for sure is - the feeling, that the creative thread has been gripped tightly, has been with me for over a year now, and grows stronger every day. I can lose myself in a photoshoot while directing two models and three assistants - the words come out on autopilot, and all I am aware of is how it looks through the lens.
There is no future or past to this. My perfect moment is now, measured in fractions of a second.
3. Moomin
I first remember the litter; my personal opinion is that, while many different sorts of cat are beautiful, black kittens are inherently ugly. Their darkness and kitten fur gives them no definition, but their faces look too small surrounded by all that blackness. So it was with this one. For a while our house was full of cats. We were breeding them; I think at one point my brother and I counted 23, mostly kittens, but still - watch your step!
We kept one, and it was my turn to name. Black cat, like a troll - Moomin! Also a girl I had a crush on used to draw them on her school books. Half Burmese, which but for the FAIDS would have meant she was worth a lot of money. As it was, she was big, strong, vocal.. and then nearly dead.
My mother found her in the alley next to the house, howling like she was on heat and really needing something up her. We took her to the RSPCA hospital, where the prognosis was that she'd broken her hip and spine, and would probably not last the next day. Two weeks later we picked her up, and she was noisier than ever.
Something had changed though, her smell perhaps, or perhaps the fear and pain had changed her personality; the other cats rejected her, and so my room became our room. She ate in there and she slept in there; the roof terrace outside my window was where she went when she wanted to go outside. She'd let me know by pawing at the window and howling, any time of night.
As she got stronger, she grew more willful. She would howl at me to bring her food, to give her attention, to brush her hair.. I suspect a certain transferred oedipal situation took place, but I didn't mind. She was mine, I was hers - if I had been a more sociable person, perhaps I would not have reacted so strongly, but we bonded somehow. After I'd brought her food, she'd go out; a few hours later there'd be a muffled roar outside my window and she'd climb through the top left open. Half asleep at whatever time of night it was, I'd open my eyes to find her purring noisily on my chest, a pigeon or rat in her mouth, as if she wanted to provide for me.
One night she climbed through the window howling louder than usual; I stroked her, and then saw blood all over my hand. I examined her; the tip of her tail was not fur but a jut of bone. She hissed at anyone else who picked her up, so I carried her to the vet in my arms, covered in blood by the time I got there.
It is an odd sort of madness, how we treat animals. I suspect that it is a two-way thing, that the more we treat animals as human, the more we become a part of their pack. Is it madness to talk to a cat? She always told me what I wanted to hear.
When my mother moved to Dorset, she took my cat with her. Earlier this year I got a phone call telling me my cat had diabetes, and needed an injection every day. Two weeks ago I got a phone call from my mother telling me my cat had died, suddenly, of a brain hemorrhage. My mother said they were going to cremate her; I argued and said she must be buried.
I don't know if my mother told the truth about how she died; it's perfectly possible that she gave me one reason when the truth involved the money it cost to give her insulin every day. I don't know; I cried a lot, like I haven't for a long time.
She had perfect eyes, the softest fur, and knew my footsteps when I was coming into the house even if I hadn't seen her for six months. I've had many pets but she was the first who was really mine; I will miss her at Christmas. I brought her back from the dead, twice, but this time I wasn't there. I am sorry.
1. "I"
Up there with "How are you" and "What do you do" in the pantheon of bollock-crushingly boring icebreakers is "Where are you from". If my father had had his way, that would have been quite a simple question to answer - I'm from Germany. However, memories of the fatherland are fourfold: sitting on my grandfather's knee in front of his liquor cabinet, which had a spiked helmet in it (although I doubt it was his); crying at the dinner table after putting my finger into a candle flame and discovering that, yes, fire is hot; racing down a motorway crammed into the back of a Porche going at a ridiculous pace; ice-skating on a frozen pond in Beckum. Also, assorted hazy memories of breakfast, inevitably involving small white rolls with cheese and/or ham.
When pushed, I will say Londoner, or even Crouch Ender. I have a certain amount of pride from growing up in Crouch End. It is certainly not an unpleasant part of town, picturesque, filled with advertising execs onto their second child and artists whose husbands work abroad a lot. It is definitively well-to-do, a place where apparently by law pushchairs can only have three wheels. I have a certain pride because those are the reasons people have heard of Crouch End - its mid-30's Volvo bohemianism, clock tower, and lack of tube station the only memorable things about it. I grew up on the bad side of town, in a large house with eight families in it, sharing a room with my brother, avoiding the burglaries (seven in five years) by being away or sleeping through them.
My mother always wanted to be a well-to-do artist.
There's nothing wrong with aspirations like that really; to want to be a certain sort of person is the reason most people make judgements about most things in life. We judge others on - are they like us? - are they acting like they want to be how we want to be? Perhaps it's just me.
I could say, I grew up in England and Turkey, spent some time in Bali, became a man in Holland.. but oh what is the point, selfish autobiographic muse of mine?
The point is a simple one: I have moved around a lot, while staying still. Fundamentally, I'm an adapter, a chameleon. If you could mate a chameleon with a cat, the offspring would be me. I seem to remember a horror story Asimov wrote featuring a similar creature, which ate parrots by firing its nose into them.
The point is a simple one: I've booked my ticket out of here, and halfway through January will find myself stranded to some extent in New York.
A grand feeling.
I've been in a sentimental mood lately. Part of the hopeless panic I feel when people go out of my life is to do with my changeability. I often develop certain personas around people I care about. Being very aware of that, I've managed to limit how much I care about what people think of me 99% of the time.
As there is only one person in my life now who has known all sides of my life, as it has been for the past four years at least, all the iterations and mistakes, loves and lustings, and perhaps even moreso that that person is someone who I will hardly ever see although conversation takes place nearly daily, I have shed my skin.
Who am I? I have never known. I have known who I have wanted to be, often very badly, badly enough that nothing else seemed worth it if I could not be that person. Even recently, wanting the love of a good woman (but not being a good enough man to cope with it when she said no), wanting a partner in the wildness and exploration that has taken over my life (but not one who'd take that quest for exploration - internal and external - and turn it on its head and say anything goes), all these things are things that I have enjoyed wanting more than I have enjoying having. I have been as a mirror and a mannequin, words dressed to please - through genuine care for those I love, but also genuine lack of self-awareness. I have no doubt that there could have been happier endings all round if things involving other people had gone my way.
