Facebook (2008)

Written in 2008

I don’t much care for it.

We’ve lived through the home computer revolution; the internet and web revolution; the social networking sites’ revolution attempt, and it’s all down to selling things. Selling ideas, selling TV shows on demand, selling snapshots of lives. Buying, or stealing, or downloading, or lying, and everything new and changing.

But amongst this polished newness: old faces popping up.

Older faces.

This is a shock.

Old faces.

Wrinkled, and distressed, versions of those I remember, ten years back or more when we all truly were the new breed. Strange, digitally enfeebled versions of the new faces and bodies and minds and dreams and daftness-chasing goons and happy adventurers now waving croak-happily to say hello again, to catch up. I can’t be fucked saying no to it either, despite not talking for fifteen years or whatever and whatever may have happened before to sour matters, it does no harm to join in, smile sweetly and bat polite questions back and forth awhile.

But it’s not possible to catch up, not really.

Here online’s a family guy, balding and bright, and with the eyes and grin of the dealer from whom I used to buy, and get ripped off for, oddly sticky slabs of hash, when hash was good and grass was the poorest of poor relations in the pre-hydroponic days where a drought was a serious problem.

The questions I really want to ask aren’t apt; how can you distil a journey of fifteen years into ten minutes, into a couple of hundred words, or into a banter over a cheating-both-sides game of online scrabble?

You can’t, and I don’t want to either. Cause these faces aren’t the same, and neither is mine. I’m shocked looking back at the photos. I don’t recognise myself anymore. I’m too healthy in them, too full of ideas (unformed but no doubt brilliant and if you forget one, no matter cause there’s another coming over the horizon) and too full of unfocused excitement about the near-present. And the future, as I was always fond of saying, would take care of itself.

And as the baby-coddling and still-sexy ghosts of the past pop up to spam me about Musicmatch Quiz Profile Games I bleed a little because these faces regained confuse me. These pictures of the past they, and I, post are one-way vortices that lead to a worldview I can’t change and don’t want to aside from to say:

You will one day know that those days are gone, and it will be ridiculous, and you will laugh with gritted teeth.

And I know as I always knew back then that one day I would need the young faces to sneer at me and say:

Shut the fuck up, granddad, I’m immortal.

Now when I look in the mirror I can, if I squint my eyes, and my brain, squeeze out of this moment and somehow remember when everyone was alive, and everyone was alive – here and now it’s too early to expire, and too late to regret too. Cause here we all are, and these faces and rashes of return are important, vital, reminders of mortality. It gets harder, and harder to resist it, so I dive in again because all I have done so far has wasted enough time for what I have done to appear significant by sheer weight of hours spent wasted on fluff and bluster.

Tonight, my temples grow tight and my ankles ache.

Cause I know, or hope, or dread, that one day, in fifteen years of wherever-next, I’ll look back at myself through the fug of the intervening years, and wonder exactly why I was so worried, so nostalgic and so still-filled with angst and indecision, but this time it won’t be about how old I look, or other people look, it’ll be about how young we still were, and how I felt – but didn’t ever quite grasp the nuance – but how I felt so lost but deep down hoped, or knew, that this feeling was down to the fact that somehow I was on the verge of a new chapter.

The difference between the current past and the future-past of now, is that in the current-past it always was the now, and I would never even dream of fifteen years hence; but now, fifteen years from then, I am terrified of the fifteen-year future where I feel the walls closing in on me: either of finally turning coat into a dreary and humdrum stagger to dismay and broken-hearted weariness, or of wilful, ever-more-tragic lost chasing of something vague and equally wearying and sad.

I don’t much care for it.

There must, and will, be another way: to marry the flash and lightning of those pictured years with the quest to adventure, and to realise that knowing nothing is OK as long as you smile whilst you try. And to find the energy and the vitality to believe that a photo of a pint in a long-demolished pub is as worthlessly beautiful as that of the toddler in the playground fifteen years previously; that there is as much a difference between those two iterations as there is between I back then and the older I of right now. And in that future-now I might, and probably will, wish for chances to chat with some of these faces, these reformed, revisited compadres, but they may be gone forever.

Or maybe I will; I wonder what version of myself I’m selling right now?

Tuesday, Sept 29th/Wednesday, Sept 30th, 2009 (written in 2009)

I went to live abroad in August 2009, 5,000 miles away from home. It was a huge life change. I was now married, I now didn't have a job. I was quite lost. I wasn't a writer, not really any more; I wasn't a music journalist going to hundreds of gigs a year in several countries; I was in the Caribbean, trying to work out what the fuck was going on.

