Thomas Moronic

A Hiding Place

2011-12-27T12:11:00.000Z

Mark wakes up at 1:30am and looks at his boyfriend Paul who is sitting at the desk where their computer is, snorting a line of bluish-white powder; his face lit by the pornography that he’s watching online.

“So are we going out?”

“I guess …”

Twenty minutes later and Mark’s washing his hands in the bathroom with the light off.

Thirty minutes after that and Paul and Mark are sitting in a cruising bar. The only real light is from a set of small red bulbs in the middle of the room, where the drinks are served. Occasionally they’ll see a face that they recognize or someone will recognize them but they keep it low key and just nod.

Paul stands up and finishes his drink. He starts walking towards the darkrooms, where the majority of the sex happens. Mark walks behind him and brushes a hand against the back of his jeans as they walk in. It accidentally feels like a reminder.

You have to train your eyes to the dark. Eventually you can flesh out shadows with features but it’s still vague. Someone starts to kiss Mark. A hand slips up his t-shirt. He reaches to the side to check that Paul’s still there, which he is. The same person has a hand planted round Paul’s crotch – Mark’s fingers trace the arm down to Paul’s jeans, which are still fastened. Paul moves suddenly, which makes Mark move too – his hands feeling out the wall behind him. It dawns on him how high he is and how much he’d been relying on the light for balance.

They push though a set of plastic strips that separate the first darkroom from a small area split into six cubicles, some with glory holes and some without. It’s still dark but there’s a dim glow and it’s not as black as the room that they’ve just stepped out of.

The way that the space is split with a slim corridor running between the cubicles reminds Mark of a level from a computer game and the fake industrial pipes on the wall add to it. A guy stands at the end of the walkway, with two cubicle doors either side of him, his hand resting on his belt buckle. Paul walks towards him and Mark follows. The man leans forward and kisses Paul. Paul puts his hand back and holds Mark’s, which surprises him. Mark touches Paul’s back. He realizes how thin he’s got. He runs his fingers over Paul’s shoulder blades. The guy kisses Paul harder, and pulls him forward, holding the sides of his head. He starts sidestepping into one of the cubicles, guiding Paul as they kiss. Paul lets go of Mark’s hand and follows the guy in. They close the door.

Mark hears a belt being undone and sped up breaths in between the kissing noises. A hand touches Mark’s ass. It reaches round and starts feeling the front of his legs and then his dick, which isn’t hard. Someone starts kissing the back of his neck. Mark closes his eyes and turns round. He lets the stranger steer him towards a cubicle. Mark holds out a hand for balance. When it brushes against plastic he realizes he’s been led back into one of the darkrooms; he opens his eyes but it’s pointless: there’s nothing.

He trips but stays on his feet. The floor feels sticky. The guy who brought him in is rough. Mark feels stubble scrape against his cheek as the guy starts kissing his neck again. Mark can feel the guy’s heart. It’s going fast. Hands run up and down his back like he can’t decide what to do with Mark or what to do first. Mark’s head bumps against a wall. His belt is unfastened clumsily. A hand covers both Mark’s wrists and holds them up against the wall. A tongue fills his mouth, pushes the back of his front teeth uncomfortably. Another hand goes up Mark’s t-shirt. Someone else is pulling his jeans down round his ankles. Something’s pushed in his face, bending his nose, a hand with a bottle or a tube or … Mark snorts whatever it is and a fast daze lands quickly, blurring the nothings further. His head nods onto his right shoulder but is quickly pulled back up again and kissed hard. He’s bent over. A finger muddles round his ass. That finger quickly becomes a cock. Mark makes a sound somewhere between a cry, a choke and a cough as whoever’s dick enters him. There’s no condom. Someone else is pulling at Mark’s hair. His scalp feels tight. The guy fucking him does it hard. It hurts. Two cocks try and get into Mark’s mouth, vying for space. He can feel another couple rubbing against his stomach. He feels the stitching of his t-shirt rip under one arm. It sounds like he can hear crying – the guy fucking him? – but the music seems so much louder now. Repetitive beats and someone singing something about needing someone forever till the end of time. It’s hard to make out anything else. The cock isn’t in him anymore. Mark’s on the floor. He remembers falling as it actually happens. Time’s a mess. He’s too high. Someone’s shouting. The beats of the song begin to stretch. Things are a lot heavier. He’s pulling his jeans back up to his waist. It takes effort. More than you’d think. Stuff is dense – stuff like air. Mark’s nodding out and he’s being fucked again. He opens his eyes and he’s back on the floor. There’s a synthetic taste in the back of his throat, like gone off medicine. He feels a vibration in his pocket. He reaches in to get his phone. He realizes how wet his hands are and wipes them on his leg and takes the phone out. He presses a button and the small blue rectangle that’s from a friend he hasn’t spoken to for in a few days and that says: hope yr ok. xxx is such a contrast to the darkness that it lights up the room for two seconds. Through a squint Mark sees a heavyset guy in his fifties buttoning up a shirt, a guy in his twenties leaning against a wall with his eyes closed and playing with his dick and trying to make himself hard, there’s two older guys standing close to each other with their trousers down, some others too, but the light soon leaves.

Mark makes his way back into the bar. The sudden amount of clear space throws him. He orders a drink and can’t tell if the guy behind the bar is looking at him weirdly. He tries to make better eye contact, but that makes it worse. He’s still squinting. When he scratches his nose his had comes back with blood on it. He thinks he can here Paul being fucked but it might just be the music. Things feel knotted.

GRAVES

2011-07-03T16:51:00.002+01:00

My new new novella, GRAVES is available now via Kiddiepunk.

ABOUT GRAVES:
Obscured by longing and haunted by regret, the characters at the heart of GRAVES are desperate for a once familiar solace that now seems long gone. A married couple mourn the disappearance of their youngest son while his older brother attempts to escape his own guilt whilst he watches his parents’ relationship erode amid sadness and frustration.
Set over several years and seen through the eyes of various unidentified narrators, GRAVES maps out the hazy and painful impossibilities of memory and loss.

For more information and to buy a copy of GRAVES, click here.
To read an interview conducted by Jesse Hudson, in which I talk about GRAVES, click here.

A long overdue update.

2011-07-03T16:45:00.003+01:00

OK, so it's been a long time since I posted here. It was a strange time. To be honest I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with this place. I put a lot of work into this blog over a few years, and I'm very proud of it. Whenever I look at it though, at the moment I still see a lot of bad memories and the place feels a little haunted in a way. To be honest, it feels quite strange just typing this and looking at the format and layout of the backroom of Blogger - something I haven't seen for a long time.

I've recently started blogging again, this time over at Transductions. As for this place, I do feel an urge to try and do something with it and continue the work that I was doing here before. I think I just need a little bit more time to work out how I want it to continue and what I want to do with it. Hopefully I'll have that worked out soon.

In the meantime, there are a few cool, exciting things that I've been involved with recently. There are some good things coming. I'll post about one in the next post on here.

Love

TM xx

2010-04-23T17:13:00.002+01:00

My dad died this morning. I won't be posting for a few days.