Truthfully, I believe I have the best life of anyone I know, and I want to share it. Adaptable and chameleonic, I fit into underground fetish clubs, fashion shoots, high society, luxury restaurants, squats.. I am not judgemental of the people I meet. I simply don't care. My life is good. It could be better if a few other people were still in it, and there are hundreds of things I do that I'd love to be able to share, but on the evidence at hand.. the ones who fall by the wayside only get left behind. Will Lilian whore herself to a few thousand and get down to South America? No chance. Did Jenni go back to college, get the self-respect she always thought it'd bring? Last I heard she'd moved to Kent. Did Willow find a place for herself amongst the rubber men and vintage girls she so aspired to? The only times I've seen her in such places, she's only been accompanied by the quiet boy she'd known since she lived in Ireland. I don't begrudge them their inevitable failures, although obviously it still stings to see people I'd wished to share great things with disappear under the morass of average. I wish things had worked out different, but ultimately, it is far more their loss than mine.
2. The only time I know who I really am is when I take pictures.
Do you know the feeling, that greatness is happening now? I have very little use for people telling me they like a particular picture I have taken, unless I have taken it with them in mind, in which case their affirmation or rejection of it is simply a measure for me to judge myself against - how well have I done?
As a younger man who thought to become a writer I was able to put myself into a state of mind of near total concentration simultaneous with heavier and heavier use of narcotic substances. Typically, I would lock myself in a room for three or four days, with a bag of dope, four packets of cigarettes, a bottle of whiskey and a little speed and/or acid. After four days I'd have something like this on my screen:
Headlights searchlight through the winter night -
police flashlights cast jagged shadows of street fights.
Underground, the Underground rumbles under concrete mounds,
the last train, making wind in the drains, aching like growing pains
through the unsleeping city, awakening with no pity
the light sleepers, disturbing the midnight daydreamers,
spreading beneath the ground like jungle creepers
reaching out to throttle cheetahs and all the wildlife,
hunting with good looks, smart suits or a knife,
pounding beneath the pavement like bad breath
the night before the morning after, rails squealing
like mouse laughter, or a knife sharpened,
the closed stations darkened, rats martyred
under the steel wheels, dodgy deals done
in the first carriage, sex before marriage in the last,
in the blackness impossible to say how fast or slow
they go, how high or low, if it rains or snows
above. A standing couple declare love
under fluorescent bulbs flickering
like St. Elmo's fire, loose wires
crawling from a broken hole,
the groaning metal mole
burrowing between buildings,
glimpsing stars through the skylight,
glass towers reflecting moonlight.
People on the platforms look
like ghosts
in the tubelight.
which I wrote when I was 20, I think. I don't know how I'd evaluate a poem like that now, but certainly the state of mind I was in when I would write - and I wrote a lot - was very similar to how I feel when I'm in the midst of taking pictures.
It works like this. My mind is full of concepts; I spend at least an hour every day reading the news, sport, wikipedia, whatever. Information for the sake of information. The more I read the more it is like wrapping strands around candyfloss; ideas in my head swell up, often totally unrelated to anything I've put in there. For writing it might be - for the example of the poem above - a rhythm that stuck in my head for about a week, like being on a never-ending train journey. I could not stop thinking with it, and it was not a metered thing, more organic than that, but clattering along either way.
When I take pictures the elements are a bit more vague than with writing, especially poetry (which in my opinion is probably the most condensed, signifier-heavy form of art) but the same ideas of structure and time fill me and are translated by the click of a shutter.
The perfect moment of intersection between the elements (framing, speed of subjects vs shutter speed, movement of light within the frame, planar & perspective shift from moving the camera etc.) is always going to be a subjective thing. It is true that anyone can take a great photograph; what must be learned is that we must be objective with our subjectivity, which is a stupid and roundabout way of saying we must know what we like. When you know what elements would go into the perfect photograph you want to take, you chase it every time you pick up a camera. And then, if you are good, and have the technical skills to capture what you want to, then your mind is filled with the changing of the elements in the frame, and your whole world becomes focused, but through a lens.
I don't know that I could ever stop taking pictures now; it is only when I look through the lens that I truly know if I like what I see. All I know for sure is - the feeling, that the creative thread has been gripped tightly, has been with me for over a year now, and grows stronger every day. I can lose myself in a photoshoot while directing two models and three assistants - the words come out on autopilot, and all I am aware of is how it looks through the lens.
There is no future or past to this. My perfect moment is now, measured in fractions of a second.
3. Moomin
I first remember the litter; my personal opinion is that, while many different sorts of cat are beautiful, black kittens are inherently ugly. Their darkness and kitten fur gives them no definition, but their faces look too small surrounded by all that blackness. So it was with this one. For a while our house was full of cats. We were breeding them; I think at one point my brother and I counted 23, mostly kittens, but still - watch your step!
We kept one, and it was my turn to name. Black cat, like a troll - Moomin! Also a girl I had a crush on used to draw them on her school books. Half Burmese, which but for the FAIDS would have meant she was worth a lot of money. As it was, she was big, strong, vocal.. and then nearly dead.
My mother found her in the alley next to the house, howling like she was on heat and really needing something up her. We took her to the RSPCA hospital, where the prognosis was that she'd broken her hip and spine, and would probably not last the next day. Two weeks later we picked her up, and she was noisier than ever.
Something had changed though, her smell perhaps, or perhaps the fear and pain had changed her personality; the other cats rejected her, and so my room became our room. She ate in there and she slept in there; the roof terrace outside my window was where she went when she wanted to go outside. She'd let me know by pawing at the window and howling, any time of night.
As she got stronger, she grew more willful. She would howl at me to bring her food, to give her attention, to brush her hair.. I suspect a certain transferred oedipal situation took place, but I didn't mind. She was mine, I was hers - if I had been a more sociable person, perhaps I would not have reacted so strongly, but we bonded somehow. After I'd brought her food, she'd go out; a few hours later there'd be a muffled roar outside my window and she'd climb through the top left open. Half asleep at whatever time of night it was, I'd open my eyes to find her purring noisily on my chest, a pigeon or rat in her mouth, as if she wanted to provide for me.
