THE DREAM FILM STORE
A sad and seductive female voice is saying things to me. I cannot focus or see her face, it refuses to appear in my mind.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve finally come, I’ve been waiting for you for lifetimes.
- Welcome at last to the Dream-Film Store, I can’t believe you’ve awoken here after so long -
Did you have a long day? What can I find for you tonight – that’s right – anything you can imagine – a Thousand amazing thoughts preserved – or perhaps just a bottle of red wine and a dream about the swaying sea will rest you well tonight?”
Of course in dreams you never know you are dreaming. That is why they have control. Certainly this dream harnessed control enough to disturb me & leave itself lingering behind the back of my mind when I finally awoke.
In my sleep I was wrestling w/ heat & the covers, & frightened by the lady’s continuing voice. All I could see was blue.
“I know you can understand what I’m saying. Don’t be afraid” -
I felt her stretch out her arm towards me and I jumped in panic.
All around me I could see blurs of deep colour merging & swirling, a moving chaos of images and shapes. Still I could see no face.
“I know you can hear me, please, I’m your friend, look! I couldn’t bear to see you waste this now. You know me already please just trust me.”
********
II
I awoke shaken and wretched, grappling with the duvets, rubbing my stinging eyes. Already the terrible fear of my dream had subsided considerably; simply because waking instantly cancels out what was previously merely dreaming. Now I just had a headache & a longing to return to that strange scene and assuage the curiosity that always accompanies fear. I suppose the fear when you dream is because you don’t know you’re only dreaming. It seems real. I lay there thinking.
What troubled me most as I lay there in bed was that I never saw the woman’s face, though I could sense it was desperate to appear. Oh well, just a dream, as they say.
Refusing to let a dream trouble my thoughts all day, as had happened before I decided to get up and wash my face.
The flat was crazed by disorder & rubbish. Clothes, papers, books & boxes which should’ve been locked in some attic were at war w/ the floor. I trod w/ care to the bathroom & stood looking in the greasy mirror at a face full of grease; the eyes that once rewarded me w/ strange smiles were laden w/ sleep, heavy with the impurities that sleep had filtered. The Drain in my Brain.
“I’ve been swimming
in a sea of sleep,”
I began singing to myself in a hoarse groan. Wanting to give myself a shock, I dunked my head in a cold basin decorated w/ floating limescale, pubic hair (for some unknown reason) and toothpaste. How I could call that much of a wash I don’t know. Nevertheless, I felt fresher; so, as always, I started to prepare my morning spliff, which helped me decide what to do today, or if to do anything at all.
I used to take great pleasure in rolling huge reefers, just for the hilarity of seeing something unusual & absurd, I suppose. Recently though, since moving in to the flat, I’ve been rolling the swiftest & easiest joints possible, & filling them w/ more weed than the big old ones. Being stoned now fits into the same category of Time & Tedium that it once was the escape-route from.
As I lit the spliff, & fell softly back into the sensuous web that stonedness weaves, I felt a longing for the fantastical times I used to have w/ friends & girls & laughter & ideas – whereas now I just felt numb, in a blunt trance. Not wanting to linger on the past, I took a deep long drag, like the spliff was a sacrament, & pulled some stolid clouds of darkness into my lungs. Holding it down, I imagined counting some numbers but couldn’t get it together, so just waited - & then exhaled, releasing the smoke in a grave grey sigh, watching it fumble, disperse & vanish into cushions & curtains & air. My head was heavy. I knew what I needed now more than ever. To get out.
********
III
After dressing in some jeans & T-shirts, I took my weed, some skins, a pen & paper & various other articles of minor importance, & hid them in places in my big jacket. I’ve never been too bothered about what I wear on top - trousers, I just wear jeans, so I’m not fussy there either. Shoes, however, I’m very particular about, seeing as I have to walk in them etc. Shoes are rare allies in life. Also, I have a tendency to turn a jacket into a home.
So, finding a particular pair of boots, I left the flat w/ a feeling of the promise of the Day.
But where could I go?
I’d abandoned my friends a few months before, fallen out with them all except one, Gabriel, who I don’t speak to anymore, anyway. It was a strange series of incidents involving my previous band & some magic mushrooms. The details escape me & give me pain trying to remember them. We were called ‘Open Poem Opium,’ & we split up; that is all.
(“Beat through the veins of the city in madness
Revolving doors in your mind & sadness
Cities crawling in your brain
streets of mystery and of pain,
I’m leaving town on the underground train.”)
I put my hands in my pocket to instinctively protect myself from the knuckle-gnawing cold that hung around outside. Feeling what I thought was a £10 note in my jeans, I pulled it out to find only a little scribbling of lyrics written some days ago in a dull hash-induced trance.
I often scribbled things. I enjoyed the freedom of scribbling & doodling. The pen can move exactly where you want it free of direction, w/out the obligation of having to form restricting letters & words. I have pages & pages of doodles, strange shapes, & occasionally some lyrics appear in the mess. That’s what I did for the band – wrote songs & sang, though I don’t play any instrument.
Noticing a growing rumble in my stomach, I felt that food & coffee were the best options, & would give me more time to consider how my day of activity could be filled.
Rounding a corner, I saw the parade of shops ahead, dead faces facing me, w/ cheap dimestore smiles. In the middle was the cafe, called “The Rat & Vessel” to my amused bewilderment. I opened the door. Inside it smelled of sad people, old times clinging in smoke to the walls, sad paint and sad light. The door was still ringing from those crazy bells that crash together on opening , & make me cringe every time. Those bells should be banned from sad cafes. They exacerbate the dead silence that awaits you inside when the door slams shut & the bells stop clanging.
“A large strong white coffee please, & a Danish.”
£1. 90. I couldn’t believe it. I realised then that left me w/ only 10p for the day – a rare day of Activity. Oh well.
The coffee was bitter & the Danish was over sweet. I was fairly stoned & therefore felt a heightened sensitivity to things like taste. After a few mouthfuls, I realised it wasn’t quite late enough for breakfast yet.
Well, what could I do? Where could I go? 10p is less than having nothing, because it just irritates you with niggling little time-consuming questions.
I decided I’d be freer if I threw it away my last change. Why I didn’t bring any money w/ me I haven’t a clue – pen, paper & weed must have seemed like a more useful currency to remember this morning.
So On discovering that I finally had something to do (albeit only disposing of 10p), I thought I’d turn it into a ritual & perhaps waste an hour of the day. I was finding it increasingly difficult since realising this money shortage to tell myself that I was even capable of activity this morning. Spending an hour of one’s morning throwing away short change, & taking an hour to decide how to do it in particular to add a pretend sense of ‘fun…’ I realised a dead-end frustration possessing me. The town was in abeyance, time was trapping, what could I do to rid me of the cruel bindings of post-youth, expulsion from university, confusion, unemployment, & worst of all, sheer boredom? Where could I go, & with what purpose?
The 10p dilemma had started to annoy me. I thought in vain for ways I could make a ritualistic point of getting rid of it, but soon realised this sort of time-consuming thought was exactly what I wanted to get rid of the 10p for – like I said, to be free of it. This realisation of my own frustrating, mind-cycling stupidity annoyed me greatly. I decided I’d give it to the next tramp I saw.
It was now 11. 00. Which meant nothing to me, because w/out anything to do or anywhere to be, it didn’t matter what time it was. The street stretched ahead of me crawling w/ insect-cars & insect-people, all busily rushing around swarming sick and feversome. I often wondered exactly what the term “crowd-neuroses” means, & laughed that I felt detached from the clinging time-table lifestyle. Walls of grey rose either side of the road to complete the dull-grey prison of the street. People flocked & assembled, briefcases merged into madness, mute timetable agony, flaccid lovers limp by, smiles fail, children congregate in backstreets to escape, everyone around thinking they have something to do & somewhere to go! I felt dizzy so found a bench to sit down upon. Watching the parading fools & this procession of sadness brought out a sadness w/in me too. I was sitting motionless on the bench, feeling the flux & thrum of the city, the dead beat of London; & I heard the beat of my heart clash w/ the rhythm of the streets. I felt suddenly cold and alone. If London had a voice, it would be a blunted and dead-pan voice like Lou Reed’s.
I must have sat on that bench for about 2 hours. The time was spent coming to terms w/ the fact that I felt estranged from my environment – the first time I’d realised the alienation of being poor in a city. Perhaps if I lived in Cornwall, say, I’d have a job, a community in which I was known, maybe even some friends. The city is a great culmination of sadness & alienation. No-one in town is conscious of their extreme self-consciousness. Everyone in town is homeless.
Pleased w/ the thoughts I had accomplished this morning (& thinking was my poor equivalent of a morning’s work), I decided to roll up another spliff & go for another wander. My hands were cold & it was too windy sitting outside, so I went to look for the nearest phone-box. Phone-boxes were excellent for skinning up in, because a) you were off the street & out of people’s way b) there was a nice little platform bit to rest the Rizlas upon c) no-one disturbs you in a phone-box, because they assume you are looking for change, or about to make a call etc. One felt a slight degree of safety & protection inside.
The nearest phone was just across the road. I loved crossing roads, felt it like a game, a dare, a thrill. One of the things I felt most confident about in life was dodging traffic & crossing roads w/ what I liked to portray to the driver as being a fearless & disdainful nonchalance. I’m constantly occupying myself w/ little challenges & wars, that I suppose I create for my own amusement. Walking along a pavement, I often ask myself a question of importance then tell myself that if I reach that lamp-post over there before the next car passes me, the answer is so & so, & if not… I’m sure everyone plays the same game, just ask different questions. It’s amazing how something as utterly pointless & unfounded in anything apart from my own mind has the power to excite & possess me.
I can honestly feel a terrible suspense sometimes as a car grumbles & groans & approaches blind behind my back – I walk quicker, desperate for the answer I want. Sometimes, if I fail to reach the object in time for the right answer, I change the question or say I meant the previous lamp-post anyway. It is by no means a game I enjoy playing. I become frustrated w/ myself after a while, but at least it distracts me from frustration of having nothing better to do.
So crossing the road, I reached the phone-box, & entered its heavy door. Inside I felt how truly separate I was from everything else around me. There is a certain mysticism about phoneboxes & telecommunications. I remember having a fascination w/ Dr. Who, & the way he travelled throughout space & time in the blink of an eye. How I longed for such possibilities now, standing stoned & alone in a phone-box surrounded by strangers & the dizzying thrum of life. I wanted adventure, change, discovery – but I was stuck. Where was there to go?
I emptied my pockets on top of the phone & extracted the various bits of paraphernalia needed for skinning up. The spliff I rolled was terrible, due to what I noticed was a growing distraction in my mind.
Standing there pulling on the spliff, I tried to locate the exact area of my mind where the negativity was emanating from.