Thomas

Danielle

2010-04-23T00:00:00.001+01:00

that mothering instinct
felt floor mesh beneath
wires and scratches
there's a view from
a window that shows
half the street
stripes of clouds
like tv interference
arrows pushing into
each other
continuous strain
missives sent
between large
bars left to
provoke fear
anxious lines of
ex innocence
trained this way
left with new skies

Where I left you

2010-04-22T00:00:00.001+01:00

I’d been standing
at the urinal
for a long time.
It was a giveaway.
The man two spaces
away had been there
when I arrived.
Even more of a giveaway.
When whoever was washing
his hands behind us
buzzed them under the hand dryer
and left,
I clocked my neighbour
without turning my head,
letting my eyes
not so secretly point
diagonally down.
I left when I guy
Came in with his
Daughter, didn’t want her
To go into the Ladies alone.
I got out, thought about his wife.
Later I was in taxi
Home from a friend’s.
I made up things about my life
That never happened.
The driver told me about people
Who’d he’d picked up
In recent nights.
He assumed a couple of
Things about me, which
I didn’t put right, so
Ended up telling me
How he’d got a handjob
From a girl who didn’t
Want to pay, said he
Could do that everynight,
And that he’d die in
Poverty but full of
The horn.
I guessed he was making
Up stuff too.

Too kind

2010-04-21T00:00:00.001+01:00

My hands were shaking
Felt blood
Rattling round like
It had turned solid
Vomit hints in my neck
Piss cracks through
The leak in my shoes
Recognize that gaze
Shifts in bravery
Turns at trembling
Slides over
Make the most of this
Leave when the breath
Feels too kind

FREE KITTEN

2010-04-20T00:00:00.002+01:00

A safe place

2010-04-19T00:00:00.001+01:00

Jase21 - Anyone about?
May 4th 2009

Guest444 - Ime just repeating the advice I gave on here last June. This is just not a safe place to cruise for sex!!
I would hate to hear of anyone getting into trouble at this location.
May 3rd 2009

Jase21 - Am in the woods right now. No one around. Will stay for another hour then go home.
April 30th 2009

Jase21 - Been quiet here recently. anyone about?
April 13th 2009

Wolf69 - i bet that was cold though lol
Feb 11th 2009

Jase21-I met crazedfilth here this evening. We found a nice quiet spot and sucked and wanked each other off till we both shot out cum into the bushes. Very horny and very fun.
Feb 10th 2009

Summer holes

2010-04-18T00:00:00.001+01:00

The room felt
the same wherever
you stood.
You’d turn
and
there’d be
the same nausea.
You could think
about spinning
with your eyes shut,
but you know
as soon as you stopped,
blood rushing
would curve nothing;
the stars
in your vision
reduced to nil
seeking attention
like gnats
storming from summer holes.

Fragment 8

2010-04-17T00:00:00.001+01:00

“Seriously,” Smudge stops. She’s staring Michael right in the face. He can’t believe how close their faces are. The music, the world, everything else has seemed to stop of disappear. “Seriously,” her face looks cute, puzzled, maybe slightly frustrated by Michael’s lack of enthusiasm or spark? “Is everything ok?” Michael forces himself to snap back in life.
“Yeah, sorry. Just tripping. Haha. I’m cool.”
“Good,” Smudge smiles.
There’s a sudden crash, bang. The sound smashes up whatever moment Michael and Smudge were having.
“What the fuck was that?” Smudge stands up straight. She looks kinda feline. A cat trying to access a situation. Michael falls over in fright. Some stuff gets knocked off a bookshelf.
Smudge grabs Michael’s arm, which forces him to stand up. She quickly leads him out of the room and into the hallway corridor. Smudge starts banging on the bathroom door.
“Hey! Robert! are you ok?”
There’s a moment of total silence.
The bathroom door opens. Robert looks like he’s been asleep. His hair is messed up and his eyes look tired and glazed over.
Smudge: “Hmmm … having fun in there?”
Robert: “I feel weird.”
Smudge: “Well if you’ve finished making loud noises maybe you should try just lying down for a little bit.”

Smudge leads Robert down the hallway corridor and into one of the bedrooms. Michael walks behind feeling freaked out and jealous in this way that he really resents feeling, he feels bad for wanting Smudge when he knows how close she and Robert are.
“Just lay down here for a minute honey,” Smudge fluffs up a pillow and flattens out the bed. Robert clumsily climbs on.
Smudge: “How’s the trip going for you?”
Robert opens his eyes and sees Smudge leaning over him smiling, like she’s willing him on to have a good time, for everything in his world to feel nice. His vision is blurry. It’s like he’s looking at her through a dusty kaleidoscope.
“I really feel …” it feels like the words splinter apart as they leave Robert’s mouth. He doesn’t finish the sentence. Smudge leans over and kisses him gently. Michael watches and feels a rush of jealousy, sadness, arousal, all run through him at once. He feels guilty for being jealous.

My earliest memory

2010-04-16T00:00:00.002+01:00

The earliest memory I have is from when I was about 3 years old. It was my first day at playschool. I remember my mother walking me up the grey concrete steps that led to a blank looking mobile classroom set upon a slight slope. I remember walking deep into the room and staring at all the other kids. Then I remember turning round and seeing my mother waving goodbye. I thought that was it, that my mother was going to leave me forever. That I was alone, that I was here with all these other children that I didn't know. I don't recall my exact thought process but I wonder if it was something to do with knowing I was adopted, and thinking ah no, I'm being given away again. I cried when my mother left. I can't make out the face, but I know that an adult, a lady with blonde (?) hair tried to comfort me, but I remember stomping away from her, inconsolable. Another kid handed me a He Man action figure. I threw it on the floor. I clearly remember seeing a little girl looking scared or unsure of me. I accidentally bumped into a bookshelf, which almost toppled. Some of the adults told me off, thinking that I'd bashed into it on purpose. Don't remember anything else after that.

The messenger

2010-04-15T00:00:00.001+01:00

Takes me to the back of the room
And tells me not to get cum on his
Clothes, in the same voice that
He used when he told me he wanted
Me to stroke his balls. It’s like
If a robot’s speech patterns got
Set on the “erotic” mode. Change
Rooms when we start to get cold.
Rub faces and cheeks and breath
Loudly into each other’s ears, but
Never kiss. Made sure to aim my
Spurt onto the chairs, the carpet,
But not his clothes.

Curious

2010-04-14T00:00:00.002+01:00

Jeez, thought the kid,
Nature looks so fake sometimes.
That blood
Is the wrong colour;
That’s not what a
Smashed in ribcage
Is meant to look like.
The kid shuffled
A few steps sideways,
Navigated her way
Round the heap of trouble
That had made her day
Feel so curious.
Where do I go now?
She didn’t realise how
Loaded her thoughts would
Seem if some waster was
To record them, write them
Down, maybe even read them aloud.
What’s that supposed to be?
If someone had a fingernail
Taken off it would have sound
Effects way different to that –
Shriek? Something else
Caught her attention. Night,
Or daylight, or the sun, or,
Some thing else.

Air feels new

2010-04-13T00:00:00.001+01:00

Almost looks like a riot;
As you get closer it changes.
Sliding down the bank
In the dark, losing track
Of anything everyday.
Air feels new, more than
Anything and most important
The air feels honest.
People have lit bonfires
On the sloped sides
Of the hills.
Couple of shadows with
Hoods pulled up skate down,
Tumbling like someone hit
Fast forward as they trip
Onto the ground – the beauty
Is that they knew they
Wouldn’t be able to pull off
The tricks they were
Attempting, which spurred
Them on even more –
Glorious failures in the night,
Snapping shots of laughter,
Sound tracking the moments
When the sky goes through
A flicker book of blues
Until it hits the greys and blacks;
All perfect, all promised.