One night she climbed through the window howling louder than usual; I stroked her, and then saw blood all over my hand. I examined her; the tip of her tail was not fur but a jut of bone. She hissed at anyone else who picked her up, so I carried her to the vet in my arms, covered in blood by the time I got there.
It is an odd sort of madness, how we treat animals. I suspect that it is a two-way thing, that the more we treat animals as human, the more we become a part of their pack. Is it madness to talk to a cat? She always told me what I wanted to hear.
When my mother moved to Dorset, she took my cat with her. Earlier this year I got a phone call telling me my cat had diabetes, and needed an injection every day. Two weeks ago I got a phone call from my mother telling me my cat had died, suddenly, of a brain hemorrhage. My mother said they were going to cremate her; I argued and said she must be buried.
I don't know if my mother told the truth about how she died; it's perfectly possible that she gave me one reason when the truth involved the money it cost to give her insulin every day. I don't know; I cried a lot, like I haven't for a long time.
She had perfect eyes, the softest fur, and knew my footsteps when I was coming into the house even if I hadn't seen her for six months. I've had many pets but she was the first who was really mine; I will miss her at Christmas. I brought her back from the dead, twice, but this time I wasn't there. I am sorry.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Hated Because Of Great Qualities
these are different matters
these are uncertain feelings
they should never be discussed here
so keep it to yourself
The momentous moments in life tend to slip by without too much bother; it's the lead-up that brings the feeling of change or occasion. As with most things, however grand or grim the end result, we get there with small, less momentous movements. Napoleon, teased for his accent, burying himself in his studies as a child, excelling at mathematics, becoming an artillery officer, rioting against the french.. Neil Armstrong, going from being a dedicated scout to the first man on the moon. It is force of personality and desire that directs us towards out final destinations, whether grand or grimy. It is honesty and clarity of purpose that allows us to maintain a course. When all other ways to judge or measure fail, the only consistent thing is - it was all me - there is nobody else to blame or applaud.
I'm not sure why I'm thinking of that today. Perhaps because I'm thinking about who I want to be; I know what I want to do, with lens and words, but the person I want to be - it's troubling. It's as easy as ever to find easy solutions to immediate problems, to not think of longer terms or grander ideas than the here and now. I have made decisions lately that have affected my life profoundly based on what I think is the right thing to do; as someone who has lied and cheated my way through life, and been in situations where I can't remember what truth I have told to whom, I find the simplicity of honesty to be something incredibly appealing. Right up until I follow through anyway; recently, or perhaps not so recently, allowing myself to love, to declare it, to let it fill me and consume me has felt like the right thing to do. But maybe, it is better to hold all that inside, because to fail on one account is to fail on many - it's a compound failure of rejection, unrequitedness, loss of friendship, loss of hope, loss of possibility.
It's impossible to know what the right thing to do is, ever, except for what you feel is the right thing to do. And you should never apologise for that, except to yourself.
In other news, a new chapter is starting in my life. I am moving house (not out of choice), maybe away from the neighbourhood (one which I have grown pretty fond of) and maybe out of the country. It is probably something about me that makes the things I reach for get further from me, but there's a part of me that hopes that it is just the luck of the place. Something I have noticed as I have got older - a desire to share a domestic situation with someone I care about. Not even necessarily someone I'm in an intimate relationship with, just someone with whom I could have a home, somewhere that could be ours. In the last month or so, it has become very apparent that there's nobody in my life I could do that with.. we shall see. Perhaps a new home will be a new start and the beginning of the next step to where-ever I will end up.
these are uncertain feelings
they should never be discussed here
so keep it to yourself
The momentous moments in life tend to slip by without too much bother; it's the lead-up that brings the feeling of change or occasion. As with most things, however grand or grim the end result, we get there with small, less momentous movements. Napoleon, teased for his accent, burying himself in his studies as a child, excelling at mathematics, becoming an artillery officer, rioting against the french.. Neil Armstrong, going from being a dedicated scout to the first man on the moon. It is force of personality and desire that directs us towards out final destinations, whether grand or grimy. It is honesty and clarity of purpose that allows us to maintain a course. When all other ways to judge or measure fail, the only consistent thing is - it was all me - there is nobody else to blame or applaud.
I'm not sure why I'm thinking of that today. Perhaps because I'm thinking about who I want to be; I know what I want to do, with lens and words, but the person I want to be - it's troubling. It's as easy as ever to find easy solutions to immediate problems, to not think of longer terms or grander ideas than the here and now. I have made decisions lately that have affected my life profoundly based on what I think is the right thing to do; as someone who has lied and cheated my way through life, and been in situations where I can't remember what truth I have told to whom, I find the simplicity of honesty to be something incredibly appealing. Right up until I follow through anyway; recently, or perhaps not so recently, allowing myself to love, to declare it, to let it fill me and consume me has felt like the right thing to do. But maybe, it is better to hold all that inside, because to fail on one account is to fail on many - it's a compound failure of rejection, unrequitedness, loss of friendship, loss of hope, loss of possibility.
It's impossible to know what the right thing to do is, ever, except for what you feel is the right thing to do. And you should never apologise for that, except to yourself.
In other news, a new chapter is starting in my life. I am moving house (not out of choice), maybe away from the neighbourhood (one which I have grown pretty fond of) and maybe out of the country. It is probably something about me that makes the things I reach for get further from me, but there's a part of me that hopes that it is just the luck of the place. Something I have noticed as I have got older - a desire to share a domestic situation with someone I care about. Not even necessarily someone I'm in an intimate relationship with, just someone with whom I could have a home, somewhere that could be ours. In the last month or so, it has become very apparent that there's nobody in my life I could do that with.. we shall see. Perhaps a new home will be a new start and the beginning of the next step to where-ever I will end up.