‘Right,’ I thought.
‘I know I don’t want to be here, but where do I want to be?’
Something was certainly on my mind, but I let it go as the smoke melted into my blood & sent diamonds rushing up my neck.
I started to gather my belongings, & noticed among them the 10p which I’d forgotten about.
“I’ll leave it here for some lucky person to make a phone call w/” I mused.
“Or, I could make a phone-call myself..”
I didn’t own a phone & the thought of making a phone call was quite big news to me. Who could I phone? I had no friends.
Except for maybe Gabriel. It had to be Gabriel. 0171 385 6603. I only had 10p, so I had to plan carefully what I would say. Even better, I thought, I could invite myself round to his.
I don’t know why I suddenly had a desire to be w/ someone. I don’t know whether I even liked the guy. I alienate myself. Perhaps the guilt that loneliness brings, had stirred me finally into communication.
“Hello?” came the cautious, questioning voice.
“Gabriel, man, it’s, uh, Franco, could I come round?”
I spoke nervously & stuttered a little, out of practise w/ conversation.
“What! Hey Franco, how’s it going? What are you doing? Come round!”
“Yeah, I will, I’ve got 2 credits left, so I’ll - “
The line went dead & the dead sound came up in my ear & hung around in a tone of despair.
“Shit,” I thought. “Where the fuck does Gabriel live.”
Typical, that for once I’d actually wanted to do something that involved someone other than me - & it wasn’t going to be possible.
I left the phone-box still sucking hard on the joint. “I suppose I could go home, get some more money & - “
The phone was ringing. I lifted it. It was Gabriel.
“Man you should’ve just said & I’d have called you back.”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t know – shit, sorry. You know how I am w/ phones, clueless.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha – well, shall I meet you somewhere then?”
“I have no money & I’m down to my last few smoke’s worth.”
When I said earlier that phones fascinate me, I also meant to say that they terrify me. I’d probably prefer telepathy.
“I’’ll tell you what Franco, where are you – I’ll come and pick you up.”
“Um, well, I’m in a phone-box in Baron’s Court. I’ll meet you outside the Oddbins.”
“In 10 minutes, I’m close.”
“Alright man, that’s perfect, cheers.”
“See you then Franco.”
“Bye-bye.”
Wow. I’d never known anyone so efficient at phones. If I’m ever forced into using one to make arrangements, I faff around for hours being indecisive & calling back & hanging up.
Gabriel was a person of admirable sagacity for his age – 2 years older than me, 22, but w/ a sensibleness that empowered him to be utterly assured and self-confident. Decisive & wise, the kind of friend everyone wants & fears abusing.
I could already see Oddbins. I approached feeling slightly ridiculous still for my telephonic incompetence.
‘I could have done any number of things,’ I thought
- ‘reversed the charges, borrowed 10p off someone… oh well, I’m just useless, no matter.’
My thoughts were interrupted by Gabriel’s voice.
“Franco, jump in!”
Elliot Smith was playing on the stereo. I didn’t like Elliot Smith very much. He finds it too easy to write fairly good songs. I couldn’t respect that.
Gabriel had a spliff going. “Have a smoke on that man,” he urged. “How are you? Tell me about your life.”
“Well, I’m O. K I suppose. To be honest I’ve been quite dazed for ages. I don’t really know what’s going on man.”
“How’s the band?”
“We split.”
“Oh, why”
“Dunno, just crap really.”
“Just crap sounds about right. So what are you doing w/ yourself?”
“Oh, nothing much, nothing at all really. I’ve got virtually no money, & none on me.”
“Any girls?”
“Ha ha ha you must be joking.” The thought of me having the time, money, energy & effort for a girl was hilarious. I was not ‘boyfriend material’ – I never have been.
“Man, I’ve met this amazing girl, she’s at the flat at the moment – you’ll meet her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mary.”
“What’s she like?”
“Oh, amazing man, you’ll see, you’ll see.”
“I’m not sure if I want to believe you or not. I mean you know how sceptical I am about girls. If she’s not perfect, not the Absolute One, then she’s not worth any waste of time bothering w/.” This was my arrogance. Suffice to say, I had never found the One Perfect Girl.
“Franco, I’m telling you man – if you’d just stop being so fucking particular & arty farty, & just accept things, you’d be happier. You’ve probably already met your Perfect Girl but were too busy moaning about existence & lack of money & fucking weed to even notice her.”
“you think?”
“Yeah, I do think. You can’t get perfection, so then take what’s best.”
Elliot Smith was starting to annoy me, so I turned it down. The car pulled up & stopped.
“Here we are then, this is the new flat.”
“Cool, which door.”
“Here.”
We entered.
I stood waiting inside the door wondering what I was doing. A blond girl w/ a subtle face & medium sized breasts came to the bottom of the stairs w/ an open smile on her face. She was attractive. Very. She wore only a long robe-like dressing gown that revealed tempting patches of skin when she moved. She looked at me for a strange second, then Gabriel & her were full of kisses & smiles. I felt a little bit small, an outsider. Gabriel introduced me, & we went through to the lounge for a smoke & some coffee.
I always admired the way Gabriel could mix women w/ friends. We shared a flat at University, so I knew him well & had witnessed many of his previous ‘mistakes’ & ‘successes.’ I felt rather uneasy being in the room w/ my old friend & his beautiful new girlfriend. I felt alone.
We sat for a while & Gabriel & Mary inevitably drifted into the usual fresh-lovers type of conversation. There was certainly a silent communication between them, a sign of their genuineness perhaps.
I looked around the lounge. Shelves groaned w/ the slow old weight of books, heaving piles of books, pages of words compressed & preserved together in slumber, long centuries of books. Gabriel had no doubt read them all. He thinks books hold the answers. I think they only hold the questions.
I became distracted from the books by the sudden movement of Mary putting on some trousers. She stood up & had to jump & pull them up quickly while she was in the air. I caught a glimpse of her pussy through her knickers. & then I was hooked. I couldn’t help but cast glances at that soft pleasure-triangle that women posses, knowing there was a cunt lying in her lap, just lying there unattended. I felt an angling, wincing agony.
Uncertainty and mystery was what sustained me, kept my curiosity strong.
I wanted now to solve the cunt-mysteries hiding in Mary’s knickers.
“Franco! Wake up man. Where’ve you been? Cloud cuckoo Land?”
“Shit man, sorry, I’m a little bit stoned, well quite stoned actually.”
Everyone laughed.
I suspected that Gabriel was feeling excellent about himself now – it was obvious that I had been staring at Mary.
“Yeah & I’m a little tired as well. I had a really strange dream last night.”
Gabriel & I often discussed our dreams when we were stoned.
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
“Well, it was terrible, frightening. There was a woman.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes! That sounds just like Franco – terrified of women, even when it comes to wet dreams!”
Mary gave me a look of intrigue. Gabriel laughed at me more.
“You couldn’t understand unless you were there in the dream. It was terrifying.”
“What did she look like?”
“I’ve got no idea. I couldn’t concentrate enough on her face. It was everywhere, all around me – lots of deep blue green colours swirling & all the time there was the Voice…”
“...and what did it say?”
“something about the Dream-Film Store or something.”
“Wow. ‘The Dream-Film Store’. Sounds exciting. & what happened that was so scary?”
“I don’t…. I don’t really know…. It was just…. Um….”
I trailed off into oblivion. The T. V. had been put on & it flickered its bright ugly faces around the room. I felt dizzy & needed suddenly to lie down. Chaos was swarming in my head, I took a deep breath….
& a strange blue colour pervaded the scene.
“I’ve been calling you all day, why haven’t you been answering -
Look, there’s something we should get straight now & here: you WANT to be here, w/ me, so please make it easier on us both.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh you already know all this, it’s the same questions every time – in time you’ll remember everything, but I need to -”
“Where am I?”
“Why, you’re at the Dream-Film Store of course..”
I felt the softness of her presence, the lure of her maiden’s voice, a strange sense of having been here before in another time – still I could not see her face, just an oceanic blur.
“Is there something wrong? What is the matter?
What is the matter?”
she kept repeating
& repeating
her voice dispersing
& drowning as I
floated away
slowly upward towards
the surface again
through the big blue
until…
---------------------------------------------
IV
I awoke panting for breath on Gabriel’s sofa, w/ 2 impending heads above me – stoned expressionless faces.
“Man, what the fuck happened,” I joked.
Their smiles told me they were relieved.
“You suddenly started hyper-ventilating, & moving your limbs manically, & then you feinted & just lay there looking still & peaceful, &, uh, almost… dead!”
“Shit, that’s never happened before, I never feint, that’s weird.”
“Probably just the weed.”
“& the crap company,” added Mary w/ a smile. “Let me get you some water,” she continued.
“Please,” I agreed.
I watched the ripe shape of her body as she moved away, watched her casual motions sway. Disorder Lust & Loneliness. ‘There is no room for love in my life,’ I thought ‘or perhaps all I have is room for love.’
“Gabriel,” I slowly asseverated, suddenly snapping back into the room, “when I feinted, just then, I had the dream of the scaring woman at the bed of the sea.”
“At the bed of the sea?”
“Yes, yes, it was at the bed of the sea first time as well. I remember. I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I haven’t seen the woman yet but I spoke to her.”
“What did you say?”
“’Who are you?’ & ‘where am I?’”
“Ha ha ha ha ha. & this was supposedly a nightmare?”
- “Um, well, no, not as such, no definitely not a nightmare, just a strange, scaring dream.”
“’Who are you?’ and ‘Where am I?’ That’s what people in 3-rd rate Hollywood PG’s say when they miraculously arrive at some fantastical place. Sounds like pure cheese to me man! I can’t believe you’re letting yourself get bothered by a dream as cheesy as this!”
“No, it wasn’t cheesy, it was crystal clear & pure blue & cool on my naked skin….”
Then there was an uncomfortable silence that hung around waiting to strangle me.
“Gabriel shall we have another bifter, I could really quite do w/ a J to sort my head out.”
“Yeah, man, that’s a sound idea. I’ll skin.”
I turned my head to look out of the window.
Grey streams pervaded the sky. The street outside was full of sadness, lined w/ windows, desperate & nothing. The street goes nowhere. The pedestrians are going to places that I refuse to call anywhere.
Mary had returned now w/ a glass of water & a cup of herbal tea.
“Oh, cheers, that’s perfect, thanks.”
I was never myself w/ new people. Strangers gave me a nervous edge. You could say that they excite me – or perhaps that was just Mary.
She sat down next to me on the sofa. I always sit forward w/ my hands clasped. (My mother used to say I sat like I was praying & I used to tell her that I was.) Mary sat back relaxed & full of presence. This made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t see her face behind me, & now felt sure she was sitting back so as to look at me w/out me noticing.
