Fatal Chip Shop Strategy

I no longer want

To see things from inside

The same pillow, held.

From now on all is a ‘fatal strategy’.

Even standing in the queue at

The chip shop

Is a breath away from the

World sliding into extinction.

It must be taken to the end,

Retched out to a view

From from outside

The pit, where

There is only absurd

Laughter and one perturbed man

With a scoop full of stuff

That now has no meaning,

As he stares hopelessly

At the salt and pepper shakers.

The night we didn’t...

I found this in an empty folder on my computer, don't know if it's unfinished or perfectly formed.

You lured me out late

From that drunken hole

I had dug pretty deep

On the docile settee.

You said it was a night for danger,

So I changed my pants and travelled

Through the night on a train:

A pioneer with a can of cider for courage.

That night we didn’t know if the future

Was a minor chord floating on

A wisp of drunkenness...

Crusty Old Men

Fizzing and bubbling on the surface
And the crusty old men
That are in the pubs at 11.
Tragically experiencing a pleasure we all fear.
They have devoured the need for sanity
And when they laugh in that melodious sadness
There is only the ring of truth that is unbearable,
But they bear it, they have learnt to bear it.
We create worlds to avoid this naive existence
And it is we who are trapped under annoyances
We have secretly slipped into our own back pockets.
They have grey hair and ruddy skin and they perform
A pint lift with the mechanical certainty,
A technique honed, of an Olympian of the absurd.
We will never learn the hard won soul
of the men that inhabit the pubs at midday.

All roads lead to Bedlam.

All roads eventually lead to Bedlam. Original artwork for Melancholic Georges by Faye West

London Park

I sit in the park

Because I know you

Can’t see me here

I left you with the

Dirty plates and spent wrappers

The people here are mere

Actors in my game

Waddling around the park

Unaware of their destiny

Memories of my Nervous Illness

A sabbatical from life; that grating, wearing away machine. The propping up of the drooping facial equipment is the carrying of an super-incumbent weight, crushing all torsos without organs; leaving abstract constructions echoing in a cranium, a raw reality, too much, a glossy trail as it soaks in.

The hiding, behind a dark room, where gods appear and steal away the fright imposed by those other lips, but something left behind. Utter indifference is the new world of my nightmares and the walls and the ceiling are all part of it, they seem like a scream that cannot be melted out.

Three weeks in this stasis and the world rolls on with my character following on behind and no one knows of the webbed images hanging  before my eyes.

Then the collapse inwards, an escape contraption thrown into engaged, deeper, deeper and everything vanishes; wallowing in that prickly void that is me, with all the hateful and needy creatures, somewhere there is a laughter, always elsewhere.

A morning and opening lids seem to reveal an impossible unity, its a beginning as there are legs growing from the stumps and standing is more a possibility. Small  steps further from the bed wedded with a dark sway and slowly, with an unsteady hand, the laughter is written with my feet and the bubbling to the surface is everything that matters.

The days come on, all with details slightly eschew, and the weight is a dispersing crowd with an ever subtle commotion. Something slipping by unnoticed then forgotten.

  

Why I like listening to records. Pt.1 A Comedy.

A normal house party scene: groups of bodies coagulated into corners and narrow hallways, scattered glass bottles and aluminium cans, the shift, the sway and the rumble punctuated by the occasional shouty cretin.  Then there’s me, drink in hand, staring at a familiar unrecognisable contortion on the face of the person I have found myself talking to. After exhausting all the rigorous and deft questions, that are destined to be posed by 2 drunken objects looking for a potential connection in the fug of bodies, it happens without fail when these words are spoken: I listen to records.

‘Yep, the vinyl ones, the big black disk things.’

...

‘No, I’m not a’ wronged up DJ who pops beats in a phat style’ and what is that odd hand gesture you’re doing?’

Once they realise I simply play these ‘things’ just to myself, for no exterior gain, for no promise of bitches or bling, I’m always treated to a raised eyebrow and a tone of voice that manages the synthesis of both suspicion and wonder; a bewildering moment which I think neither of us know how to deal with in an increasingly inebriated social interaction.

There is something incomprehensible about refusing what is seen as the best and as the apex of cultural capital. Society has progressed, eliminated the need for flawed technologies already perfected by our new form of speed; who wouldn’t agree, no one wants to be a Luddite? Yet, there is a certain attraction to refusing to accept what is most readily believed and records still have an ideology of cool; there is always a glut of renegades queuing in East London on Record Store Day to get their hands on a piece of the cool; a retro injection of the intangible past excitement of something with substance between their grubby consumer fingers.