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Waiting Around To Die
It's a year and a month since I started writing this blog, wondering what I could possibly make of myself after a series of romantic, personal and work mishaps. It has been a year of bizarre and strange events, and has gone by very quickly, and looking back I see a person who has done a lot with their lives, going by the standard of what went before. That far it has been a success; although currently I am in trouble with work (hello credit crunch!) overall I am in a better position than I was - fundamentally because I haven't given up rather than because of any talents of my own. Emotionally there has been a toll, however. Relationshipwise, occasional pangs of pain and disappointment, a few bigger disappointments, but, perhaps because of what came before, the yowling, insufferable torture has been absent. The lack of positivity is simply dismissable as well; extremes of happiness and sadness go hand-in-hand in my experience, and are often completely random anyway. I would very much like to fall in love with someone who loves me back, but it doesn't seem likely, not as I have before.
The generally mediocre levels of my emotive temperament have of course been rocked by what has happened recently with my friend. I have some close friends, and they always say I'm talking nonsense when I tell them that, of the people I'm really close to, there are perhaps one or two. To have lost one, in the way that I have, has deeply, savagely hurt me. I did not think it possible, from a friend, unless it was in the way that I have been cheated on by a lover with a friend previously. Even then, what I felt was a overwhelming sense of something bad having been done to me intentionally. Here and now, I feel like the laws of physics are broken. Something is very wrong, and I cannot figure it out.
In times of overwhelming emotion, my brain tends to shut down a bit, or at least the part which experiences the world does. For the past while, I have been wandering in a state of detatchment, laughing when I should laugh, looking serious when I'm supposed to be listening. Inside my head, I am trying to figure what has happened.
I of course firstly look to myself. Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my thinking? Why do I find certain things abhorent? Is it purely a personal level of disgust that drives my thinking?
Well, I am sure there is something wrong with me; I'm an average human being, and most people have something wrong with them. In this situation though, I cannot see what is wrong with me in this situation. We're not talking about arguing with someone about their love of ping pong, but about becoming a whore. The next stage - why do I think it's a bad thing? There are obviously personal emotional and personally historical reasons for this - anyone who knows much about the history of my family will understand that, but as such, even I wouldn't accept that as a valid reason for someone to do or not do something. It's something further than that; for me, sex is one of the few things we have left that can be truly universal between people. Bringing money into the equation makes it mundane; you don't sell sex, you sell intimacy. I of course wonder if there's some part of me that is simply jealous, that a fairly attractive and intelligent woman that I can get on with very well wouldn't be with me; it is one of the curiousities of my life that, although I have honestly and openly wondered (sometimes aloud) what it would be like if we were together - and there are a lot of things which match up - it has never really entered my mind. There have been moments, of course, when I have been reduced to nothing but a man and she a woman and I have acted stupidly - but that is nature, even if just my own, to try to break that which is closest to me. Rather, there have been moments when I've felt we shared a different sort of intimacy, when I have wanted to hold her as close as she could possibly get, to push my head against hers as if we could melt together and become the same person. I have never had that before; more than anything I have held her in vast respect. Perhaps that is another cause for my disgust.
But the main reasons I have found is twofold, and they are these. Firstly, that someone I have held in such esteem for so long could completely ignore me about it, and throw away what has probably been the best friendship of my adult life, for money and a job that clearly won't be a career and can't last for more than a year or two unless she starts spending on plastic surgery and all that crap. It really hurts; I have been given a monetary value and someone has met the price, and I had no say in it. Secondly, that she is giving up on love, or doing it to make intimacy something that doesn't affect her; it's easy to say nothing means anything, and perhaps not so hard to feel it as well, but it is the things we cannot put into words that we should believe in; intimacy, love, friendship - describable in action but perhaps not so well in experience. To cut off from it, one might as well burn out their own eyes.
An ex-whore I used to be friends with would go into a complete fit whenever she got together with a guy because she felt she had to tell him about her history; she said that more often than not it put them off. She met a guy eventually and moved to Norway or Denmark with him. Even so, she was of a very different temperament to my friend now; she'd started when she was a teenager and quit by her mid twenties, not baring the thought of having to fuck another obese middle-aged man. My friend, I can't help but think she's doing it to destroy herself a little, as much as anything. Perhaps she sees my disgust and says, I don't want to know people like that, I'll do something that will put them off me for life. Or perhaps, she's fed up with being under her parents wing, and wants to do something that will make them cast her out when they find out. Or perhaps she's so into this black magic stuff that she thinks it's all she needs to be happy. Either way, I see no strength in what she does, only a self-obsessed self-delusion that makes my skin crawl with its irreversableness.
I hope most days that somehow she comes round before she goes through with it. I miss my friend; in my head the last few months I'd been idly thinking about asking her to move in with me when I move out of here, which is probably in a month or two. There is so much which I had hoped to do with her and somehow it has not happened. In all honesty, I blame myself as much as anyone. I was not there; I could have shown her a better time of life. I sit through the night with my head and shoulders out of my window, smoking and staring at the ground, and wonder what will become of her.
Sometimes I don't know where this dirty road is taking me
Sometimes I can't even see the reason why
The generally mediocre levels of my emotive temperament have of course been rocked by what has happened recently with my friend. I have some close friends, and they always say I'm talking nonsense when I tell them that, of the people I'm really close to, there are perhaps one or two. To have lost one, in the way that I have, has deeply, savagely hurt me. I did not think it possible, from a friend, unless it was in the way that I have been cheated on by a lover with a friend previously. Even then, what I felt was a overwhelming sense of something bad having been done to me intentionally. Here and now, I feel like the laws of physics are broken. Something is very wrong, and I cannot figure it out.
In times of overwhelming emotion, my brain tends to shut down a bit, or at least the part which experiences the world does. For the past while, I have been wandering in a state of detatchment, laughing when I should laugh, looking serious when I'm supposed to be listening. Inside my head, I am trying to figure what has happened.
I of course firstly look to myself. Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my thinking? Why do I find certain things abhorent? Is it purely a personal level of disgust that drives my thinking?
