The Horror, The Horror

For approximately the fourtieth time in my life - and this is no exaggeration - Amy Winehouse is raping my ears with her disgusting voice. I categorically cannot see the appeal in a singing syringe. Whatever. I will be quickly shouted down by those amongst you looking for someone fitting the 'quirky /gritty/twisted /mistaken - tragic angel type.' There are millions of better people, with hatchet faces who I would rather hear right now. It tests my fucking patience. Don't go back to black Amy - go up your own bumole like a bees bonnet Ouroboros. Sing to your crack addled guts, eat your reptilian tail.
Enough. This isn't the thrust of this blog, today's blog - this greasy moment. There was a wicked night of grimey d'n'b at the Hare & Hounds on Saturday and it was over all too quickly. The bass wasn't like anything I'd felt before. Snares on top with a bit of mashcore; then below that the bass; then like a whale breaching booooooooooo there came the deeper bass and it fairly set me and Jin screeching like harpies. Or Amy Winehouse. It was rad. You had your supplement of main heads with neck tatts and chav wear - more than the A level d'n'b night we attended a while ago - but they were happy to slosh their sweat about like the rest of us when it came to it.
Time was Jazz used to fizz me up to the extremes and I'd stick my shirt in my pants, pull those very same pants up to my chest and play air sax. Now I've grown up a bit I seek the dirt sandwich that is drum and bass. Like I said to Jin - it infects me. No other music does that. Infects me. Except Winehouse - her music is a lethal pathogen.

Deep Freeze

I have a headache. I am in a bad mood. This might be the daily supplement of someone's facebook status. I hate seeing those platitudes. So and so is tired; so and so is hungover!!! (note the use of triple exclamation marks). Where's your bloody imagination? All the same I have a headache and I'm moody. Everybody's stepping on the coat tails of my patience, it seems. The couple who always come into the shop and spend half an hour chosing one item; the old woman pouring orange juice down her throat is excruciating to watch; the nasal voice from the cafe; the ugly people; the long hours; the chipmunk laughing - God, I hate her so. My only wish? That I had the guts to tell her how ingratiating her invincible laughter is.
Last night there was a great programme on celebrity fallouts - a top 20 of fatuous people (mostly plastic American women vying like harpies for an ex rock star or Flava Flav's enormous clocks - although there was a smouldering face off between Hulk Hogan and his wife's personal trainer). There was the complementary name calling and in - yo - face beyatch - ery; then came the taunts and the throwing of drinks in faces - something dear to my own heart, for those in the know; then the physical violence. Women scare me when they fight. Hair pulling, gouging and shrieks of pure rage. It's like they really want to fuck each other up. With men it's blunt and hopefully resolved in a few punches and a kick - couldn't say the same for these prima donnas.
On a subtler level there was the surprisingly hilarious Nokia Green Room highlights - cringe with embarassment as Tadio Cruz strums on a guitar, having absolutely nothing to say to The Charlatans; feel your toes curl as Ashley Simpson gets ripped to shreds by some smug faced little shitface; best of all was Sam Sparro's reaction to Shaggy saying he had 6 mango trees...
The jist of it was tension, the sort I feel today, where silence steps in and language falters. And the unfulfilled promise of violence. It's like flirtation. I am not happy. There's another status for Facebook. :)

Rose Drop / Timnah Part II

An empty head and a long afternoon do not happy bedfellows make. If they were to mate they would shortly sire this moment in a flash pregnancy and everyone would be disturbed by the utter plainness of the baby - neither boy or girl. Sexless as a worm. The doctor (me) would shake his head imperceptibly and put down the tongs, the billow of his breath warm against his face mask.
But then there are always intruders - they elope around the fringes of vision. They are thieves of silence and attention I am unwilling to give. Neutral, boring and alike. Unless ugly, foreign or beautiful in a difficult way; to say 'I really shouldn't like you but I can't help it.' Or something acerbic like that. Drifitng conciousness like a slick of oil, the call of someone. Plaintive cry. Irritation. En masse. STUCK!

