winchester 3
Winchester scarves are long, loose-knitted creations, given out with colours for particular achievements. The scarves are called pussies. You can win a first XI pussy for sports. Or you can win a pussy for belonging to the backgammon society. One of the most treasured pussies is that of the croquet club.
J, one of the boys in the dormitory, has a Rasta pussy, in Rasta colours. J belongs to the Rasta society. J plays Bob Marley, but he also plays Burning Spear and Augustus Pablo and more. He also plays The Raincoats and The Slits. And Bauhaus and Extreme German Noise bands. He plays PIL very loudly.
J’s mother lived with Steve Winwood from The Spencer Davis Group. He grew up for a while in a cottage in the Cotswolds where clothes were banned. J’s father is a filmmaker who he rarely sees. J’s father has unseen footage of The Beatles tripping on a plane on the way to India. There are photos of J with three of The Beatles, the only one missing is the one he loves.
J sits and plays me this music. Which is alien to me. I have to learn to love it.
J is obsessive. He gets crushes on people, which lead nowhere and mean nothing. One night he believes he’s offended me and comes and sits by my bed asking me to forgive him. He hasn’t offended me so I can’t. The whole thing’s embarrassing.
J continues to obsess about people. Another night, years later, he’s very depressed, because the person he’s obsessing about has been ignoring him. He finds solace in The Rites of Spring, which he plays louder than he used to play PIL. He talks me through each beat. When the strings come in he compares them to a school of little fish.
J becomes more idiosyncratic as he gets older. Soon after we leave Winchester he takes to visiting the sites of power stations and drives me down to one in Somerset for the day. Both the bonnet and the roof of his 2CV fly off at regular intervals. He rolls cigarettes as he drives. Another time he locks me out of his Cambridge rooms at three in the morning and I have to spend two hours in a phone box fending off the fen cold. Years later, I run into him at the ICA.
Last year there was a short film of his on Channel 4. He was hitch-hiking around Britain, interviewing the people who picked him up. Several of them talked about suicide. They responded to his erudite tones with tragic stories. No matter how amazing their stories, J appeared neither to be phased, nor inclined to show them any mercy.
He’s out there, somewhere, in this city.
J, one of the boys in the dormitory, has a Rasta pussy, in Rasta colours. J belongs to the Rasta society. J plays Bob Marley, but he also plays Burning Spear and Augustus Pablo and more. He also plays The Raincoats and The Slits. And Bauhaus and Extreme German Noise bands. He plays PIL very loudly.
J’s mother lived with Steve Winwood from The Spencer Davis Group. He grew up for a while in a cottage in the Cotswolds where clothes were banned. J’s father is a filmmaker who he rarely sees. J’s father has unseen footage of The Beatles tripping on a plane on the way to India. There are photos of J with three of The Beatles, the only one missing is the one he loves.
J sits and plays me this music. Which is alien to me. I have to learn to love it.
J is obsessive. He gets crushes on people, which lead nowhere and mean nothing. One night he believes he’s offended me and comes and sits by my bed asking me to forgive him. He hasn’t offended me so I can’t. The whole thing’s embarrassing.
J continues to obsess about people. Another night, years later, he’s very depressed, because the person he’s obsessing about has been ignoring him. He finds solace in The Rites of Spring, which he plays louder than he used to play PIL. He talks me through each beat. When the strings come in he compares them to a school of little fish.
J becomes more idiosyncratic as he gets older. Soon after we leave Winchester he takes to visiting the sites of power stations and drives me down to one in Somerset for the day. Both the bonnet and the roof of his 2CV fly off at regular intervals. He rolls cigarettes as he drives. Another time he locks me out of his Cambridge rooms at three in the morning and I have to spend two hours in a phone box fending off the fen cold. Years later, I run into him at the ICA.
Last year there was a short film of his on Channel 4. He was hitch-hiking around Britain, interviewing the people who picked him up. Several of them talked about suicide. They responded to his erudite tones with tragic stories. No matter how amazing their stories, J appeared neither to be phased, nor inclined to show them any mercy.
He’s out there, somewhere, in this city.
posted by maldoror at 12:17 a. m.
1 Comments:
You want a sweetie, i hear.
You mean a suction.
Quoth he?
You mean her?
I don't know if it was J who pointed that out. But in the hands of the exotic creatures we became in that hothouse of perversity it was inevitable.
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