Performance Heresy

What's that you say?
Wrangle some words on a page to be read on a stage.
Well OK.
But performing is a distant form from the norm of my world,
which swirls between four walls with an audience that is always absent.
I'm more at home at home, than on a pedal stool, feeling a fool
with lights in eyes and cries of laughter coming out of the dark
ever after. Or worse still - Nothing
just me, going unseen, having left the house,
armed with something great to speak about
that just falls on absent ears
and so it's only as the curtain calls, in tears I fall and realise,
in breathless sighs, there wasn't a point to performing at all.

What's wrong

Maybe life isn't hard enough
and I don't try hard enough.
Perhaps I'm having too much fun today,
But there is precious little to suggest that.
As I sit here going out of a mind
that has precious little time to find
an escape from the trapping and trimmings
of a reality, it hits me -
Sideswiping, headlong until tomorrow,
sure, I'll plough on but for how long.
With aching bones and a brain that drones
through the night until tomorrow.
Still, I'm filled with sorrow for all of those
affected and rejected by these tones
of a life that I too loathe.
So, even though I'm homing in closer,
closer to acceptance is still negligent
to my eloquence which is the problem here.
I can articulate the doom,
but not fight against it.
This is life in the ranks of the affected and rejected,
craving the tastes of successes and contentments.
But seldom they're seen in the pastures I'm after.
This is the vicious and viscous circle,
treading through the mire
of an eloquent squire with so much to say
about what's wrong but with no one to hear
so much as the utterance of a letter
of how to make me feel much better.

And there you have it.

Him indoors

Hiding from the world, closing curtains on the longest day.
You'll see me when I find a voice and not before, I fear.
It is hard to be heard over the thunderous racket
of a crowded world gone crazy, so down hearted I'll stay.

I am not afraid to say "the door seems too far a stretch".
But it gets caustic inside these constant walls and windows,
the air growing stagnant with wasted, stale ambitions
that will never get to see the light of summer solstice.

It gets harder to remember my lost vitality,
the exuberance of a once creative mind - now fogged.
Here I am beyond the sunset, beneath the moon and stars,
Anchored still, here I remain, dejected, jaded and dry.

These Lands

We are the sum of our parts

Impurities and all, we are the sum of our parts. But it is more fun that way...

Lord only knows...

Oh God. Jesus shitting Christ. Fucking hell. I’d love to get a handle on my blasphemes. How many times a day I take the Lord’s name in vain, except of course in my universe – which I’m fairly sure is reality – there is no Lord. Well there is Sebastian Coe and a few others but I think you know what I’m getting at – saying ‘Oh my fucking Lordy-Lord’ as a reference to a former Olympian turned politician seems a bit of a stretch – despite his undoubted good work. No, the name we are taking in vain here is that of the Lord God Almighty - if you need to get a better handle on who that is, unlike Seb Coe you don’t need Wikipedia, you can just click next blog above until you see what some sad sap is quoting from the bible about the creator or worse still his fictional off spring. Nope, no God here I’m afraid (and why wouldn’t you be afraid – those fuckers take their shit, and I mean shit, seriously); sure, current gaps in science makes space for mysticism for belief in the things we can’t prove, but I think we’re over most forms of literal interpretations of religion now, moral guidelines are fine but let’s not start fighting about our superstitions. I think we‘ve evolved beyond that now. Naked beliefs are not something to be pushing about and certainly not something to be forcing on your children; put those blogs in the ground, we don’t need them anymore and heaven’s door was only ever a poor metaphor.

So, strange then with all this cursing of the much lauded creator and his special book and wotnot that there’s me, Mr Atheist or Agnostic depending on what day of the week it is, still saying ‘Oh God’ or ‘Jesus fucking Christ’ an inordinate about of times a day. God knows (point proven) if there was a God and taking his name in vain was ultimately a sore point for him I’d be struck down with the rest of the fuckers fighting to prevent abortion but supporting killing other innocents in his name and taking money from the poor and ignorant to do both. Oh, no wait, that’s his bunch anyway – so I’m probably the least of his worries just cussing him. Either that or it’s just some left over language and in a more civilised age we’ll be cursing evolution and damning singularities – look what you’ve made me do now genetic mutations etc. For now though I’ll continue my blasphemy and make no apology, until someone or something can show me otherwise. Unless it does turn out that Seb Coe is God almighty, in which case I shall up the ante and increase my swearing until he does strike me down – for that would be a world I would wish to inhabit even less than one overrun with our current religious zealots. A-fucking-men to that.