Fragment 7

2010-04-12T00:00:00.003+01:00

We’re looking for things to hold onto. Our friends seem like the best things that we can find. I’m starting to forget. I’m pretty sure that soon I won’t even know who I am. It’s starting to get so cold. I don’t mean normal cold. I don’t mean the cold that you get outside, or the cold that you feel when it snows. I’m talking about a different cold. This cold is a lot deeper. It’s definitely inside. It’s buried. It feels like it should be lost, but just doesn’t want to be left alone. The thing with how cold things can start to feel is … I dunno … it’s confusing … the thing I hate is how things just start to get lost – important things. But because we’re pretty much fucked anyway. Sometimes it feels like we’re clinging onto things even when it’s too late to have them. Because sometimes things can still be so good. I mean really good. Awesome, amazing. But they just disappear so quickly. Sometimes I only realise how great things are after they’re gone. After the moments have burnt up. After they’ve died. There’s a constant sadness. It never shifts. It’s always there, even when something good is happening. Maybe it needs to be there. Maybe it’s binary. Suppose it wasn’t there; perhaps the good stuff wouldn’t seem as good anymore. If that’s true … I dunno … it just seems slightly sick, you know? To need that sadness.

Videos of Steve Albini saying stuff

2010-04-11T00:00:00.002+01:00

Fragment 6

2010-04-10T00:00:00.000+01:00

Robert stands in the bathroom staring at the mirror. He sees his face in front of him, with this blurry dreamy mist floating across it, obscuring his image slightly, like faint clouds of vapour drifting across the glass. The longer he stares, the more the vapour begins to look like some kind of film, or a membrane or something. It looks like something his fingers might be able to tear through. He lifts a hand and thinks about the touching the mirror but changes his mind just before his fingers touch the glass.

Fragment 5

2010-04-09T00:00:00.002+01:00

“Maybe we should go and see how Robert’s doing?” Michael didn’t mean that; he was just testing the water, trying to gage Smudge’s reaction.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Fuck yeah! Look!” Smudge isn’t listening. She’s in the corner of the room with her back to Michael, messing with something that he can’t make out.

Michael moves closer to Smudge. She spins round and opens both of her hands out. They’re glowing. Tiny intricate hairline threads, a thousand or something – all different sparkling colours, are shooting up and down from her palms. It looks electricity but more fun. Thousands of tiny showers of buzzing light.

“Can you see that?!?”
“I think so yeah …” Michael can see crazy lights in Smudge’s hands, sure, probably totally different to what she’s seeing, but he can see them. He looks at her eyes, and sees his version of the lights trickling around. Fucking … perfect … he thinks. It feels like they’re sharing something. Probably best not to mention Robert again …

“Hey – what did you say about Robert?”
Shit – did she here that? Did she hear what I … thought?
“Uhh, what?” suddenly Michael’s comfort zone feels a little shaken.
“Just before I showed you the lights – you said something about Robert.”
“Oh yeah,” course she didn’t hear what I was thinking – stop being paranoid. “Uhh … I just said …” he doesn’t want to say it again but he does anyway: “Should we go see how Robert’s doing?”

Smudge looks at Michael and thinks. Michael stares at her eyes, wishes that he could work out what’s going through her head at this exact moment. He can still see traces of the light in her pupils.

“Yeah! Let’s see how he’s doing,” Smudge jumps up. Sometimes it feels like her energy is just fucking endless. She grabs Michael’s hand and pulls him up drags him out the door. His body language can’t help but look totally unenthusiastic.

They go down the hallway and back into the room where they all started off, where they took the drugs. It’s empty but the stereo is still on full blast playing fuzzy noisy sounds to itself. Smudge scans the room.

Instantly distracted, Smudge kneels down in front of the stereo and presses stop on the music. The sudden silence sends a chill through the room. She starts rifling through a pile of CDs on the floor, tossing albums aside, singing tiny only just audible songs to herself as she tries to choose something to listen to. Michael stands awkwardly staring at her as she grabs each new CD, considers it for a mini second and then chucks it to the floor. He looks at her legs. He feels fucked and powerless. Weird mixture of horniness and … despair?

Michael: “So where do you think Robert is?”
Smudge: “Oh yeah … must be in the bathroom. We can check in a bit. He’s probably just chilling out for a minute or something.”

Fall (a poem to be read silently)

2010-04-08T00:00:00.000+01:00

Hate feeling
Like I'm waiting
For you
To fall again.

You will feel no pain

2010-04-07T00:00:00.001+01:00

Lapping like severed threads
Upmost attention paid
Like deserving coping strategies
Memorised in kind
Remnants of something missing
Traced back and there’s fire

Shaky

2010-04-06T00:00:00.001+01:00

Preordained scenes set up
Like remembrances
Cut shaky as if this is the
New dream
Leftovers startled to stops
Nothing glows anymore
Except this one that hidden
Matching up blocked moods
Contour lines built round
Hard heavy breaths
Lungs so tired for death
Fall so hard
You won’t stand again
Whippings of grace
No one can move this

Been trying to hack through the same finger for days

2010-04-05T00:00:00.001+01:00

Been trying to hack through
The same finger for days.
It’s turned red
Where the blood’s trapped.
Need to get it off
Now it feels like forever
Since it started to hurt.
Throbbing has gotta be
Trimmed; tried smashing it
On a table under a brick
But just more grazes.
Need to get this finger off.

Heat hums static

2010-04-04T00:00:00.001+01:00

Heat hums static
Familiar new voices
Clogged up
Tied straight
Missing what you’re supposed
To enjoy
Canned laughter laid with trust
Fed the things
Needed to know
Almost too funny
All things
Stop at once
Tacked together for frights
Future steps sideways
And now you’re home

Tempered

2010-04-03T00:00:00.002+01:00

seeing him
looking so
bored drove
me crazy

wanted to
see what
he'd
look like
screaming
fucking
red faced
flushed

wanted to
see sweat

tensed arms
stretched sinew

under me
on top of me

pulling at
everything
he thinks
i might have

biting his
neck
pretending
i could do
what i got
lost thinking
about

i want to
leave a
my mark

i want
him to
leave
scratches
on my
shoulders
fingerprints
round my
waist

seeing him
so bored

One of the only recent British guitar bands that interest me = The Cribs

2010-04-02T00:00:00.003+01:00

24 hour petrol station

2010-04-01T00:00:00.001+01:00

Can’t even tell who
It used to be.
Left dying in sperm
And blood and air
That smells like
The flu.
Separate yourself,
Take a walk,
Use distance like
Medicine and walk
To the 24 hour
Petrol station to
Top up on supplies.
Gonna stay inside
Till it gets dark
Again so lots of sugar,
Coffee, crap that’ll
Stuff up your innards,
Keep you regular
But stodgy. Keep you
Feeling as heavy
As the dread that
Keeps cropping up
In those dreams of yours.
The dreams that
Started all of this.

Each love peaks

2010-03-31T00:00:00.002+01:00

Read about a girl (on some website
Forwarded by a guy I met online),
Who’d been cut into pieces. Body
Turned into a bloody, fleshy,
Pulped jigsaw puzzle that had to
Be put back together by someone
With gloves on.
Read some other stuff too. Smoked
So that I could look at ghostly
Patterns gathering round lampshades.
Talked to a couple of friends
Via instant messenger. Forgot anything
That I was supposed to do.

Something just jogged my memory

2010-03-30T00:00:00.002+01:00

I realised that you were
Probably there
And it made me feel so
Bad that I froze.

Kept conjuring images
Based on what you’d
Told me, of what I’d
Half remembered
Pretending you might
Have looked like there.

There’s this whole
Past without me,
This whole monumental
Thing that’s so dense
That I’m having trouble
Trying to chip
My way into.

