watch this video

make it a meme
make it 'go viral'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weIv_5Bg78Y

A blog post with photos by me

In a moment of desperation and loneliness (ha) I have been looking at pictures I have taken with my mobile phone. I don't take that many pictures, I am just not made that way. I have a good memory and I really do hold on to vivid images and special moments and save them in my head. That is not to say I do not enjoy enjoy looking at pictures of myself and others having fun. According to facebook I can be seen in 332 pictures, and I know that this statistic is wrong because I know that I am not in a handful of pictures, but was 'tagged' in them for comedic effect.

Here are 2 pictures from my phone.


This is from a gallery I visited in Sheffield. I was there for a gig and had been wandering away from the train station towards the city centre. I visited a couple of galleries which were on that route and in one of the galleries, which was located above the public library, way up flights and flights of stairs, there was a dark room with a plastic city made from white milk containers and lit from the inside. I looked closely at this for 10 minutes and it was so intricate and beautifully crafted, I wanted to take pieces of it away with me but thought better of that idea. I do not know who the artist is. I am not good at names.


This is the lake (pond?) in Abington Park here in Northampton. We went to the park to see the most snow in 18 years and to play in it. I was supposed to be at work. I have never liked the snow too much but the sight of hundreds of people across this vast white area all playing and rolling up great balls of dirty snow and pushing them into the river, it was a special thing to see.

Fucked

I really didn't want for this blog to turn into This Sort Of Thing.
But I also don't know what else to do right now.
The following is a story I have written and wish I hadn't.
I wish it hadn't happened, I wish I could go back in time.
Something sticks in my throat when I think about how this story makes me feel and how I feel it is based at least partly on a massive fucking misunderstanding.
Or how possibly now I am feeling that perhaps I was misled.
Maybe even taken advantage of.
Maybe there are moments which mean everything to one person, and everything can stop still perfectly for a moment, but for the other person the seconds just tick on and that moment is one of many, which may not be forgotten but will never be so important.
Fuck it. I can't deal with it so I won't.

“The snow outside my house was too amazing to be false”

I walk to your house through the park where people get raped and stabbed. I walk this way all the time and sometimes really late at night but I have never had reason to be scared by stories like these so I just walk with my earphones playing old radio shows from 1994 and my head down trying not to slip on the slick cold paving. It is slippery tonight so I walk on the grass alongside the path and have to dodge bins and benches along the way. The weather website says it is cold and we can expect heavy snowfall. It is cold. The website is right. I have always strongly disliked snow. When I was younger I slipped over a lot. When I was younger I was hit in the face with balls of ice pretending to be snow, black eyes set against the white hats on top of parked cars.

We watch the film everyone has been talking about and I guess it is good. I tell you how I invented an impression of the actor and now all our friends do a similar impression but I do not ask for credit because I know that my impression will always be better and more funny. We laugh at the ridiculous ending which is fun but ridiculous and it is the moment previously menacing and serious characters cross the line towards melodrama and comic strip violence. It is hard to concentrate on the film. Other things crawl through my brain but not close enough to come out of my mouth.

I am cold. I am always cold in your house. This in itself is curious because I have always enjoyed the cold. My parents' house was always cold and I have never liked central heating. Central heating mostly makes me feel ill with headaches and makes me remember childhood asthma statistics I heard somewhere one time which detailed how there was virtually no childhood asthma in Victorian times but now we all huddle around radiators as soon as the sun sets and Our Nation’s Children cannot breathe properly. But I am cold in your house. Perhaps it is my body's way of seeking attention. You turn the heating up and I’m grateful.

“It’s snowing” I say whilst holding back the curtain. I am not sure you believe me because you walk to the front door and put your shoes on. I walk to the front door and put my shoes on. We are not wrapped up warm but we go out anyway. Your neighbours are on their front step and it is a bit weird at first but we say hello and we walk to the end of your garden and through the front gate and prove that we are more interested in the snow than they are.

In the street lamps. On your street. At midnight. On a Sunday. It is the most beautiful thing. The snow falls slowly but heavily and I can feel it pounding against my face and every flake leaves a numbing scar which has it's own memory and now it's own first step in history, and maybe at some future dinner party where I am stood in the middle of the room with a glass of expensive wine and everyone's attention on me, there I will tale anecdotes of every point on my face, with the moment the snowflakes landed being the beginning.

I am happy.