Is this my return?

Recently, I don't know why, I can only guess or make vague gestures toward knowing, I have felt the return of my creative self. Having near scorned the art world for its perversities, intrinsic unfairness, vacuity and desperate brilliance (and that's only Birmingham!) for the last few years I want to work my way back in and make some shit hot art. If only for myself.
It's already happening pasque - dieux! With installments being worked on for Insertspace, new films being made (see Pissy Lynne on my Facebook page); and a whole boiling sea of ideas eagerly awaiting the spill like mastiffs roaring for quarry. I'm excited about things. I am susceptible to stimuli in ways I haven't felt in five whole bloody years - the divining rod in my head singing. I laugh aloud at the smallest things - I have always held by asbestos gelos - inextinguishable laughter. It's time to stop making excuses for the things I'm not doing and start spurting hyperbolics about the things I am. They are large in number and swell daily.

Swell me bell.

Rose Drop / Timnah

Rose drop by Lester Bowie, a dog barking uproariously ruins the moment. I am partially ruined and disgraced. Very sad, this music. Maybe I am too.

(G)Usher

Gotta do it for the ladies
And I gotta keep it hood
Where we at Polo (Ay)
I see you Ryan
What you do was right
But we just gettin started
Yeaa Man..

Usher
You see you searching for somebody
That'll take you out and do you right
Well come here baby and let daddy show you what it feel like
You know all you gotta do is tell me what you sippin' on
And I promise that I’m gonna keep it comin’ all night long

Lookin’ in your eyes while you walk the other side
And I think that shorty I’ve got a thing for you
Doin’ it on purpose winding and workin’ it
I can tell by the way you lookin’ at me girl

I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)
I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)

Usher
You got some friends rollin’ wit you baby then that's cool
You can leave them with my niggas let em know that I got you
If you didn’t know, you’re the only thing that’s on my mind
Cuz the way I'm staring miss you got me wantin to give it to you all night

Lookin’ in your eyes while you walk the other side
I can't take it no more, baby I'm coming for you
You keep doin’ it on purpose winding and working it
If we close our eyes it could be just me and you

I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)
I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)
I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)
I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)

Young Jeezy
(Well, you know we always rollin!, Im on em')
Yea, Let's Go
I’m what you want, I’m what you need
He got you trapped, I’ll set you free
Sexually, mentally, physically, emotionally
I’ll be like your medicine, you’ll take every dose of me
It’s going down on aisle 3, I’ll bag you like some groceries
And every time you think about it you gon’ want some more of me
About to hit the club, make a movie yeah rated R
Pulled up like a trap star,
That's if you have yo regular car
You ever made love to a thug in the club with his ice on
87 jeans and a fresh pair of Nikes on
On the couch, on the table, on the bar, or on the floor
You can meet me in the bathroom yeah you know I’m trying go

Usher
You might as well give me a kiss
If we keep touching like this
I know you scared
Baby, they don't know what we doin
Let's both get undressed right here
Keep it up girl and I swear
I'ma give it to you non-stop
And I don't care who's watchin
watchin, watchin (watchin, watchin)
oohh, in this club, on the floor
Baby let's make love

I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)
I wanna make love in this club (in this club, in this club, in this club)

Yea...


What a misguided fool!

Amy Winehouse is a cunt

'We only said goodbye in words; I died a hundred times'.

Once is enough you fucking wretch!

