Helix Piercing

This is what I did to my ear. I don't know why I decided to do it, all I know is that I did just decide and went and got it pierced. I had my lip pierced 3 years ago (not anymore) and this hurt a lot more. It wasn't so bad with the actual piercing bit, but it still hurt and a couple of hour after, it hurt a lot more. It's been a week now and it's healing quite well.

The guy who did my piercing was talking to me about writing because I told him I was a writer and he told me that he did a tattoo on Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer of 24 Hour Party People and Millions. I told him that I'd met Frank at uni when he did a talk and that my tutor knows him personally. When I told my tutor this she laughed and said she'd love to know what tattoo it is. It's funny because I knew Frank was from Liverpool but that tattoo parlour was right near where I live. I didn't know he was from like round the corner from me.

Night of the Window - Nocturnos De La Ventana (Lorca Translation)

Night of the Window

1

Moon rises high
Beneath the wind

(My eyes look for a long time
Exploring the sky)

The moon sits on the water,
The moon is in the wind.

(My eyes look for a long time
Exploring the sky)

I hear the voices of girls.
The moon in the water,
Effortlessly I go to it
In the sky.

2

The arms of the night
Enter through my window,

Great brown arms
With bracelets of water.

On blue crystal,
I played in the river at dawn

I watched the wounded moments
Pass away.

3

I place my head by the window
And the wind cuts it with a blade

In the invisible guillotine
I place my head and all my desires

It fills the moment
With the smell of lemon

While I become
Blossoms of silk in the wind.

4

There is a death in the pond,
A girl in the water.
When she is pulled out,
She is covered in soil.

A fish crosses her body
From head to her legs.
The wind calls out to her
But cannot wake her.

The pond releases her.
She is now algae
And grey breasts of air,
Quivering like frogs.



Nocturnos De La Ventana


1

Alta va la luna.
Bajo corre el viento.

(Mis largas miradas,
exploran el cielo.)

Luna sobre el agua,
Luna bajo el viento.

(Mis cortas miradas,
exploran el suelo.)

Las voces de dos niñas
venían. Sin el esfuerzo,
de la luna del agua,
me fuí a la del cielo.


2

Un brazo de la noche
entra por mi ventana.

Un gran brazo moreno
con pulseras de agua.

Sobre un cristal azul
jugaba al río mi alma.

Los instantes heridos
por el reloj... pasaban.


3

Asomo la cabeza
por mi ventana, y veo
cómo quiere cortarla
la cuchilla del viento.

En esta guillotina
invisible, yo he puesto
las cabezas sin ojos
de todos mis deseos.

Y un olor de limón
llenó el instante inmenso,
mientras se convertía
en flor de gasa el viento.


4

Al estanque se le ha muerto
hoy una niña de agua.
Está fuera del estanque,
sobre el suelo amortajada.

De la cabeza a sus muslos
un pez la cruza, llamándola.
El viento le dice “niña”
mas no puede despertarla.

El estanque tiene suelta
su cabellera de algas
y al aire sus grises tetas
estremecidas de ranas.

Dios te salve. Rezaremos
a Nuestra Señora de Agua
por la niña del estanque
muerta bajo las manzanas.

Yo luego pondré a su lado
dos pequeñas calabazas
para que se tenga a flote,
¡ay! sobre la mar salada.

Reading Out and World Book Night 2011

I read at the "Next Up Showcase" at the Bluecoat last Thursday. I was chosen as one of three from my University. There were others from Manchester, Chester, and Edge Hill Universities reading. There were 12 in total and I was seventh. I knew the man who was before me and that was when I got nervous because I knew I was up next. I'm usually very nervous (and this was only my second reading) but I was unusually calm. I drank half a pint of beer and tried to stay focused (I met the third guy from my uni and he was up first).

It came my turn and the woman who was hosting gave me quite a good introduction, although (and we joked about this afterwards) when she quoted a line from my work, which she's meant to do, she read out my opening line. My tutor said it was one of my best lines, and she almost ruined it by quoting it like that. The line was: "A black hole opened up in my living room."

I read it well. Though I didn't look away from the page on the lecturn, I didn't want to lose my place. I got some laughs at the funny parts and held their attention at the evocative parts. Later on in the pub someone thought I was reading from an actual novel, and I had to say No it was mine. I was surprised at how many liked it, and some said I was one of the best. A man stopped me and I thought he was giving me his card, like an agent or something. He was a photographer, and showed me a picture on his camera of me reading. I wrote my email address down for him to send me the photo. (Haven't got it yet).

I was a volunteer for the first World Book Night. I was given 48 copies of Seamus Heaney's poetry to give away for free. I left copies on the train, in the train station, in a bus stop, in a phone box, on benches, with a message inside saying things like "You've found me!" and "Have you thought about reading poetry?" The rest I gave to my friends and family.

It was a good thing to do, though I should have chosen a novel to give out. It was out of 25 titles.

Novel Extract pp.46-47 (unfinished/first draft)

For days I sat watching the turntable with record after record playing music through its scratchy sound. I heard a lot of early Beatles LP's and upon trying their patience by throwing myself against the wall and knocking myself unconscious three times, they changed it to Booker T and the MG's, only until they got me some later Beatles songs or maybe even some Dylan. But they never gave me what I wanted most of the time, and all I asked for was some good music – no Mozart no Beethoven, they said I'd heard too much of that and it had warped my cognitive thinking, by which they meant Mozart had driven me to the brink of madness and I had only Doctor to thank. D. was a Judas. He'd left me sitting in that room for so long, shivering with the cold, the room was just a while cube (the record player was black), and I began to believe, as no one came back, that I was in fact dead, and that I was either in Heaven or Hell, only I had to figure out when I died, up to which point in my life was I no longer living, and how it came to be that I was no longer of that world but another … It occurred to me, sitting in that room, as I then reverted to a lying-down position, that I was never alive at all, not really, my life (or whatever it was called) was just a moment of excess, a collection of drinks, pains, laughs and songs … I only had the fortune or un-fortune to experience such a moment in time because … Well, my parents had the displeasure of creating me … I then forgot, not that I knew, that I was not real, and so with being unreal, I was able to work a destructive way into myself, blind to the consequences, uncaring of anything beyond that life, for beyond it was a white room with a record player playing early Beatles songs, which go on and on and on, and you listen to them, without much of a care, because even this existence, though you may think in your head, is not real, because there is only you, and you are not there …

A woman came in. She had dirty blonde hair tied with a hairclip at the top of her head, I imagined wasn't very comfortable-looking, pulling the hair tight – everything about her seemed tight; I could snap her in two. She wore a white nurse's uniform. She pushed a metal trolley, on which sat a blue tissue with a large syringe filled with a pink-ish liquid, which she then squirted upwards to remove any air bubbles inside, which would give the recipient a heart attack if they actually reached the heart. She placed the needle back down. She read off a small chart that my ketone bodies were high (β[beta]-Hydroxybutyric acid, and Acetoacetic acid [CH3C(O)CH2CO2H], which, as an acid decomposes to both acetone and carbon dioxide like this: CH3C(O)CH2CO2H → CH3C(O)CH3 + CO2,), and that was a sign of ketosis from my not eating well, I was fasting, shall we say, and I had lost some weight, not a lot, just so you could see it in my cheeks. 'I did not see this as a problem per se, no, my dear, I was merely maintaining a disciplined regimen of meditation, like, aiding good health and spirit.'

