one way out

transition

On the last transition, I was perhaps too cryptic. This time...

Ladies and Gentleman, Spring is nearly upon us. Nearly time to bask in the scent of wildflowers and feel the sun on your panda skin.

Welcome to The Mismaze.

on the subject of mutant butoh

Someone said to me the other day: you do know what’s going on in your blog, don’t you? It’s very forty-ish.

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They say we all have a book inside us. It’s true. An autobiography, at least.

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It is interesting to note that most of the memories captured here are at least ten years old. It suggests that a certain amount of time must have elapsed before you find yourself in a position to ‘look back’ or ‘reflect’.

You will not be able to reflect on what happens tomorrow the day after tomorrow.

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This document is connected to its sister document, The Yellow Fever Pages.

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The Yellow Fever Pages were mostly fiction. Fact filtered through fiction. These stories became too dense to be continued. It was a doomed attempt to process events as they occurred through the medium of fiction. An intense, daily process which gave way to the more tranquil task of filtering history through the medium of literature.

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So often things go in threes. They were onto something with the trinity. One’s a start, two’s a continuation, three suggests a conclusion. These pages will now give way to The Mismaze. Another space, which may be more sporadic, containing elements of the previous two and something else which has yet to be discovered.

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Why should a blog last forever? If texts were infinite we’d have to live forever.

Both Yellow Fever and Mutant Butoh would be best read by being printed out, mulled over for a couple of days, which is all they’d take, digested with a mug of tea or a cup of coffee or whatever else keeps the mind company whilst the reader reads.

They could then be put away on a shelf with some companion texts to keep them company, until someone across these idle curiosities and dusts them off. Teases out the connections that lurk within their pages, paragraphs, words and thoughts.

for (ongoing) winter nights

duvet cover

The duvet in Peckham obtains a cover after three nights of waiting. The cover has a white background, with a green seventies shamrock/heart motif repeated over and over and a green border where the motif is picked out in white.

The duvet cover has little pop-buttons which clip shut, though many have gone. On the side is stitched a name tag, Claire Fletcher, which suggests my sister must have taken it to University or boarding school with her, though I'm not certain she ever went to boarding school. There is also a laundry tag on it.

This duvet cover has belonged to one member or another in the family for perhaps twenty years or more. At some point I must have taken possession and it found its way to Vauxhall, from whence it has tonight cycled to parts of South East London it perhaps never expected to visit.

(more) soho depravity

darkness wrapped in light

The singer is no more that a gracefully floppy fringe, bobbing like an apple between roof beams and the backs of heads. He’s flanked by graceful arguments for the benefits of hair product. He has my complete tip-toed attention until he comes up with a line so Bergmanesque, it makes my eyebrows rebel. I retreat to the back of the class.

album cover

The painter has come round to paint the ceiling. I tell him I have to leave in 40 minutes. After 32, he comes and asks me how long he’s got left. I tell him about ten minutes, and he says he’s already done. He must be an American to have got it done so quick. He has a strong Jamaican accent and an easy going manner and I tell him he doesn’t sound American. He replies he lived in NY most of his life. Clearing his stuff away, he says I remind him of John Lennon. He says he used to paint and decorate for him in the apartment overlooking the park. He says John had a cool way about him, he treated people as they were, he didn’t try and be like someone else. He says that’s the best way to be, and he sounds like someone who’s met a lot of people who try not to be the person they are. He leaves me his card. He looks just about old enough to have painted Lennon's walls. Only just. I look at the ceiling. It’s a dazzling and appropriate shade of white.

the strange roads

Being in the wrong is not such an unlikely place to find yourself. Most go there several times a day/week/month. Some would argue that it is the only way of discovering that land called ‘right’ (though this is perhaps mere theological trickery). Acknowledging that one has visited this place is altogether harder. Perhaps its because you have to be out of there in order to acknowledge you’ve been there.

the world spins its web

four months

The child wants to be able to move. It lies on its belly and tries to crawl. Some of the parts work. The knees bend and push. The hands grip and stretch. But its hard to do it all at the same time, to co-ordinate. Yet, the child wants to move. He lies on his belly and he tries. He strains and he furrows his little brow and the effort is intense. He fails but refuses to give up. He will be back and at it again. It cannot be as difficult as it seems. One day, he knows, he will crack it.

not good for your health

the first piece of abstract expressionism

The Roundhead troops rode into the cathedral and smashed the vast stained glass window.

Shards of glass fell to the floor. They smashed sculptures and icons and let their horses shit on the floor and generally desecrated to the best of their abilities.

When they left the citizens came and cleaned up. They collected the glass shards and took them away and hid them, a piece here, a piece there.