Well, I am sure there is something wrong with me; I'm an average human being, and most people have something wrong with them. In this situation though, I cannot see what is wrong with me in this situation. We're not talking about arguing with someone about their love of ping pong, but about becoming a whore. The next stage - why do I think it's a bad thing? There are obviously personal emotional and personally historical reasons for this - anyone who knows much about the history of my family will understand that, but as such, even I wouldn't accept that as a valid reason for someone to do or not do something. It's something further than that; for me, sex is one of the few things we have left that can be truly universal between people. Bringing money into the equation makes it mundane; you don't sell sex, you sell intimacy. I of course wonder if there's some part of me that is simply jealous, that a fairly attractive and intelligent woman that I can get on with very well wouldn't be with me; it is one of the curiousities of my life that, although I have honestly and openly wondered (sometimes aloud) what it would be like if we were together - and there are a lot of things which match up - it has never really entered my mind. There have been moments, of course, when I have been reduced to nothing but a man and she a woman and I have acted stupidly - but that is nature, even if just my own, to try to break that which is closest to me. Rather, there have been moments when I've felt we shared a different sort of intimacy, when I have wanted to hold her as close as she could possibly get, to push my head against hers as if we could melt together and become the same person. I have never had that before; more than anything I have held her in vast respect. Perhaps that is another cause for my disgust.
But the main reasons I have found is twofold, and they are these. Firstly, that someone I have held in such esteem for so long could completely ignore me about it, and throw away what has probably been the best friendship of my adult life, for money and a job that clearly won't be a career and can't last for more than a year or two unless she starts spending on plastic surgery and all that crap. It really hurts; I have been given a monetary value and someone has met the price, and I had no say in it. Secondly, that she is giving up on love, or doing it to make intimacy something that doesn't affect her; it's easy to say nothing means anything, and perhaps not so hard to feel it as well, but it is the things we cannot put into words that we should believe in; intimacy, love, friendship - describable in action but perhaps not so well in experience. To cut off from it, one might as well burn out their own eyes.
An ex-whore I used to be friends with would go into a complete fit whenever she got together with a guy because she felt she had to tell him about her history; she said that more often than not it put them off. She met a guy eventually and moved to Norway or Denmark with him. Even so, she was of a very different temperament to my friend now; she'd started when she was a teenager and quit by her mid twenties, not baring the thought of having to fuck another obese middle-aged man. My friend, I can't help but think she's doing it to destroy herself a little, as much as anything. Perhaps she sees my disgust and says, I don't want to know people like that, I'll do something that will put them off me for life. Or perhaps, she's fed up with being under her parents wing, and wants to do something that will make them cast her out when they find out. Or perhaps she's so into this black magic stuff that she thinks it's all she needs to be happy. Either way, I see no strength in what she does, only a self-obsessed self-delusion that makes my skin crawl with its irreversableness.
I hope most days that somehow she comes round before she goes through with it. I miss my friend; in my head the last few months I'd been idly thinking about asking her to move in with me when I move out of here, which is probably in a month or two. There is so much which I had hoped to do with her and somehow it has not happened. In all honesty, I blame myself as much as anyone. I was not there; I could have shown her a better time of life. I sit through the night with my head and shoulders out of my window, smoking and staring at the ground, and wonder what will become of her.
Sometimes I don't know where this dirty road is taking me
Sometimes I can't even see the reason why
Monday, 6 October 2008
Four Hearts In A Can
Trying to outrun
Four thousand problems
Things I Have Loved About You.
Lying on my side, and your head comes up next to mine with my arms around you, and you say "hello" with just a hint of surprise. Your cheeks flushing when I popped a pill in your mouth and your eyes firing up and you looking like a vampire who just saw the world's most moreish virgin. Your disarming moments of cuteness, when you pull faces. Seeing you dance for the first time, like a snake shedding its skin. Your unrelenting passion for soft toys. That you cried when you knew I'd been hurt beyond what I could take. Your unrelenting generosity. Your impeccably taste in music and films. That I could tell you anything and you'd always ask the right question, even when I didn't know what it was. That we walked around a shellshocked London after the tubes blew up on a mushroom comedown and it was like we'd found each other in our dreams; we were above it, and nothing could hurt us; we were immortals, the dead were nothing. That you squealed with pleasure when I picked you up off the ground. That you love birds. That you knew who was right for me when I didn't. That when you laughed it was always so unexpected and full-bodied that it made something inside me break open and fall in love each time. That we had adventures together and you always, always looked after me. That you're humble. That you never needed me to prove myself to you or show off. That you inspired me to my greatest words, greatest dreams, greatest depths and heights. That you made me feel like together we could do anything, rule the world.
Things I Have Not Loved About You.
You were too smart; you have too much time to spend thinking, too trapped in the moments of memory and worry, introverting yourself and losing sight of possibility and chance; that you seemed to need drugs to switch that off, or extreme moments to throw you into the present. That you lost hope, as if it was something idiotic to keep. That you seemed so intent on losing sensation and toughening yourself against the world that you couldn't enjoy it, sometimes. That to me you seemed to see strength in not caring or feeling, that always made me think you'd been hurt by something so badly that you didn't dare open yourself up to it again. That you would hurt your family so much even while caring about them so much; that you never considered how they would feel when they find out about the things you do. That you would never seem to listen when I thought you were doing something that would hurt you in the long run, even when I'd been right about things you'd done before, like with the film-maker. That you wanted to stay young forever, when you were always destined to be ten times the woman the girl had been. That you seemed to think nihilism and self-destruction and destroying the world could fix anything or make things right or somehow be cool; that you'd rather destroy everything than be proved wrong. That you never noticed when you started down a path to becoming a numb, deadfaced person, the sort you'd have spat words at before. That you would sometimes seem to accept anything for truth rather than - this is just how things are, and it can be good and it can be bad.
That you never seemed to realise just how much I love you.
Four thousand problems
Things I Have Loved About You.
