i was just walking down my street. the sun was blaring from the sky. and there was vinegar in the air from the chippy. the sensation gave me a sort of jolt through time and space, as scents are wont to do, and took me to the british seaside holidays of my childhood.
sticky hands, blackpool rock, the hot sun and the cold breeze. chips and salt, the squeak of plastic cutlery on polystyrene.
do you know what is a great cure for the blues? cycling a pass through the foothills and seeing the range reveal itself as you reach the crest. after going so hard you tasted blood on the ascent.
and of course, hazy jane is a reference to nick drake. who was introduced to me sort of in tandem by ms. j, my high school english teacher, and graham coxon, who had an album out, the sky is too high at the same time. ‘i wish i could bring nick drake back to life’. it’s been a long time since i heard that. adds to playlist
i was a bit down in the dumps. so much was going on in my life. i was depressed, lonely, anxious. i was in autistic burnout, but didn’t know i was autistic.
i spoke to a friend on the telephone and felt a lot better. i didn’t solve any of my problems. but they didn’t seem quite as big.
lo siento is spanish for sorry. but it literally means something more like, ‘i feel it.’ of course, most of the time i say it after accidentally stepping on someone’s toe in the supermarket, or after smashing something in the supermarket. but in a poetic context, it feels to me like a generous state of mind. a beautiful feat of empathy. i hear your concern, and i feel your agony like my own.
second place – again. another job i didn’t get. and do you know what. it was probably for the best. i was gutted at the time but i’m basically glad about it now. i’m starting a new job in the next week actually. an opportunity i would otherwise have missed.
mother and sisters are relations, but so are times, places and things. we cooperate with untold thousands on daily basis – we relate with a seamstress in bangladesh when we pull our trousers on, one leg at a time. with the worker in the sandwich factory when we eat our lunch. with the victorian engineers who built our sewers when we flush the loo.
it’s easy to be swept up by the self-fetishisation movement. to believe that you have control over your destiny. you do not. you merely have influence over it. so to do anything in the hope of an outcome – for me and my calculations anyway – is folly. to live a happy life, one must do the things that one wants to do for their own sake.
life is a process, not a product.
this was an idea that occurred to me a few years ago. i was coming up to the age my father was when i was born, and i noticed that there would be, during that year, a day on which i was exactly half as old as my father. and it isn’t a big leap from there to realise that for any two people who live at the same time, assuming both live long enough, there will come a time when one is twice the age of the other. whether it’s when they are two and four or 40 and 80.
i have sort of mystic beliefs about numbers. i can’t explain them really. i think they sometimes convey messages to me. of course, my lover and i, being a coincidental couple, share a day. it fell on 1111 999. how could it not be love?
i have a new verse out today – the text was previously published in edge of humanity magazine, so please check that out if you haven’t already (see link below). now live on youtube, spotify, etc.
every coincidental couple share or will share a day
(assuming all live lives that lap over and aside)
when one is either twice or half as old as their partner.
we only live in relation to each other:
brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children we are all
in second place again, lo siento, i feel your pain
then a vow: to talk much more on the telephone
hazy jane mountain range and a mouthful of blood
the chip shop salt and vinegar on the edge of the breeze
decline is the consequence of a millennium without conquest
bring all ye visigoths, only the sack of london can save us now
sometimes perspective illuminates
sunny convalescence; can i modify my betrayed reaction?
is there space for love without condition between event and response?
the universe is comprised of information thoughts are but ephemeral forms
deleted from the records for eternity, locked within an evanescent system
but are some things unforgivable?
let’s hope good souls can hold a grudge with compassion.
chorus
have you tried the toblerone, feckless bairn?
it’s abysmally pricey, but so is everything else
i have a theory that brexit is the effective sack of london, by hitler
different, but the same
this bipolar love hurts so much round infatuated hertz
bevvy bivouac, coke and jack in the sack
i read about his suicide on teletext in the 90s
a poet tortured, bill teller of the apple orchard
never socrates unsatisfied nor pig in shit:
we are socrates in pig shit, always and 4 real.
i cut a lana del rey tattoo into my arm, is that self harm?
each generation must make the material their own
smell tomato paste and cheddar, my da’s cooking, my home
a feeling of disconnection between body and homunculus
post-prandial down-dumpsy meek remainderman rain run
ink on scar tissue, perineum to the sun
this isn’t a cover up, the red rose, the guerilla’s fist
i am a loaf of bread, origami, a process
in purgatory every pain and every pleasure you caused will be inflicted back
and you will judge yourself
getting there—a tired prayer to monotony
four goes on the playstation then i eat the whole bloody toblerone
all that’s left is our dismal materiel
we all rely on the good souls who forgive us
chorus
have you tried the toblerone, feckless bairn?
it’s abysmally pricey, but so is everything else
i have a theory that brexit is the sack of london, by hitler
different, but the same
another month ends. tomorrow it will be may. it’s the best time of year. the sun is out, the days are long, and the whole summer is to come. and i’ve got a new verse out tomorrow. and its a little bit different. let’s just say that last may was tough. we are hoping better. come what may
the donkeys are a reference to the philosophical paradox of buridan’s ass – the donkey is equally starving and parched. fortunately, food and water are close to hand. in fact, plentiful supplies of each are just 1 metre away. in opposite directions. so the donkey is unable to rationally decide whether to first eat or drink, and as a result, it dies of thirst and starvation.
i must be getting old. everything seems to expensive. £7 for a pint of beer? i remember when £2 was considered pricey. i don’t smoke any more, but i distinctly remember 10 packs of smokes for £1.36. they don’t even do ten packs any more and its most of £20 for a twenty deck. and the chocolate bars seem to have doubled in price in a mere couple of years.
i used to read about history, war, famine, strikes and all that, and think it was lucky i lived in the settled, modern world. sometimes now i wish i’d been born a million years ago. when human history does end, it will end with a bang, and not with the philosophy of francis fukuyama.
i had this big job interview. i really wanted the gig. i worked so hard on it. there was a presentation, a written exercise, and, well you know, like questions and answers. as is implied by ‘interview’. anyway, there was some other stuff going on in my life at the time, but i felt like i managed to hold it together and come across like a competent human employee hybrid.
but in the end i never got the job, and i pretty much had a breakdown in the evening after the interview – in a fever, despairing. it was a low. the month had started with a spring of optimism. it was about here that the year took a downward turn.
the love epochal. n.n. benn 