The glass fragments lived on in secret, year after year.

When Cromwell died, the citizens brought their pieces of glass back to the Cathedral. They couldn’t put the original pictures back together again. There were no photos to go by. All they had was a crazy stained glass jigsaw puzzle. Rather than re-make anything figurative, they replaced the shards like a mosaic in the new window.

Strangely, although it made no sense, the new window looked even more magnificent than the one the old-timers had stored in their memories.

inverted

The child leaves its parent behind as they prepare to take their mock exam. The child feels supportive yet helpless. The child walks away knowing there is only so much they can do. The child feels vague feelings of antagonism towards the examiner, based on nothing more than that they will judge.

migraine

The first week at university is supposed to be a time of rollicksome high spirits. I hid away and read books. I didn’t know anyone at the university and I didn’t know how to get to know anyone. I didn’t want to make friends with people I wouldn’t want to speak to in three weeks time. Retreat felt like the only option.

In the first seminar, the tutor talked through the books we were to study in that introductory term. The first on the list was Conrad’s Secret Agent. He wanted someone to write an essay, or ‘paper’ as they were now called, to read at the next class. No-one wanted to volunteer, so I did.

I spent the following days working hard. To the sound of young men and women running around in nothing more than sheets, balancing bottles of Newcastle Brown on their heads. My neighbour played the new Waterboys album very loud until the small hours of the morning. I started to get a headache.

The headache stayed with me. It kept me company during the day and during the night. The world was swimming around me, people making friends and deciding what sort of an individual they were planning on being for the rest of their lives, whilst I was nursed by my headache.

It got worse. I had a blue cap which I pulled over my eyes to screen out interference. Finally I found myself sitting in the refectory, eating the small mountain of moussaka which student refectories specialise in, the Cure’s Close To Me playing punchily on the jukebox, tears rolling from under my cap. If they were tears of sorrow then they might have been the tears of my headache. Knowing it was almost time to release my brain and let it loose into the world. It had been amusing, in a way, to be so separate from everything else, but it couldn’t be sustained.

I went out into the world. I discovered the sheep badges signified a love of Housemartins. I pretended to be able to dance reggae with the future founder of Faithless. He professed envy to my way with women. I learned to drink neat gin and whisky. Bought second hand clothes. Found myself sitting on the floor of N’s room at three in the morning on a regular basis. People didn’t know where to place me. They thought I was interesting. I didn’t know why. I had successfully become a part of the world. My headache left me in peace.

The paper on Conrad went down well. The work hadn’t gone altogether to waste. My thesis was that the real secret agent in The Secret Agent was … A sense of humour.

economics

I used to argue with James P about economics. He’d got his job at the Bank of England, he’s probably still there now. He was investigating what held back third world economies. Among other things. He’s the only economist I’ve ever known, so I enjoyed throwing things at him, seeing if I could catch him out.

I used to argue with him about a supposed individual, living somewhere like the Caribbean. Might be reading a book about him at the moment. This individual does fuck all. He (was always a he) sits in a hammock all day. Picks fruit from the tree. Water from the well. They are content with their life. In spite of the fact it can be ascribed no economic value. They earn nothing. Perhaps they are good friends to their friends or they think remarkable thoughts, but to all intents and purposes they contribute nothing. And yet they are happy. Where is this individual’s economic good to be located? If it exists at all.

Hypothetical hammock man used to keep me going for ages. We’d wade through curries talking hypothetical hammock man. I can’t remember what the solution to his problem might have been.

hard labour

The most satisfying jobs in the world do not involve creating things (which is inherently dissatisfying if you have any sense of pride, as the thing you create is never as good as you’d like it to be.) The most satisfying jobs in the world involve destruction. When I worked at the hospital building site, I’d done all the sweeping there was to do. My reward was to be given a sledgehammer and shown a wall that needed knocking down. It went far too quickly. Sledgehammers are remarkable objects. On a job that Steve got me once, painting and decorating an old church, I got the plum job of smashing out roof timbers in the company of a stoned Geordie. We’d balance on two timbers and took out the one in the middle with a rhythmic swing of the hammer. The classic ‘man sawing the branch he’s sitting on’. It beat painting and decorating all ends up. It might be that the combination of physical labour and the fruit of that labour being so rapidly evident is what makes destructive work so satisfying. There’s also something honest about it, as opposed to the perennial hint of smugness that goes with creation (‘Look what I/ we have made’) Perhaps there’s something more profound in the satisfaction to be had from destruction: the quest for a simpler life, which may have existed before they started putting buildings up, designing pretty wheels, getting silicon to reform itself as chips.