'Okay,' she said. 'But, you see, you are quite underweight, and while you are here you must regain your physical health as well as your mental health.'

'Well, as I say, I was maintaining … '

'I heard, but you are wrong. You have done some damage to yourself. You are a sick boy.'

'I'm not a boy, I'm a man.'

'Yes, but you are a boy.

'Am I a real boy?'

'Look at yourself. Sitting there, legs crossed, listening to your records. Do you like how the record spins? Do you like it?'

'Don't patronise me.'

'I wasn't.'

'I want to leave this place right now.'

'I'm sorry, not just yet. The doctor would like to see you before you go.'

'Doctor. I hate the man. He is no Doctor! He is the Devil!'

'Yes yes, okay, my love, now I'll need to give you this needle.'

Off-Perfect Like Time (Short Story)

I am at the train station. It is cold and the sounds of trains are an off-perfect 15 mins. or so scream. This designated scream occurs when I least know, and wakes me up from a dream, where I sit slouched on this cold metal bench, which displaces the blood from my legs, absorbs into the atmosphere in the form of vapour and I become constricted and white/blue, shivering until it hurts my shoulders and cannot recover the muscle so I leave it spasming as some kind of electrode in me.

I slept here. I always sleep here. No one knows I sleep here. If they find out they wouldn't let me, but I'd find another place to sleep because I always have to sleep. No one else sleeps but me. The world keeps on moving and I keep still on this bench. I feel so tired. When I wake, on the off-perfect time every 15 or so mins. the devil bursts out of me with laughter and hopes to kamikaze in front of a moving train, but cannot since I must catch the train soon, and if I am dead then I cannot get the train. I only need to rest now. Just before the train gets here.

It is night. It is cold. I am surrounded by unfortunate dreams of darkness in a medium of motion, always going away from someone's arms, and then the scream like this: Aaaaahhhhh! But kind of electrical, too, like Zchurkkkkk or something. The blue flash frightens me, lights up the whole world, reveals this unreal world of black and white lines like a broken TV – lasts a second and I relax and go back to sleep. I am so tired.

I'll catch the next train. There is someone I want to be with. When I get there I will hold her in my arms. I'll just rest first, then I'll go. I'll catch the next train. I don't know how long I've been here. The night seems to have been here forever. The night is my best friend, we've always known each other – I sleep and no one else sleeps, so we get along pretty well.

I had a conversation with the person I'm going to see. I remember it perfectly. It went like this:

'I do love you, you know.'

'Oh yes, I do know that.'

'Don't you think we should get married and all that?'

'Oh yes, I do think we should do all that.'

'Yes, why the hell not, eh?'

'That's just fantastic for me and for you.'

'Yes, it is fantastic.'

'We'll be together forever.'

' … '

' … Forever.'

'Forever?'

'Yes, forever. We'll be together forever. And we'll die together.'

'We'll die?'

'Yes, we'll die together.'

'We can't die if we're not together.'

'But – '

' – I have to go now. Bye.'

Oh that's right, I was going away. I'll catch this next train now. I hear it on the other side of my sleep. It's coming in an off-perfect time of 15 mins. or so. But I feel so tired. It is very cold here by myself.

Review of C.W. Stoneking -- Bido Lito Magazine

[Published in Bido Lito, Feb 2011, p.28-30]
http://www.bidolito.co.uk/



C.W STONEKING
Brownbrid Rudy Relic
O2 Academy 2

“It always feels a bit American to be drinking on a school night,” my friend says as the O2 Academy 2 stays rather subdued with the on-going music of the support act – BROWNBIRD RUDY RELIC – who is impressive, to say the least, and we realise that we have unearthed a cult following for a musician not many have heard of: C.W. STONEKING.

This man steps onto the stage wearing a 1950's style barbershop jacket and holding a banjo. It's him, but something's not right. Why does he look like one quarter of a barbershop quartet? He begins singing and playing the banjo and his voice resonates right through me as if I am hearing Louis Armstrong incarnate, a wailing sorrowful sound that makes each person gain once inch in height as they step onto their tip-toes to get better look at this man with a voice from another time. Around him are his band: trombone, cornet, tuba, snare drum (with brushes), and the cello hidden behind C.W.

There is an ominous feeling around us when the stage lights go out, and we don't know if it's supposed to happen, but C.W. is singing Jailhouse Blues and the audience begins to sing the chorus, either because they are his cult and know the lyrics, or he has hypnotised them with a mournful voice of a forgotten era. Lights back on, he bursts into a rendition of another bluesly song – Jungle Blues is a favourite – some quick-paced some not, spit flies out of the cornet, hits a photographer, flashbulb lights him up for one second prior to said spit, the leader of his cult, who were probably hooked when they saw him on Jools Holland a few months ago. He is a Crooner with a lisp.

There is a point when he speaks more than sings, but the subdued audience are attentive, and he recites a story of a talking lion, and it's hilarious. He's like a comedian halfway through his performance. He then makes jokes about himself as he pitches too high with his voice or sings too loosely. He jokes about not having a harmonica, the reason for a gap in the middle of one of his songs. It's this strange accent that fluctuates between Australian and The Deep South, which sounds constantly sad and broken, and he jokes about a story of three Americans on a ship to Africa who “loved the Blues, but they also loved the booze.”

At this point I should mention that C.W. was once a Hoodoo Witch Doctor's assistant, and only those who have seen him play will understand the hilarity, though someone shouts out “you can't kid a kidder,” to which C.W. smiles gentlemanly at the realisation of how far-fetched his stories are – so why do I believe him?

He is loved in Liverpool, it's the humour, he is funny, but it's difficult to see how he does it. He doesn't make sense, and it's incredible. He is like an Australian time machine into 1950's New Orleans.

Michael Holloway

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (The Merseyboys)

This must be the rarest LP I own. It is a 1964 Merseyboys album composed by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. I don't know much about this record, and why they released it, since the first Beatles album was released in 1963. I do believe it was made before 1964 however, I only date it from the copyright date. It contains songs from Please Please Me, which is confusing because it seems like this would have been their first album had they not changed to The Beatles and took on Rongo as the drummer. It must be after The Quarrymen and before The Beatles.

In the top right hand corner is the word Decca, which is the studio that turned down The Bealtes in 1962. They were turned down by a number of record companies by this time. George Martin had produced studio recordings of their songs (this was with Pete Best who would be sacked from the band this year).

This album could be one of the original demos they recorded for Decca and was subsequently rejected because "guitar music is on the way out" and "The Beatles have no future in show business." However, The Beatles would later hire Ringo Starr and become signed to Parlophone, and would record from 1963 - 1970 twelve criticality and commercially successful albums and would become one of the greatest bands in history.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (Beatles For Sale)

This is probably my second oldest LP, and also one of the rarer ones. It is an original from 1964. Their fourth album proves to be a turning point in their music, which was important to how they would sound in their later music. It still has that early 50's based rock n roll sound, but some bluesy sounding songs, such as my favourite off this album, Mr Moonlight, which is a cover of the Roy Lee Johnson song. It has Lennon singing with this scratchy, wailing sound, like wailing at the moon(light). I have used this song in my novel as the song playing when the narrator loses his mind, and subsequently argues in his head about the best Beatles albums.