Lying on my side, and your head comes up next to mine with my arms around you, and you say "hello" with just a hint of surprise. Your cheeks flushing when I popped a pill in your mouth and your eyes firing up and you looking like a vampire who just saw the world's most moreish virgin. Your disarming moments of cuteness, when you pull faces. Seeing you dance for the first time, like a snake shedding its skin. Your unrelenting passion for soft toys. That you cried when you knew I'd been hurt beyond what I could take. Your unrelenting generosity. Your impeccably taste in music and films. That I could tell you anything and you'd always ask the right question, even when I didn't know what it was. That we walked around a shellshocked London after the tubes blew up on a mushroom comedown and it was like we'd found each other in our dreams; we were above it, and nothing could hurt us; we were immortals, the dead were nothing. That you squealed with pleasure when I picked you up off the ground. That you love birds. That you knew who was right for me when I didn't. That when you laughed it was always so unexpected and full-bodied that it made something inside me break open and fall in love each time. That we had adventures together and you always, always looked after me. That you're humble. That you never needed me to prove myself to you or show off. That you inspired me to my greatest words, greatest dreams, greatest depths and heights. That you made me feel like together we could do anything, rule the world.
Things I Have Not Loved About You.
You were too smart; you have too much time to spend thinking, too trapped in the moments of memory and worry, introverting yourself and losing sight of possibility and chance; that you seemed to need drugs to switch that off, or extreme moments to throw you into the present. That you lost hope, as if it was something idiotic to keep. That you seemed so intent on losing sensation and toughening yourself against the world that you couldn't enjoy it, sometimes. That to me you seemed to see strength in not caring or feeling, that always made me think you'd been hurt by something so badly that you didn't dare open yourself up to it again. That you would hurt your family so much even while caring about them so much; that you never considered how they would feel when they find out about the things you do. That you would never seem to listen when I thought you were doing something that would hurt you in the long run, even when I'd been right about things you'd done before, like with the film-maker. That you wanted to stay young forever, when you were always destined to be ten times the woman the girl had been. That you seemed to think nihilism and self-destruction and destroying the world could fix anything or make things right or somehow be cool; that you'd rather destroy everything than be proved wrong. That you never noticed when you started down a path to becoming a numb, deadfaced person, the sort you'd have spat words at before. That you would sometimes seem to accept anything for truth rather than - this is just how things are, and it can be good and it can be bad.
That you never seemed to realise just how much I love you.
Saturday, 4 October 2008
The Partisan
1. The Age Of Love
Love is defined by that paragon of truth Wikipedia as "any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection", although there follows a good number of scientific and psychological definitions and case studies on the subject. I started thinking about it after reading this post which, in truth, repeated some ideas that I've had kicking around my head for a while. But, in the last few years, I've come to change my mind about whether or not love even exists; I think now, it might be seen as a development of the human condition in the same way that the enlightenment brought forth the concept of a general sense of human individuality (rather than just for those in the higher social classes). Love is hard to define, hence a few million crappy comic strips &c, but as with most abstract emotional concepts, is better understood through the actions of people under its influence. I don't necessarily mean the love of lovers - those who'd cross the world to see their favourite musician give a rare performance, or would spend many years working on a project of no particular consequence to anyone but themselves - these are all as much signs of love as throwing yourself in the way of a falling tree to protect a spouse, or whatever cliched moment you wish to choose. Belief in love marks a moment in human evolution where we develop as sentient beings; to cross-reference with similarl non-substantiated (but through out own experience) beliefs, with religious or spiritual beliefs you may ALWAYS see a need for belief stemming from psychological ailments i.e. a need to rescind responsibility for one's own actions or accept a life without hope but of the religious kind which offers some vague possibility of salvation once all the hard work is done(re: Martin Seligman - Learned Optimism); love itself does not require higher powers nor a loss of control, rather, following from the Lust and Attraction stages, with their hedonistic lures ("Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement." - can those who have trouble with dopamine or serotonin levels fall in love?) the Attachment stage requires a conscious and voluntary submission to the concept of family (or at least, a unit greater than "I")rather than individual; a willingness to accept that as individuals we are part of a lineage rather than motes on the surface of the ocean of humanity. Love is a belief system based on our own experiences and decisions, a blind faith with real-world results.
2) Live to work, work to live.
With fierce hunger I threw myself at work whenever I could get it, for the past four years or so, as long as it was in the field I wanted. Suddenly, in the past few months, work has been throwing itself at me; this Russian reversal has had me somewhat busy, insofar that I've had a few weeks of sleeping 4 hours a night, waking up to go on set all day, coming home to write up my other jobs, editing pictures when I can. It has left me rather exhausted and for the past week I've found pleasure in sleeping and not having to wake up at 6 - far more pleasure than I've had doing much for a while. Inevitably, such luche behaviour has left me somewhat in trouble, and a missed appointment sees me needing to find a way to pay my rent and (somehow) eat and travel and smoke for the next week. Desperation, desperate money situation - I can chase up invoices I have sent recently, but it's a bad way to get more work, considering that they're hardly late (it's been 2 weeks since I sent them and you don't expect payment before 4 weeks have passed usually). I've wondered what I might do for a quick fix; on top of everything else, I've been told a letter has arrived at my previous address from a court that I was hoping to have been forgotten by. It is odd; I have had a criminal life at some stages, and for the slightest thing I am being hounded to the point where I suspect I will be up before a district judge before too long. I have tried and tried to make something of my life; I have tried to be a good and just person, tried to be a good man, a good lover, tried to take care of my family and friends whenever I could. I feel like I chase penitence for my many past sins - and, I have so many regrets from life, that there is a near-bottomless pit of energy to put towards undoing who I have been and becoming who I want to be. But who I have been seems to catch up, inevitably, always at the worst moment. I know I am not alone in this; at a fetish party this week, I spoke to a lady who used to run a brothel, and now runs a minicab firm - "I feel sorry for a lot of the girls, they don't know what they're getting themselves into" (and I wondered if she'd say the same about her drivers in a few years time) - her face etched with the timeless lines of a morning-noon-and-night alcoholic; I spoke to a man who was naked but for a mask, his voice nervous and excited, but his eyes looking like they might cry; the whole situation had a resigned, sanitised, tragic air to it, of people who found their kick once, chased it and never found it again, and found they could never go back to wondering what it was like, back when they were happy. It was like all other fetish clubs and sex societies I've come across, then. I sometimes wonder who I would be if I'd never thought to move in both the dark and light of life; for all the adventures and excitement, my talents would be better used on someone with a purity of purpose about them - and no past to catch them up and bite them on the arse.