My stoned mind focussed out & dispersed & my thoughts began to spread into detailed crevices of indecision.
If I lent back it would be blatant that I’d either noticed her, if it’s true that she is looking at me, or, if not, it would be either a nervous action or a rather full-on, arrogant one; so I shouldn’t just sit here & feel comfortable w/ her looking at me from behind.
I considered my position w/ Mary agonisingly behind me, & Gabriel, my friend who was beginning to bore me a little, reading in front of me, quite engrossed. He had the spliff & wasn’t even smoking it. I didn’t want to ask him for it, because it was his, but the rude bastard hadn’t even passed it once.
Suddenly, in a moment of decision I sat back next to Mary, our bodies pressing. At this stage, w/ the threat of Gabriel there & the tendencies of my edgier thoughts getting carried away, I began to feel excited – I began to get an erection & my jeans were tight. “I could really do w/ leaning forward again,” I thought. “Though what would Mary think of me rocking back and forward like a monkey?” Paradox. The only solution I felt was to ask Gabriel for the biff & lean forward to take it.
“Gabs man, the bifter has extinguished itself in the absence of you smoking it. Have a light.”
We often spoke to each other in burlesque tones using highly pretentious diction to mock the people who assume we are being serious or genuinely ostentatious. A silent cruelty, & a disdainful one. We enjoyed deliberately confusing people. I know that of course it’s a manifestation of personal insecurities, or something like that. Enigmatic people, though, have to cultivate their enigmas, play on people’s curiosities. If people knew this, however, the enigma, the mystery, would cease.
I suppose you could say I suffered from a dreadful arrogance that played games w/ my autonomy.
W/ all this thought taking place & consuming my stoned mind, my erection subsided. & Gabriel passed me the joint.
“Cheers man. What you reading?”
“Turn of the Screw.”
“Henry James. I’ve read it.”
“What do you think?”
“Frightening. Frightening to think that the entire novel is related through the eyes of someone so subtly mad… psychotic… that she doesn’t know it and neither do we…”
“Yes, yes, the scary thing is that when you’re insane of course you wouldn’t know about it.”
“Where are you at?”
“The Governess has just been visited by her second horror.”
“Oooooooooh… it’s just getting good. The insanity accelerates from then on.”
I often spoke of insanity. The idea of it attracts me. It’s in the same boat as all the things which attract me like dreams & angels & myths & magic, symbols, Mystery.
I often used the word ‘insane’ as an adjective. I’d never told Gabriel (& he was the most likely person I would tell anything) that I don’t actually believe in sanity. Or intelligence. I just believe in minds.
I needed the loo.
“Mary, where’s the bathroom please.”
“Upstairs.”
That’s all I needed to know. Bathrooms are self-evident & usually exactly where you expect them to be. Still, you’ve got to ask.
“Right. Do you want the rest of this?” I offered the joint.
“Oh, yes please. Thanks.”
On leaving the room, I realised how much I’d wanted to leave it since entering it.
“I’ll take my time,” I thought.
Halfway up the brown carpeted stairs I heard Mary & Gabriel exchanging aggressive but hushed remarks w/ each other. They were squabbling. Shit. Was it something to do w/ me? No, don’t be arrogant Franco, of course not, they just waited for privacy.
I reached the top of the stairs slowly, straining to hear what they were saying downstairs.
“Don’t be so nosy Franco, go & take your piss,” I said to myself, imitating the sense of morals & responsibility that I recognised I inherently lacked.
Four possible doors faced me at the top of the stairs. I chose the one I was sure was a bathroom; but it was a bedroom. “Shit, oh well, another one of my immaculate notions ruined. Bathrooms are not self-evident after all.”
The door next to it was the right one. As I pissed, I looked around at all the fancy bottles of sprays & scents & creams & whatnot. My bathroom, in comparison, was utterly empty.
I decided I’d stay in the bathroom a little longer to give the two downstairs a fraction more privacy. Their relationship, on first impressions, was strange. They possessed a silent communication which I’d seen in other couples, but never experienced.
In front of me, they ignored each other. & Gabriel had definitely changed. I realised then, staring blankly in the mirror, that Gabriel was not a friend anymore. I no longer needed him for the public confidence he inspired in me. I no longer needed any public confidence. I had no friends. I had to get out, leave as quickly & politely as possible. W/ as much of Gabriel’s gorgeous skunk as possible.
Returning downstairs it was clear that all the fuss had subsided. Entering the living room, Gabriel had now moved to sit in my seat next to Mary on the sofa. He had his arm around her. The skunk was on the coffee-table, where Gabriel was previously sitting. I moved over & sat down. The couple were full of smiles.
For the next ½ hour, we chatted idly (except for Mary), & I was given the opportunity of rolling a spliff. Little did Gabriel know that it was also an opportunity for me to steal about ¼ of his ounce of skunk. Having convinced myself that there was no longer the same connection between us, that he wasn’t a friend, & that it was his fault as well, I reached a guilt-free state of mind, which excited me. Ah, the potentials of being guilt-free, amoral. All you needed was to be good at lying to yourself. So, skinning the J, I subtly spilled the bag under the coffee-table while the couple were smugly engrossed in some embrace. Under the coffee-table, I put a substantial handful into my left boot, then brought the rest up in the bag, laughing and apologising.
“Gabriel. After this biff I’m gonna cruise.”
“You’re going? Already?”
“Well, I’ve been here ages &… to be honest, I still don’t feel too good after that feinting episode.”
“I thought we’d do something today, go to Camden maybe.”
“Gabriel,” I joked like a friend would. “You know we never do anything if we’ve got enough weed.”
He was reluctant to agree. I knew it was because of Mary. Being w/ her changed him.
We smoked the spliff, & talked some more. I couldn’t be myself w/ him. He had become a stranger. The way he was so – insensitive about my dream as well…. That was what first alerted me to his new persona. Oh well. I managed friendly chatter, & by now had realised he probably wanted me to go anyway, & was probably experiencing the same friendship crisis between us that I was. At least he had Mary there when I left. What would she be like then? What were they really like together?
“So,” I said, standing up, “I’m off, man.”
“Cheers for phoning & coming round, it’s good that we’ve retained our friendship and are still in touch…” etc, etc,
Bullshit.
After the crap & the strange half-falsity had finally gotten too crappy to bear on both sides, I smiled at Mary.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said looking at her intensely in her sea-green eyes, as if to communicate something more than my words actually said.
“you too,” she smiled,
“see you again.”
& then that was it. I doubted if she ever would see me again. Or Gabriel for that matter. It didn’t matter.
The door had closed behind me. I faced the street. I was free.
********
V
W/ my confidence fuelled by the safe knowledge of having something to smoke in my possession, I strolled briskly away. “Even if the worst comes to the worst,” I thought, “I can just get utterly cained & escape, pass out in a miserable gutter.” But I could not accept this as being the outcome of the day. “Decisions must be made,” I said decisively out-loud, to no-one. “I must choose.”
I turned the corner, not knowing where I was, or where I was going to. A woman w/ a pram passed me & deliberately averted her eyes from mine. I don’t know why but this fuelled my sense of drive further. My stride began to extend.
A moment later, a fragment of sun scattered through the clouds that had lay in the sky all day. A ray caught me in the eye. I began to feel quite exultant, happy to be alive, & to be me. I continued walking in a strong rhythm. My feet penetrated the street.
I started to hum; then I fitted words to the tune. I was walking directly into the beam of sunlight, which seemed to be exclusively shining on me. ‘Wow,’ I thought, light-headed & dreamy, ‘I am indeed a very special person, blessed.’ As soon as I’d felt this elated sensation float through me, the grey clouds covered the sun again, as if to punish me for my arrogance, or simply just to ruin my mood.
Angered by this, I felt like getting myself involved in a conflict against the sky & sun. I decided, in the mess of my mind, that I would will the sun back out from those clouds.
Soon my concentration faltered, though, & my thoughts maundered into silly crevices. I had turned onto a little side street, & at the end of it, I saw there was a fenced grassy opening w/ a gate. A cemetery. W/ my thought now on a level of confusion, it would be a good idea to sit down & think for a while. Maybe I could write a song.
The cemetery was virtually empty. Furthermore, it appeared to be more like a park than a cemetery. Nicely mowed lawns. Cosy gravel paths. Each tombstone lined up immaculately & forgotten about. I couldn’t believe for a minute that any of the people lying under this ground had specifically chosen this cemetery as their place of rest. Of all the places of rest on Earth.
I wandered down to the bottom of the path & sat by an unusually small gravestone under the trees in the corner. Leaves were scattered around me, fragile and crumbling.
“In loving memory of
Mary Calliope,
died 2nd April 1882,
aged 26 years.”
That was what this curious gravestone said. It was faded & looked out of place, tucked away at the side under this tree. It seemed almost lonely. I leant against it, sitting on the damp ground, forgetting to respect the dead.
I noticed a robin hopping around the base of the nearest sycamore tree. He, or she for that matter, looked rather impoverished, skinny & tired. I immediately took pity on this little robin & felt helpless that I couldn’t give it something to eat. Instead, I smiled at it, & said “hello” in the tone of voice you’d use w/ a baby. “You can be my friend” I said wistfully, trying to put some genuine enthusiasm into my voice. I sounded false. Almost inevitably, the robin bobbed away. ‘Oh well.’
I sat there engrossed in an evolving day-dream, unable to find a single thread of productive thought, wallowing in whatever arose.
I was beginning to feel nauseous. My guts felt like sludging snakes writhing inside me. “Shit,” I thought “I haven’t eaten yet today.” What time was it? I hadn’t a clue. How long had I been sitting there? I began to panic a little, & feel light-headed. ‘Shit, I’ve got some weed, shit I forgot, wow, I’ll have another smoke and calm down.’
W/ my face down to my lap, & my fingers absorbed in the process of rolling a spliff, I did not notice the elderly woman approaching me w/ a little joke of a dog scampering beside her. Just as I lit up, & lifted my face up, she was there.
“Morning,” I said, slightly shocked.
Her face was heavy w/ old skin but could have been attractive before about 50 years of weathering set in.
“Why are you sitting on that grave?” she said abruptly.
“Well, um, actually, I am here to mourn my father’s grand mother.”
Her nosy rudeness annoyed me, & I was in the mood for retaliating on the offensive.
“She died while giving birth to my grandfather,” I continued, enjoying the freedom & spontaneity of lying, enjoying the fact that I had gained the upper hand.
“Oh,” she said solemnly. “Oh I am sorry,” she continued humbled and apologetic. I was suddenly hit by a great wave of guilt, at seeing how easily I had defeated his poor old woman, who was in the right anyway. I wanted to tell her that I was lying, & had actually stopped to roll up some illegal substances, & that yes I was a typical youth, & that you were right to question me… But she had already tottered off, w/ her little tottering dog. Oh well, no point in pitying the weak, I thought.