Donny Hathaway

I first heard about Donny Hathaway a couple of years back in an issue of Loaded. There was a small musical section in the back that dealt with new Cd releases: old classics rubbed shoulders with the latest d&b, r&b, rock etc. The article was about Extensions of a Man, an album I later checked out but didn't pay much attention to, sadly.
It wasn't until recently I picked up the thread again. Listening to some cheesily wicked Roberta Flack, I came across a few duets he'd done with her, the most famous being Where is the Love? I knew about this track from a Grover Washington cover, so the order of discovery was really fucked up. If the path there wasn't in a straight line, I still got there in the end.
So the album in question this time was Donny Hathaway Live, and my particular favourite track, and I do mean particular (imagine if you will a whole heap of wickedness, a pile of lusty gems the like to make your soul's fortune, and every one is a drooler, but you have to choose one above all the others) is Jealous Guy. Fuck me this guy's got a voice like a pan of warm caramel, and he just keeps on pouring it out. As my darling friend ____ said about Elvis' voice : 'It's like a warm chocolate egg bursting inside you'. And Al Green too : his voice is like a chocolate grinder, all that rich high pitched laughing goodness showering out from the speakers. You almost feel guilty it's that good.

A horifically trivial top 3 of my favourite voices (and subject to change):

1) Donny Hathaway
2) Jean Carne
3) Al Green (see what I did there? Clever eh?)

Get listening!

Fucking Funny Texts

This was initiated by a reading from Charlie Brooker's Dawn of the Dumb; randomly text someone you know this message: Wahey, I'm in a HELICOPTER! Hilarious! Anyway Batty took it a step further and the dialogue runs like milk & honeyz:

Batty: Wooo I'm in Florida
Me: Waaaa I'm indoors. Roly's mum's doors*
Batty: Ow my god just wrestled an aligator! Wow!
Batty # 2: Just found out I've been diagnosed with back cancer. They cut it open and found a diamond bigger than a peach!

Batty wins everytime.

Then a little later w/r/t his and Charlie's night out:

Batty: YES MAN! Were (sic) going to clean up man. Peoples be like 'wooooh these brothers be like straight out de jungle' womans be like 'who are those two?' i'm like 'yes babe i'm like the king of sting, the bruin of ruin, the mash in your potatoe, the knight of all knights at night time! I'm the rime in your crime doin overtime! Be leave babe'

Me: Classic: the chicks drop jaws like bible laws 'woah! who are those two crude dudes?' and we're like "peter piper, the midnight viper, come to clean up your dreams, drop a no brainer with brains, make your night out of ribbons and gold, hold you in bed so ya don't get old - we're miracles in male form and speak in rhyme like goats. Big willy = big happy. Moves like weird

Wicked!

*A story too long to go into here.

16:16

Yes, it could start here, and why not? The start of my five year plan to stop getting so fucked up in my head. Because I haven't smoked in a few days, an excess of saliva has built up in my throat. I've been blustering like an old Colonel in my bedroom, drinking flagons of tea to clear the blockade. Yesterday Batty & I sat in the garden for the first time over a cup of leaves. I noticed the tree at the back of the garden, as if for the first time. IT DEVOURED THE SKY like a green mace. The sky was seal grey, smeared with fatty clouds. It'd gotten hotter at last. My bones were warm. We talked with the neighbour.

'Alright lads. How's tricks?' It was the father of the house, with his screaming progeny running rife about him; he was continuously stopping to scold them in Indian or English.

Batty had picked up a toy from the paved upper half of our garden.

'I could use this', said the ever industrious Robinson,
'Keep it! I bet that's the first time you've heard that'. I liked the father: his face was kind and strong.

This lead into an inevitable conversation about what we do as artists.

'You do paintings then? You tried that gallery up the road? (the _______) etc. Touchingly naive, but interested, like a cabby.

Maddening to think we'd been in this house for eleven months and not once sat in the garden to drink tea and talk for an hour. One hour in the munificence of those many days. I felt guilty almost. It was like Batty said:

'You can hoard all that time up and not do anything with it. You keep imagining this vital time you've built up is mine mine mine, (making a scooping gesture, like a highwayman / miser drawing in his riches); and still nothing. It just goes to waste'.

(note the use of yellow for dramatic effect).

Soon after Charlie came and dropped Minda's keys off, discussing moving into the house. Joy! She noticed some weird growths coming from between the paving slabs. Batty plucked one and threw it at my bum crack as I was stooping over. They laughed.

From Horace's Odes: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.

Seize the day, trusting little in the future. And I might add a little embellishment of my own:

Grab a minute, innit.