So where do I stand?  Am I a badass maverick or a tragic wanker clinging to a set of slowly dying ideals? I like to think I’m a bit of both.

I’ve had a record player for about 2 years; it was one of the first things I bought after something terrible happened to me, basically I slipped between that crack on the plane of instinct. I tripped and disappeared into that dreadful aperture commonly known as a full-time job, responsibility and a disposable income – I know, I know but I was naive and incredibly stupid and I gave to all those voices that were telling me that’s where I belonged – this is relevant by the way. 

So I tried to fit in and become fully at one with my ‘final destination’ and to create a distraction from that dull ache in the belly, that comes from the unknowing participation in a system of futile accumulation, by starting to buy stuff; fantastic misrecognised, ideologically soaked stuff; I needed it to tell me who I was, in the absence of a soul, I needed stuff.  I entered into the role slightly askance but I pushed on my magic cloak of pretence and hoped no one would notice. My record player is a relic of that time.

Therefore, it came to pass that I defied all can be gained instantaneously through the internet at a quality much greater than the crackle, hiss and skip of a turntable system and this is why: I had a very clear image in my mind of a warmly lit room with a singular desk in the corner upon which was a small lamp. Its glow produced a beacon and a halo to my head, which was visible as a silhouette arched over a laptop (or typewriter), while I was tapping away on a piece of sublime prose or poetry; there was a glass of whisky by my hand, from which I would sporadically take a gulp then shake my head and gaze at the ceiling. In addition, for some elusive reason, there was a layer of cigarette smoke floating through the scene, even though I don’t smoke and would probably be choking, but anyway it was there. The record player sat on a cabinet to one side producing the sweet sound of a 1930’s music hall, leaving me a fibre shaking between its intangibility, and thus completing the scene. 

It’s a vaguely hackneyed picture, which I find obviously aberrant and must question what it was doing in my head – looking back now I can see that it was one of them, a solidified form of my alienated desire, an abstract idea foisted upon a solid object; an ideology, a commodity. Not one I had created, not a glorious convulsion of the absurd, not a collection of parts seeped with personal meanings, but a prewired template taken wholesale from some Unconscious Cultural newsagent.

This is what its evil little voices said: hey, hey, MG, guess what? You’re tired, you lack inspiration and all you can think about is the ever flowing ructions that ooze from that suit strewn abyss [the evil voices are known to be particularly obscure]. Here, look here, some things, ooooohhh yeah; you see this thing here [points to record player#], you need this, you need this because of this [gestures towards an ethereal image of the aforementioned whisky scene floating before my face, shimmering]. Oooooohhhh yeessss, this thing will make you a better writer and a more romantic, deep and profound person with all the time you need, look, look at this image of the future, this is what you will become; yeeesss [pats me on back and takes money from my back pocket – I put my hand out to the image and it immediately turns to sand].

Of course, now that I have stopped rowing on that infernal boat, I realise that all those cacophonous voices were ever saying was simply: ‘We can make the absences you feel, the qualities you lack, into the glorious presence of fulfilment’. A futile wish; they get you when you're down. What they* never mention is that they are the ones that have stolen the enjoyment you don’t have in the first place; it’s basically a blackmail which lasts FOREVER where you must pay in order to get back a bit of what they stole, and what you do get back is now useless. Oh the irony.

So I fell for it and I found myself with this thing in my room, an object consumed, and another failed ideology kicked to death by its diversion past the boot of capital, it faded and disappeared into the banality of the room, a forgotten potential. There it stayed, ensconced within its dust blanket, until something wonderful and unexpected happened. A rediscovery.

TBC...

# Yes, the voices have arms.

 *As a quick side note, I do realise I have displaced that inherent lack, that we all must accept and take on our back in order to enter into the Symbolic realm (society) and therefore not slip into the bliss of psychosis, onto work and capital, but that’s my particular want you may choose your own object, you decide who 'they' are.

The Intrepid Fox

Net stocking leg swaying with the Jager bomb
that denotated a missed hand clap as
the slow grinding guitar symphony liberates
the soul of a machine that licks
a low cut future.

Keep on Lying Baby!