W/ this incident over, & seeming to have taken place hours ago, I continued with the spliff.
Slowly, I began to enter a state of mind that I’d never encountered before. My stomach seemed to expand & expand into space. I closed my eyes & felt the walls of my stomach moving outwards. I felt as if a universe was being created inside me. I felt a huge space within the entire of my body, which I felt no longer existed. I imagined seeing stars explode & planets being born &
********
VI
& I plummeted to the Dream-Film Store again…
“Here is where dreams are stored on disk,” said the friendly female voice as if on autocue. “Anything that can be dreamt, any dream sequence, it’s stacked on the shelves here in The Dream-Film Store, this shop beneath the waves.”
I felt less afraid than before.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “I can explain.”
Her face, her physical form now appeared, a nubile and pulchritudinous sylph.
“Hi,” she said, resolving from the colour.
“Hi,” I said back, breaking that rule that women don’t like you copying them.
“Your loneliness, disorder and despair leads to LUST. Your agonies are self-inflicted. ALIENATION is one of them. You have escaped into The Dream Film Store. You have accidentally slipped into a crevice of your own mind and landed awake in the subconscious.”
“Really?”
“Either that or you have created a world here at the bottom of the sea symbolising mystery, women, penetration, drowning, hallucinating, dreaming, the subconscious.”
“Well which is it?”
“Your LONELINESS is a fantasy world that is the subconscious reaction to and sanctuary from the alienation, waste & disorder of your waking life. You are at war with yourself. Your subconscious is offering you peace terms.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Come with me while we plummet,” she said; “plummet with me while we sleep.”
********
OUTLINE
OF LIFE EVENTS THAT LEAD TO THE CONDITION OF SCIENCE
When
I
was only
seven,
and
liked the film All
Dogs Go To Heaven,
I
helped
invent the net albeit
only a little way.
I scribed
a little
book, that
is,
that
stored
the idea of the net in writing in the attic to give it a chance to
grow all the way round the world – and
to keep it free too.
The book performed
at
least four
scientific functions: it
encrypted
a scientific notion concerning Gravity; stored
the idea of the net in
writing in the attic to
give it a chance to grow around the world;
calibrated
an algorithm that sublimates
numbers and letters on a cellular level to see if the new colour, I
think, could be rendered as a cellular mark; and
separated
the object ‘pollen’ from its name - and I did not consciously
know,
even though it was writ with my own right hand.
Some
might say that’s already enough or even too much for a whole life’s
contribution to writing, but it was only a promising start. Then at
eight I made two Naturalistic Observations I didn’t understand…
if one was metaphorically speaking the breakfast of every snooker
ball colour in James Joyce’s bedroom, the latter was the plastic
spreadsheet in the lining of a jacket in the cloakroom. I guess
the less said the better.
Yes, then by the age of eleven I was “incrementally” marked by the maths of the new colour on the hand even though it didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end. At that stage I was at Caldicott. My siblings and I wrote The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. We sang of the dog going round and round chasing own tail! I won the government set intelligence test at the computers.
Leaving Prep School, I came into possession of a cassette cut in the reel and resealed it in a delicate operation meaning a pause in the song, and an ideal to do away with the pause. That was one experiment back then that lasted for years. It being Pearl Jam ‘VS’ I suppose the experiment was in organising a poetry machine in perpetual motion. At fifteen I formed a second band called Oedipus Wrecks. My mnemonic for the strings was indeed Even A Dick Gets Big Erections. We foreshadowed the genre Doom. I also led two friends to the face of stars. We were three gathered in the name that Night so it could be something from the Bible but there are other options including collective hallucination, including a vision scripted in The Lords And The New You Know Who. By now I had started reading it.
I formed Secret Chord H and an Anon love poetry magazine while still at school, sweet sixteen. Then at eighteen years old in the year 2000, and not unlike Democritus of the Ancient Greeks, I foresaw the hunt for the God Particle from looking at dust in a late ray of light angling in. I was a fully tuned-in prophet on other fronts too, even savant because I foresaw and spoke against September 11th using my own brain in 2000. I did also entertain the idea that the witness from The Lords And The New Creatures by Jim Morrison might have to become the missing link to the super-human corridor in evolution – but it may not be my own thesis.
I envisioned our Plough alignment happening, but got the address well wrong, saying “maybe in India” as opposed to my back garden. I set aside an ideal for a book called The Scientific Papers about it all that would be classed as “a series of findings into itself, into the concept of art and science as a single discussion of perception.” Among the prophecies I spouted many ideas for inventions, many aphorisms, many artistic ambitions. That year I wrote the highest-marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%.
My fourth band The Flood recorded an album or even algorithm on binaural earphones… the earphones were my idea to invent, back in the den in the barn, which was never mentioned once during the band because it wasn’t me that implemented it. Already some of these things seem scientific, these motifs, this Excellent News. When writing a portfolio for Warwick University, furthermore, I entertained that I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too, that Portability might be the apotheosis of form…
The Towers came down, appalling us all or at least my friend Paul. I did feel the psychosis in my brain burn and burn. Still, when I got rid of the burning feeling, I lost my memory of the conversation where I forewarned of it, the whole prophetic speech. So I had little recollection of the barn where I had foreseen and spoken against it to the day using my own brain; and was persuaded at length to continue playing in the binaural earphone band.
Attending Warwick University, in 2002, I found my teacher, Professor David Morley, whom it would seem was a reasonable man, had just brought out The Scientific Papers and with an almost-verbatim classification to mine own. When it happens in sheep it is called morphic resonance and when it happens in academia it is uncanny embrocation.
My first mobile, it reverberated the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang. I wrote a paper about whether or not Lucy in the soul w/ demons even happens to be an actual substance. With no degree, I returned to the band in my Gap Year haunt of Cambridge and promised on the binaural album recorded on earphones I’d “plug my senses in the mains.”
Leaving the band, I coined the neologism “co-imagination,” before attending a second university, Lancaster, where I got a First despite the onset of mental illness. My dissertation was on the scientist-poet David Morley. I attested to our Holy Cow, the white eyebrow, the alignment of the Plough, the Plough honed in to align for a beautiful rhythm change in the White House around that time.
I also attended the Secret Garden party after and found real skywriting; gravitated down south, attesting to a pint glass exploding from thin air in the capital. I found my name tattooed on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, as if some sensory overlay had grown as naturally as grass.
Returning north again, I built The Tower out of books I had gained that seemed to exhibit signs of natural magic, like one emanating the redolent smell of perfume that could be the word of a dog, and another that seemed to have lost a line. My PC screen bloomed purple, and I worked at the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen in an experiment into post-humanism. I also found the tape I mentioned to be a successful fusion and listening in to the suggestion of the wind cooked it in the dark blue AGA’s top oven.
When my dad died, and the purple-bleeding screen in the same instant, I discovered the sheet where pictures brown and blue simply bloomed or maybe grew. It could be portentous of the end of the chip. The pictures seem to depict the lyric to an old song I wrote in Oedipus Wrecks but the sheet is still not mine for it belongs to my younger brother who designed it, who laid it down so it is up to him to deal with it. That was also when my boyhood book emerged which only now do I start to understand in terms of long storage. Then it was time to falsify the Nirvana barcode, and nor did I forget to extirpate every trace of recognition from the myriad mind, unloose the mind of form, method-act every adjective in ‘Howl’ to attain visual radio, broadcasting dreams.
Throughout
that sequence of events I found it impossible to gain even 1p and my
friends on both the right and the left deem it that that is not fair;
but
it is
not my business to complain about money. I
suppose if someone pays you for the face of stars, they themselves
become a tyrant. I
also suppose there might be some kind of democratisation or balancing
out process going on that stops me from winning, from getting ahead.
I heard it said that people really are so jealous of what I went
through they are innately incapable of deeming it all true, but I can
assure you I tell no lies. Sometimes a little voice gets to me to say
“you were a beautiful mind in what you did but not what you said;”
or also “you don’t get to go through all that and still be a
literary genius.”
SCIENCE SAYS
Science STILL says to only keep my old falsification of the Nirvana barcode and my brother’s notion about <BEE>.
The latter is not mine; and so I must leave it out for now at least.
In terms of the falsification of the Nirvana barcode, that refers to that occasion when I made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.
I actually did have a mobile phone that buzzed off before it rang, through every technological inlet in the room, telly, stereo, laptop, air.
So I wrote that down – that monochromatic drone – somehow - and it became a song that falsified the Nirvana barcode through bastardisations and mishearings of other people’s songs, that nevertheless worked as a piece of music unto itself, sustaining narrative, meaning and musicality all at once.
It has been called as good as Rachmaninov and I will reveal it in time… but for now I am to only keep the Nirvana barcode bit from the whole sodden story!
|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings
A NOTE ON MY FIRST NUMBER
The encrypted node in the boyhood work, meanwhile, was that if the Gravity between earth and moon is instant and therefore enough to break Light-speed a clock is still only as fast as a cheetah.
I see now that it was possibly government scientists who, for the sake of long storage, when the idea of the net needed storing in writing, got me to begin encrypting that with a text called
2
JOHN TUCKER
ENGLISH
E
and to continue with a second text called
ENGLISH
JOHN TUCKER
HARECROFT
1
“but then again who knows.”
The split was not even but asymmetrical like one was on and one was off. It was like spotting the flaw in Einstein. It was like saying if you write Einstein backwards it implies the breaking of light speed. It was even like saying even if we invent a time machine that can equal light speed we can only go back in time because the future hasn’t happened yet.
At some point, after the Einsteinian bit, a + sign was put in for the F of ‘scarf’ in the line
“I have a scar+ that is red and black.”
Then there was a discussion of the struggle between ‘Good and Evil’ in a piece where
“I woke up at 1 o. clock.”
In other words the first person pronoun and the time 1 o’clock were being contrasted.
It is not clear if the splitting of the two books happened next, for the number 2 in the sequence, but I think so. In terms of the number three, there was also my maths book where in among the numbers you find a three line poem going
Colour circles red. How many circles?
Colour triangles blue. How many squares?
Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?
To read it all you’d only need to go and get a copy of what by now I know helped invent the net but which at the time of publication I did not know helped invent the net. It’s called The Sunset Child. People have said the best one in it is called ‘My Dad.’
THE LIVING SPREADSHEET
At eight years old, then, I made the two Observations, one a breakfast of every snooker ball colour in James Joyce’s bedroom, the other the living spreadsheet.
W/r/t the latter, I tried on a jacket under the stairs and got a sense something was wrong and took it off and looked inside… “mum!” I cried up the wooden stairs. “There’s something disgusting growing in this jacket!”