This is one of the finer Beatles albums, which is usually overlooked for the 'greater' ones. I think it's the transition into a maturer sound that proves to be a quality to this album.

I'm a Loser is another fantastic song with blues-style lyrics, but with that quick-beat 50's style rock n roll. With both Paul and John on chorus "I'm a looooser," and then John singing the verses, he said it was him in his Dylan period, and I wish he'd kept it longer, I mean John Lennon calling himself a loser while blowing into a harmonica is just incredible. It was recorded the same day as Mr Moonlight.

The malpropism Eight Days A Week is the memorable melody, which I believe is used to signify this period The Beatles were in. The sound of strums on the guitar at the beginning and repeated at the end is the mature sound of four musicians who were, in their fourth album, becoming something new and big each time. Like The White Album, I don't play it that often, but when I do I just love the sound of them, this must be their best "early" album.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (The Times They Are A-Changin')

Bob's first fully original album (albeit his third LP) was proof of his genius songwriting when he actually attempted to be himself in his music rather than mimicking Woody Guthrie as he did in his eponymous debut. It his regarded amongst his early folk LP's, amongst the lauded Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which many believe to be better than Times, though I think I prefer The Times They Are A-Changin' for the simplicity of it, the rooted folk music so obviously learnt within the space of two years since his first LP. It not only works on a level of folk music, but acts as an instrument of social change throughout the 1960's, with songs about racism and poverty, it represents such a strong movement in human thought, for liberal thinking and a change in us as people.

Out of ten songs, the title track is easily the best, with its memorable poetic lyrics and ominous leadership sounding us to follow in the tide of change, and calling for us all to realise the change happening in the world and ourselves. With such a powerful message coming out of the mouth of a 22 year old, he was way ahead of everyone else, and is no surprise everyone hung at his every word.

The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll is another favourite of mine, with it's simple chords of C major, A minor, E minor, which was one of the only songs of his I learnt to play. It is a sad song with a story about a woman who was murdered out of a racial attack. I think this kind of song highlighted what was going on at the time, no one wanted to hear it, but they had to listen, because those kinds of things were actually happening.

I bought this album from Hairy Records in Liverpool. I had just started buying records and wanted a Bob Dylan one. I found this one hidden between Saved and some other one, which I have no qualms with (Saved is actually a good album) but Times is understandably an early masterpiece.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (Goats Head Soup)

I bought this LP from Hairy Records in Liverpool, which was given to me quite cheap with a Best Of The Rolling Stones record, when I was looking for Beggar's Banquet and couldn't find. From Goat's Head Soup, I'd only known Angie, and as I bought it the guy behind the till said 'That's a bloody good album,' and I believed him as I walked out, slightly disappointed that I didn't get what I was after. But when I listened to it, I agree, it is bloody good, and there are songs on that album that will have you listening over and over.

Angie is such a good song. Kind of sorrowful but still optimistic about love. The song's title name is based on Keith Richards' daughter, Dandelion Angela.

Another song is Dancing with Mr. D, the opening song, and one which has actually given me some ispiration with my novel's character named D. D. in the song is supposed to be the devil, ie, "dancing with the devil," and what I'd written was meant to represent either the devil, death, or a doctor.

Hide Your Love reminds me of The Beatles song Hide Your Love Away from Help!, and I love both songs, with The Stones' song being more of a bluesy song whereas The Beatles' song is more folk rock. With Jagger's voice sometimes incomprehensible singing "How do you hide your love."

The whole album is a gem out of the many, just coming out of the longest streak of amazingly successful albums in concession.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (Abbey Road)

Abbey Road is my next LP, which is an original print and this album represents The Beatles in quite a mature artistic presence, which is evident in the way it looks - suits, ties, no smiles, order. The ambiguity of the sleeve gives the album as much mystery as some of the others like Magical Mystery Tour, but this mystery is less about highs and more about experimenting with music.

The whole 'Paul is Dead' myth surrounds this album like mist and they played to it, as one of their jokes, because they found it hilarious. Each walking across the road in an Egyptian-style side-view, they represent mourning or a funeral: John = Preacher, Ringo = Mourner, Paul = Corpse, George = Gravedigger. The beauty in this art as a picture is equal to the art of the music it contains.

Come Together I think, relied on absurd lyrics and drum/bass sound that emerges the solo of George's guitar. It is a very well put together song, which lasts with John's gently wailing voice. A strange song whose lyrical ingenuity has as much artistic merit as the cover. I.e., the lyrics represent each member of the band: "he's one holy roller" allegedly refers to the spiritually inclined George Harrison; "he got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola" to Ringo, the funny Beatle; "he got Ono sideboard, he one spinal cracker" to Lennon himself; and "got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see" to Paul.

One of my favourite Beatles songs is Something, which I always state was one of George's songs (I had the pleasure of hearing Bob Dylan sing this in Liverpool 2009). Such a beautiful love song which isn't too mushy, but shows someone admiring from afar, being attracted 'like no other lover' and being moved by her love, there's just something about this certain person that you can't escape. (I have two versions of this song, one is not from the album but I can't remember where I got it, and is George by himself with guitar with no other sounds from the band, just brilliant).

Geroge Harrison wrote Here Comes the Sun from this album too. Shows that he's still my favourite Beatle. Some other songs such as Mean Mr Mustard (which I have two versions again) becomes these great Liverpool-style folk songs the band would know about with being from the place, and I know too, with being from here. They're similar to Irish folk songs, usually funny and witty. Polythene Pam is another one, it's like a joke in a story in a song, about Pam, "She so good looking she looks like man."

Abbey Road is a a cryptic album of hidden lyrics and music specifically engineered out more of jokes than art, but the Beatles couldn't help it, because they were so damn good.

Records, My Rare Vinyl LP's (White Album)

Probably the greatest album created in music, The Beatles (The White Album) is a great collection of 30 songs, which most have some sort of artistic presence that have a timeless quality and preserve the actual creativity of the band, being such that no one (or not many) could match their creativity in music. Even one of the lesser songs of the album, Piggies which is a kind of annoying old-fashioned baroque sound with a harpsichord is an intelligent social commentary on corporate greed. Not my favourite of George's songs.

My favourite might be Happiness is a Warm Gun. It has a three-song structure, which contains a kind of misery and fury and love. It explodes now and again by loud/quiet rhythms along with the beautiful songwriting on the lines of happiness, which is either a sexual symbolism or in the grip of suicide.

Someone in work once said to me that the best song he heard The Beatles do was Long Long Long, which I wasn't too familiar with at the time. It, too, has a quiet feel to it which then changes so suddenly into a burst of sound. It's a strong but gentle sound, reflecting how good George was, I mean almost every song he made was good, and he didn't have to team up to do it.