It’s like a virgin asshole.
But one that’s stayed that
Way through choice,
And you’ve kept tabs on
How that thing smells.

Too scared to ask
The sorts of things
That I’d like to,
Because I know that
You’d answer me
So truthfully, that
I wouldn’t be able
To stand.

You’d have to help
Me up and I doubt
That I’d feel any
Better for it.

Fragment 4

2010-03-29T00:00:00.001+01:00

“Hey!” Jason is standing at the bottom of the stairs, grinding his teeth and looking generally manic. “Are you guys coming or what?” His current warped perception of everything means that he hears the words come out of his mouth very clearly. It’s like when someone hears their own voice on a cassette. He repeats himself not for anyone, just for his own amusement, so that he can listen to his voice again: “Are you guys coming or not?” He looks at his hands, they’ve got a faint gleam to them. “HEY!!!” still no answer from upstairs. “Fuck it – be boring! I’ll go on my own!”

Jason leaves the house, slamming the front door behind him. He mutters to himself about his friends, annoyed that they’ve obviously changed their minds about going exploring with him, even though they seemed to think it was a good idea before they took the acid.
Wow, who’d have thought this street could look so good? The street feels like a movie set or
something. Not a real street, but a street in a film.

Jason notices the trees. The green looks so green, with the moonlight reflecting off them in a way that makes them look glossy, like the front cover of a magazine. Jason imagines what the street would look like from a high diagonal camera angle. Cameras are his thing. He has his point-and-shoot round his neck as usual. It’s part fashion, part functional, he likes people knowing that he’s “a photographer” and the sort of casual social kudos that seems to attach itself to that, but also he just loves taking pictures of things. He imagines what he might look like from above with everything looking like it has been prepared for an expensive photo-shoot.

Man, the whole world has been Photoshopped. How can stuff look so perfect in the dark?

Jason walks out of the street. A warm, overwhelming rush of pills and acid races through his body, as he’s suddenly illuminated by the gorgeous orange light bursting out from an otherwise everyday lamppost. The beauty of everything makes the faint hairs on his arms jump up into goose bumps. This … fucking … rules.

Jason turns a corner. His senses suddenly feel acute. His ears zoom in on the sound of his trainers grinding on the gritty tarmac street, making a satisfying crunching noise.

Before long he finds himself walking past the fence that separates the house’s back garden from the street behind it. He cranes his neck and looks at the house standing there in the dark. It looks really still. No one would know that his friends are in there tripping their brains off. Weird, Jason thinks.

He pauses as he reaches the opening to the woodland that the whole town backs onto. He looks at the huge trees that form the entrance, he looks at the floor, at the point where the street ends and the dry brown soil takes over. The shadows cast by the thick growth of trees and bushes looks immense. Fuck, Jason thinks. Maybe I should go back for the others … don’t want them to … Jason starts doubting himself and his whole idea of walking round the neighbourhood and woods while tripping … don’t want them to miss out. He manages to get his brain back into fun-mode. Whatever, fuck it … their loss. He grips his camera and starts edging closer to the woods.

Fragment 3

2010-03-28T00:00:00.001Z

Robert is standing up. He had to psyche himself up to do it. It feels like invisible weights have been hung on his body. He has to concentrate on balancing, on not falling down. When he walks forward a couple of steps it feels like the carpet and his shoes are made of pieces of opposing Velcro. When he walks he lifts his leg higher than usual. It looks like he’s trying to step over things, like there are invisible shapes blobbed in the air, lots of obstacles made of nothing.

As he gets closer to the door, Robert steadies himself. Shit … the door. It feels a lot more important than it usually does. Robert sizes it up, tries to work out what to do. All I have to do is pull the handle and leave the room. The door looks bigger, like it might be really thick, like it has this authority – it throbs like it’s losing patience. It’s not a big deal. It’s a fucking door. I open it and I walk through. All I need to do is leave the room and find the others. Leave … the … room … Robert jumps out of over-thinking-mode and just pulls the door open. He doesn’t think about the force, it’s like he’s superhuman. The door slams against the wall and Robert jumps in fright.
He stares down the dark hallway corridor that connects all of the upstairs rooms in the house.
It feels so fucking cold. Robert looks down the corridor that looks dark and deserted and seems to stretch on forever. He can hear faint sounds. Smudge … laughing? Cool. I’ll go find them … after I’ve … Robert wants to be out of the corridor so he slips in the nearest door possible which is … where’s the fucking light? Can’t see a fucking thing … where’s … click … ok, the bathroom.
Robert closes the door behind him. He leans against the wall and stares at the impact that his hand makes on the linoleum tiles. Ripples bobble off it, like he’s put his hand in water. He removes his hand and the wall goes back to normal. He puts his hand back and watches the watery effect again. He feels less cold. He walks towards the mirror.

The reflection looks almost too real. Robert recognizes himself but it’s more like he’s looking at an expertly CGI rendered version of himself. He looks almost too perfect. As he gets closer, the image changes: it seems to flicker, like a hologram. He looks at the scared expression of the person he’s looking at. The person looks lost, their skin looks clammy. Robert moves so that his face is virtually against the mirror. He stares into his own eyes which are staring back at him intensely.

*

Fragment 2

2010-03-27T00:00:00.001Z

“Shit – everything looks like it’s got glitter on it.”
“What about this?” Michael holds up a scratched CD that’s lying amidst a heap of clothes and other mess on the floor.
“No. Weird.” Says Smudge, squinting up her heavy-on-the-eyeliner eyes in this way that kinda makes Michael feel crazy. “You’d think that it would … because … you know … it’s shiny already.” Michael gets a little high listening to Smudge talk. He zones out on her voice. It sounds like there’s some kind of heavenly satellite delay. He zones in when she says:
“But look at the fucking scratches on it.” It sounds violent, Michael jerks back into the conversation from whatever blissful, tingling place his mind has been speeding at for the last … three seconds?

Smudge is still talking about the CD, she’s holding it and examining it like a little kid would a shell that they found on the beach. She holds it out and shows Michael. She’s right, the scratches on the CD look deep like any lustre that the disc might have had has been sucked into the surface damage. Michael doesn’t like looking at it – it feels like a … warning? Smudge tosses the CD back towards a pile of scrunched up bedroom debris where it gets lost, ceases to exist, resets the atmosphere of the room back to playful confusion.

“When did we take that stuff?” Michael stares at Smudges face. It looks like there are two versions of her, both vaguely transparent hovering just out of sync until they get a little more aligned and … click … yeah, just one Smudge. Cool.
“I don’t know. Not that long ago.”
“It feels like we’ve been this way forever.” Michael gets a kick out of how the drugs seem to make everything Smudge is saying sound profound; so that when she says “I can’t remember not feeling like this,” it just sounds so meaningful and deep that he feels like he could serious just fucking die happy right there on the weird, glittering carpet. Michael rolls back and lies down on the floor smiling.

*

Fragment 1

2010-03-26T00:00:00.001Z

Robert sits with his head in his hands next to the stereo and tries to wish away the tide of what feels like it might be a particularly bad acid trip. The first hint is when the wall with the Sonic Youth poster on it begins to look a lot further away than it usually does. Everything in front of him looks stretched out.

The next sense to start betraying usual perception is his hearing. The song that’s playing – some lofi punk thing, some hipster thing that he couldn’t convincingly sell to himself let alone the people he’d been trying to impress – sounds like it has been shrouded with a huge blanket made of water, like a wave but softer, it sounds muffled but a lot louder too.