I watch you. You are also happy. I look at your face in profile and I watch you pick up pieces of snow and put them in your mouth to taste them. The snow must taste so fresh. You tell me about the house across the street and how you would like to live in there. It is big and set back from the road and I suggest we go and knock on the door right now and ask them or tell them that we are going to live with them now and I explain how they will look at us, stood out in the snow, and think of us as weary travellers and take us in and look after us with warm, dry bedding and treat us as their own. Perhaps I would make us all delicious soup.

I put my arm around you. Then I put my arms around you. We are both cold by now so I hold you tight and it feels like your chest belongs there against my chest and your head against my shoulder and my arms around covering you as best they can from the damp chill the snow leaves in the air. The fat snowflakes dance around on the wind and I close my eyes. And I keep my mouth shut. But right now I am happier than I can remember being. And now I love snow. I love snow but this right here is what I will remember.

Future titles

What follows is a list of titles for stories I am writing or stories I wish to write or stories I would like other people to write so that I can read them and feel happy or sad or smart or pleased that someone would feel compelled to write a story based on something I put on this blog.

1. The Snow Outside My House Was Too Amazing to be False.
2. Department Store Basement.
3. Birds I Have Seen Die
4. The Break Up
5. Every Morning I Stand In Front Of The Bathroom Mirror
6. Lesley Joseph is a Fucking Monster
7. Watching Other People Make Mistakes is Easy and Hard at the Same Time
8. The Canoeist
9. Lesley Joseph Voodoo Doll
10. You Are Great at Words, Thanks for Nothing
11. I Don't Want to Stop Seeing You But I'm Not Sure I Know What Else To Do
    

What I Feel

I don't know a thing about how legal or illegal it is for me to do this.
This afternoon I read this story by Lydia Davis. I am feeling pretty emo right now and this helped/didn't help, not sure which.

What I Feel by Lydia Davis
These days I try to tell myself that what I feel is not very important. I've read this in several books now: that what I feel is important but not the center of everything. Maybe I do believe this, but not enough to act on it. I would like to believe it more deeply.
What a relief that would be. I wouldn't have to think about what I felt all the time, and try to control it, with all its complications and all its consequences. I wouldn't have to try to feel better all the time. In fact, if I didn't believe what I felt was so important, I probably wouldn't even feel so bad, and it wouldn't be so hard to feel better. I wouldn't have to say, Oh I feel so awful, this is like the end for me here, in this dark living-room late at night, with the dark street outside under the streetlamps, I am so very alone, everyone else in the house asleep, there is no comfort anywhere, just me alone down here, I will never calm myself enough to sleep, never sleep, never be able to go on to the next day, I can't possibly go on, I can't live, even through the next minute.
If I didn't believe what I felt was the center of everything, then it wouldn't be the center of everything, but just something off to the side, one of many things, and I would be able to see and pay attention to those other things that are equally important, and in this way I would have some relief.
But it is curious how you can believe an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it. So I still act as though my feelings were the center of everything, and they still cause me to end up alone by the living-room window late at night. What is different now is that I have this idea: I have the idea that soon I will no longer believe that my feelings are the center of everything. This is a comfort to me, because if you despair of going on, but at the same time tell yourself that what you feel may not be very important, then either you may no longer despair of going on, or you may still despair of going on but not quite believe it anymore.

(this story is available online here so hopefully I won't get in trouble for posting it.)

Buddy Holly glasses (+ news?)

I am currently sat typing the most difficult/stupid email I have ever written. It almost hurts. But enough about that. On tuesday, at work, rather than working, I wrote the following

I am wearing the Buddy Holly glasses. 3 pairs of them. Did you know that Buddy Holly died 50 years today? Did you know that? February 3rd 1959. He was 22 years old. Also the Big Bopper and Richie Valence died in the same plane crash but I do not know how old they were and they did not wear this type of glasses.

You can go read Twins on the website Titular Journal.

The Lifted Brow will be publishing an illustration called 'You Look Like This' in their next issue. Due, not sure when.

Over the next couple of weeks I play some Winston Echo shows. Most of the shows are with Tea & Toast Band and the man who is them makes wonderful videos. Also there is a show with poet Ross Sutherland and lady Line & A Dot, both of whom are responsible for the following video


Things to Do Before You Leave Town - a poem by Ross Sutherland from Line & a Dot on Vimeo.

My brain stopped working for 15 minutes

I've clicked this same button for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hour.
A poem?

My brain stopped working for 15 minutes

After 15 minutes was up

My brain starts slowly again

My eyes are still a little dull at the edges

I look into the gas glowing inside the tube lights

My face is a flat solar panel

Without my help

My hands cover my entire face

My hands are glowing pink

I like to hold a torch against my fingers and pretend I am a skeleton

Or perhaps a man with x-ray vision.