Illegal in Leicester Square

The darkness sloshed up and down in our heads as the night sky rose before us over the newly refurbished Leicester Square - all the metal struts and luminous men had been cleared away leaving a great expanse that hadn't been glimpsed in quite some time. ALD and I stood on the kerb-like plinth that now bordered the main tumult of people that spurted incongruently from Piccadilly and Covent Garden; the marching bodies all met in the middle like some kind of disorganised, half-hearted, mediocre consumer battle. We watched and spoke our soaked words into each others faces, fresh from the pub we had decided on a tour of London's most obvious facial features and hence here we stood in the square, cans of cider in hand, swaying to the movement of the liquid playing sweet cacophonies inside our craniums. We turned to look into the area of grass at the centre, now locked up. We discussed how the fence keeping people out was pathetically short, about a meter high, we followed that with a short confab about how high we would each be able to urinate over the said fence. We turned back to facing the hoi polloi, just as two rather fresh-faced Community Support Officers were walking past, scanning with their hairless chins and bulbous eyes intent on ruining someone's fun; spotting us they looked at each other and with a nod of the head sashayed towards us.

'Did you know sir, that it is illegal to have an open container of alcohol in the borough of Westminster?'

'No', I replied, 'I didn't know that'.

'I'm afraid you are going to have to dispose of your drinks.' He wasn't afraid, but I was, the can was over half full, I searched for the magic words that would make the horrible men disappear - all I could hear was Westminster, Westminster, what if you leave Westminster as soon as possible. It seemed plausible. I would utter the words with a cheeky grin and Mr Officer would tut and raise his eyes and say, 'oh OK then, but be quick', at which point we would thank him and scuttle off into the crowd, safe to sup on our newly radicalised beverages and laugh at the stupidity of the repressive state apparatus.

Only something different happened, by the time the words had made their way to my lips, they weren't the gems I had initially found, but a rather offensive looking piece of coal.

'Yeah, but what if we run away.' The officer looked back with a seriousness I couldn't quite comprehend.

'Well, we'll chase you.' there was no smile no laughter, just a sombre stare. I tried again, I just didn't say it right, I held up my hands.

'No, No , No, I meant really quickly.' The coal had turned to shit, as if running away from the Officers really quickly would make them change their mind. I was trying to say one thing, but really saying quite another, I had to now give up didn't I? Yes, yes I did. ALD intervened and encouraged me to stop talking at which point we reluctantly tipped that most noble of liquids down into London's bowels through its grated eye ball; I guess London deserved it, putting up with all these people all day and their impossible dreams and dirty rubber soles. We put our empty cans in the bins and moved off into the crowd, liquor-less and chasing that subtle divergence in our splattered consciousness - I think it was annoyance.

London had won and I didn't begrudge it, the pavements seemed to smile that sloppy drunken grin and somehow I was pleased we had shared a drink - London was our melancholy comrade rolling and rising with the tides of our happily addled heads.

One drink for you, one for London, those are the new rules.

MG

'Emotional Rollercoaster'

Dear self

‘It was an emotional rollercoaster’

A man splattered with an ugly face and eyes whiter than the sun mouthing these words on the screen, summing up his team’s victory in the penalty shoot-out.

A girl, descending the steps of the court, describing her tumultuous legal battle, happy like a dozy canine.

A man surrounded by eyes so pure and adoring, casting these words as profound knowledge into dribbling mouths; his long and eventful travels through the world.

A robot, metal and empty, looking into the coming night, programmed with binary code, the 1 and 0 of mediocrity – a slow dull whirr and the words construct themselves. 

Rectal or loser

There is not a humanoid on any plane of existence that can convince me, with their useless words, that this fairground phrase, a worn out piece of carpet at the entrance to reality, sums up the complexity, uniqueness and multiplicity of any person or situation – indeed I’m also not entirely sure an interpretive dance would do the job, but no one has ever tried and this is the point.

The overuse of this expression, in all the blinding corners of my consciousness, is a fetid stain and sadness on my countenance. It makes me want to put my head in a blender then use the pulp to write an elegy to my soul on the kitchen floor. I realise this may seem like an overreaction, but with all the stringy sinews of my being (that vibrate with lucidity, played by the evil harp player in my head), the one thing I know is that it is not, because of what is at stake: the meaning of your existence.

