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Friday, 26 May 2006
Documents project.
Fire On The Lifeboat's musical, diabetic brother can be found at the myspace site of Document: a sound project.
UPDATE: Myspace is currently undergoing maintenance and may be unpredictable.
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Tuesday, 23 May 2006
Idea theft.
To the end of the day and to The River, to Disengage. Both contain hours of drone and lull, not always unchallenging but always acting as the creation of a non-silence. They enact bodily processes, ambient environmentals, the sound of the street.
They have accompanied my work and today has been profitable. I have be adapting and stealing from others.
In order to adequately investigate the modern nation we need a writing that transcribes the ambivalence of time & place with a nation's identity. These words are not mine, but they could have been, they are now.
(Still constantly fascinated by the internal/external aspect of language; that is, that language is an external expression of self which the internal self can no longer control. Ironically, this has been better said by others.)
The 'modern' nation is defined by: homogeneity, literacy, anonymity.
The real site in which the ambivalence of the nation becomes manifest is within the discourse of the minority; they are the limits at the limits. The voice of the minority is a recognition, is a beginning, a renewal and so their voice is the one of constant flux.
As a thief of ideas, I surely must exist at some margin.
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Monday, 22 May 2006
One-two-three.
Crook of a spine, legs crossed and in chair but then, and only then, standing and reading from paper. The occasion of an event, John's celebration, unaccompanied voices and the sparse, healthy intonation of space within song. What is said, what is not said.
Then performance from the judges: a short tentative poem, old at the edges but with reticent heart; a ballad stolen from a shanty, echoes of the man himself; finally, the Bach prelude, the philharmonic leader caressing violin fret and urging the room to standing applause.
Finally, the awards given, one-two-three. Tearful, dutiful winners boasting of a complex, claiming of a relationship more real in the moment of things, that in the sense of its terms. We owe a debt that we never knew and things continue to continue.
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The academic coil.
Crowded with light, an intense grey from the window and the sills reflecting as solid white bands. Yesterday's re-memories are close, apostrophed and footnoted and correct.
The academic push, works being completed at a progressive rate; this can be called progress. Three reading lists dispensed with, bibliographies intact and sources referenced. These are the final stages and come easily.
It is, however, the opening of a new chapter, the final research project of this semester, that sings loud. Moving into culture and imperialism once more, facts of nation and fictions of narration piling in, clamouring for weight and discussion. Nine articles to be read somewhere during the ensuing week.
Then to planning and more, the situation of loss, the culling of weak ideas and the promotion of a tight coil at the centre, a circle of linked concepts that turn back on themselves in order top prove themselves; the academic flux that plays at the heart of all my work must retain strength whilst commanding flexibility. The universal applicable, the local remedy, the questioning answer that refuses to lie still.
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Sunday, 21 May 2006
It's not coming together.
A drenching and yet more poetry. Hunger is in sight and the shoes dry on the radiator as slow, computer thought comes into an equation of its own. The end of the street is hazed with water, bust gutters as tap onto concrete yards, and I am waiting.
The daily occurance, keeping up an appearance of sorts has been made today. Judging a songwriting competition, live unaccompanied voices, my remit as poet - look at the words. I listen to the words.
Hurry across the streets, vault the standing water, there are no cars.
Third poetry reading in two weeks, this one impromptu and killed by fortifying, awe-filled preludes of Bach from solo violin immediately after. A follow, followed.
Poetry is becoming a nice habit.
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Friday, 19 May 2006
Street.
Summer rain in spring, dampening and quietening onto the road and pavements, a residue dimming and fading. The red wooden porch, black wooden porch, blue wooden porch, black wooden porch remain stiff in the wind. Blossom clouds into the air and then settles in doorways and up against kerbs, the brackish & tired plants in the windowboxes exhausted by the wind.
This is the street, and the site of evidence, the case in hand. And whilst contracts are up, time is over and deadlines of mid-August have been drawn between landlord and tenants, the street will remain. Not just in shell and postcode, nor simply in association and topograph, but in the actuality of my everyday.
The annual renewal of house contract has been rendered impossible by crumbling plaster, tipping doors, sparking, shorting electrics and dog-eared walls. We must move, we have to move out. Where to?
The perfect answer: upstairs.
Taking over the flat directly above, the flat with three bedrooms and two other rooms, the flat with the grand sloped kitchen and stepped yard, the flat from where a year of noise and sleeplessness originated. Some have been here longer.
Now however, we have taken a gamble; a musician and a poet, a photographer and a writer, a journalist and a musician, a writer and a composer - the combinations continue, flexing and rotating like Rubik's.