It could be described as a flat, plastic rectangle with an un-naturally regimented pattern of black stuff – maybe eggs or seeds - splurged on top.
I left the room to see if it would still be there when I went back; and it was; and so I decided to put the whole jacket in the bin.
I heard later, years later, it was called “Grand-darth’s Ship” and took its Taxonomic Genus from one of my own seven year old poems.
The poem ‘Grand-darth’s Ship’ was about how my grand-dad Don became a deep-sea diver. For a start, he actually fought against the Nazis and secondly he didn’t become a deep-sea diver in reality – he became an Officer in the R. A. F. So it just grew, evolved, this living spreadsheet, which was not an animal that reminds of wealth, but of grand-dad’s generation and the horror of war.
What I think I have learned about this specimen recently is that it was an actual monster albeit small, and that a monster needn’t be very big. Maybe we were supposed to deem it a success of scientific procedure that it was available to sensory perception in what some might call consensus reality, in other words stable and at bottom sterile.
How it came into being I do not know. Reification means “becoming a thing” and comes from Latinate etymology “res” meaning “thing” but where this living spreadsheet as I call it came from I do not know. I could start talking about “Symbiotic Homeostasis.” That means there was such a juxtaposition going on between Good and Evil that Nature acted with an homeostatic reaction. So we are talking about kinesis – but how plastic became part of that kinesis I do not know.
If it was my dad’s business and there was financial backing I’d just say that with enough financial backing anything is possible. One might deem it a shame that I threw the specimen away on judging it evil, for now we cannot examine it, but I am not convinced of that version.
They say this is what I should’ve been writing about when I was writing teenage love poetry inspired by Jim Morrison – but it’s better late than never eh?
They also say you shouldn’t write about things you cannot renew; but I think in this case of the synthesis of the living spreadsheet it might be renewable even if not by me.
I also think if you can trust my sensory perception it shows that science is the key to a world of possibility. To possibilities opening up. It shows what can be done and that is surely inspiring. I am not trying to bring down the government or start a Revolution, only report accurately on what has been seen, sound out the realm of the senses. If new possibilities arise that is surely a good thing and should not be squashed or censored.
I’M FINE
“I’m fine,” I say all the time and you wouldn’t know what I mean.
I mean I was visibly marked on the hand by the experiment into the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark when I was about 11.
I took a long thin stripe up the underside, and that is what I mean when I say I’m fine.
It didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end.
We still see that it is possible to effect your own evolution.
You could even call it self-evolution.
This one might imagine comes from within as opposed to adaptation to the environment. It might be what Darwin would focus on in my situation, nevertheless: The Theory of Self-Evolution. And if I were a shapeshifter, Protean, a changeling, I would also try and be the Darwin of light, where maybe Morley is the Einstein of water.
In
short we might be able to grow new colours on a cellular level, and I
might have evidence of this either way. Above
all else in my science, this would seem to be the greatest
revelation. If you Google the question “is it possible to change
the colour of white skin through maths?” the whole net will tell
you no, but this is not true, even if the colour did not turn to be
the new colour in the end.
The
original + sign for the ‘f’ seems to appear in a poem about
guilt. I hit my brother because he refused to play Lego with me. I
used to say yes to everything and he was just the opposite and I had
a plan for a shockproof world and all he needed to do was agree to
play Lego but he refused so I hit him
and
felt terrible, really bad. So that was why I put the + sign for the
‘f,’ I think, because it was about making a mistake and feeling
bad for it.
THE
RED AND BLUE THING
Between
the tincture and The
Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob
there was a prose poem, or even dyad of prose poems called ‘The
Fire’ and ‘The Sea’. I was thus quite old when I “did the red
and blue thing” and now through reading gather that it was yet
another example of embrocation
with a scientist poet called David Morley, which I would see more of
the older I got.
‘The
Fire’ was a description of the sitting room fire, its 100 tongues
that danced and entranced, here where the stars realign. It was
observed; whereas ‘The Sea’ was remembered and imagined. It’s
interesting though because there is a difference between humidity and
moisture in the air; and the hottest star heat burns blue; and the
red and blue thing as they call it, which Michael
Hofmann
writes
of in a poem called ‘Entr’ acte’ could be but a graph with one
long line kinking headward from the heart and ending in the stars.
So
that was something I
did
between the tincture and the first album; and back then I was a
garden brick expert – my garden bricks, attention to detail in
grammar and spelling too, and
general keen-ness at English saw
me top of the form at English every term at school. And then years
later, as I say, I found out at University that Professor David
Morley had done the “red and blue thing” through the elements in
just the same way, when he was studying acid rain’s effect on Lake
Windemere up in the Lakes where I lived as a child.
Anyhow,
the boyhood work was a proof and the red and blue thing may have been
enough to be another. I was already producing proofs in boyhood,
which were cogent and interesting. You
notice in the elemental style a complete absence of grim specimens
and a belief in the Natural sciences.
The
embrocation
with David Morley could be down to his researching the effects of
acid-rain on Lake Windemere in my boyhood, but there are other
potential causal factors such as that I was the witness and he was an
evolutionary scientist and still is.
THE
EMOTIONAL COLLAPSE
Also between the tincture and The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob I had a complete emotional collapse. I was in the I. T. Room at Prep School, talking to the teacher and suddenly started sobbing. The teacher was hugging me, asking and asking “what’s wrong? What’s wrong?” and all I could say was “I don’t know! I don’t know!” I had never heard of The Lords And The New Creatures, as hadn’t my mother, but I think I was already the witness. I hadn’t read my seven year old book because it had to be locked in the attic but in it I had already helped invent the net and my thing was now marked by the mathematics contained in it. It all got on top of me and made me break down in tears, and it wasn’t just any old crying – I was heaving with sadness.
If you look in The Lords And The New Creatures, it starts with “Look where we worship,” and funnily enough I had by that stage already had a black out in chapel. I think it a naturally occurring fossil of art. I went down like smashed glass on chapel floor and woke in another room being offered tepid tapwater by the rugby captain as if for the rending detail: both our dads had chainsaws.
The New Creatures of course begins with the words:
“Snakeskin jacket
Indian eyes
brilliant hair
he moves in disturbed
Nile insect
air.”
If
you look at my experiences, the wood, the plastic spreadsheet, the
tear up the front, it templates over the opening of The
New
Creatures
– which has always seemed cryptic to me, ambiguous, impossible to
fully understand. If Jim Morrison was scripting a witness, factoring
in a foreseen human repository, with his opening gambit, the sheer
incomprehensibility of his language might account for why I was lost
for words when having a breakdown. What
I might now mean is if you want to understand what Morrison meant,
find out what the subsequent witness went through and that will
reveal what Morrison meant;
and what really came after “brilliant hair” was an experience of
tremendous sadness and being lost for words about it too.
I
have by now read and reread The
Lords And The New You Know Who.
Not only that, but I have rewritten it, made it more about E and less
the door to the occult.
PREFACE
TO ‘NOTEBOOK’
This
text is painstakingly transcribed from defaced bank notes. Some of
the bank notes are damaged, illegible, others ‘missing.’ Efforts
have been made to order the bank notes but were not always
successful. No efforts were made to authorial-fingerprint the voice
or psychoanalyse the handwriting. The text is not necessarily a
critical indictment of embedded liberal capitalism of whom we are
liberal, human subjects and where money, formerly neutral means of
exchange, is becoming a flying, white, electrical spark passing
through borders of osmotic porosity in the dark. Nor is the text
necessarily about an imaginary designer drug called Strictly Free
that does exactly what it says on the tin, is and makes you “strictly
free” to consume. It is but an open-air poem, comprised of torn and
bleeding snapshot-fragments that are given artificial insemination.
Inherent in it is a notion that money is an Ode to Death, that a
fiver is cheese and onion flavour, that work sets you free.
NOTEBOOK
Il
faut que je m’en aille.
Sometimes
you’ve just got to hit
the road and.
Start
learning the basics of a strange, unseen vernacular arrowed down from
some lost, mad Godhead within. Pass
the fallen road sign saying THINK! in the nettles and the mystery of
the single shoe beside the road, in a fast Subaru Impreza with Paul
and the gang, the Beatles’ back catalogue tumbling from the
speaker, the open window a roaring lion, late birds singing in trees,
birds that are intelligent, trees that are our friends, on a
smouldering evening in Cambridgeshire, when nothing really matters.
The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. L to the pregnant snorkel + Ossie the dog, he should be sleeping like a log, goes round and round chasing his own tail, only goes upstairs for a trail of Maltesers, nice, round and pale, we’re on the road to Heaven, happiness awaits us there, flutter in the sideways, flutter in the sideways, bring your brief fling with the politics of flight…
Seeing
as we can travel backward in time, seeing as we have equalled the
speed of light, I thought we could revisit some choice excerpts from
my boyhood and beyond.
Teacher
rite elephant nite
everything
lite lesson love
learn
tell everyone Esso orange.
2 MC = E = MC [someone] 1
In
the picture of the airport
I
can see… a runway,
a
cloud, two planes,
a
control tower
and
the ire ii net.
In our new pogrom there is a Vetacore.
A bomp explodes.
I
faded my work.
I have a scar+ that is red and black.
I
found a piece of string with a stone on it. I put it round my neck. I
saw that the stone could fit into the hole in the wall. It was full
of dead skeletons.
He
has spines all over him.
Colour
circles red. How many circles?
Colour
triangles blue. How many squares?
Colour
oblongs orange. How many triangles?
Hot
July brings cooling showers,
straw
berries and gilly flowers.
When
I see beer it reminds me of my dad when he is drunk and when I see a
police man it reminds me of the time my dad lost his drivers license.
When I see shoes it reminds me of my dad's smelly feet. My dad is the
sort of person who tells you not to put your elbows on the table when
he does it himself and my dad tells me not to ride my bike on the
garden flowers when once he reversed the car on them. My dad helps me
with
my prep and most of the time I get it wrong. Sometimes my dad acts as
he is three years old but he is really forty-one. When I say “I
should play soccer for the England team” he just says “some
chance.”
It
was 6. 58 and 37 seconds so we all ran as fast as we could towards
the sofa.
MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,
MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,
HE'S GOT THREE EYES
AND A BIG FAT NOSE
AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED
WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,
HE ONCE TOOK A PILL
THAT MADE HIM ILL
AND EVER SINCE THEN
HE'S
BEEN STANDING VERY STILL.
Squawk
squawk gaggle gaggle, bongles has still got the stones.
Sullen, silken sulks,
we drink the same rain,
spit is clean
and
so is dirt.
Folder
graffiti. Normal is boring. Do it later. God made speed to save us,
God made hash to help us. The
system works quite well. The
grass is always long on the Other Side.