Freedom soon will come;
Then we'll come from the shadows.
Love is defined by that paragon of truth Wikipedia as "any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection", although there follows a good number of scientific and psychological definitions and case studies on the subject. I started thinking about it after reading this post which, in truth, repeated some ideas that I've had kicking around my head for a while. But, in the last few years, I've come to change my mind about whether or not love even exists; I think now, it might be seen as a development of the human condition in the same way that the enlightenment brought forth the concept of a general sense of human individuality (rather than just for those in the higher social classes). Love is hard to define, hence a few million crappy comic strips &c, but as with most abstract emotional concepts, is better understood through the actions of people under its influence. I don't necessarily mean the love of lovers - those who'd cross the world to see their favourite musician give a rare performance, or would spend many years working on a project of no particular consequence to anyone but themselves - these are all as much signs of love as throwing yourself in the way of a falling tree to protect a spouse, or whatever cliched moment you wish to choose. Belief in love marks a moment in human evolution where we develop as sentient beings; to cross-reference with similarl non-substantiated (but through out own experience) beliefs, with religious or spiritual beliefs you may ALWAYS see a need for belief stemming from psychological ailments i.e. a need to rescind responsibility for one's own actions or accept a life without hope but of the religious kind which offers some vague possibility of salvation once all the hard work is done(re: Martin Seligman - Learned Optimism); love itself does not require higher powers nor a loss of control, rather, following from the Lust and Attraction stages, with their hedonistic lures ("Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement." - can those who have trouble with dopamine or serotonin levels fall in love?) the Attachment stage requires a conscious and voluntary submission to the concept of family (or at least, a unit greater than "I")rather than individual; a willingness to accept that as individuals we are part of a lineage rather than motes on the surface of the ocean of humanity. Love is a belief system based on our own experiences and decisions, a blind faith with real-world results.
2) Live to work, work to live.
With fierce hunger I threw myself at work whenever I could get it, for the past four years or so, as long as it was in the field I wanted. Suddenly, in the past few months, work has been throwing itself at me; this Russian reversal has had me somewhat busy, insofar that I've had a few weeks of sleeping 4 hours a night, waking up to go on set all day, coming home to write up my other jobs, editing pictures when I can. It has left me rather exhausted and for the past week I've found pleasure in sleeping and not having to wake up at 6 - far more pleasure than I've had doing much for a while. Inevitably, such luche behaviour has left me somewhat in trouble, and a missed appointment sees me needing to find a way to pay my rent and (somehow) eat and travel and smoke for the next week. Desperation, desperate money situation - I can chase up invoices I have sent recently, but it's a bad way to get more work, considering that they're hardly late (it's been 2 weeks since I sent them and you don't expect payment before 4 weeks have passed usually). I've wondered what I might do for a quick fix; on top of everything else, I've been told a letter has arrived at my previous address from a court that I was hoping to have been forgotten by. It is odd; I have had a criminal life at some stages, and for the slightest thing I am being hounded to the point where I suspect I will be up before a district judge before too long. I have tried and tried to make something of my life; I have tried to be a good and just person, tried to be a good man, a good lover, tried to take care of my family and friends whenever I could. I feel like I chase penitence for my many past sins - and, I have so many regrets from life, that there is a near-bottomless pit of energy to put towards undoing who I have been and becoming who I want to be. But who I have been seems to catch up, inevitably, always at the worst moment. I know I am not alone in this; at a fetish party this week, I spoke to a lady who used to run a brothel, and now runs a minicab firm - "I feel sorry for a lot of the girls, they don't know what they're getting themselves into" (and I wondered if she'd say the same about her drivers in a few years time) - her face etched with the timeless lines of a morning-noon-and-night alcoholic; I spoke to a man who was naked but for a mask, his voice nervous and excited, but his eyes looking like they might cry; the whole situation had a resigned, sanitised, tragic air to it, of people who found their kick once, chased it and never found it again, and found they could never go back to wondering what it was like, back when they were happy. It was like all other fetish clubs and sex societies I've come across, then. I sometimes wonder who I would be if I'd never thought to move in both the dark and light of life; for all the adventures and excitement, my talents would be better used on someone with a purity of purpose about them - and no past to catch them up and bite them on the arse.
Freedom soon will come;
Then we'll come from the shadows.
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Rooster
Tuesday: Go into town to interview Ronnie from The Killers, at the St. Martin's Lane Hotel, which is one of those "stylish" hotels but really isn't very nice. A lot of these places seem less like hotels and more like temporary offices and conference rooms for media types. Manage to scrape 20 minutes with him alone when I was expecting half an hour with three other people also asking questions.. have to shift around my portrait appointment for that day, a girl called Sarah Young, who has some sort of fashion event agency. Then off to Scandi Kitchen with Sarah Ba. for some arctic bread and hot chocolate. Just as I'm finishing up there, a PR from Universal calls - to double-check I'm good for my 5 o'clock appointment with the Kaiser Chiefs at the Sanderson. What 5 o'clock? So, I call Sarah Y. and explain that I'll have to put her back a day, bid adeiu to Sarah Ba. and wish her luck with her continued recovery from the debilitating condition known as "regular employment", for a while briefly consider phoning Sarah Be. to complain about the extreme disorganisation that Sarah V. is causing me by asking me to cover her work (and in all likelyhood Sarah Be. would have been able to give me some decent questions too) and then rush off to see Ricky and Nicky, who had that energetic nervousness of people who don't actually work for a living. I had the impression that if they weren't millionaire rock stars, they'd probably be living with their parents. It was a stressful day, but I felt good because Sarah P. was to arrive imminently. It was a week of Sarahs.
Afterwards went to see Garry to give him photographs; on the way to see him he called me and said his girlfriend had been knocked off her bicycle and was in Homerton hospital, could I please get in his van and direct him there. When we arrived she was pumped full of drugs and had big graze on her arm, but otherwise from that was wandering around in a fairly chirpy state. In the waiting room I went through my pictures of Reading with Garry. He seemed quite pleased with them and asked me if I'd be interested in helping him write a sort of script for a tv show he wants to make.