And the new living space will not just portray a kind of placed-in-place but rather a formative dwelling. The plans are afoot for the recording studio, the gallery, a writer's study, artists-in-residence, sub-letting to those who wish to contribute to a series of books, a series of albums all glued together from field recordings, environmental consequences and the chance of who might be passing through.
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Tuesday, 16 May 2006
Trope.
Such slowness, drawling over Freud's uncanny. The ideas fly around inside but any incision is stalled by the momentum of head to mouth to head to wrist to keyboard to screen. Each component of a sentence suffers a physical barrier. The headache I have - its origins desperately unknown, as always - offers the greatest blockage.
I have begun to worry about radiation pouring from my computer screen.
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Monday, 15 May 2006
Anti-photography.
Non-photography is floating around and it is something that hits like a chorus. Many debates over smoky Sunday dining tables - my talk weak with hunger - have resulted in clenched fists and flung paper. A keen friend loves to Lomo. He searches events with his Russian automat, finger beaded with sweat, tension-strained-tensions, a tendon out of place.
Often, during these evenings, he attempts to persuade me to drop my rejection of cameras. I dislike them, I feel awkward taking pictures, they obscure an internal recognition a connection. I cannot write of something I have photographed. He claims our difference is the result of memory; his faltering, mine acute, if not entirely transient. In my head, odd little moments resonate, flight times dissipate.
For me, looking at other people's holiday snaps holds itself as numbing as listening to other people's dreams. And yet everyone takes them, as expert. There must be more amateur photographers than painters, poets and sculptors put together. And they function as dreary documenters, just as weblogs function as amateur Kafkas, manic Blanchots, reticent & shy B.S.Johnsons. The blanketing of standards, the sense of DIY mocks an elite both positively and negatively.
There is no sense of time in a bad photograph.
But of course, the antithesis of this is the reason of a good photograph, it transcends inks and the rectangular borders, moves away from geographies and pulls unapparent relationships into shot. Therefore, unhesitantly, I love the Lomo pictures of my friend. Not of all of the photographs, because not all of them work, not all of them do the work. But the ones that succeed are processes of survival, relationships created and exposed in trays.
I hate to photograph because I, like the majority of photographers, am no good.
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Friday, 12 May 2006
News of the world.
The fascination with news and the reporting of news continues. Alongside, a sense of how I can conjoin my studies with a fictional discipline. The narrative contained within newstype holds a continuous attraction, and yet I cannot see journalism as a vocation. Things are happening, movements of peoples and movements of ideas are being recorded in the innocent serif and institution of daily journals.
The refugees of Chagos end exile from white beached homelands; Andalusian government pays for the demolition for of half-finished tourist monoliths on the graveyard of the costas; the systematic exposure of 4,500 former KGB agents in Latvia threatens to tear at heart of Baltics; alarming Bulgarian stability and market economy questioned in light of ascension to EU; Sri Lankan militants kill seventy as country moves towards fringes of war; anniversary of Chinese cultural revolution and its deep significances; US infringement of privacy issues at stake as telephone data patterns are scrutinised in silence; Escalation in popularity of Russian filmic works banned under previous Soviet regimes, gives rise to remakes and republished samizdats.
The poetry of world news is not to baulked at. Any fool can lay metaphor upon fact, but what we investigate here is not how rhythmical and dramatised reportage may be, but an examination of its techniques and inferences, its relevances and insight. There are narratives buried within, and the media exists as both a representation and a catalyst. These things do not exist for us without the word of another.
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Thursday, 11 May 2006
Nicotine and asparagus.
So must be quick, I have set a curfew of my own - head down and working by eleven. A delightful evening last night with my newly engaged friend last night. We haven't been casual for a while, no expectations or agendas, no forced meetings or structured time, just an ample evening in which to talk, smoke and eat.
She roasted cashews in oil, salt and chilli as we spoke of things, mining the exploits of the underpaid and underfunded while I drew back on the week-that-never-was. I opened champagne, accidentally. Then, asparagus tips drowned in butter and lemonjuice, creamed feta and dark large spinach leaves.
After eating, we drew up lists of music for the wedding, spanning decades, whilst smoking cigarette after cigarette and giving ourselves fierce nicotine headaches into the small hours. The walk home was still and warm, lit by the moon, and gradually as I fell into exhaustion the headaches were released like balloons.
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Tuesday, 09 May 2006
Crimewatch.
On arrival, I realised I had forgotten the thing I arrived for. Soon after, although not immediately, I returned to the house. We sat and talked in the dining room, next to the dismantled piano, an instrument removed of its side panelling and several keys. Strings poured out of the lid, itself propped ajar with newspapers.