We'd been there a month and a bit and things moved away from the kind of extended holiday-type summer-fum adventuring into something that was officially 'real life' but was pretty fucking far from any application of that phrase I'd ever previously encountered.

Seven years after I wrote these words I found them again. 

So for what it's worth, when people ask why I came back - there's something here that might click. Not the only reason, nor even in truth one of the major reasons, but this dislocation... I still feel it. 
________

I saw it, more than once. You can't live somewhere for the cheese wedge of a decade and not. Let’s be honest. But I’ve surprised myself in my cups tonight by exhausting my work, sorting, soccermanagering and surfing.

Re-re-wind.

Two hours ago – mas o menos – I finished my Spanish class for the day. It was boring, but worth it for the chance/being forced to think/speak a little Spanish. And back to the house for cheese on toast, Tortuga brand mango chutney and a little rum. Overstimulated, really, with thoughts of work and things to chase for the morning.

And now, here, it’s midnight. And it’s warm. The last couple of days have been humid, which made my walk into town yesterday quite an experience of water-wishing, petrol-station-stopping fun. Not so good when trying to sleep; the air-con dries you out very quickly.

But it’s cool, I sit here wondering if I should go for a midnight swim and brave being bitten by insects and lizards; probably not a good plan in the shared pool here. I can wait. So I’ve checked the Citizens’ Choice page, wished for New York trips, hoped to heave another day and smiled and breathed deep and tried to make sense of it all. It’s just so ludicrous, still, to be unreal. The whole damned thing is soaking with rum-sung rambunctiousness; scrapped and wracked, but here we are nonetheless.

And so here is midnight; an hour I know well. An hour I’ve always been friends with, like most of my friends have. And even if I’ve had proper jobs I’ve kept myself awake to see it if I didn’t crash earlier: the only times I’ve missed it is after whole days on the piss in Bangor games, or following no-sleep nights and early flights back from Iceland and cheapRyanairholidayland and fantasticville and everywhere else.

But when you can’t sleep and you’re out of inspiration for even surfing and it’s a Tuesday night stroke Wednesday morning, what is there to do aside look up webcams of places you’ve been? Places that you’d like to be, maybe, fleetingly, or for longer? It ain’t hard really: what’s most comforting is what you like and where you might like to be. Bangor. Reykjavik. Valencia. Homes, and holidays. Worktimes, wastrel times.

In Liverpool now it’s 6am. The city is waking, and there are cars beeping already. The webcam on the top of the Crowne Plaza gives a gorgeous image; a vista of the city I learned to love and loved to learn in.

A huge pang hits me. Pang for the time we’d all drunk port and made up new words, surfing on chatrooms of bands on the label we worked for or were signed to; pang for the time I drew a map on the back of a fag packet, or a bill, that led from the house to the nearest off-license that was going to be open in two hours; pang for just waking up, looking at the slate sky and then the clock through one half-open eye and realising that there were two hours more to snuggle in warm blankets and make smoke-ice-air-breath. And, above all, pang for all the people who’ve been there, who’ve left there, who’re still there. Under that dawn sky, in the snap and sharp of an English autumn. The webcam points perfectly at the Liver Building. Too perfectly, really: it’s a perfect image of a perfect time.

But nine years – just under – is far too long a time not to have seen that, once or twice. The best bit is that at the time you just don’t give a flying fuck about it, or anything aside from making a map, finding more port, talking rubbish about music or crisps, way too late and long a night to even consider that a new day is starting.

It’s always that kind of dawn, somewhere.

Noble, foolhardy and beautiful.

Tear it up, tear it up, tear it up. 

The flowers of romance

A metaphor here

And a simile goes here

Because I project my longing onto you

And you seem perfect

At the moment

Hormones here

And DNA here

Ensure that humans repeat the dance

Over generations

And generations

There’s no poetry here

Just verses here

Because there’s nothing better to do

Than yawn, write and recount

Binary boredom

Record Breaking Summer In Store

“Unprecedented levels of shitness” promised

LONDON, ENGLAND – The UK is set for a summer season that will break all records, according to latest research.

Travel boffins explained that a rare convergence of conditions is in store that they are already dubbing ‘The Great British Shitstorm.’

Governmental and private tourism bodies are ready to work together closer than ever before to deliver a never-before seen level of incompetence, according to scientist Carlton Wuck of Ffossip University.