Occasionally there’s respite. Robert turns his head and the music seems to make sense again. Then it switches back, sounds more like a modem warming up, slowed down, the lyrics, guitar, whatever, reduced to its components cut up into all the tiny discrete parts that are usually left for the ear to decode before the listener actually hears it. Robert thinks something along the lines of shit, I’m hearing this stuff before my ears do … he laughs, or grins wide eyed, amused at how like a stupid hippy he was starting to sound. He’s almost relieved to laugh.

Things feel so surreal and disarming that this stuff might be funny. Scary. But funny. Could go either way, he thinks.

Robert turns around. He realises how empty everything looks, how still, forgets that there’s a loud punk song playing, and feels peaceful for a second. He can’t tell if he feels calm or just alone. His friends have gone to other parts of the house.

Maybe I should try seeing what outside of the room looks like.

A couple of summers back I was surrounded by Canada geese.

2010-03-25T00:00:00.002Z

A couple of summers back I was surrounded by Canada geese. It was after a party. One of the old parties that we used to have. The ones that seem so far away now; mainly because once you jump out of that phase where you want to get emotionally headfucked every other week, the distance you can travel from that space in a short space of time is pretty staggering.

I’d not slept. I shared the last remaining pills with a friend. We snorted them, figured it would be funny. Our noses stung. We licked the last of the coke off the table, the last of the MDMA from the plastic wrap that it came in. Washed it all down with the last quarter of the final bottle of vodka. I left the party at 2pm to meet a friend.

We walked round the park. I gave up trying to make sense of how I felt. I settled for a vagueness that seemed to fit whatever mood was trying to work itself to the surface of my emotions.

The gaggle of geese wobbled around me, hoping for bread. I had no bread. I was intimidated by the number of birds, the flapping of the wings, and craning of necks. My friend guided me to safety; I tiptoed around small splats of duck shit. I left the park and tried to make my way home without further upset. I looked at the sky.

I miss Le Tigre

2010-03-24T00:00:00.002Z

Too sincere

2010-03-23T00:00:00.001Z

- Are you filming this?
- Can you see a camera?
- No … but …
- Ask a stupid question get a stupid answer.
- Woah, sorry. I just thought that’s why you would … I thought that you would want people to be able to watch this when it’s done.
- Why would I want anyone to see this? What business has it got to do with them?
- I thought that’s why you were doing this. Well, not the only reason, but I thought that was … a big part of it.
- Is that why you’re doing it?
- I like the idea of it.
- We’re very different. I HATE the idea of this. I only like the fact that I’m actually doing it.

Traces of things

2010-03-22T00:00:00.001Z

It got really quiet and stayed that way.
People’s ears adapted I suppose.
So the silence ended up getting loud.
They got lost somewhere between it, and themselves.
They got caught up in traces of things that
Became overpowering somehow, bigger than anything that they actually were, bigger than anything like them should actually appear; I suppose they were still small but the silence had started warping what people made of them, what people were used to hearing.
We’re getting to that point now.
What used to be shadows now feel like bright lights.
What used to be darkness looks like a fire.
I listened to your voice fade of, ramble, lose touch with what you were talking about.
I let my eyes get used to what you were starting to look like.
You adapt. It’s easy.

Scribble

2010-03-21T00:00:00.001Z

He’d hooked up with a guy off a Master/Slave website and let the guy tattoo him. It was part of his “do anything you want” spiel that he always got a boner from writing. The guy had gone wild – scrawled some Cy Twombly scribbling deep into and across Mark’s back. When he twisted his head he only got half the picture, he top of his shoulders that looked more heavily inked than the rest of his skin; but that was just proximity. Mark got his friend to take a picture. He uploaded it onto the website, but this time he didn’t get a boner.

dummy

2010-03-20T00:00:00.000Z

Saw you fucking walking away with him, cunt.
Bet you got what you fucking asked for.
Bet you got everything that you had no idea that was coming/cumming.
Fucking insane.
Nasty, nasty, shit.
Fuck those advertisements that you walked past, didn’t even fucking read.
You’ll be in one of your own soon.
Won’t be around to see the fucking thing, though. Dumb shit.

Things just stayed stable

2010-03-19T00:00:00.001Z

she pulled her hood up so that only a scraggle of hair
was peeking out, and her eyes and featured
were cast in a shadow
that she hoped
would make her look like she was higher on drugs than she was
or more intensely lost in what she was doing
who she was talking to
she felt like it did the trick
she felt like she was the centre of the room
where all the boys flocked
aimed future masturbation fantasies towards
“saved for later” said some dick
with shoulders too big for his head
things never got as fucked as she would like
or liked to imagine they would get
things just stayed stable
things just stayed ok

Celebratory

2010-03-18T00:00:00.002Z

Wheels skidding scrape
On the steps

Drunk kids shout
Under the fly over

Reclaimed architecture
Privy to bliss

Flushed faces
Affected pose

Good intentions
Spread evenly

Daylight held
High esteem

We slowly pass

2010-03-17T00:00:00.000Z

I ask my friend to slow down,
Cars start to overtake us
As our vehicle begins to dawdle.
We slowly pass
The rushed memorial,
Stripped of whatever it is
That it’s supposed to have,
For anyone that doesn’t know
The specifics that they
All come with.
The last few leaves
Have started to discolour,
Looking crisp;
They’d snap if rearranged:
Their own impressions
Of the ashes.
Someones’s job is to sweep
Them away, the sort of weirdness
That no one thinks about, or
If so rarely. I don’t want
To be there
When they do.
But I don’t want anything
To last forever.

Home movie

2010-03-16T00:00:00.002Z

I shot a video
Of myself
Cutting off
My own hand.

I thought about
Showing it to friends,
But chose not to.

They'd just have
To be polite
And pretend
That the hand
Was still there,
If they noticed
Its absense.

I watched
The film back,
Slowed down
The part
When the hand
Finally dropped.

It was a long
Fucking film.
Took so much
Longer than
Movies had
Made me think.

I'm getting by
Okay; no one
Has said anything
Yet anyway.

Odd dialogue that I heard in porn films recently

2010-03-15T00:00:00.004Z

"Donny can't write poetry so the only way he can touch your heart is with his dick."

"Just remember, you're doing this so you will have money for the abortion."

"Oh god, I'm sorry" (that last line was kinda gasped by accident/instinct just as the speaker was ejaculating on someone's face and got it in their eye.

"Shall we just get on with the porn?"
"No - finish telling me a little about the house music from Rotterdam ..."

The fallen

2010-03-14T00:00:00.003Z

Day

2010-03-13T00:00:00.001Z

I asked him a question
about the train crash
that had been on the news,
so that he felt like
he had a purpose.

His confused face looked up,
gazed at me
through a drunken mist.
I could see his brain trying
to work through sheet upon
sheet of glazed
over emotional barriers
trying to find its footing.

He slurred,
telling me that
there were
fourteen people
dead so far,
his eyes lit up

– engaged finally –

he said that the death count
was expected to rise.
I asked something else,
anything really, nothing
I can recall
and he answered that too.
I stood in the doorway,
trying to work
out another move.

While we slept

2010-03-12T00:00:00.000Z

While we slept
I thought I heard you
Get up move around,
We swapped places
And I stared at the
Darkness’s intricate
Lack of colour
Until I fell asleep
Properly, until I was
Really gone, really
Dreaming.