The
fire-dance dwelled in electric drums
where
ecstasy fell soft fathoms to clap
and
bells let peace form in blue notes
and
peered at deer in the wood and ate of it
and
wet let excellence sound out its criticism
and
dawn let sting its unsheathed sting
and
chloroform in the heart let see
if
only Game Over was seen in nights.
The
sun
hanged
himself
from
a
length
of
daisy
chain.
Clocktick
clock being clocked off by clocktick.
Clocktick
clock not being clocked off by Time.
The
Universal Mind’s moon meat man might.
The
Universal Mind’s moon meat man meant.
The
Universal Mind’s moon meat man met.
Break,
bird with the skin of snake.
God
rushed into the cold cod quick.
Behold!
An evil vision hath flashed before mine eyes!
Barnes
has scored a chicken
and
wingers are allowed bikes!
Maybe
a
tabular arrangement of signs in boxes, like The Periodic Table except
a swear word in every box, to
go at the end?
Even
A Duck
Gets Big Erections: my mnemonic for the strings
of the electric
guitar took the same amount of time to conjure as it takes to say,
but
my mother has changed it now.
Hey, my name is David Bonky,
I’m a knock-kneed hummingbird,
there’s a tear up my jacket.
Over and out, testing testing 123, welcome to my presence and its intensity...
I watch her walk along on the other side of the street.
She parades the black panther’s nonchalant strut.
She wears blue jeans and black leather boots.
She takes some chewing gum out of her bag.
She slides the stick of it out of the pack.
She puts the stick of it into her mouth.
She loves to chew and suck the taste.
She loves to chew and suck the taste.
She puts the packet back in her bag.
She swings the bag about a little bit.
She walks past a little pub long shut.
She might go check out a flower shop.
She loves to chew and to suck the taste.
She enjoys it, chewing and sucking the taste.
I read that Maya means “Goddess of Illusion” in Sanskrit, where Mara, by stunning contrast, is the Buddhist God of Temptation.
A glance
A blink
A fault in the stars
Her mascara slips into pools of black
A chance
A second
of Infinity
She flutters her eyelids
like spring’s first butterfly
The stars awake to notice love
she waits with open arms.
But all is well if I only think
& sigh of the dreams of dusk
Images before I sleep
Dancing, escaping memory
They seem to have no cares at all
They seem to know the name of love
They seem to be my sacred friends
Ancient messengers, waking at night
But I will forget them & never care
About what I saw in love & alive
What? Oh, I guess it’s love
Just us & love Forever...
Sometimes I wish to have no more than a line penned in the margins of a newspaper going:
The light of all that’s good is true
if believing is the dawn of dreams.
Only when the ship is ripped is the sea a she and the water Nirvana-blue as solar spike.
Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.
Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.
Soft
and
loose
like
yellow
pencils
scribbling
dreams
as
they
arrive.
Semen spills like silver water,
under the bridge with the angel’s daughter,
splashing with laughter in a moon-glow chamber.
Don’t escape at night
into a heightened dream
from a dull and longing sleep.
Her breath a poisonous magic.
Sometimes perhaps
down opening quiet
I am drawn down
long and alone and
my friend and my foe
recede into deep sleep
sudden and still
like a dawn behind
a screaming veil
where silence is born
and all that’s loose and tight
and all that’s light is light
like first morning
with no night
and wend my way
so slow to Freedom
and soft Infancy-lunacy
with harp-sure eyes
so I can live
the last poet’s
last poem.
There is joy in things
and smiles not grins like butter
but like butterflies.
My philosophy in a nutshell: sensus praecedit cogitationem. It could be the motto of the LSE’s Philosophy Dpt; but when you write it down, what happens?
Tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.
When I first read the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty - and I can’t stand the suspense,” for some unknown reason it chimed like bells, reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. I even conjured lines to rhyme with it before I knew what it meant like:
[John is dancing with aliens in collective ecstasy].
Last
night it seemed we couldn't sleep but maybe I was dreaming. The world
expands inside my hands it's getting heavy. Of all the treasures I
could choose I can't seem to decide. Today the shade was washed away
where I would hide. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can
fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we
can fantasise. Last night it seemed we nearly died but maybe I was
dreaming. It made me feel sooooooooooooo alive
and soooooooo in love. Dream
with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve
stopped telling lies, come below
and we can fantasise.
J:
what colour is white?
P:
smooth and tight!
J:
what colour is blue?
P:
be true you!
Waves
[squiggle]
crossed
the FTSE
[squiggle]
and
the Helter Skelter
[squiggle]
crashed
in the electric sea
[squiggle]
Blessed may be the end at last,
under the sea,
below the soul,
in the upside-down
Oceans above us
(all
that Heaven sends is rain).
Words,
words, words. What are words? These are words. Words in this
epistemology I would say are useful tools associated with the
instinct to survive. Man
is words and ‘man’ is a word and words draw bridges across
metaphysics and words make connections between first and third
persons. Words
are also a great bandwagon of falsity we must presume is not false in
order to make life easier. Words
are, well, ONLY words.
“Mayfly,”
I say the word
“mayfly”
phonetically
sounding
out its every
vowel
sound alphabetically.
One
night we
were having a Scrotbag
Party
in the caravan. That means drinking and smoking - and
suddenly I got a preternatural sixth sense that the dog had run off
and was trapped on the fence at
the local farm barking.
So we walked up through the fields, our
tombstone-shadows looming tall beneath the moon in the church field;
and we found the terrible goat which was tied up in the triangular
patch of land past our field; and we noted how its eyes gleamed a
baleful green colour when a lone car passed; and we made it past the
terrible goat and to the farm where we indeed discovered Ossie the
dog trapped on the fence, barking. I was wearing a fur coat and had a
bottle opener in the pocket and used it to cut the dog free. Then we
made it back to ours and told the dog he was a bad boy for running
off and continued with our Scrotbag
Party.
The
symbol [R] could still
represent
the stance,
the large-R
Romantic stance that there is room for Creativity in the synapse
gulf; that Creativity is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.
When
you renounce the quest for meaning you find it, fall back on
meaning-by-proxy.
Where once I wandered far and wide
on a field-file, a file-field,
a fenceless farm without
security alarm where all hearts bleed
and all arts breed, now Hell
is very quiet, unadvertised.
McBreastmilk,
McBreastmilk,
don’t feed your kids.
Gentle face erasing cream,
smear it in and let it sink
down through the pores of your skin
to erase your deepest down dirt.
O stars the government
that truly speaks for us!
Get an extra kid for free
when you spend 99p.
Freefall 0800 down
your own black hole pupils.
Maybelline you maybe only make-believe
you may be the true mating queen of the hive,
may mad vampires stalk you,
stalking walls walk through
your vagrant dreams.
I see state of head
is more than Head of State.
Monster Munch can
always gobble up your food.
Cancerel can always
sweeten the stewed-
carfume coffee we sip in
this liminal afterlounge.
It’s getting cramped
as a tin of beans in here.
In emergency please
break glass and exit.
Credits at the end of innocence
are falling like numberless lists
of fallen autumn leaves.
Snatched handfuls of light
come to nothing in the dark room.
There must be a use for
this dust amounting.
There’s nothing like digging
a meaningless hole as if to cure the
spiralling lethargy of Hell...
and when I went into the
woods to bury my soul,
all the trees knelt down.
O perpetual orgasm of the sun!
Privation is the mother of imagery.
Prayers, ghosts and
e-mails chatter on
the ego-loss breeze.
The chitchat in the solipsistic
kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.
My new, motley fridge magnet
letters contain no question
mark in the pack but the first
qualification of Modernism
is inquiry and furthermore
wilful ignorance is a sin.
Meanwhile outside the
fallen Autumn leaves
are where bears have
dipped their feet in pots of paint
and danced across the threshold
of the paving stones.
Water clears its throat from the tap.
Gunpowder was only invented
for fireworks and a firework
is a champion sperm nosing up
blind to explode bright and wonderful
deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.
The world is a cool, bejewell'd
marble snug in Holy Orbit
suckling on a mother sun.
Supposedly there is soon
to be New Atlantis on the moon.
The cure for cancer
sustains your heart.
Robbed by a bastard vending machine,
somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper
to cleanse the doors of perception,
a drunkard attacks a wall
on an otherwise empty street,
a policeman forces himself
to come with a gun.
Hey salesman
slow down
with that
fast-food.
I don't mind
waiting here
for a year.
Portability still seems the Apotheosis of Form: sometimes I can be walking along on a sunny day when I jump from the jungle to the Arctic to the Sahara. Mutation in consciousness itself, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture-without-motion-bones, like sadness gene and dreaming gland.
It's not impossible to write an anti-poem. Love is not a mechanistic set of rules. Love was once aligned with madness, fever and intoxication. Love became grouped with language not God. Love became a tough word-combination. Love has no ego as everyone knows, and so it goes and so it grows.
I for one think Lucy in the soul with demons may happen to be an actual substance. Travelling south, as I read Rimbaud, a rainbow smashed a railway train window. A baby cannot trip without memories... I remember “every atom ate our eyes.” Our eyes: they are ingrown in the ocean's bellyful of wine, down in the seabed-orchard. There is angelic music inborn in the inner ear; but those whom the Gods wish to drive mad are sent the end of ‘Bike’ in their heads and madness is not something to be Romanticised as a return to Purity.
Impunity seems more what the poet wants. He likes to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds, and is into exploring alternative histories suppressed by the overarching meta-narrative. For plastic surgery of the soul there are libraries. Poetry is the bike riding itself. Monopoly money will get us well, Monopoly money will get us bread, she picks the blue tac off the wall and says “my T-shirt is red”. I put my wounds up on bright flags; I take the angel up the arse. To plug my senses in the mains might engage [!00 %] of my brains.
It’s all about a permanent reactivation of the Glastonbury Festival spirit. John Tucker is taking acid again. Money shags in the dark. Thoughts of one’s greatness only diminish one’s greatness. Skunkfoot is putrid demons excreted through stone. Love an army of fire. Fire needs some incentive to rise up. Shall I touch my heart with a red Bic biro? When all the air in outer space is consumed… The bed in the wood, it was definitely a whore’s, with solar spike I can use the Force, with R2D2 I cleanse my doors, I’m just trying to win my Star Wars. I’m starting to think in five musical parts at once. The Anon Throwaway as a new form could become an alternative currency to rival with money for the role of the real.
Formal education is not for everyone. The yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Giant killers are frozen peas in the microwave. I look into the mirror though I shouldn’t pool my sources. I’m not going to die at the age of twenty seven, watch the dreamtapes on repeat from a golden seat in Heaven.
The heart beats to the rhythm of one. A fiver is surely cheese and onion flavour. Cataclysm is catalyst for the old cat that sat on the map of sound, just because the world is very round. If there were paper under my heart there would be writing on it and it would be art. I might ding it in compressed Space Age seconds.