“Airports across Britain are readying themselves to close down as many gates as possible,” he said. “Whether that be half-arsed refurbishments or whole areas closed for a phantom ‘cleaning’ that will never take place, this is the most concerted effort for years by air partners.

“We have discovered that they are already working hard to leave the announcement of boarding gates as late as possible and wherever they can, moving them to the other side of the airport.”

Should travellers nonetheless manage to board their selected flight, contingency plans are in place, Mr. Wuck said,

“We are also recording a large number of aeroplane re-routings.”

“These have been specifically designed by the air carriers to cause maximum irritation to passengers by dropping them off hundreds of miles away from their original arrival destination. This will help them incur significant fines for parked cars, huge taxi fares and in some cases ruining their holiday entirely.”

Disruption

A representative for the Department of Transport confirmed that all motorways would be given significant ghost refurbishments during bank holidays and times of peak traffic. Six million cones have been deployed already to close off perfectly good lanes to cause maximum disruption.

Train bosses are hoping to deploy unprecedented numbers of Rail Replacement Buses during the summer period, and have already ordered a fleet of unreliable diesel-spewing rust buckets in anticipation.

Hotels are also getting on board with the initiative, said Mr. Wuck.

“There has been a previously unheard-of level of cockroach implementation this year,” he continued. 

“Teams across the hotel sector are employing high numbers of new staff to de-clean their rooms, including staining sheets with spunk and other unidentifiable fluids. The Dust Industry has reported enormous orders for pre-grimed carpets, and British toilets look set to be the most skidded they have been since records began.”

Botched repairs are already being undertaken with pound shop sellotape on plumbing, and drains are being blocked with noxious slurry ready for the holiday season.

He added that windows and outer doors were being loosened in order to let in as much traffic and street noise as was possible, with curtains also shortened so they would not touch the floor or draw properly. This, the researcher explained, was to ensure that as much light as possible was let in to wake hungover guests in the early hours.

Breakfasts will remain continental-only, he added, with a new addition this year being tiny, sweet slices of bread that consistently burn in automatic toasting machines.

Customer service is looking to be the worst ever, with statistics suggesting levels of giving a fuck down to a record 0.9%, adjusted for inflation. Grunted semi-acknowledgements and gritted-teeth irritation are both on the up, whilst staff are being observed to disappear for vape breaks up to ten times an hour.

It all adds up to something very special, according to Mr. Wuck.

“All in all,” concluded the scientist, “The UK will be able to look back and be proud of its record of delivering unprecedented levels of shitness this year.”

Who is Mick Paisley?

De-clutter

My pocketsdeskmind

Two out of three ain’t bad

HA

But who is Mick Paisley?

Recover

By dollopthickmind

Who he may be, that lad

Called

Mick Paisley?

Whatever

I tryIjustcan’tfind

Why I want to chat

To

Mick.

Paisley.

It’s written on a ticket.

It came out of a jacket.

Mick Paisley:

Oh

Who are you, and why

Are youonthisgreenscrap

Of paper?

Mick Paisley

Ah maybe you’re one of my

Mates’ friendsgettingakebab

I wager?

I know you, Mick Paisley!

HA

Too many guesses, too bad.

I’ve justrealisedIwrote

This clutter:

It ain’t a bloke, it’s a shopping list.

One item parsley: the other milk.

I used to be a music journalist, I tell people these days when they ask.

I reckon I've seen 1,000 bands over about 20 years on and off of playing, watching, writing about and generally living music. I never actually kept any record of the gigs at the time, which I now think was stupid. But I have been writing about the gigs I can remember, or the bands I can remember seeing. It's an ongoing project just for myself really. But here's one entry anyway.

Xerxes Xylophone and the Cum Snot Bastards

Various, Bangor & Liverpool, 91-96 / 2000-2005ish

Not the name of a real band, I don’t think. Although I might use it myself, to go with my other non-playing bands with no actual members including Joe And The Bastards, Gay Dutchmen, Comedy Germans, Dolphin Rape (featuring Brian Wright), Art Brut 53310761, Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen Pen And The Pencils, et cetera.

But the concept is the same: Noisy band, probably youngish, certainly not conventional musicianship (although sometimes there’d be absolute virtuosos in the most unlikely of groups), playing in a basement in front of about 25 people and making an absolutely fucking fantastic racket whilst sweat dripped down off the black ceiling into the dark, dank little shithole of a venue. These gigs are often the best: pure DIY, punky, alternative stuff with audiences as interesting as the bands – if not more so. 