A cover version of night time

2010-03-11T00:00:00.001Z

There’s no home
In a place that seems
To burn to the ground
After a certain time
Every night.
Daytimes can be
Distractions, letting you
Feel approximations
Of how you used
To want to feel all
The time, but once
The sun is old enough
To hit your squinting eyes
Then it’s almost time
To close your eyes
And pretend that the
Night is just a trick
Of the light, and that
The flames may have
Been dull, but they
Were never put out,
And it’s too late to
Start dousing them now.
The fear cancels out
Nothing, and the boredom
Equals the sadness;
And you’re ready to
Stare at the amber loss
Until your eyes feel sore.

3 voices (from a work in progress)

2010-03-10T00:00:00.002Z

Be quiet-----------i’m trying to channel something-----what?--------I’m trying to channel something-=-------yeah, what?---i’m trying to channel something so that i can be afraid of the same things that you are------------that’s dumb----no it isn’t----it’s all about one particular place in the house-----where?-----you should know-------how do you know what i’m scared of?-----i’ve watched your eyes.it only happens when you’re getting tired///there are certain parts of the house where i know you get scared//only at night time//that’s when you’re the most scared----how long have you known?---long enough//only recently really-----it’s been going on for a lot longer than that//since i can remember//since i was a kid---you still are a kid---yeah, but younger, when i was a little kid//---yeah i thought it might have-----i can’t even remember the first time properly//i mean, i know it happened and remember little bits of it but all of the first times blur together now//it’s happened too many times-----does it ever get less scary?-----no//never---sometimes i even think that it’s getting worse--------------

Charles Ray

2010-03-09T00:00:00.004Z

SHRINE

2010-03-08T00:00:00.004Z

“I hate you looking at me like that, because I can tell what you’re thinking.”
“Oh yeah? Good. Not long left, right?”
“Nah. I wish you’d just do it.”
“Get it over with?”
“Yeah.”
“Getting bored?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. That’s all part of it. No good doing it if you’re scared and nothing else.”
“I hate you.”
“I hate me too. Doesn’t change a thing though. Total waste. Of time and of everything else that it entails.”
“Just fucking do it.”
“You’re making things a lot worse than they have to be. You should be trying to think about the silence at the moment. Think about nothing else except that.”
“Why?”
“Things might make more sense.”
“Might?”
“I could be lying.”

I'm gonna pretend I'm at a Hole show from the 90s (for Aspen Michael Taylor)

2010-03-07T00:00:00.007Z

Backwards

2010-03-06T00:00:00.001Z

- I want to feel the way I did when I was first getting into this stuff.
- New experiences are wasted on you.
- They’re not. It’s like the distance … frames them better.
- You don’t think about things while they’re happening to you. When moments have gone and left you then you decide you want them back.
- That’s more normal than you think, even if that isn’t what happens to me. It’s not what I’m talking about though.
- You don’t know what you’re talking about.
- No one does. I almost do. I never feel myself until I’m looking back.

Exercise caution

2010-03-05T00:00:00.002Z

Didn’t you hear? Someone got killed there.
Youngish guy, about 20, tons of police
“combing” the ground for clues.
They’ll find used condoms,
Maybe some lube, I know a couple of men
That liked to leave panties there too
After they’d been fucked wearing them,
Always wonder if their wives
Ever notice that their underwear goes
Missing, or
Whether they’ve just got too much stuff
To notice when they do.
Police have told people who use the
Fields to cruise on to exercise great caution,
Not to go, to just stay away until things
Have been “ironed” out.
Don’t know if it was gang related
Or mistaken identity, or someone
Just felt like they had something that
They had to do.
I’m lonely and I want you here.

If the light has to go, let it cut

2010-03-04T00:00:00.003Z

I watched him.
He undressed and smiled.
I asked him something
But I either said it too
Quietly, swallowed my words
Or else he thought it was dumb
And that it would be kinder
Not to answer me,

Kinder to
Just let things
Carry on flying off
Like trails of fireworks

Or a bundle of fibre optic
Threads being wobbled
In a dark room.

I kept a t-shirt on while
I fucked him

Felt like protection
And in the dark I
Could at least pretend
That it wasn't such an
Obvious gesture as it was.

For a while he kept
On his vest -
But that was just for warmth
Not through any shyness
Or lack of confidence;

When I pulled at it,
It soon got tossed onto
The cluttered carpet,

The same carpet
Where some of his cum
Fell and soaked in,
Mixing with mine, when I
Tried to aim for his face,
But couldn't control
The burst I was so happy.

The funny moments
When everyone realises
That everything has to end;
If the light has to go,
Let it cut.

Deflected

2010-03-03T00:00:00.001Z

1. Best intentions deflected.
2. I know some of the same people you used to.
3. He had a dream where he started kissing you when he was pretending to show you to your door, got a hand up your top, pinched your tit a little too hard.

***
4.
5.
6. FINISH

Dear Ryan

2010-03-02T00:00:00.001Z

Dear Ryan

I hope you don’t mind me writing, only you’ve been on my mind for the past few days and it feels like I’ve been focussing a lot of thoughts in your direction, so it felt like it would make more sense to write them down and actually try to send them to you; I still don’t know if I will.

The opening paragraph of this letter probably made you think that I had specific, organized thoughts that I wanted to talk to you about, or that you figured in or something. If you did then I’m sorry to disappoint you but some things just never change I guess; I’m still as muddled and as confused/ing as I’ve always been.

It started because you were in a dream that I had. Not for long, I mean, the dream wasn’t about you or anything, but you were there and it freaked me out. It’s strange that I’ve never had dreams about you before. It feels rude of me to say that – you know : I’ve never dreamt about you, but it’s true and I don’t mean to sound cruel when I say that I was surprised to see you in there. I’m not being passive aggressive or anything like that. I actually think that it’s because me and you were always – and I don’t mean this is a crude way – just so physical with each other all of the time, that it was impossible for that physicality to actually slip through into dreams – something impossible to touch. I know that when/if you read that then you’ll roll your eyes at me for trying to work through something in my usual ham-fisted in articulate way.

About the dream itself? I can barely remember a thing. I just know that I was dreaming about something and then all of a sudden you were there. I think you came in through a window or something, maybe you were hiding underneath something, I have this idea of you appearing through a hole maybe. You were wearing a black t-shirt with some logo on that I took as being a logo of a band that you liked that I hadn’t heard of yet. And that’s it. You only played a bit part in the dream, but you’re the only thing that I can remember about it. Consider yourself Edward Furlong in Terminator 2, in that case. Actually no, I can also remember the part where the evil terminator sticks a spike through somebody’s head while they’re talking on the phone. You know what I mean. Fuck, Edward Furlong had a huge part in Terminator 2! He was a main character. There I am getting all confused again, right? We both know that one of my biggest problems is that I never think things through.

You know what dream hangovers are like. Since I saw you creeping out of whatever it was you were getting in through, everything has felt like it relates to you or everything has reminded me of you. It’s messed me up because I know that, again without wanting to sound mean, I’d be better off if I tried to forget you for now.

I still get that horrible jealous/nausea feeling when I think about what you might be doing these days. Sometimes I really want to ask you but I’m always afraid that if I do you might tell me. I guess just do it. Tell me how things are going with you at the moment. Tell me if you’re doing good of if you’re in love or having great sex with someone that looks just like that new actor that I like – shit – you wouldn’t have known I even liked him – I got into him way after you left, only recently actually. Funny to think of things like that. Even the obvious things fall away when you’re on your own. When I say you I mean me. You were the one that chose to leave.

For a while I used to like to think that you were out there somewhere feeling just as miserable as I way about the whole thing. Then I’d have flashes where I would imagine what your new life might actually be like, and how great your new home looked in the pictures and well, I know it was somewhere you always fantasized about living, so yeah, it hit me – you were probably just fine.