There’s a lot to be said for lying down or indeed reclining, especially in bed; and this is what I have been doing for the last 2 – 3 weeks. Guess what? I feel great, authentic, a full blooded inhuman spirit (oxymoron intended mofo); ready to rage, oh yeah.

My job has gone, my girlfriend has gone*, and only now do I feel real (by real I include all the usual dispensations, ie real in terms of my experience through the Imaginary and Symbolic realms of my perception etc etc). The less I have, the more I feel at home within my offbeat, melancholic cranium; madness feels comforting somehow, rather than a threat.

Anyway, the normal set of circumstances is that a person goes somewhere to either sit or stand all day and stare at something (let’s call it work), and I can see how sitting or standing for short periods of time could be ok, but in terms of hierarchy I guess we could suggest something like this:

1.       Lying (supine/prone)

2.       Reclining/semi supine

3.       Sitting

4.       Standing

Unless you’re a vampire – there seem to be so many around at the moment – I presume that everyone sleeps lying down and what I want to propose is that instead of getting up then sitting or standing all day before coming back and lying down again, why not just stay either lying down or reclining, it cuts out the middle man, cheaper too.

Now I am being jocular of course as there are 2 rather large considerations that will somewhat thwart this utopian ideal I recommend:

1.       Your brain

2.       Money

One thing I have found about lying down and indeed any degree of doing nothing is that it is not that easy and not everyone can do it. Luckily for myself I am trained and so can withstand/enjoy it for extended periods of time.

You see the action of doing nothing/lying down is in fact hard work if you don’t know how. Your brain starts to think, invent inadequacy and guilt; to survive you must travel into the depths of your pointlessness, hold your head under its soapy surface, and say yes.

There is a fairly prevalent cliché, especially in the west that everyone would like to win the lottery and somehow be free from work or oppression; I would suggest that this is the last thing they want to happen; with no oppression there is no enemy and with no enemy you only have yourself to fight. Those demanding voices never go away, they are inside you, better you pretend they come from somewhere else (that twat of a boss, the stupid government, the ignorant lover). To truly be able to lie down you must be able to punch yourself and laugh, and be cleansed by its horror.

Don’t invent enemies, protests, petty injustices, simply start lying down, once you learn to breathe beyond the other side of your brain, there is far more to see.

All I will say about money is if you are worried about it you are too far into the system to be helped, you have a lack of imagination and too much stuff to upkeep (‘yes but I’ve got a mortgage to pay for and kids and...’ please leave me alone).

Basically I have been and will continue to lie down until my madness is all of my reality and the real world has shrunk into a loveable but clumsy puppy that chases its own tail (how cute).

Urg, yes, urg, yes, urh, yes (sorry that’s just me punching myself).

Lie don't lie.

MG

*Piekna is very much still around and in close proximity.

Sat in the waiting hour

I'm sat in the slow waiting hour until the distant 02:30 digitally appears; it's not for myself I linger, Piekna is set to fly and the alarm is set within me, a buzzing and a ringing held tight until the time to awake arrives. 

The time is not my time, someone else’s time I inhabit and live with like shrapnel lodged in my inner realm; the hour is wheezing, laborious, but I endure it for her.

Last week I was in Berlin, another melancholy spectre, full of it’s own trauma; a place struggling with a guilty ego hiding it’s crimes in full view of the tourist in the hope they will disappear. We all hope ‘it’s different now’ but there is still a bitter frisson that follows down the throat. People wherever they are will torment and destroy each other and Berlin is the airbrushed representative, bikini clad but with impenetrable sorrow etched on it’s old man face. Berlin cannot escape its distress and thus I loved it purely. 

My whole experience was crystallised in a statue in one of the museums; it changed me somewhat, creating a subtle divergence in my consciousness; it was a sow, looking up morosely, clutching pathetically at her belly. My only thought was: yes, it’s true, the misery lives, beautifully, terribly. Then I stared and stared with a blankness that only a touch beyond our imagined reality can feel...

I still feel it somehow in my bones as they breathe in it’s menthol glow.

Pig Woman is my Goddess 

She gazes into that night where inspiration lives and my life as an Office Manager is shattered and consumed by a million hysterical lips, my lips.

There is still 3 waiting hours to live until the time, I will sit with the silence and learn from it’s face the way to exist without words, without noise, without people.  I dread my return...

MG