Wednesday: Back to the Sanderson to interview Tom from Keane. That basically involved asking him a bunch of questions that had been written down for me before, and chatting randomly about Stoke Newington. Then off to Gloucester Road to take Sarah Y's portrait; she was nice enough, a bit pushy in the way that suggests she normally gets what she wants from men, and by "men" I mean daddy. She had me take her picture sitting on a bollard, because her father owned the company that made them. Mentally, I pictured her doing a pole dance on it, or even using it as a giant dildo, and then me showing her father that picture and her bossy little voice saying "do you like it daddy? do you?".. it's these little moments that help you get through the longer days. Afterwards went for drinks with Tammy and Tom, who are both lovely. Then, Sarah P. showed up - a few moments of awkwardness, perhaps, as we hadn't seen each other in years (and even then it was brief and confusing) but in no time we were getting on fine. She was a bit unwell though, and had some fevers in her sleep.
Thursday: went down to Homerton hospital again, with Sarah P. so she could get a health check after 9 months or so out of civilisation. We had a good lunch at the Cat and Mutton, then down to that joyous place known as Oxford Street for shopping. A few times I've been down there with people who have got a bit upset with the way I sometimes let people bounce off me in crowds, thinking that I might cause an argument. There's really no point in worrying though; people in crowds disappear faster than they do if you drop them in the ocean. Sarah P. was feeling a little unwell; so we hurried it up, then I had an interview (me being interviewed for once) at the Blues Bar on Kingly Street, which is one of my favourite places. Then we got on the bus home, Sarah P. feeling gradually worse, so that when we got back to my area, I took her to Homerton Hospital - my third visit that week. They drew her blood for testing, and got her into a backless gown - she responded with fevers and some hysteria. It was an odd old time of it, a feeling a bit like anything could happen and probably would. But what happened was she was diagnosed with a sort of travel fatigue, and let out of there, and then back to mine for sleep.
Weekend: basically a series of me going "ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh". I wouldn't exactly say I felt melancholic, more frustrated and a bit lonesome. I sometimes feel like I'm becoming a sanctuary for other people, sometimes a shoulder to cry on, or an outsider to have outsider adventures with. At secondary school I was always the boy that girls would tell about their crushes; it's the worst possible thing to hear from a girl you like. Perhaps I bring it on myself; perhaps I'm over-considerate. Which would be odd, because I can be a ruthless heartless bastard on occasion. I don't rightly know. But I'm fed up with never being the right one.
Tuesday: informed by the magazines I did the interviews for the previous week that my work was good; told by mtv everything is going well with the project I'm doing for them; uploaded a photo of Tom from Keane I took, it gets 150 hits in the first day; am told there's work for me taking photos for a gym chain, decent money; go out to see Lucky, we go to Sketch and 12 Bar; meet Sarah V. and ACB; ride the bus home through the night thinking about NY, and possibilities.
Yeah here come the rooster...
Afterwards went to see Garry to give him photographs; on the way to see him he called me and said his girlfriend had been knocked off her bicycle and was in Homerton hospital, could I please get in his van and direct him there. When we arrived she was pumped full of drugs and had big graze on her arm, but otherwise from that was wandering around in a fairly chirpy state. In the waiting room I went through my pictures of Reading with Garry. He seemed quite pleased with them and asked me if I'd be interested in helping him write a sort of script for a tv show he wants to make.
Wednesday: Back to the Sanderson to interview Tom from Keane. That basically involved asking him a bunch of questions that had been written down for me before, and chatting randomly about Stoke Newington. Then off to Gloucester Road to take Sarah Y's portrait; she was nice enough, a bit pushy in the way that suggests she normally gets what she wants from men, and by "men" I mean daddy. She had me take her picture sitting on a bollard, because her father owned the company that made them. Mentally, I pictured her doing a pole dance on it, or even using it as a giant dildo, and then me showing her father that picture and her bossy little voice saying "do you like it daddy? do you?".. it's these little moments that help you get through the longer days. Afterwards went for drinks with Tammy and Tom, who are both lovely. Then, Sarah P. showed up - a few moments of awkwardness, perhaps, as we hadn't seen each other in years (and even then it was brief and confusing) but in no time we were getting on fine. She was a bit unwell though, and had some fevers in her sleep.
Thursday: went down to Homerton hospital again, with Sarah P. so she could get a health check after 9 months or so out of civilisation. We had a good lunch at the Cat and Mutton, then down to that joyous place known as Oxford Street for shopping. A few times I've been down there with people who have got a bit upset with the way I sometimes let people bounce off me in crowds, thinking that I might cause an argument. There's really no point in worrying though; people in crowds disappear faster than they do if you drop them in the ocean. Sarah P. was feeling a little unwell; so we hurried it up, then I had an interview (me being interviewed for once) at the Blues Bar on Kingly Street, which is one of my favourite places. Then we got on the bus home, Sarah P. feeling gradually worse, so that when we got back to my area, I took her to Homerton Hospital - my third visit that week. They drew her blood for testing, and got her into a backless gown - she responded with fevers and some hysteria. It was an odd old time of it, a feeling a bit like anything could happen and probably would. But what happened was she was diagnosed with a sort of travel fatigue, and let out of there, and then back to mine for sleep.
Weekend: basically a series of me going "ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh". I wouldn't exactly say I felt melancholic, more frustrated and a bit lonesome. I sometimes feel like I'm becoming a sanctuary for other people, sometimes a shoulder to cry on, or an outsider to have outsider adventures with. At secondary school I was always the boy that girls would tell about their crushes; it's the worst possible thing to hear from a girl you like. Perhaps I bring it on myself; perhaps I'm over-considerate. Which would be odd, because I can be a ruthless heartless bastard on occasion. I don't rightly know. But I'm fed up with never being the right one.
Tuesday: informed by the magazines I did the interviews for the previous week that my work was good; told by mtv everything is going well with the project I'm doing for them; uploaded a photo of Tom from Keane I took, it gets 150 hits in the first day; am told there's work for me taking photos for a gym chain, decent money; go out to see Lucky, we go to Sketch and 12 Bar; meet Sarah V. and ACB; ride the bus home through the night thinking about NY, and possibilities.
Yeah here come the rooster...
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