Fashion? Of a kind: sometimes you’d get the punk/goth/industrial/whatever uniform-types, but more often than not it was more like anything goes so you’d get punters in wedding dresses, full make-up, clutching bouquets (and that was just the men), fully-dolled-up gorgeous women doing it for a laugh, maybe wearing DMs and a LBD at the same time, suited n booted ska-boys, scruffbags (me) and everything in between. And nobody judged; you might get comments: “nice bra, Paul” and so on, but it was always a given that you just did what you wanted.

These gigs made me and saved me. There’s something completely brilliant about being amidst misfits and weirdoes (whether self-identified, or dubbed thus by straight-head dickheads) that makes/made me always feel like I somehow belonged on the planet. That was not always something I took for granted and quite a lot of the time during my life I’ve wondered why the hell I, me, the essence that looks out from these eyes, whatever, why I am... why I am, and nobody else. I look at other people and they often seem like they know what it’s about. I’m older now and know that’s really not the case: at most, they might not be thinking about it at that precise moment. Confidence is borne on such dismissals of self, I think. 

But put 25 people together, maybe a bit pissed up, maybe on speed or pills or whatever, crank up the amps to ear-bothering levels of scrappy, sscrrrarighhhhhhy feedback, and set the riffs on fire. It creates its own energy, its own moment, its own womb away from the bullshit and the blether of those who live above ground. I’ve not had that transformative/dislocative/disassociative experience in years. Often, I’d wander into a venue with a mate and there it would be, unbidden but powerful and alive. Electric shocks of clock-stopping bastardy that deny analysis by nature.

After the fact, try and explain it to someone. It ain’t easy. Impossible, really, which is why gig reviews were once so revered from all those who couldn’t be there. It’s why you’d get such flowery, flowing and adjectival journalism that veered far, far away from objectivity in an effort – doomed, of course – to come close to trying to speak to a moment that, as soon as it’s acknowledged, is gone forever, and the spell broken too.

But thank fuck for the buggers and the bumblers, the rusty-stringed one-claw bassists and the taped-together-guitar bashers, the hard-headed drummers and the grunting, preening, anti-positive-anti-positive inconsistent singers.

Thank fuck for the vile, seedy venues with the dodgy electrics and the puddles of beer under the feet; the sticky-floor shitholes with lino curling up at the edges in disgust; the walls palimpsest with year upon year of gig posters, the only things holding the damp, crumbled plaster up; the 50p gigs and the 2 quid to charity gigs and the please-buy-our-tape(CD/Minidisc/Vinyl)-so-we-can-afford-to-get-petrol just-off-stagers; the one-channel PA with fucked crossover and burnt out tweeters.

Thank fuck for the place that music really lives. All the rest, in comparison, is corporate Kardashian-burnished, super-sanitised football ground sit-down orchestrated play-the-famous-one-in-the-encore bullshit.

Thank fuck I got to experience all that. Outside those moments, you have to do things like I did today which has been mostly talking to people about boilers and council tax and fucking changing tariffs on gas and looking at life insurance and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

the anticulturalist and fakery

Everything on the internet is fake

this work is fake

the programming underneath it is fake

all the pictures on the internet are fake

where are they

you download them

then you put them on a hard drive

open the hard drive 
there is only electronic stuff there 
like diodes and gizmos and blobs of metal

they did this in zoolander 
i saw it

that was fake too

kenneth goldsmith decided to print out the whole internet once

it was a stupid idea and made lots of waste paper for no real reason

Even when he did it though it wasn’t the internet anymore was it

not really

printing out a picture 
that generates a static version of something fake

that is something tangible I think

but meaningless in its way

and that wasn’t the image on screen anyway

the colours were different

and that image wasn’t the image that was captured by a camera

how could it be

a camera is not an eye

we are not there in the moment

the moment is fake

and all this has been said before

and written before

but not in this exact configuration

thus i condemn them as fakers too

you read this

how do I know you are there

you’re not 
not when i write 
i write it for myself
i suppose

when i look at it again in a week or an hour or a month will it be real then

it’s not a conversation it’s a harangue

it’s not researched or thought out it’s instinctual and anti-academic

and this is the fakery revealed by anticulturalism 
a fake word I made up to bastardise thousands of years of other people’s fake thoughts and theories
for my own reasons
and they are the only ones that are valid for an anticulturalist