First Person People

So I started reading a bit of Kerouac today after I found ‘On the Road’ for £2 in a charity bookshop; it had a brief biography in the introduction and some bits about Neal Cassady, Ginsberg et al. Having read that and coupled with my usual doses of HST and Buk I have to say I’m concerned. These lads were some serious drinkers and drug abusers so you have to be worried for your own health should you find yourself entertaining them as heroes or even perhaps admiring their writing, since in all cases it was fairly interlinked with their lifestyles. I like a drink and there have been times in my life where I’ve had to calm it down, most know I like a smoke and that will probably be an issue I deal with for the rest of my life, I’ve smoked like others breathe air for a good many years, but not so much anymore. I guess it’s a fear that I like writing from the first person and that perhaps it is only with the drink, drugs and insanity that it begins to be interesting. The fear comes from the pain, suffering and early death that is likely to ensue – I don’t have the constitution of a Hank or a Hunter – but hey, if it makes for good literature maybe that makes it ok. But I doubt it.
We’ll see I guess, my writing yesterday was shocking and today I'm writing dry. Back to Kerouac - see where this road goes, other than alcoholic ulcers and renal failure.

... Updating it after a slow and painful read I'm no reviewer but come on, Down and out in Paris and London it was not, and no Factotum either.

Shifting Seasons

Suffice to say it is in the very fabric of my national culture to discuss the weather, increasingly though it seems this is not just part of some mundane or inane time passing conversation but instead a reaction to changes to all of that we have become accustomed. Weather is everywhere in my life, in my language in the many and various clichés and colloquialisms of my outdoor work and leisure. All that I hold dear in nature and sport is governed by the seasons and their change. April showers that evolve in to warm dry summers with Sunday cricket drifting on into light evenings; it’s been the same for all living memory. Of course the weather, perhaps more in this country than elsewhere, cannot be predicted but generally we get things done, by hook or by crook or under brolly. Wimbledon is played - even if it runs over and stawberries and cream is eaten, with or without the odd summer downpour; test match special thrives on a rain break and it is these things that keep Britannia’s islands in the great category to which she has become accustomed. However, something strange is happening to our climate or perhaps it’s not strange if you listen to the scientists and look at the larger picture of an expanding population with the pollution it brings. Those April showers are becoming early summer hazy days and the coming of autumn is increasingly an Indian summer; meanwhile in-between we have days like today, wet and gloomy. Another June Sunday with village fetes attended in wellingtons, cricket teams phoning around news of cancellation and abandonment. As we get more wet summer days I've begun to think of British weather more in terms of a tropical climate with a wet season and extremes normally associated with far flung destinations, rather than our temperate norm.

So what’s the reaction to this unseasonal downpour? In my case make sure the team is aware cricket is off, before resorting to sport on television, write up this blog and cook roast beef and Yorkshire puds with the added bonus of in-season strawberries and cream for dessert. But away from this damp Sunday and looking at climate change as a whole, our world is undergoing a weather revolution and with that will come a transformation of language and culture that has developed alongside it; we'll need to get used to it as we've come too far to ever rectify it.

Down Turn

I should be spending my day filling in job applications, but perhaps instead I’ll spend some time on the wider issue. The rich are getting richer while the rest of us are struggling. Perhaps not struggling to eat or put a roof over our heads but struggling to meet the expectations that have been dictated to us through our formative years. Two of my closest friends have both lost their jobs in the last 6 months and I’m scraping by in a part time role. We all work in different sectors, myself in the great outdoors, one friend in nano-chemistry the other in fashion design. Meanwhile, those with jobs they dislike are told to feel grateful for what they have and are too afraid to make a foray in to an overcrowded and uncertain jobs market. This is life of middling adults in an economically south facing society, we’re waiting for the sun to pop up over the horizon, swing round and bathe our faces but as yet, there is no sign. Instead we make the most of what we’ve got, cut back and economise whilst watching those on the television making more and more money and squirreling it away in off shore bank accounts and turning their back on an economy and a country beset with an imbalance that needs redressing.

The reality I face might not be the end of the world in comparison to the upheavals and suffering in the other parts of the world, but our injustice of rising outgoings and static incomes is becoming to hit home. These are my early thirties, I may not act my age but I’m starting to look and feel it; wouldn’t it be nice to take on some of those things that come with age – wealth, ownership, supporting your dependants – but finances make all these things at best risky at worse an impossibility. The distractions are many and various – endless shelves of music, films and books, hundreds of channels of television, theatre, shopping, restaurants, sports, leisure in all its guises and of course the new found distraction of this century, computerised technology. With all of this on offer there is no reason to make room for time to think about the realities of your existence, it just bubbles away in the background and rears its head when someone takes the time to have a serious conversation but more likely we’ll just concern ourselves with frivolity and struggling on. Time to go get distracted...