Collate Errors

It’s like giving a loved one flowers or some such heart related product on Valentine’s Day – How romantic?  No No No! It’s not romantic if you have a gun held to your head being ordered to do it; of course the gun in this context would be a metaphor for expectation or, if you like, the superegoic pressures of society. The only way it would be romantic would be if you kicked the assailant in the nads or indeed grabbed the gun from them and shot yourself. Romance is chaotic, scary and a spontaneous act, not an obsequious and vapid gesture; if you choose to represent your ‘powerful and transcendental love’ with a husk empty of any unique meaning, I wonder what that says about you and your relationship.

Just as on TV or radio news when a tragic and unexpected death has occurred – you can almost sing along to the trite sound of the words uttered by the family member of the deceased – s/he was such a special/wonderful/talented son/daughter/husband/wife. I don’t doubt that they were, but the fact that you have chosen to represent them to the public and therefore the (big) Other (that judging unknown place where all utterances are addressed to and which holds the silence that begets the structure of your thoughts) with a laboriously repeated platitude makes me think the complete opposite; if they were that special render them in a way that shows their beauty, it doesn’t have to be words or interpretive dance, or dramatic in any way, just make an attempt at meaningful.

Oracle Err Slot

 ‘An emotional rollercoaster’ What does this phrase actually mean [holding it between quivering fingers and examining it before wrenching away in disgust]? A rollercoaster – Roller – Coaster – 2 innocuous and ‘pleasant’ words denoting ease and lack of resistance, but placed together and put in a context they denote that physical construction that weaves shadows around the participants of the fairground and can suddenly be used to suggest the trials and ructions, ‘the ups and downs’, of any situation that ever happened that was a bit hard to comprehend within a linear progression of emotion.

Nonetheless, its overuse renders it empty – an empty pot (dug up and reconstituted by archaeologists, seemingly filled with layers of subtle and profound meanings and a valuable insights, but basically just an empty pot, the same as all the millions of other pots brought from the ground, that maybe used to have stuff in them, but now they don’t and are destined to be looked at it through the glass of the museum). It is not insightful or interesting surrounded by so many multiples of the same.  It is perfect for those empty Valentine’s Day flowers though.

A Rollercoaster – a piece of mechanical engineering; a track designed to give the participant the feeling of danger and excitement without the risk – an entertainment. It is a manmade simulation. There is never really any danger it is all a construct with the full expectation of getting off at the other end. There is no reality; they were never really out of control. Just like a cliché, there is no danger of expressing anything new or unique.

It’s the Pavlov’s bell with the bovine audience salivating and chewing on their safe illusions like the herd munching on the cud. Emotion – an abject or ecstatic, indescribable force pounding through your body. The feeling and any uniqueness is pre-digested, a soggy molten mush – ding, nom nom nom.

Rear Cellos Rot

I’m being partly jocular of course; word’s can mean many things depending on context and use – I’m being purposefully provocative with my ‘interpretations’, but what I want to show is the rut I can get into with the light – to me it all seems the wrong way around.

The ‘rollercoaster’ implies a structure that humans ride to a resolution. The assertion that I want to make is that the phrase necessitates confusion between language and emotion.  People look into the words like little mirrors and see the something they think they recognise, they take that reflection stick that image like a pastry cutter over their emotion. The mirror image isn’t the real thing, it’s an image, a static, flat copy that seems to refer to something out there, but does not. The mirror is the out there that creates the thing it refers to. Hmm, What? What? What? Yes! Yes! Yes! Basically there is misrecognition between language (the structure, the words) and the emotion (that chaotic, fire-breathing, elusive wisp).  Those empty meaningless Valentine’s Day flowers are what create the affection and bond of the ‘powerful and transcendental love’, not the thing that refers to it. Platitudes, clichés, turn the Real within into a banality, a safe, fettered, loveless marriage with the silence.

Art Closer Role

Take your hammer and break that track of the rollercoaster you’re riding to bleakness, let yourself fall – jump off the rails of pleasure and free-fall into the wind of bliss.

All I’m really saying is it’s better to burn down the fairground than reduce yourself to the mechanics of boredom. Clichés are admissions with little bars, don’t lock yourself in; you don’t have to overhaul the planet, unless you are Socrates or Jesus, just piss into the darkness when it counts, create, innovate; you are not special, what are you trying to protect?  Hang your head in front of oncoming traffic, you might be surprised what happens.

MG