keeping the feral at bay

inventory

One packet of Earl Grey
One packet of Coffee
Two roasts (Beef & Chicken)
Two trips to Rebatos
Two maximum three nights insomnia
One test match
Eleven visitors (For whom seven cooked)
Many baths
One shower
Too much TV
The odd football match
Two books only
One delivery
Cheese
Half a bottle of whisky
Two or three bottles of wine
One flood
No disasters

canny george

(warning: the following reveals some of the plot of Syriana)

OK. At the end, you get to drive a four by four across the desert.
Cool. What am I doing there?
You’re there because you’ve found out who the bad guys are who set you up in Beirut.
What happened in Beirut –
It’s not important. You get your nails pulled out by a limey.
OK. So I’m in the four by four. In the desert.
And you intercept the convoy of the good prince –
Not the bad one –
The good one. You pull alongside, flag them down, looks like they’re going to shoot you but they don’t –
No point in driving all that way just to get shot –
He recognises you from the time you got in the lift in Beirut –
Before I got my nails pulled out –
And he looks into your eyes.
He looks into my eyes.
Right.
We have like – a moment.
Exactly.
Then what?
Then –
I –
You both get blown up by the CIA.
We get blown up.
That’s right.
We die?
Un-hunh.
No-one gets saved?
Matt Damon gets saved.
Matt Damon gets saved?
That’s right.
OK, so let me get this – I drive across the desert. I intercept the convoy. I’m doing good. We have a moment. Then – ka Boom?
All over.
OK. Anything else?
You have to pork up and grow a beard.
What kind of beard? Like something suave?
No. Like a biology teacher.
So I look like a dork, I have no plot significance, I get killed, my nails get pulled out … I love your work but it’s a tough call. I’ll do it.
You will?
Yeah. Smells like Oscar to me.

semiotic cricket

The BBC website includes a series of seven pictures of Bush playing cricket in Pakistan. This bizarre meeting of cultures is deemed worthy of greater analysis:

Picture 1: Bush with Inzamam-ul-haq, the Pakistani captain, and Salman Butt, the young opening batsman. Inzamam is one of the broadest sporting superstars in the world. He looks suspiciously like a Pakistani version of Clooney in Syriana. (A film which also contains its cricket reference). Butt has his hands in his pockets, and looks at the President as though he’s faintly amused/ bemused. This suggests Bush is good at putting people at ease or hard to take seriously. Or perhaps both. In one hand Bush holds a cricket ball, in the other, some books. His belt has a Texan twang, looking like something you’d buy at Camden market.

Picture 2: Bush is at the crease, holding the bat in one hand, his arms raised in a faintly simian pose. Behind him, Inzamam walks away whilst schoolchildren in cricket whites look on. One child looks like he might be putting a bail up his nostril. Bush looks ridiculous, one foot just off the ground. There is the air of a high spirited circus.

Picture 3: Bush is batting in the nets. He looks away as a tennis ball is about to strike him/ has just struck him on the shoulder. His grip of the bat and posture are reasonable, not too reminiscent of baseball. He is still wearing his watch, implying that nothing too threatening is being bowled in his direction. His eye is off the ball. In fact it is nowhere near the ball.

Picture 4: Again in the nets, Bush strikes the ball. His posture is reasonable, he is hitting through the line, not across, against his baseball instincts. Bush has an expression of concentration and satisfaction on his face, as he follows the trajectory of the ball. It looks as though he’s starting to get the hang of things. The clue to the picture is in the posture of the young wicketkeeper stood behind, whose hands are excessively relaxed. There was clearly no menace in the delivery. The wicketkeeper’s trousers have retained their neat crease. His expression is benign, almost paternal, even though he looks young enough to be the batsman’s grandson.

Picture 5: In some ways the most beautiful of them all. Bush has three teenagers beside him. He looks as though he is preparing to bowl. The teenager in the middle looks at the President as though she is not sure what to make of him. Is he mad? Is he a clown? If he is (and his facial expression supports this perspective) what does that mean? Her bemusement carries a hint of concern.

Picture 6: The President bowls. As the caption suggest this looks more like a baseball action than a cricket one. Nevertheless, it is executed with gusto. The President is game. His lips are pursed. One young man with a hint of a moustache and a teenager look on. The former has dirty shoes which are not as neat as his clean, new whites. In the background is a sign saying ISLAMABAD and CRICKET. These remind us both that cricket is the most popular and lucrative sport in the Indian sub-continent, and of the fact that Bush, famously, did not know the name of the President of Pakistan before his first election. This whole photoshoot has been designed to increase his visibility and popularity in the region. Pakistan has become a key player in Washington strategy. Bush wants to be seen playing their game. As a reminder of security issues, the shaven head of a white man can be seen in the background. He has no interest in the cricket and his burly form implies he could be plain clothes US security.