This album is one of my favourite, though I do like the other later one's (Let It Be, Revolver). And I suppose it gives to music more than most things have given, being that essential creativity that lack now, and it existed the most when they made this album. This one I've got, (No. 0125403) is rare and is a statement to what music was and must be. I know I read articles now saying Rock n Roll is dead. I don't know. Maybe it died when John Lennon died, maybe it just got wounded and suffocated by the corporate crap that surrounds us now. As long as these kinds of songs still exist, then music will be fine, because we don't have to listen to new stuff.

I'm around new unsigned bands a lot, and I see some with potential (some I lie just to get my name as a writer heard) and most of the time I don't see the same power. No Morrison, no Cobain, no, Dylan. If people decide to treat music as an art again and make it disregarding what money could be made, then the love for music should return along with Rock n Roll. And The Beatles, who just so happened to be one of the earliest rock n roll bands, may or may no have been the greatest band on earth, but the fact that they lasted and they were wanted and were/are listened to, shows that they were doing something right.

Long Poem Ideas

I'm thinking of writing a long poem of the size of The Waste Land and Howl, by merging some poems I've already written, including my poems Transition and Modern Life, which would in effect kill those poems, but for the sake of one greater one. I don't know, it might work, it's pointless having those poems that I do nothing with, and I could always keep them separate anyway. One of the best things I learnt was not to cling onto the things I write. You should treat your writing as useless until artful. If they're are useless, it won't matter if you attempt to destroy them to form something different out of them.

Anyway I just wrote this:

Holy me and holy you,
The great Don, Donnie, Donald,
Rob, Robbo, Roberto, Oh Oh Oh!
And Oh, great, too, the Ja, Jimmy, Jay,
Beginning here and there where me,
Your only God, hysterical, of fucks –
Fuck fuck fuck!
And ask them, great minds in the sky:
'Why don't you fuck?'
And see them dead living singing
Songs thru beards and teeth of white suns
Burning burning inside outside glorious words
Where always always lonely alone
Running screaming crying, tears burning down
Soft fat cheeks let steam in the ocean
Of great mystical calm and soothe
The only mind on Earth saying fuck!

Novel Extract (what I'd written today)

Sometimes I'd stare into the mirror for hours trying to decide what I look like. Whether I'm ugly or not or if by coincidence I look like someone I know, and by knowing nothing at all, see a face with cheekbone ridges and chlorophyll eyes buried deep within moments of anger that now seem so subdued as if the ripples on the pond have settled and now there is quiet. I could stand there not moving for so long and feeling sick in my head and stomach but the world dims through chrysanthemum window where outside is fighting and screaming and I am in a nightmare. The absolute powerlessness of it all was confusing, making me stand in one place unable to see things as they really were, which I did not understand anyway, making me stand in one place, unable to move, corrupted to the point of a kind of sense of humour: knock knock, who's there? Olivia, Olivia who? Olivia, so get out of my house. I heard a boom outside and I thought the sounds were getting closer and closer to me, and there wasn't a single thing I could do: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

I was so sick I couldn't eat, the cramps were cutting through me. I never knew how to handle these kind of things so I usually ignored them, usually attaining to a high-fibre diet, carbohydrates, protein and the other one, (50g fat, of which saturates: 4g), sugar; though my diet usually contained aspartame mostly made up of Carbon and Hydrogen in a methyl group (R----CH3). This information was usually pointless to me, yet it was stuck in my head, words upon words, numbers upon numbers.

I'd try to decide if I was real or not, like I did when Melissa asked me “There's nothing on TV” so I decided she couldn't possibly be real; all/ most thought now was based around TV, and so if I think therefore I am then and there is nothing on TV, then existence ceases to be – of course my sister took this the wrong way decided that our two separate existences were tangent to each other in relation to certain mathematical spaces. I didn't understand what she meant so I made some tea after she'd left and took it upon myself to make sure I knew I existed, but I didn't know how so I smoked in the back yard contemplating calling (--) who now hated my guts, and I had a vague idea why, though now it seemed impossible to set things straight since it was actually all her fault and not mine. She was somewhere else by now, probably weeping into a cup of tea, moaning like a fucking ghost, the propensity to attack one another for the sake of love, by which we come to the conclusion of “angry love” that exists furiously to one seeking to ability to forbid the other.

My Website: http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/mcamholl/

Just Something I'm Thinking About

I've just found myself writing the end of my novel. I'm not near-finished, I just realised that I wanted that put in the end, so I've been decided what to do with certain characters and where to place them, quite surreal that I'm writing the end of it though. But this novel is more trouble than it's probably worth. It's already had the longest workshop discussion in class, going onto the next day by email, with one person threatening to quit, and then me discussing my 'future' on the course with my tutor because not only can I no longer afford to pay for it, but I just don't want to anymore. I'm only staying for my friends there, whom my tutor told me are my sense of security and protection, which made me feel quiet good, because they are, and I'd been in a pretty bad way recently, and being in that class with someone was hard for me, though I was still able to bite my lip and carry on and then pitch my novel idea to an editor as part of my assessment.

Certain things have made the class fall apart. People turning against each other in a mad wave of hysterical depressions that overwhelm us all, and three of us laughing our heads off at the mere thought of letting those things break us down, because we can write well and if either of us leave then there's less hope.

I stopped being sad but then returned to it when I think back. It was a tough week. Quite pathetic really, but that's why I don't talk about it, and got on at work, and stopped lying around. I know I have friends I can trust as well as people I no longer trust, which hurts, and there's nothing I can do about that.

My Website: http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/mcamholl/

Things I Learnt From A Young Age #1

Things that I learnt from a young age are:
[…] That, what would begin as a game, certain ingredients would, in effect, result in the toxification of young people, and that it is actually possible to snort liquids through the nasal passage, notably Tabasco sauce and vodka, which you would think would induce a fast-acting effect upon the brain, but really the sensation is much like a simulation of vomit in the nose, and subsequently induces actual vomiting thereafter.

That on the way to class your school friend whom you've known and trusted since primary school and trust with all your heart (at the time) will offer you a small tin, the contents of which is a powder that he would snort in the business studies classroom before class had started and you would say no to that but accept pill he calls a Gary, which is named after Gary Ablett, but you don't know who that is, and we are later told he was a football player who played for Liverpool from 1983 – 1992, and still didn't understand (Ablett rhymes with tablet).

That, on the subject of toxicfication, at the age of fourteen you sneaked into a park near the Seaforth Docks, which had a peculiar smell of cabbage, and you smoked pot with with your brother and his friend and had to run away from a policeman who was only attracted to the effeminate giggles deriving from the dark bushes because the high which was induced is quite difficult to subdue once active.

That, during P.E., you opted out of any sporting activity on account of the exact same inflamed knee condition of your friend whom you've known since primary school, and the teacher, with disbelief, has no choice but to send a group of us to the other side of the school building were we smoked – or attempted to smoke as I coughed each time I inhaled and became very paranoid about my asthma and I panicked thinking I was going to die, so I gasped in lots and lots of air until I collapsed with the over-intake of oxygen and the group of boys laughed at me when I hit my head, which hurt for the rest of the day, and I subsequently told a girl in my next class, which was Spanish, that I was in a fight with a boy, but the attraction soon goes away once another boy asks who you had a fight with.