If
you falsify the Nirvana barcode it should have meaning. I can run you
through a series of life events in terse
precis
that meant I arrived at such a culmination.
Well,
at
seven I helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed
storing in writing in the attic here to
give it a chance to grow all the way round the world, I
was the one to write it. By eight I was the witness from
The Lords And The New You Know Who
twice. By eleven who
knew what was going on?
By fifteen I attained the face of stars which
may have been scripted in the Bible.
By eighteen I forewarned of September 11th
in 2000 and wrote the highest-marked English
Literature A-level
exam essay in the nation at 100%.
After
school I recorded an album on binaural earphones, had an effervescent
mobile reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every
technological inlet in the room before it rang, hosted the Plough
alignment for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First despite
the onset of mental
illness,
worked the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen, built the Tower as an
instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a cassette
tape with a pause where resealed in the reel, and discovered the
sheet where pictures (seemingly
depicting one of my own song lyrics) grew.
I
went through all that without earning 1p. Then
as a summary of all of
that
which
I had done,
I invented
and falsified
the Nirvana barcode and in doing so attained visual radio,
broadcasting dreams that
swirl in digital, purple swathes about the head of the deranged
seer...
V to the knock-kneed hummingbird’s wings… plus, in Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels, E is white; but in my friend Agent G’s musical code, when you detune the guitar strings all the way down, the street-name for E becomes F sharp minor!
2
JOHN TUCKER
ENGLISH
E
ENGLISH
JOHN TUCKER
HARECROFT
1
Signed by everwell, she couldn’t hit it sideways, or maybe a soothsaying Spiderman with the hairgel of Dracula, Atlantis, Aquarius, the 60’s.
So
you see that it has been fast indeed! That Subaru Impreza! And Time
does not pass but evaporate! And things live inside onions of
themselves! And galloping water would be a cool thing to say!
I
made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless
Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape
using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit
Bring bring
bring bring
“Hello?”
Gold member, you're the one,
the one with the heart of gold
Vowels, pure vowels
Immanuel Kant
will come to thee
with immanence
You come home smacked up you come
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
d/ d/ d/ down
grooving up slowly
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah
boom
boom
boom
boom
boom
how did we get down here from flat-top
wide tunnel cities self driving cars
bears in the moon and liquor and drugs
and whisky baaaaaaaaaaaars
boom shanka, you're the one,
the one with the sonic boom
knickers knickers faster than lightning
skin up fall out of bed
and did those feet
in ancient times
rain down, rain down,
come on raindown
and walk the sun
fatter, hippier, less well connected
always walk the hallways
down to create my own
and in the meantime
and in the meantime
I'll do the monkey bars with my legs
manic depression has enraptured my name
don't know what I want but I just want shame
don't know what I want but I just won't shave
rainy waif, rain always,
lay back and dream
on a rainy waif
now I know how Kurt Cobain sang
oh now I know how Kurt Cobain sang
no more laaaaaaaaaa la's
removal van canes will be turned into furniture
we're thinking of putting Tricky's name on the front sir
you never see me dead near an inch of closure
|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings
“and a record made of sound
goes round and round, conveying
music to the speaker through the stylus,”
says the radio as I turn it on.
Well, although there is no
such thing as the Nirvana barcode
it opens up a discussion about
the Telepathic Walkie Talkie, how
if barcode is rain barcode is phone...
and at least I have
the grace to come
back and say that the
extinction of consciousness
has no monetary value.
It is past dawn
and I see that
that first mobile
phone
has gone.
If it makes any difference to you,
my little bro is a genius too, who
designed the sheet
where pictures grew
and says <BEE>
might soon ensue
from @ in the international
language alphabet…
he did it for Flora,
subject of many a love poem of mine,
and it turns out he
had her, did her,
loved her, won her,
got her, in time past.
But who kissed who
is playground stuff,
and jealousy is a wasted emotion,
and I am proud
to be my brother’s brother,
and my mother’s son.
I
would never begrudge my brother something I would want for myself or
my mother either.
After
all we share a house. We live together at the magnetic, telluric and
gravitational foot of the fell in the house my father left behind for
us.
Sitting
in the kitchen writing, I sometimes hear voices but they are not
exclusively clinical: there is such a thing as ESP and telepathic
communion. Right now I have just heard my sister Hannah on the
intercom and do you know what that means?
H
does not = 0 – 0 because I have a heart.
WAKING
AGAIN
I
All
of a sudden I woke up, no seaweed in my hair, eyes stinging, in the
cemetery. I had had a dream of the future, of
maths and science, of a book in the undersea of dreams below. It
was still the same old grey day as before though.
Grey streams pervaded the sky. It
felt like a day of intermittent rain. I stood up and brushed the
crumbs of skunk and baccy off my top. I made my way to the gate of
the cemetery. I didn’t even have 10p
with which to call Gabriel from an old red phonebox. The nubile,
pulchritudinous sylph of the Dream Film Store was no longer beside
me. I went back to the flat, which was still crazed by disorder and
rubbish, and skinned a bifter and put on The Pixies. My CD was a bit
stop start, had the odd slight scratch but apart from that it was
smooth. I thought about the cannabis I had been smoking,
how it was a magical sacrament. I avoided the mirror. It was into the
afternoon already. My shoe box of papers complicated my thinking to
no beneficial end so I ignored that for now. But the cannabis, it
propitiated great realms within realms. I guess I smoked it to abjure
a worthless dogma to consumerism that only robs us of our bodies,
touch the texture not name side of life, renounce fidelity to surface
gods of illusion, get sober from the advertising trance. There
was
a font change to italics,
a switch thrown on
the tenses. To light it and write it, burn and unlearn was my motto.
Anyhow,
I
lived quite close to a pub called The Queen’s Head and feeling a
bit thirsty went for a lager and lime. The pub was quite empty apart
from a few afternoon
deadbeats
washed
up,
the
likes of
which I was probably destined to become unless I could sort my life
out. After taking a few sips of my lager and lime I downed the rest
of it and went for a rollie in the pub garden. In the vision of the
future I had had in the
dream in the cemetery, they even did away with smoking sections on
trains. Maybe it was time to give up smoking, to lead a healthy life,
to flourish?
I
went back home to my flat, feeling the effect of only one pint, had
another bifter and guess
what?
Down
down
down
down
down
I
sank
into the Dream Film Store once again. Coral
staircase in
the key of C.
What images rise or try to rise in your mind?
“Welcome
again to the Dream Film Store,” she said.
I
looked
her in the eyes and smiled. She had a beautiful face that resolved in
the corner of the dream. I needed to know what
was going on, all that
science,
so
I asked her what was going on, which it was, real or dream and she
said
“do
you want to have a coffee to talk about it?”
I
said okay, and she made some instant. The Dream Film Store looked
like an old HMV – remember those? – except the CD’s that were
stacked up were dreams. There was a stack behind the counter and a
door leading to the backrooms.
She
said “you’re
right, the
legality of the science
depends
on it all being a dream.”
She
took me through the door into the backrooms of the store and she
said there
you
found a network of infinite corridors containing rooms full of
infinite dreams stacked up in disks. We
went
into the first room and sipped
our
coffee
in the shop at the bed of the sea. She said
“it
is all a dream.”
I
asked her why. She said it was an erotic fantasy, where a nubile
sylph was dominated,
and through whom we look. There
were a whole stack of similar such erotic fantasies to my left.
“I
chose you because I need someone down here to help me with the smooth
running of dreams,” she
said. “I
was trying to allure you.”
She
then offered me the chance to stay in the undersea below and attain
the real dream, live any dream I want and for it to be real.
“All
you’d need to do is give up cannabis,” she said. “It’s your
choice. But I am offering myself to you.”
I
didn’t know what to say or do. The content of the dream we had been
through was quite heavy,
quite scientific,
and
necessitated it all being a dream.
If
I could have asked my author what he did it for, he might say to
keep all the science and maths of
his boyhood in
the same compendium. To consign the illegal matter of the wood to
history and mythology. To
falsify the science and replace the lost boyhood book. To
allow it so that what I went through can be renewed when my body is
rotting underground if someone wants to renew it and can. To make the
shape of supplication towards the future state. Even to supply Simon
Pomery with another number he can translate in his post-poetic and
psycho-technological way. In
other words for light.
I
thought
about it but said
no thanks to her offer and she said that was fine and let me slip
back to the surface.
II
I
sat in my flat which was still crazed by disorder and rubbish, asking
myself what was real and what was dream. I wasn’t much of an
amateur psychologist so couldn’t interpret my dream very well.
Maybe I needed to see a psychiatrist? As far as I understood I had
been privy to the boyhood science of someone called John. Or rather,
should I say, “that was what I did when I was a kid.” For it
already wasn’t clear if that ‘I’ is Franco the character or
John F B Tucker the real human writer. That
means things are still quite dreamy and unstable. Maybe what I needed
was to go to the library, be it to look for psychiatrists online or
read up on the science and maths of this bloke John F B Tucker whose
name I dimly remember from the initial dream sequence? The library
was ten minutes walk away, an old red brick building, up the hill a
little bit and to the left when you get to the main street. I had
been there several times and was a member. I was quite well-read even
though I never finished my University course. That
I was still dreaming didn’t cross my mind. But I remember feeling
like becoming a scientist or a mathematician at the moment I thought
I had awoken from the dream sequence. Maybe to still be me, Franco,
would be holding up the traffic… the rock re-invents itself and
that is for sure. The first thing I needed to do was skin another
bifter for the walk to the library. Hopefully
I would get there without any further “sliding into the Dream Film
Store.” And when I get there I can access the computers, get
online, maybe read up on some maths and science.
III
I
took a right out the house and another right at the end of the
street, then up the hill, then took a left to the library, smoking my
bifter all the way. If ever I was to design something like Nash’s
Equilibrium it would be all about cannabis in a way. There was a poem
back home in my shoebox that contained the idea without giving it
away.
The
poet delights in a wilful obscurity, opacity, bats, black magnets,
firking, encryption and code. The poet also extirpates every trace of
recognition from the myriad mind, unlooses the mind of form,
method-acts every adjective in ‘Howl’ to attain visual radio
broadcasting dreams. As I walked to the library I cupped the spliff
in my hand so nobody could see it but the smell was Everywhere. It
was Gabriel’s GM skunk, and he only smoked the best, be it cheese,
trainwreck or whatever.
Not
knowing if I was still dreaming or not I got to the library and got
some computer time. I looked at first for therapists but none of them
were even smiling in the pictures of their faces, which looked an
ominous sign. I also Googled the name John Tucker to see if the dream
sequence presented a real scientist and there was no sign of him.