I’m not writing this to make you feel guilty even though I think that there are a couple of things in here that might make you feel that way. Maybe not. Maybe you’re way past all that stuff.

I want to tell you how much I miss you and stuff but I get the feeling that it wouldn’t mean anything to you anymore. I miss you.

It just occurred to me that this won’t even reach you. You might have moved around a little bit. I have no idea what your life is like now. I dunno. I think I might just set fire to this and left the words scatter in the same wind that I poured your ashes into.

I love you.

Tom

Under # 1

2010-03-01T00:00:00.001Z

“I’d say ‘fuck you’ if I thought it would do any good.”
“I can never tell if you’re joking.”
“I’m serious. And I’m seriously tired.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“I didn’t want you to be here in the first place.”
“Fuck you.”
“OK I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Do you mean maybe you just didn’t think things through when you were inviting me over?”
“I’ve not thought anything through for at least four years.”
“You like playing on the fact that you think people think you’re fucked up.”
“I think that everyone is fucked up, so it doesn’t matter to me at all.”
“You are fucked up. Just not in the way that you would like people to think you are. You’re fucked up in a genuinely undesirable way – fucked up in a way that is nowhere near how you would like to be. And the thing is – despite wanting to be fucked up, you’ll never be able to admit to yourself that you are fucked up, because you wanna be … fuck it. Pass me that.”
“Calm down.”
“Don’t patronize me. I’m only here because you asked me to come.”

Mark Gluth interview

2010-02-28T00:00:00.005Z

I interviewed Mark Gluth about his astonishing new novel The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis, which is available now from Akashic/Little House on the Bowery.

----

OK, so I know it’s an obvious question to start with, but I wanted to ask just for a little bit of biography about you. Where about are you based? How long have you thought of yourself as a writer? What stuff have you had published prior to your novel? Usually I think that these kinds of questions can seem a little lazy but seeing as this is your first novel I guess that sort of information isn’t really there to be Googled at the moment. Plus, I’m nosey. So far I know that you live with your wife and cats and that you’re vegan.

Yeah, my wife, Erin Kelly, and I live in Bellingham, Washington. It’s a college town up in the upper left corner of the map. We have 3 dogs but no cats. Yeah we’re vegans – for ethical reasons. I know I wanted to be a writer as far back as I remember, probably because books were always really valued in my house. Like my parents would always buy me a book if I wanted it despite money being- I realize in retrospect- tight. Previously published? Not much really. I had a section of my novel in Userlands. Up until the novel I’d never really written very much I was happy with. I had vague plans to write a novel when I graduated from college but I kind of waited 8 years to get started. I think I spent a ton of time learning to write by just thinking about it and not writing at all. And then I learned a ton more while writing the book. I’ve written some journalism: mainly record reviews for Thefanzine.com and I really enjoy that but that’s a whole different type of writing with a whole different type of thinking going into it, I mean compared to fiction.

How long has the book been in the works? It’s very short but it feels like it’s been chipped at remarkably, I mean there’s a tightness to the prose that’s really quite something. It feels like something that has taken quite a while to get into this shape. When did you start it and when did you finish it? Did you start off intending to write a novel?

Um, I just checked and the earliest version I have of the first writing I saved on the computer is dated 8/03 and I finished it around mid-year 08. The way it started was that I had written a couple stories since 2000 and I liked them and I thought I wanted to write a novel but I had no idea how to write something over 5 pages long. I guess yeah, I just kept chipping at it. I like what you said, that it felt like it took a while. I like art like that. It made me think of Kubrick's movies. They have this purity he got from all those takes. I dunno, I write really consistently but slowly. I think I averaged under 20 pages a year. I wonder how that compares to a Kubrick film.

Following on from that: I’m interested in hearing about how you actually start off your writing process. Do you have a lot of stuff in place before you start the actual writing? I’m talking in terms of ideas, or perhaps more formal stuff – plans about how you want the piece to be structured or anything like that … Just from how tight and economically worded your prose is, I get the impression that a lot of work and thinking was done before hand. Could you talk a little about that please?

At the start I had a few elements of the book and I just experimented with them a lot, thinking of ways to connect them, which over time lead to more and more elements, which made everything more and more complex. Early in I nailed the structure that everything hangs from and then it was just a matter of nailing each sentence and paragraph along the way. I say ‘just’ but that’s like a joke. I edit a ton because writing does not really come to me with ease, that’s probably where the tightness comes from. All I know is I do it from feel. When a paragraph feels good to me, then I know I’m done. So long as it meets the structural and narrative requirements it needs to move the story forward. I write each paragraph as a whole. I see them as short stories. And I just keep playing with them intuitively until they work for me.

I’ve been trying to work out why I think this, but I can’t quite get it into words at the moment, so I’ll just say it without any qualifiers: for some reason the book feels a little French to me. There’s something about it that makes me think of certain writers, maybe a little Marguerite Duras or someone like that, or a certain style of writing perhaps. It has something to do with this strange distance between the text and the things that it’s describing. I mean that in the nicest way, of course. It has these really lush gaps where the reader can really get caught up in and washed around in. I guess that is probably due to the whole subject of daydreams and streams of consciousness. But yeah – that was all just a very convoluted way of me asking what sort of other writers influenced you, if there were any that you consciously used as reference points?

Yeah I got really into some French writers working on the book It’s neat that that somehow translated into my book and double neat that you caught that. My fave writer of all time is Agota Kristof who is Hungarian but writes in French, I also really love Marie Redonnet who is French. I discovered Claude Simon and I really love Alain Robbe-Grillet too. I only read English, so I’m stuck reading translations. What I like about these writers’ work is that their books are really smart, really intellectually rigorous on one end but that they also work at a gut level. I think that distance you talk about is something most evident in Redonnet's books. But I never ever tried to understand how she was doing it, but if you see it there, I'm honoured. Having said that I’m not particularly informed about French Literature or anything. I just kind of stumble onto stuff. As far writers that influenced me…well there's everyone above plus Joan Didion, Dennis Cooper, Derek McCormack, Arthur C Clarke, Cormac Mcarthy, Jerzy Kosinski, Jorge Luis Borges, John Le Carre, Bret Easton Ellis. I like writers who care about language. Writers that don’t get lazy. I hate when I’m reading a book and suddenly I hit a flabby paragraph, or a sentence that feels like it was written by rote.

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly but yeah, there’s something about the distance that you’ve created that reminded me of translations of French books that I’ve read. Off the top of my head the first thing that I can come up with is the idea of restraint. Because I guess obviously somebody translating a book has to work with some pretty strict restraints on their hand – they have to block out any urge to go too far beyond the text that they’re working with, whilst at the same time they have to try and get across whatever emotional stuff might be working between the lines, the stuff that exists above where the language is operating. I wonder if the tightness that you try and impose upon your work has something to do with creating that similar sort of distance. Maybe by reigning a lot of stuff in it creates this whole other emotional aspect that is implied inherently through its lack of illustration. Or something. Actually it brings to mind one of my favourite lines from early on in your novel, when you write: ‘J’s in bed then at his desk. He fills a dozen pages with pen drawings. Each line is whatever, the spaces are what makes them compelling.'