That during exam leave we decided to go to someone's house and get drunk for the first time in our lives, and I inhaled a solvent from a glass which was just deodorant and was like inhaling perfume, making me choke and spit. With the excess deodorant I sprayed it onto my friend's arm and set it on fire, I'm still not sure why I did that. The smell of cooked skin and hair roamed the house for several hours, it made us sick at first, then we got used to it. After three or four more hours of drinking I awoke half-naked in the front garden with a bloody nose as some kids were coming home from school.

That you chose, without any moral standings whatsoever, to draw penis shapes on the plastic bus stop window in black marker, you then drew some girls name on a park bench, you then wrote your name over the plastic outer-casing of a Jurassic Park poster outside a cinema, which you got in trouble for, but you didn't understand this was because you'd written your name on the poster.

That, although I was terrified of girls at that age, I liked to be around them when a group of us hung around this social club at night and then went inside to be a even more social, but as I said I was terrified and I felt more comfortable to hang around the streets at night when the girls had gone, and then the boys had gone too, and I'd have to go home because I'd get in trouble with the police who roamed the area like rats looking for kids doing nothing.

That when we'd skip school because we were bored and sometimes just go into town and walk around or buy a magazine and a coke and sit on the field near the school and read about what was happening in the music scene in the late 90's and early 2000's, discovered a tiny grave of a hamster with a cross made from sticks, although we only guessed it was for a hamster because I was too frightened when you tried to dig it up.

That even as a kid, women were mystifying creatures. And men were my dad with different voices.

That the mere mention of sex in school was only terrifying to those who had done it.

That being 'mathematically challenged' at a young age meant you were permanently made to believe you were a lesser species than the maths teacher, who degraded you to the lowest set, but at the same time rose in sets in English, improving grammar and stylistics, which improved grades, but also rose the ability for sarcasm and hatred of the mere fact of both words and people.

That love was a dangerous thing to be a part of, when one girl fell in love with me and I fell in love with her but she vanished from my life simply because I forgot about her. (This would recur more often in later years).

That drugs, alcohol and school mixed together was an hilarious combination marred only by the mere fact that doing these things resulted in premature depression leading to me to the ridiculous decision at one point in my life to take an art course in Lancashire, where I lived for three years, doing much the same thing.

The Hyperreal, Facebook and Zadie Smith

I am sitting in my bedroom and it has just got chilly and I'd been reading various essays on semiotics, notably the Hyperreal, which I was taken to by Zadie Smith in her essay “Generation Why?” in which she talks about mainly the film The Social Network and Facebook becoming a generation, but examining the the almost social-autism of the character of Zuckerberg (played by Eisenberg). Why did I get to this? Well, reading Zadie Smith has got me thinking on a new wavelength than I was previously, whereby her discourse is very intelligent but also charming and funny. The Hyperreal, she says, is conveyed in the way David Fincher directs, creating this compelling “real” world which isn't real at all, but to this generation it is very much real – 'it's music video stuff,' which has forgone the youthful MTV teenage generation of the 90's and has sunk deeper into a world where we are almost unable to get out of, probably like digging our own grave, and why would this be? Well, it's not real. It is fantasy. It is mixed (2 parts reality / 2 parts fantasy) and it is difficult to see the future generations with information far surpassed the wealth of knowledge and then drenched in the overpopulation of words, numbers, percentages and metaphors – a world of advertisements, buying and selling.

It's not about whether the hyper world should slow down and take a breath, buy why it should? Why should all the knowledge in the world be given up for, what? Morals and ethics? Don't be ridiculous, we're humans, ethics comes as choice. And knowledge comes as desire. Take the snake in the Biblical reference. It was desire to take the apple (or unknown “fruit”) to achieve knowledge, and now, with Facebook, we are overwhelmed with fruit of knowledge – cast out from the Garden of Eden, though still we built and learned.

I finished reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith today. I was going to write a review of some sort, but decided on these thoughts garnered by Smith and her works. White Teeth is written in a kind of archaic narrative, the likes I can only compare to the history-ridden characters of Wuthering Heights with it's huge time-scale. This “hyperfiction” I believe it is called, this style of writing that jumps from one time to another and one character's history to another is reminiscent of 21st Century life. Now I'm talking about knowledge and information; the Internet. Globalisation. Everything, the whole Earth, at my fingertips as if I am some evil genius from a James Bond film, but really I am a consumer and this is part of this generation. It's called “hyper” because it moves so quick, I am in England, then next Japan, then next Guatamala – discovering things without opening a book, without even getting up from my chair. But is this a bad thing? No. Not entirely. Knowledge is a good thing and everyone should have the right to learn. But us as humans soak up information like sponges, and so like some know-it-all kid will get it wrong, and something will go wrong.

But it's not real. How can it be? I never left the room. Really it is just a representation of the world, a picture, a shape. If they are shapes, then surely the information and knowledge must be too? It's worth thinking about that with all this information happening on and on and on all at once these days, why are we so willing to trust it straight away? It's hyperreality, it's both real and unreal, the world has become a theme park and we're paying to use it.

Like Zadie Smith says about Zuckerberg: he's too 'hyped on the idea that he’s in heaven to notice he’s in hell.'

Website

Been a while without posting. I'd been making a "Writer's Website" for my Masters, which took up so much time, and I then decided to edit out 6,000 words from my novel and re-write that number back in, so I'm still up to 40,000 words. I'd submitted an extract to a workshop last week and got 'mixed' reviews, but mostly positive, which was good, because at least I know this style I'm writing in is working. A weird kind of formal/informal mixture of dark comedy. The Absurdist was coming out in me, but at least people understood the scenario, unlike in the past when it was just nonsense.

Here is my website: http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/mcamholl/ It only works well in Internet Explorer, otherwise it drops below the screen.

Poetry Reading

I did the reading on Wednesday and it went very well. Although, having kept myself free from nerves for the entire day, I fell nervous to the point of being sick as we walked to the building. I sat near the front of the Everyman Bistro drinking water, and I'd been unwell for a couple of days (this being the day before I went on antibiotics) I thought I might either vomit on stage or collapse. I didn't, I stumbled over one word and hate the sound of my voice in microphone, but it went down well. And because they thought I'd still be in class (I'd left early) they put me last. But I'm glad I did it, it's like breaking down a barrier for myself, and I'll feel a little more comfortable doing it again.

I read out Explosion #1 and #2 but I made crossings out on it while in class.

Explosion #1


If we rummaged here in the bedroom,
We from earthquakes –
Would feel the explosion,
As black smoke blacks out the black sky,
A red to the left of the window
Embers like fireflies dance in the moonlight,
And you'd say: 'my heart is beating really fast in my chest.'