Whatever route I had taken to the library it seemed a waste of a
journey. I went back home, only ten minutes to the flat.
FLAGRANT RAPSCALLION
I
Apple blossom cheek
breath of wine
plates or confetti
he sips on disturbed
Nile insect
spaghetti
II
While that may be the ABC of aesthetics,
what I’m getting at is that
if a flower-press ending on cannabis
could = a dialysis a love poem
only hoping to impress poor Flora = a motor.
III
If I could sip from your eyes I would
and taste your name. Eyes of
deep
undersea green, we
would skinny dip and fish
in them, drag out numberplates,
mangled car doors, crumbs.
The pretext is yours
and it is also my mum’s.
IV
If this were a fairy story
there’d be no happy ending.
No sumptuous consummation
will wait for the poet
at the end of a plot.
I think of a chain of music from star to star,
but therein am starting
to quote my old self again.
V
I’ve already lost my father
who was an international art smuggler
nicknamed Blue or so he said -
though once upon a time
I thought art was recourse
to euphemism for pollen.
The people from the future,
they don’t want his business to end.
VI
It’s good when the daffs come out in spring,
like yellow trumpets, broadcasting
their excellent news.
Excellent News was the ideal
in my New Beat youth, b/t/w/.
I was nomadic in those days.
VII
Before the daffs come out,
we have snowdrops like
pure, white flames
in the heart for love.
The long, dark tunnel
of winter awaits us now.
VIII
I sip tea, I sip tea,
unsweetened it’s
enough for me.
I’ve
got a lot of washing up to do.
I
tried to meditate today.
Come.
It’s
good to get the washing
up
done, because it is good
to
make a clean space
for
yourself before
you
write – mess leaks in
to
the brain when
you
are in a messy room.
Now
it’s done I can make a sandwich -
cheese,
ham, lettuce, on special brown bread…
it
has no added sugar unlike white.
At
the moment I am leaving
the
washing up to dry, but
soon
will put it all away.
Then
I can say “hey,
I
pulled my weight today.”
So
that I do, and that’s true…
I
do a little bit more at my screen,
getting
pithy about Place and Nature
then go outside to collect wood.
Sometimes I look at Nature and see
invisible sheet music flowing right to left.
If you like I’ll mention some scattered perceptions of the Lakes.
The fell from town,
when you’re driving towards it,
seems a great, slumbering
diplodocus, come
to fat and die by
the Irish Sea; but
nearer the foot
you can see it is
more Buddha levitating.
And when you mention
the slow ascent
up flat, gradual paths
I think more of a bullet
to the top of a telegraph pole
or even the kettle, rising
to its silent scream,
its steam Ariel returning
on Caliban’s chain.
Floating in the quiet
of a weightless dawn,
the buzzard is the crux
of the flux of time,
and all of Creation
his dark machine.
There are benefits living here, like
once I encountered a rare, red kite,
which sat resting on a fence post, waiting
for me like a warning or a reward.
Sometimes
Nature is custodial;
and
at other times, frightening, otherworldly…
in
me, Nature is a great
art exhibition,
but
it can also be an immunity to Reason.
Some
think of the future a lot,
and
how there should still be
a
place for Nature in that future,
to
go exploring
just to look at trees,
which
like
crows,
dogs and
horses
are Man’s friends.
Nature
is the true architecture of State, at
least
unto some, while others would take a less staid and Conservative
attitude.
Here
we find mood as bracken frond.
We
find dry stone walls creeping
in
to the writing even of city folk, visiting.
I
think writing about the Lakes could be the refinement of a drug
called “Strictly Free.” I think the Beautometer would be a good
invention for fell walkers. I
sometimes think of Heaven as a pile of statistics when I ascend the
fell – that I will one day find out the exact number of steps I
have taken up it and whether I held the record.
The
powers that be could be clouds
rowing
overhead
on
their sky blue roads.
And
everything
in Nature is
only
semi-state: even the fell is mutable on a long enough timeline.
Well,
nothing
has changed to the map
apart
from the wind-farm beyond
the lap
of
the tide, revolving
its Mercedez Benz arms
to
make electricity for
the
farms -
and
also the cafe down the beach -
since
Norman Nicholson neglected to preach. -
Changes
to the place
have been the net,
global
warming let’s not forget,
the
advent of the mobile phone
and
increased
opportunities
for vice in town.
But
who needs vice when literature is intoxicant enough?
Here,
we
find the beck is a fountain pen.
I
sometimes stand by the beck, listening
in.
(Dr.
Bob says only those with their feet firmly planted can fly.)
I
would be wearing my wellies, listening
to
its most mellifluous applause,
the
way she falls two feet
into
a sound as sweet
as
a kettle drum’s
metal
petals of
silver
bliss that
blossom
on a carnival’s street.
Literature
from the city is of alienation,
literature
of rootedness repetitive,
and
the city is the intellectual breeding station,
but
countrylife closer how we ought live.
I
The reason my new work is not Anon is that I believe a writer has a right to a name otherwise an Exclusion of the Individual Machine can close ranks against you.
The earliest-written English poems, however, are attributed to Anon, the earliest recorded line being:
“Well-wrought this wall: Weirds broke it.”
Weirds could be weather-systems.
Combining the fact that the earliest subject is ruin’d architecture and the earliest recipe known to man is for beer, as discovered by monks, could make a poem’s definition “a statue of alcohol.”
The A595 is the main road connecting
the nuclear sub factory in Barrow and
Sellafield up the coast. On Sunday
the posse of motorbikes comes
to this bucolic valley because the road
has something in the golden sector
to do with its bends, its elegant curvature.
I went walking up the rearside of the fell,
and some one or two hundred yards in,
up the path and away from the A595,
encountered a rare, red kite
with dawn-charred chest, resting
on the fence-post, waiting
for me like a warning or reward…
II
Here from this seat now
I look about the kitchen, painted
a plush, Mediterranean coral,
at the indomitable things on the walls,
the notice board of cork,
the dead telly wearing
mother’s funeral hat,
the calendar with local photos,
the chart depicting the plants of the
Meadows, the clock, my sister’s art…
It’s a country farmhouse kitchen
with an AGA, where most of the cooking
is home-made, not from packets.
We have no neighbourhood or amenities
and country life can be quite dull,
but recently I felt elated
for capturing a partial alignment
of the Plough and oldest fell
on my new Smartphone.
I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,
NHS for Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons,
H20 for hypothalamus tattoo,
ESA for extra sensory allowance
but I for one still don’t really know
if Lucy even happens to be an actual substance.
III
It’s a myth that countryfolk are stupid
just because the rhythm of life is slower.
The region is an actual religion.
It’s why my dad didn’t take too kindly to racism.
I
was amazed the kite didn’t fly away,
as
I stood there gazing upon it.
It’s
as close to a bird of prey
as
I have ever got out in the wild.
Apparently,
the Vikings named the hills and the Celts named the valleys… this
should be easy to remember because you can picture a Viking being
able to see the mountains from the sea as they travel across; and the
Celts likewise lived in among the valleys so it would be natural they
named them.
Obviate
not titivate, sate
your
quest for meat and fling
to
your bright
ring, your
peerless
orbit, your wheel
of
hunting,
out-stretch
wings
to be
engorged
on air’s
ranting,
rock-strong
sockets
braced against crushing,
uprushing
rivers and sail.
Eventually,
it did fly away,
but
not until I made the decision
to
continue my walk, to leave
the
moment, the spot where I stood.
Seeing
its wings unfold,
seeing
it fly away, I took a left
up
the rear side of the fell, following
the
path beside the beck
and
– still not knowing
what
the bird was, only storing
an
image of it in my brain -
reached
the cairn at the top.
Down
down
down
down
down
deep
blue
below
“eh
up,
mate,”
says
my
mate
and
is
it
safe
to
say
hello?
When
I got down again,
and
back to my home on
this
side of the fell, I
looked
the bird up in a book,
and
found it was a red kite.
For
some reason I thought
I
had found the golden eagle…
there
was a rumour that a pair of them
had
moved into the area.
So
I was actually disappointed
to
find the bird was a rare, red kite,
which
it certainly, judging
by
the book of birds, was.
That
afternoon, I got a phonecall
from
my ex gf on my mobile.
I
told her: “I’ve just seen a rare bird.”
I
also told her I had given up cannabis;
asked
her if she still smoked;
but
what she said and what she was doing
when
she said it, I shall not say.
Simon
says the River Goyt
might
become the Styx in Heaven.
I
say the rhythm of the River Goyt
beats
blood to my head like a cold muscle.
The
word ‘goyt’ might actually be Celtic thought-patterns meeting
Anglo-Saxon vowel-sounds.
Back
then I liked music by people such as: Boards of Canada, Squarepusher,
Aphex Twin and Autechre. I also still liked some guitar music by
people like Hella and Shellac, and my favourite act of
all were
Radiohead, ever since they filled the hole left behind by Nirvana.
All
of it was better to listen to when high.
Dr.
Robert says: “the brain actually releases cannabinoids naturally
for moments of signification like reaching the top of a mountain. If
you flood your brain with cannabinoids un-naturally, meaning and
signification become aleatory, a mess. There is suddenly meaning at
any point of intersection in the crazy palimpsest of memory.”
Kurt
Cobain sings:
“my
heart is broke,
but
I have some glue,
help
me inhale,
I’ll
mend it with you,
we’ll
float around,
hang
out on clouds,
then
we’ll come down,
have
a hangover.”
I
Now
we’re just enjoying the peace on a calm, autumnal Sunday.
It’s
a time for expanding your threshold of Negative Capability… I am
also taking care of my mother, who injured her arm on holiday. It’s
her birthday today, so I gave her a book, and like every other day
made her a fire and made her a morning coffee.
We
need to get some new Vape juice
because
there is only one bottle left.
Tesco
is going to be closed for a few weeks
after
today so we should stock up.
Apparently
they are going
to
redo the fruit and veg section
so
that the fruit and veg is stored
in
a series of closed compartments.
Now
for the
E as I
try and summon up a purpose for this. It is healing, of the self and
the soul of the world. It is truce between old friends fallen out
like
fools.
It is air for
the tortured soul to breathe. It
is an experiment into more advanced modes of being.
II
Sensation
precedes
thought in art,
chain is made from same as key,
waves make gentle
love to the shore,
homework tonight is
to remember your dreams,
and this we know,
there is no ‘we,’
I am the third person
immaculate, free…
you know the routine
by now, the score,
and more and many more,
but let’s not dwell
on school-made things
when outside birds
sing with their wings
and freedom flies
and freedom flows
and the music never stops.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I
acknowledge “the ire ii net” from my own boyhood writings; and
real people and voices alike; and the world at large as well as my
family surrounding me. Thanks
to everyone involved.