Picture 7: The money shot. Bush holds his bat out towards the camera and winks. The wink says that he’s a good sport. It is confidently executed. Two wealthy looking elder statesman stand beside him. He’s in more comfortable surroundings. The bat is no longer something he has to use: it has become a prop. Most of all, we see Bush’s grasp of the art of photogenics. He knows exactly where the camera is and plays to it. Like a model, or an actor. He looks more self-assured than in any other photo. He’s been bold, he’s executed his mission (to play cricket/ to make himself more popular with another demographic), he can afford a certain macho smugness.

playing god

soho moves

Move 1: Oxford Circus to Poland Street. Go to club #1, a louche recreation of nineteenth century colonial bar in Singapore, dark wood, leather sofas, log fire, quiet. Meet Director #1, talk sound mix obstacles, strategy. Actress #1 pops in to pick up make-up in appropriate bag before heading for casting.

Move 2: Oxford Circus to Dean Street: Go to club #2, hints of Regency, more open fires, rules, smell of some Winchester music don’s living room, loud laughing laughers interrupting the quiet with late afternoon drunken laughter, shrill in the context. Meet Writer #1, talk staging plays, dearth of venues, feasibility of venture.

Move 3: Dean Street to Shaftesbury Avenue. Go to Curzon Soho, with Writer #1 who is going to meet Actress #2 who is in premiere of absent Danish director (#2), and will participate in post show discussion. Say hello to Actress #2, all glamour, see the bustle, the hum of art-success, slip away.

Move 4: Shaftesbury Avenue to Charing Cross Road. Go to Foyles. Browse. Flick through biography of a woman who as a ten year old walked from Belguim to Russia and back, was succoured by wolves, killed a soldier. Contemplate Musslich and Moseley, forego both. Flick through introduction of contemporary dramatist, friends of friends…

Move 5: Charing Cross Road to Frith Street via other streets. Time to kill. On Old Compton Street a woman says: We’re all so fucked. That’s why we need this meal so much. Quo Vadis is near empty. Think of Marx scrivening upstairs. Australia humbled by South Africa, seen through the window of The Crown and Two Chairmen. Head for theatre. No-one there. Make a call to Director #3, who’s in a Frith Street Japanese diner eating beef curry noodle. Head there. Talk about Julius Caesar, murder of Cinna, Writer #1. Cut it fine.

Move 6: Frith Street to Dean Street. Go to Soho Theatre and Writers Centre. Meet Director #4, editing her radio play with virtual help of writer (#2), who sends emails from Bora Bora. Run into writer #3, estranged friend of writer #1. Hurry to get in, run into writer #4 who is not coming to watch the play about RSI, but the reading of African play upstairs, and is emerging from theatre as everyone else tries to get in. Take seats but told the kitchen will be invisible from there. Director (#5) of show gives up his seats for us. Watch play with half body on edge of bench, half body suspended in mid-air.

Move 7: Dean Street to Dean Street. Go to Nellie Dean, forsaking overpriced theatre bar, with directors #3+5. Talk constraints of naturalism. Problems of Soho. Which theatres to take over. Actor #1 arrives fresh from stage. Talk constraints of naturalism. Actors infinite. Directors infinite. Writers infinite. The meaning of the six pint show. The lobster that walked from Newfoundland to Dublin.

Move 8: Dean Street to street whose name is too small to remember. Go to Star Bar to visit Actress #3, serving cocktails to lesbians. Talk Oldham Rep, Monday night, Carnival.
Decline to rediscover Writer #1 who is still with Actress #1, headed for Club #2.

Move 9: Back to Oxford Circus. Street cleaners leaning in green/gold uniforms, breathing in a cold which does not belong to them. Woman with dog on long lead attracting masculine attention. Crowds thinning out. Train strangely empty. Another day done.

the yellow shirt

I’d invited Elisa round to Blackheath for some supper. She lived in Greenwich and she walked up over the heath. She was wearing a yellow shirt.

Elisa was from Lancashire. When I joined the shop she was assistant manager. She was a no-nonsense woman, who had lived in Turkey for a while with her boyfriend and who was saving up money to go back there.

I’d been living in Blackheath for a while. It wasn’t comfortable as H also lived in the same block. All bad timing. Later, Sedley moved in round the corner. It was another one room bedsit, with a futon bed, a baby belling, and a meter you put 50p pieces in to keep warm. Unlike H’s bedsit, it didn’t have a view of the heath. I was only there for six months.