Explosion #2


Black night had wrapped its fingers round your neck,
Almost beside me, the fire burns outside,
Stockings now boil in a teapot
Beside an old, frail towel-hook,
In the shape of a clawed hand –
We are rustling like leaves in the dark,
Only as eyes and the occasional tooth-shine,
Or a golden onlay, broken on one side –
I imagine you: “Don't be so pregnant,”
Which then swells and bursts, or explodes,
And your other-side saying: “I'm getting married,”
As your heart beats in your chest
That is the same sound, or throbbing feeling,
In my neck or throat –
A woman who has dirty blonde hair,
Is taken away for the embers of the exploded
Car outside, that rumbles us in shifting earthquakes –
Crossed in the air, Hail Mary full of Grace,
Written all over your face,
A red to the left of the window,
Your heart was beating really fast.

Poetry Reading and Starting a Magazine

I've been asked to read out a poem next Wednesday following a prize giving for a poetry prize I didn't win, so it was good of them to let me read out, though I'm terrified at the thought of reading in front of people, I get stage fright easily, but I think I've gained some confidence in my writing recently. The main problem, other than panic (which I haven't been doing) is deciding what to read. Most of my poems aren't really good enough to be read aloud, though some of my new ones are, yet I don't really trust those news ones as much as I trust the older ones, which I grow tired of. I got it down to Three Men With Suitcases, Explosion #1 and #2, and Modern Life, the latter a much older one. Though today I've decided I could do Streets in Liverpool (title to be changed) and I'm in the middle of editing it so it's much more audible. I shall post the final edit.

What I find annoying going through my poems like this is that I'm looking through the ones I thought were my best and I'm thinking "Hmm, no, that's not good enough," and so I know I need to write a lot of new poetry and stop relying on a bunch of old ones I wrote one or two years ago.

I was told by my tutor, after having trouble defining myself to a genre, to start a magazine. I'm going to get my friends involved and first have an online magazine and gain content without really any set issue, then I'll do a print version and publish content received. The problem is, I don't really know how to go about doing it.

I began Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace in the Summer (June or July) and I had to put it back down not only because it is such a difficult book, but that I had other things to read, I still do, but I feel like I should. I'd only read 24 pages, though of the massive 981 of the Abacus 2009 edition I have, with the print tiny and pages thin like a bible.

The thing is I was talking to someone in work today about myself and my friends who have been, in some way, influenced by David Foster Wallace, which began with one friend who was already a fan and each of us now reference him as an influence, bringing about us as these new writers using Foster Wallace as some precursor to our own writing.

But the thing is that David Foster Wallace died in 2008. He was only 46. It was tragic, and such a damn shame. Here's us with our new writing styles, having Foster Wallace to thank for some of it, and the poor guy is dead.

He writes with this formal/informal postmodern technique, which, emerging from that, is this comedic voice so distanced from anything it can say anything - I think it;s better than the traditional god-distanced narrative, becoming this god-like voice that is sprayed out everywhere and sounds so funny (though you do have to pay attention, or else it's gone).

Writing Poems - Meeting Carol Ann Duffy and Billy Collins

I don't think it's quite worth saying how relevant it is to write poetry from one point of view of the world, where the single purpose for said writing is that single and actual functions; though every time I write poetry - it will come about like some kind of celestial or biological function - I'll write about five or so "good" poems, and what I mean by good is that I choose not to throw them away and believe that with the one good line in them they'll be forever remembered as that poem he wrote, and thus I cannot throw them away anyway.

But I've always been one to read Sylvia Plath, I love her use of language and I've seen it in no other poetry so I subsequently mimic that causing me to have written something totally cryptic that even I don't know what I have written (this happened in 2007 after reading Virginia Woolf for the first time, I didn't know what I'd written, I've not read her since). So the polar opposite to Plath I believe is Charles Bukowski, whom I also adore, and they are actually similar in that they both write confessionalist poetry (which I've written in an essay before). Bukowski made me write gritty and often vulgar language, but together I see my influence from the two. But I don't think it's quite worth saying that I read only these two poets, since I do try to read others, and one recent influence is now Billy Collins.

I saw him give a reading with Carol Ann Duffy. I met Duffy and spoke to her, told her I was doing a Masters and she signed her book Rapture for me, which I still have, but I went and got Collins' Sailing Alone Around the Room because I like his use of language, very slow and meditated like his voice, and the message/story that I neglect to put into my writing.

I wrote a poem I've posted called Three Men With Suitcases. I wrote it after I came home one night and three men with suitcases where in my way, but I was thinking to myself about a short story I wanted to write which I never got around to (it was going to be called Conversations with the Vicar, and was to be quite violent). My thoughts then moved onto these men in front of me, they were very strange, like tourists at night. In my tired state of mind I began describing smells as colours. The poem I wrote switches from outside and inside; with three men in suitcases in the way and getting past them, and inside with a man seeming to be freezing to death somehow.

I wrote this:

The best thing I ever knew
Was not yourself or what you do –
It was that time you got the flu,
Sat and said achoo achoo,
Covered in a dangerous heat
A swelling down to your feet
Skin white as a sheet,
Tongue a lump of meat –
The best thing I ever knew about you –
Not your eyes (that were blue)
Or your left foot (with it's tiny shoe)
Or your presence (which sticks like glue) –
It was your sickness inside of you
That made you want to sneeze
To explode or pop
And fall at your knees –
It was you and the time you had the flu –
It was always you and the things inside of you.

This was just something that came to me after reading some Collins and the idea that, with being sick at the time and most other people too, we're more sick than alive. And the result being, I more likely fell for the sickness than the person.

Another one:

The heat of me burns,
I glow a shade of red,
Maybe crimson or rose,
I swell and fill with dread;
Then numb to the knee
(and numb to the arm);

My skin is dried fruit
Or rotten apple skin –
Eyes are heavy,

A shadow is slit along
White wall like yin yang –

I then burst into confetti
As I drift into sleep.

This was a small thing I did to get me to write when I couldn't think of anything. When this happens I just describe my physical feelings. The confetti bit was an interesting image that came to me, the reason I haven't included it in my "good" pieces is because the first part is too weak and the end is paradoxical since 'burst' is the opposite to 'drift into sleep.' It's one of those poems that can't really be edited since a change in the metaphor will be a change in the entire thing, which isn't really worth it in the end.

Three Men With Suitcases

Inside: bathroom yellow smell swells
Around cracked tiles against him,
And five pieces of silver smash
From his fist that fall pink pink pink
The same colour of the disinfectant –

Outside: three men with suitcases
Walk like Disneyfied dwarves,
Humming hi-ho with diamonds
In their eyes, which is to be seen,
With one of them smelling either brown or green –

Inside: he sits on the floor that freezes his body
He is just tired and angry like many others,
And cannot find strength to move
And cannot love a woman who loves a woman
For that woman is in love, and loves not him –

Outside: they stop and start like little ants
Building something far away,
He turns and sees you, and lets you go past
You keep walking, he smells grey,
He hates you with a smile, deep from within his heart –

Inside: momentary waves of non-sound like hummm
Or precisely aaahhh from his throat echo
A weird vibrato or an almost booming electro-magnetic pulse
Through him, which carries on in his skin
Above a soft-ish smell of ochre,

Outside: You are going home
You think you are in love
As three men with suitcases are now behind you,
Their lives safely and neatly packaged
In cases, which smell of black and white and maybe purple.