The kitchen was freshly plastered and my host left me for a moment to make tea amongst the smooth terracotta walls. Looking out into the yard, I saw descriptions of things; a coiled hose, a broken, unpainted fence, the push of weeds through old concrete.
Another man joined us, having left his work in the next room. The pot of tea was brought to the table and left standing, the spout resting against a bound and laminated pile of magazines, unopened. We spoke of lost things, the element of chance within any lending that might be abused. Earlier the laundrette had misplaced my jumper. The two men offered that it might have been stolen. That would be the place to do it, I said. Steal clothes that is. They have a poster absolving them of any responsibility to any damage, loss or theft. It is signed 'The Management'.
Home security is an issue round here, we must all double-bolt our back-doors and reinforce our gates. Each front access point is heavily grilled or double glazed. The door has a deadlock, a yale lock, a mortice lock, a chain and bolts. You can barely get out.
Eventually I remembered what I had arrived for, and I returned to get it. It took a while longer than I thought, but very soon I was moving back up the street, past the numbers, with a slide projector in my arms.
I knocked on the door, offered both apologies and thanks, although I'm not sure why. He took it from me and I wanted to be invited in for a second time, but there was very little to talk about. We protracted and prolonged upon the doorstep. I offered a weak movement down the street and indicated at the trees, now in bloom. We agreed on their appearance so I made a vague invitation and left.
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Monday, 08 May 2006
China heritage.
The guilt/non-guilt writing of 11:57. Having known that I rose at 10:02, and that this is my first ink of the day, then you might scorn. But I have been cleaning and eating and rearranging things, and washing too, both myself and my clothes. The dust and damp have been flung out into the hazy intimacy of early May winds.
The dream of a burning house, the razing of my home was a traumatic one. There was no drama inherent, that is to say I did not experience first hand the fire, but heard about it by proxy. The consequences however, were all mine to deal with, attempts to mourn and rebuild, the reacquisition of music collections and houseplants and paintings. Those years of papers lost - what would happen if you lost your heritage, if the silent projects that you had unknowingly been working on were terminated?
Yet this perhaps is what happens daily. We drop ideas, intellectual pursuits and academic leanings just as we drop a saucer or china plate. And perhaps one of these blind, invisible concepts was a conceit of our own making, perhaps it was a valid and entirely beautiful mode of enquiry, now totally abandoned, now totally irredeemable. We stray from that particular path through the everyday, just by picking up another book, concerning ourselves with yet another fiction or the dearth of poetic constructs that seem to fill our days.
It is gone forever, the king is dead. Long live the king. We must solace and relax in regeneration, adoption of the new, the faith of words and times, the - ever more vital - assimilation of influence. The hallmark of our century, after the ease of the nineties where all was dumb expression, is a sensitivity; a sensitivity to histories (always plural) and subjects (always plural). We dwell within the climes of 'post-', meaning not after but over, on and on, layers and layers, echoes and shivers.
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Saturday, 06 May 2006
Politricks.
The decline of weather, an opening and shutting of clouds upon Saturday. Last night's poetry reading was tamed, organisers as horse whisperers, calming the influence, hoping for a break. When fatigue strikes at the emotions, all is held in suspense like oil floated in water.
Minor panics abound. Woke to brawling youths cracking each others temples across parked cars and pavements, the rush of blood and scuffing of fists. After all had died down, tried to sleep but was too frantic about futures lost and gained. My lemon-tree was appalled. The middle-class conundrum doesn't quite wash, playing my fears out as the result of some position of social privilege does not suffice. That argument - the irrelevance of the English voice - is only valid in cases of failure. I do not plan to fail; this may well be my problem.
Trial and teething experienced on a family level has tired and worn me, and left me longing for a revelation, a beautiful surprise that acts simultaneously as flattery and vacation; the ego from the normative, the diamond on the kitchen floor, the Ginsberg journals at the back of Oxfam.
Feeling an increasing political bent to my enquiries at the moment, wishing to engage with that patchwork of humanity, the manifestation and organisation of co-habitation, both representing and causing affiliates to live. It is the game, the one true game. It is a gentle, playful exhibition of control and movement, of ascension and deliverance. Governments are the maps of our lives, they both guide us and are written by us.
There is no authority contained inherently, nor any relevance, they must seek to address and redress. They fascinate, condone and repel; they are to be studied like books. They are living books. The kind of book I wish to write should function like politics; a despised, chosen, confronting and adaptive movement that chooses its own path.
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#100.
On post number one hundred, we are still not writing to any standard. Infrequent, unfocused idiocy remains the order of the day. The origins of the project have slipped away, to the detriment I think. I was writing better two years ago.
I do, however, have more ideas now. And that is my excuse and my motivation.