Elisa ended up staying over. She crashed on the floor, I crashed on the futon. Or maybe it was the other way round.

The next day I went into the shop in King’s Road, where I was manager. (Elisa worked in the Neal Street branch.) Rebecca was there. George had recently given me a yellow cord shirt which he didn’t want. It was almost identical to Elisa’s shirt.

Rebecca, who was from Tamworth, and who got me the job at the Royal Albert Hall, said – nice shirt. I knew she was thinking something else. Then she asked me if I’d seen Elisa. I told her I had. In fact, Elisa had come for supper last night. Rebecca raised her eyebrows.

A little later, Rebecca said:
Doesn’t Elisa have a shirt like that.
I said she did.
A little later, Rebecca said:
That’s Elisa’s shirt, isn’t it?
I told her it wasn’t.
Rebecca asked me if Elisa had stayed the night.
I said she had. But not like that.
Rebecca couldn’t hold maintain her composure any longer. She came right out with it.
I can’t believe you slept with Elisa, she said.
I tried to persuade her I hadn’t.
But you’re wearing her shirt!

beginning of the end (job number 45)

The owner summoned me for a meeting at the head office, near Olympia. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew that the figures had been good. I also knew that the owner, a sturdy North American with a brazen ‘tash and an awkward manner, didn’t particularly like me.

The meeting was in the morning. The owner’s ‘advisor’ was there, an angular woman who would be kind one minute and vicious the next. She would descend on the shops, children in tow, and have staff rearranging them at a moment’s notice. Her visits were dreaded slightly more than the owner’s for their unpredictability, her pleasantness as unwelcome as her criticism.

The two svengalis of the shoe world sat me down on an uncomfortable bench. They offered neither tea nor coffee. They asked me how I thought it was going. I gave an upbeat assessment of my first few months in charge. Takings up. Shop looking tidier. Staff approachable and reliable.

They let me talk for a while, and then interrupted. I don’t know what it's like to be wounded and bloody out on the plains of the Serengeti, watching the hyenas circle before they approach and gleefully tear strips off your flesh. I suspect this experience is about as close as I’ll ever get.

Every detail of my stewardship of their shop was raked over. Every discount I’d ever given. Every time they’d driven past the shop, unseen, and spotted a member of staff yawning. Every layer of dust their spot checks had revealed, even down in the stockroom. Every faulty pair of shoes I’d replaced for a disaffected customer. The music I allowed the staff to play. The list of my crimes was endless.

However, more than this list, was the manner of its telling. I had been tried, judged, and lined up for execution. This was my final reprieve. Their intention was more than to merely tear up my pride, they wanted to break my psyche and assert their absolute dominance.

I sat there, shell-shocked. I had been working hard. Doing a good job. Takings were up. They were wealthier as a result of my labours. On several occasions I had been exposed to the risk of Sloane violence, defending their near-indefensible returns policy. Expecting some kind of appreciation I had been given the opposite.

It was a fine enough day. I did not hurry back to the shop in the King’s Road. I dawdled, unable to quite believe the chasm that could be constructed between individuals sharing (apparently) the same goals. In this case nothing more complex than to sell as many earth-friendly shoes as possible.

I never worked as hard for them again.

apposite

The sky is a beautiful crisp shade of blue. The sunlight hints at the Spring which is to come. Perfect conditions for a man to spend his final day in the dungeon.

between and betwixt

ash wednesday

Due to the vagueries of the international cricket schedule, I catch the morning service, on this first day of Lent. How soothing to know that it is all part of the divine agency; that we must learn to acknowledge our imperfections with the assistance of our fellow sinners; strive to correct our imperfections; put our gladrags and party clothes away for forty days and forty nights; forego pleasure; atone for sins; await the day we are reborn more perfect than before.

grizzly man

‘I had been in the jungle’ says Werner Herzog at one point and you get the feeling there might be more to that statement than meets the eye.

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The way the mother unconsciously moves her dead son’s teddy bear’s paws as she speaks, as though she has the same instinct to connect with these creatures as he had.

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Timothy had a boogie board with a union jack on it – does this reveal anything? If so what?

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The sight of two bears fighting one another, a vision of the immense ferocity that is innate to the natural world, one of the most terrifying things you could ever see.

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The laconic, grizzled narrator counterpointing the films’s ebullient, unhinged protagonist. Both of them filmmakers, both capable of being seduced by the call of the wild. One a moptop fatalist, the other a steely survivor. Begging the question which is the real grizzly man of the title?