Explosion #1 and #2

Explosion #1


This blackness first, through a window –
No stars the explosion
Hum-vibration through my body
Earthquakes the bedroom
Like we would do if we were in bed –

If we rummaged here in the bedroom,
We from earthquakes –
Because we are tectonic plates –
We would feel the explosion,
As black smoke blacks out the black sky,
A red to the left of the window
Embers like fireflies dance in the moonlight,
And you'd say: 'my heart is beating really fast in my chest.'



Explosion #2


Black night had wrapped its fingers round your neck,
Almost beside me, the fire burns outside,
Stockings now boil in a teapot
Beside an old, frail towel-hook,
In the shape of a clawed hand –
We are rustling like leaves in the dark,
Only as eyes and the occasional tooth-shine,
Or a golden onlay, broken on one side –
I imagine you: “Don't be so pregnant,”
Which then swells and bursts, or explodes,
And your other-side saying: “I'm getting married,”
As your heart beats in your chest
That is the same sound, or throbbing feeling,
In my neck or throat –
A woman, whose terrible blonde hair,
Is taken away for the embers of the exploded
Car outside, that rumbles us in shifting earthquakes –
Crossed in the air, Hail Mary full of Grace,
It was written all over your face,
A red to the left of the window,
Your heart was beating really fast.

Translation of 'Romance Sonambulo'

Romantic Sleepwalker
(Translated from the Spanish)

I want you to be green.
Green wind. Green trees.
The boat on the quiet sea
And the horse on the mountain.
The shadows around the girl
Who dreams on the balcony.
Green body, green hair.
Eyes like cold silver plates.
Green, I'd love you to be green
Under a gypsy moon.
They all see her.
She does not see them.

Green, I'd love you to be green.
Giant stars of frost
Under quiet fish of shadows
That open the morning road.
The fig tree rubs the wind
With its rough branches.
The world is a cunning cat.
The cactus has sharp bristles.
'What are you doing on the balcony?
And where are you?'
She is still sleeping there.
Green body, green hair.
Dreaming of the bitter sea.


Romance Sonambulo

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.

Verde que te quiero verde.
Grandes estrellas de escarcha
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.
La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.
¿Pero quién vendra? ¿Y por dónde...?
Ella sigue en su baranda,
Verde came, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.

Novel Extract p.28

It's hard keeping up, I now write a novel and work 8 hours a day in work, I'm getting exhausted and I'm still doing the MA Writing. Not written any poems in a while but still on my novel. I've written over 22,000 words so far. Here is another extract:


I woke up on a hospital bed, my left arm wrapped up in a bandage with dots of red like a polka dot dress. There was a dark red/crimson colour in a triangular pointing-down arrow of the cubital fossa on my arm where the needle had intravenous access and burst through the tissue, and had kept on bleeding down to my hand. It was very warm, I remember. I'd woken up very tired and cold, my lips felt swollen and raw; the abscess under my tooth had taken ground after the lack of blood, and I wondered how much infection I'd succumb to after this escapade. It was dark in the room only because there was a heavy sky about to rain (it was afternoon). Melissa was sitting on a chair. She had a slightly miserable face, which I'd done, this having me feel the muddy effects of guilt. I thought of apologising to her, but thought against it. I didn't say anything, though I did look at her for as long as she looked at me without talking, her eyes on mine very cold like icy water – I began to shiver, breathing heavily through my nose, hoping that this headache was only from the vacuous space left in the superficial vein that was now a long dead worm that stretched up to my armpit where it ached – the skin all bruisy and tender, skin paraffin-white, skin very porous, cold and dry. Melissa looked away, glancing out of the window, now becoming the only light available, shining on my sister's face, a poor pathetic thing less pathetic than me – I looked at her for minutes longer, knowing she knew I was looking at her, could not find words with which to express whatever it was I wanted to express to my little sister, who, by now, had crossed a leg and her arms, sighed once and clenched her jaw. I looked away.

Novel Extract (p.18, without formatting)

When I am walking here with these noises in my head I feel dizzy with the effects of whatever is inside of me right now and cannot keep my eyes open, there is (–) who is probably shining like a holy thing, but I cannot see properly right now and my throat is on fire with the effects of something and someone is screaming and it gives me a headache – I wish this woman was not so full of lies as I think she is, because I cannot marry a liar – though I do not know what she has done just yet – I sit down (I am inside somewhere) D. was here but cannot see him – can I see at all? The time is 17:58; my home feels like a temple, round as a Stupa (a heap of power I have now used in the wrong way [18:01] whereby I dwelleth not in temples; he who does not believe dwells on himself).

'You are stupid,' (–) says, but I do not know why she thinks I am stupid as I find my body stood on the other side of the room, which is wider than normal – Oh, it is my room, I recognise the window, I recognise the mirror (not my reflection, but the Café Tabac menu) and pick up a book (heavy) and notice the bulging blue veins in my fingers constricting … something … there is a pain in my wrist, which causes a lump in the joint (or does that cause the pain?) which is an old injury that comes and goes, though it strangely notices the weight of books (Infinite Jest) … feels like I'm one of the Satori Mowri of the Inhubai Village who used bullet ants within a glove as initiation to become a man, the pain of which is unheard of, you'd want to gnaw your own hand off, rip it clean off the joint –

She called me stupid. I stand there with not a dickie bird in that I've no idea what she's on about – I think she may have said Stupa, the shape of my temple, although I've no idea what her face is saying to me – her stupid voice is saying something.

'You are so stupid, you know that?' she says. She has the look of someone who has licked a stinging nettle. Her clothes are the colour of tooth decay, which is going to rot itself into her skin – she's too sweet, rotten to the core, but I can't keep my hands away, I'm simply attracted to filth. I cannot help myself. I spoon-fed this one sugar after sugar and given myself my own healthy dose of a potent analgesic, though does nothing for the pain which resides in my lowerright molar (and the pain in my shoulder, and my headache) – doctor said I need more tests. Mouth dry, I see Christine's cat on the outside of my window, a little black and white thing saying Mao as if it is a Chinese Communist revolutionary, (specifically of the Hanzu ethnic group) who, by a cult of personality, has come to have it's picture hung in my living room, along with a million other households, by which he can uphold his own charismatic authority by way of hero worship. I hate that cat.

'Why?' I say, my eyes rolling underneath the drunken stupor I thought I was hiding very well, though I cannot – what, with me still stood, wearing my uniform-black coat, and unable to sit still, seeing through a mist of red/green/blue – 'Why am I stupid?' I ask her, but I know why and it's not how I'm acting, not at all, I know how I'm acting, I always do (up until the point I forget, but I always always know what I'm doing – not that that means I can control it), no, what she means is what I've said. This dialogue between ghosts is so difficult I'm unable to comprehend. I'd asked her to marry me.

'You idiot, you actually think that I'd say yes?'

'Yes.'

'Well no.'

'No?'

'Yes!'

'Damn.'

'Yeah. You can't marry me. We're hardly even together,' she says 'together' as if it tastes bad. I now have a bad taste in my mouth, it's a metallic taste, which is much more prominent because my mouth is as dry as cotton anyway, and my tongue is cracking and splitting in two.

'I'm going to have to go,' she says (I've offended her) 'I'll see you tomorrow,' (Just embarrassed) 'Maybe,' (she doesn't know).