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Friday, 05 May 2006
Results in
| Name | Description | Votes Polled | %Ward Poll | Majority |
| Muhammad Akhtar Ali | Liberal Democrats | 994 | 38.5 | |
| Vivien Ellen commonly known as Viv Browne | British National Party | 157 | 6.1 | |
| Peter Roy Hilton | Green Party | 172 | 6.7 | |
| Joyce McCarty | The Labour Party Candidate | 1031 | 39.9 | 37 |
| Jacqueline Mary McNally | The Conservative Party Candidate | 227 | 8.8 |
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Prickly.
Sun blinding in off streetcars as I sit down, planning the day, allowing for the fact that this word will be the first of many. Abandoning schoolwork feels grand, an important release. This week has been a tempest and the uncurling of things only happens with space and distance.
The levity of my hours are compounded by a raging hangover. Unable to take alcohol anymore, my body rebels. I shall steer away from the wine tonight. The evening will be focused upon heat; a theme of crematoriums, celebrity magazines and long shadows.
Talking of them, long shadows fall from my eyes, horrid bloated face with bloodshine and line, gurgling repetitive stomach and faltering pale limbs - I am to retreat into a correspondence with myself, a hungover indulgence while poetry readings draw closer and I wait, wait, wait for the electricity to be turned back on.
So write me.
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Thursday, 04 May 2006
Local democrat.
The fallout begins, continues and ends today. Sleep-assisted organisation has removed the halo from events, has etched the dream out of the day. I will process with reticence and eventuality, but I am not the type to shed tears. There is a coldness about the happening of an event that I experience, I don't absorb it. The architecture of a room, the inflections of windowed light, the dance of sunshine upon veneer - these are held. Words merely fall.
Today reads as democracy. Local elections numbing all, I try to enthuse others if only to silence the sidewinding BNP. Vote if you can, this is reason enough.
Discussions of poetry events are fruitful too, co-organisers having been distracted but meeting in untidy house over Ceylon and oats. Then, bran and potato omelette. Here be duties. Talk of future and alliterative dates, 42nd birthdays, magazine articles.
All of this reminds me that the location of culture, materialist feminism, colonial resistance and comparative identities in the postmodern climate lie, unsheathed, in great stacks on my desk. But there is no time, must be off to work. They allow me to stare at the sunshine through the window, it's a grace of sorts.
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Wednesday, 03 May 2006
On the way, and there.
Tuesday, full of impassivity, laden with finds and motorway anxiety, heading towards the funeral. In one's head the rewriting of this a thousand times occurs, the endless slips and recoveries fashioned through each thousand, notched upon a milestone, 800 units to there and back. The roadside sets up flashing tempters and recalled splits of mind, all headed into lanes, directed through swerving cones and drifts of tumbling grass spores. Every now and again - there - the carcass of a dilapidated coach-house, skeleton timber and shunted slate, nettles as high as rooms.
The rejection of the grand narrative is brought to the conversation. Dull mumble into swept air, cigarettes through wound down windows. Try not to cry, we're barely there (actually, we've barely left). Nothing read, nobody reads, the resurpassing of the objectionable poet upheld in forlorn junction interchanges, the swoop and flutter of gull and bridge. Great ideas held in the overhead. Violent swatches of rapeseeds filtering over chalky, sliced meadows, the descent into wrought steel running bars which dip and weave alongside the chassis, plunging into black gravel.
Mother, jumpy behind the wheel (later to be involved in a non-blame traffic accident) aging less every day, hunting ghosts with paper. Resuppose the dead poets, speak up into the back, all tone and volume lost as articulated haulage rumbles past, over eager. Stare at the horizon, nausea, then stare at the horizon. Put down the book and the newspaper too. You used to read so much as a child, sitting upon her thigh.
Her, she - of course - was remembered all day. The letter-writer they called her. Woman of epistles, branching into grammar for solace now, sacked the dishonest cleaning lady for breach of trust, moving into correspondence to chase away the quiet. It all started at the shoe factory, then marriage on the Outer Hebrides (the church still holds the record), then support of hospices, lived here all her life (except the parts we forgot to mention). People stirred uneasy, over easy, when they mentioned the hiding of tablets. Tried to implicate her gamefulness, a sense of play. In reality, she had forgotten how to eat.
No one smiled when the vicar repeatedly said her name wrong. She tried four different combinations, none of which fell out quite right. Still, congregation were too bloodshot and grimacing to notice, full of tears, some pressing sticks into the corners of their eyes. And as they left, four uneven men hardly struggling with the weight, they demolished the wreath on the door frame, petals and holly coming dramatically loose but no one noticing until, hoisting her up to heaven, they cracked the lid.
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