She walks out of the flat, closing the door in slow motion so as not to hurt my feelings further, but it's okay because I'm so drunk I've forgotten the whole thing. I begin to laugh because I think I've been talking to D. since I thought he was here, but he's not. I suppose he's out in the street, up to his eyeballs in ketamine somewhere, probably near Canning by now, harassing the waitresses with false hopes of love by producing large amounts of money he obtained from his own shitty job, which pays much better than my own. There is no sign of him, except the one glass tumbler (lead crystal) browned to the sides with Jack Daniels and Coke, which, itself, smells of lead.

I suppose it is now September and the Summer leaves are on the ground (I see them through my window); sky is the colour of a gun. I feel sick to my stomach – feels the partial depression within the walls of my arteries pumping the 5.5 litres of blood pounding into my brain, which feels the after-effects D. has left me with: musculoskeletal relaxes. I am jelly. I turn my head away from the window and this knocks me dizzy – head jerks forward, and I vomit. I spit some blood.

Evil brain. What have you done? I must leave, I cannot bare this much longer. It is disgusting. Man dwelleth not in temples.

Poets That I Read

Sylvia Plath
Charles Bukowski
Allen Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac
William S. Burroughs
Philip Larkin
Dylan Thomas
Arthur Rimbaud
Guillaume Apollinaire
Frank O' Hara
T.S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
Brion Gysin
Heathcote Williams
John Sinclair
Ted Berrigan
John Giorno
Harris Schiff
D.H. Lawrence
Wilfred Owen
Siegfried Sassoon
Keneth Rexroth
W.S. Merwin
Geoffrey Hill
Elenor Ross Taylor
Joe Dunthorne

Time Out of Mind

I have been listening to Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind recently, although it wasn't up there with my favourites including Blonde on Blonde, Bringing it all Back Home, Highway 61, Times They Are A-Changin', and John Wesley Harding. I stuck by his 1963-67 era music mostly.

Having listened to his later albums, and loving the blues sound to them,

indicating how much he has become his original idols of blues music, I wasn't as inclined to Modern Times and Love and Theft. (Though Together Through Life is a keeper). As I began listening to the haunting gruff voice of a love-sick man, I kept listening to it over and over. It's not a sad album per se but one of perspective and nonchalance.

I kept listening to Love Sick ("I'm sick of love, and I'm in the thick of it,

this kind of love, I'm so sick of it"), Standing in the Doorway, and Highlands, the latter being the only 16 minute song I can listen to all the way through 5 times in a row.

I suppose it's one of those albums that will keep you going because it's full

of words you're thinking, but not hearing so well. I'd love to get in that big mind of his, unfortunately I'm stuck in mine.

Why I Believe Infinite Jest To Be Following Me

David Foster Wallace has only recently come into my literary life, and has already become very important in adapting my style. I now have Infinite Jest, though only having read 25 pages of 981, I have notice his name has popped up a number of times before even knowing who he is.

My friend from Uni is a fan of DFW, and lent me Oblivion to read, which is by DFW. In this is a story called Incarnations of Burned Children which we studied for one class last October, while we were in Wales.

Before this, August 2009, I downloaded some e-books to read because I didn't have any money to buy any new ones. I found this website to get them for free, so I was getting the usual stuff I liked to read, plus some random names I thought I should give a go. One being - yes, that's right - David Foster Wallace. I'd only read some of this before Uni and did not remember the name.

But, further back when I was in University in Preston, my tutor in Creative Writing had Infinite Jest. I recently told her I had Infinite Jest and was about to start reading it, and she said she'd had it on her shelf for years (inc. the years she taught me) but never read it.

And now, flicking through Generation X by Douglas Coupland, which I bought before I even started Uni, I notice in the back it has advertised a number of books published by Abacus. One of which being Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Although books cannot follow people, I've come to the conclusion that this one does. I should start reading it soon, but it's the biggest book I've had to read. (I've only read 300 pages of 933 of Ulysses).

On Poetry and a Novel - Gainbourg Vie Heroique

The previous Poem, Two Mystics, was written over a few hours at night, after reverting back to Sylvia Plath's poetry, which I hadn't read in a while, and she's a huge influence on my poems. It is basically my experience around people and the actions between them. How I could give a person so much - feeling like I've "had to" give something - and then feeling like I have given not enough: "I have given you less than your smiles," and "I have given you hardly a thing."

I suppose it ends with feeling ashamed; with the obvious symbol of "red,"

which then bursts into flames. The title came to me right at the end of writing it, when the line "mysticalstill" came to me (forming one word is apparently Joycean, I got from a friend at our writing worskshop), and I decided to call it, not Mystical Still, but Two Mystics, making the two people seeming exactly the same, as they act so awkwardly around each other in the exact same manner.

Havva I got from Bob Dylan's song Hava Negeila, which is a Jewish song

of the same name. I wanted to put that word in, so I looked up it's meaning and it means "Eve" which I think fits perfectly.

I have begun writing my novel. I submitted the first section of the first chapter to the workshop and got some really good feedback, so I must be doing something right. However, the thing I was worried about was true, which was I wrote something impressive, and then as it went on, it lost the impressiveness to the end. It's like I've push out every bit of stylistic writing I have in one bit, and the next bit its diluted. But with the advice I received, I think I know how to go about writing it.

It's a 4 year old story. I thought of it in 2006 and never wrote it because I

liked it so much I was worried I'd ruin it. I told this to a friend back in May, as he'd already begun his novel, and he'd said to just write it and then see where you stand. But I hate that, when people say "just write." It's really not that simple. It's so comlex that it's taken me 4 years to adapt my writing style to be good enough, and I can now use the previous mad experiences I've experienced into which I can form a somewhat semi-autobiographical novel, which I think Hunter S Thompson used in Fear and Loathing which is called a Roman-a-clef; a story based on real events, turned to fiction.

Because a lot of things have influenced me 4 years after I had the original

idea for this novel, I wonder how long I should take with anything. So if I write and publish and novel and then see it some years later, I'd probably have some better ideas for it.

I'd been using David Foster Wallace, which a friend had lent me, as an

influence. And I was also looking between Catcher in the Rye and Naked Lunch as two distinctly different first-person narratives as influences. But I recently saw the French film Gainsbourg, which I saw after I'd started writing the chapter. The life of musician Serge Gainsbourg is illuminated through Johann Sfar's portrayal in this film, which uses Absurdist-like charactures, including a giant walking head of a Jew that comes out of the propagandist poster of Nazi-occupied France and walks with the young Gainsbourg. Another is La Gueule (The Mouth), which is a 7 ft. tall persona of Gainsbourg, with a long nose and long finger, very creepy to look at, but very funny as you understand that it's just Gainbourg's thoughts personified. This is something in what I wrote, in which the character is somewhat divorced from his own body. Someone had mentioned Beckett's Molloy, (though I'd only read Malone Dies out of The Trilogy). Someone mentioned to me that at the end of season 4 of House, there is another similar concept, in which House views his own mind in the form of a dead person. I will have to watch this. I will have to get writing this thing, having been reading up on more of Pinter and about to read Hamlet for the first time.