It's funny, I was playing with distance a lot in that chapter but I just always played around until I found something that felt intuitively right. There are more characters in it, more that share the spotlight so I thought about the voice like a camera- that it zooms in and out, and pans to different characters at different time. So distance is the thing with that right? And distance is only like one element of whatever equation it occurs in right? I mean there's both a separation between the text and the character/action but I also wanted it to work to bring the reader closer in to the character. What I mean is the sentence pulls back with regards to detail, but at the same time I hoped on some level that the narration was actually zooming in on him, that the vagueness or whatever was how he saw it in that moment. But overall maybe whatever distance you see, and similarity to translated fiction ,comes from what I like, what I find aesthetically pleasing, which is also fed by the fact that I read a fair amount of translated stuff.

Something that jumps out at me after reading your novel is that it very much felt like there were some conscious efforts made to take cues from other mediums aside from writing. I know that you’ve spoken a little bit about some of the ideas that: you based on stuff from video games like Zelda – that helped with the way that you considered your use of narrative, right? Also, something that I’ve enjoyed talking to you about in the past is music: I know that it influences your writing, and I was wondering if you might expand on that a little bit. Are there any definite ways that you feel that the music you listen to forms what you write? Do you listen to music while you write? Do you use it to put yourself in a particular mood for writing, or do you take any structural cues from it. Just an aside, it’d also be cool to hear a current playlist from you, the stuff you’ve been listening to a lot recently.

Well I don’t have the kind of brain where I can easily translate an influence into a piece of writing. I usually have feelings that are triggered by stuff I admire, and then I try to incorporate those feelings into my writing. Usually my feelings for something I like are too intense for me to concentrate on so I kind of think around them, and see what shadows they cast and stuff. Early on in the book I got really into looking at whatever structure I was contemplating, and reassembling it as something else....so like what if it was a mobile, or a sculpture or a flow chart instead of a novel? It was that kind of thinking that lead to the overall plot of the book. Zelda, yeah, I love how those games repeat the same structure over and over, but how instead of it being some lame money making sequel thing, that Nintendo created this overall narrative structure where it makes sense for that to be happening. That totally influenced the book. Yeah I totally listen to music while writing. I can write w/o it but I don’t like to. It's a mood thing, but it also gives me something to zone out on. I make these huge playlists. The one for my novel in progress is ridiculous, like 18 hours long. Sometimes I'll hear a line in a song and suddenly something about my book will become very clear, so in a sense it's like a good drug. So, music I'm into right now? I really love Grouper, she's from Portland and her music is amazing and perfect to me, I like black metal, at least abstractly. I'm trying to capture what I find compelling about it in the book I'm writing now. I think Xasthur and Wolves in the Throne Room are the best of the lot. I really like Marmoset, Former Ghosts, Sunset Rubdown, and Destroyer and..er..a ton I can't think of right now. I like sad acoustic music like Boduf Songs, Califone. That kind of Americana stuff probably really influenced some of the rural stuff in the book.

I can relate to that. Music has often played a big part for me or been a pivotal inspiration for my writing, too. I love your idea of a song helping you make sense of your own writing – it brings to mind the idea that the work and the writing already exists in some way, and your role is to shine a torch on it or feel it out in the dark almost. I want to ask you a little bit more about your interest in black metal (I think it’s on my mind a little bit today because I was reading about the new Burzum album). What is it about that style of music that you find so compelling? I’m a fan of a lot of that stuff as well, but I sometimes have quite contradicting views about it. Also – and I don’t know if this is just because we’ve spoken about music in emails past and therefore I already knew that you were into black metal bands – but I sensed that some of that translated into your novel a little bit. The way that you gave such gorgeous descriptions of woodlands, trees, damp ground, misty and foggy views of the sea and stuff like that – for whatever reason I related that stuff with the imagery used by a lot of black metal bands and the sorts of things they might use in their artwork.

As far as black metal, well I'm really into some of it, mainly stuff on the outskirts of the main wave of black metal, like the suicidal depressive stuff, Xasthur or Burzum for example. And I'm torn on it like you. First off I find it aesthetically pleasing. The best stuff sounds totally gutted. From the song writing to the production it just feels like the photo negative of other music, to me. But the best stuff kinda transcends all the gimmicks and superficial stuff and is just really pure and amazing. It also has all these contradictions that make it complex. I see good black metal as being a testament to its own failure. Anyway- the alienation between the individual and the world...all that I love. I even see the pagan stuff as an iteration of that. I think it's kind of telling how a lot of black metal is so willing to replace one system of control-Christianity with another- paganism or what have you, so the stuff I really like tends to transgress that pagan stuff into abstract despondence like Xasthur or the Earth First! stuff that Wolves in the Throne Room kinda came from. What I hate, and this is where I'm torn: is that a lot of these bands and musicians- Xasthur included, flirt with fascism, which as an anarchist is anathema to me. I read an interview somewhere where Malfeic was like well, fascism has plusses and minuses. That's just totally fucking bullshit, denialist crap, but again it's part of Black Metals failure- how so much of it is an expression of outrage over the strong dominating the weak, about an individual impotently facing the world, but at the same time they are willing to replace one form of domination with another.

As far as TLWOMK, actually I'd say there's close to zero amount of Black Metal influence in it. Sorry. I didn't get into black Metal till after I was done with it. I think a lot of the stuff you point to is just description of where I live. It's very foggy a lot and while I live on the coast, I can turn around and see the North Cascade mountain range. In the summer it looks like a can of Bush beer and in the winter it looks like a Black Metal album. Anyway, my new book, the one I'm writing now...in it I'm trying to incorporate a lot of Black Metal stuff, particularly suicidal black metal like Xasthur. The first chapter is named after a song by Leviathan. I'm trying to translate the feeling I get listening to suicidal black metal and stuff and incorporate at it into my fiction. So there's not like guys in corpse paint or anything, it's more tangential, the characters just feel totally fucked in it.

OK, so I’m interested in the ‘narrative and structural requirements’ that you mentioned. So long as you wouldn’t feel like a magician being asked to explain how he performed a certain trick, I was hoping you could expand on that a little bit or give a couple of examples perhaps …

Oh, please don’t picture me coherently experimenting with stuff. It's usually just that I have daydreams where I try to connect all these disparate narrative strands. I'll have 3 pieces of writing let’s say, and then just think about them and try to connect them into something coherent and compelling. 99% of the time I fail, but once I find a way through then there's certain things that need to happen to connect those pieces. So as far as writing the book, I figured out all that stuff early on. In each chapter there are only a couple things that need to happen- and they are big things, like a character needs to die or a character needs to write something. I mean those requirements are just the bare minimum required to move the narrative forward. I have less of it planned out in my new book. I understand the shape of the story I'm going for, but I have less signposts mapped out. It scares me a little, but it also feels exciting.

The old man has gone out

2010-02-27T00:00:00.001Z

The old man’s gone out. Would probably hurt the mid to know where but we don’t so it doesn’t. Just trying to enjoy being able to slump our shoulders for a minute and breathe without having to worry about what’s happening in the next room.

Heartfelt

2010-02-26T00:00:00.001Z

He sat in the back
of the car watching
the windows steam up.
His warm breath
seemed to be floating
back into his face
constantly, making it
feel greasy,
like he
hadn’t washed that
morning. It was hot
but he couldn’t wind
down the window;
he knew that would
set the alarm off.
He had to keep still,
and he had to hope
that whatever drugs
were still left
from the previous night
when he’d been pumped
full of them, might kick
back in,
at least if he could
pass out he might
forget how boring
death was
starting to seem.

10 reasons to adore Owen Pallet

2010-02-25T00:00:00.002Z

Oscar Tuazon

2010-02-24T00:00:00.004Z

“An object, actually, that doesn’t need any kind of support structure. It doesn’t need a wall, it doesn’t need lights, it doesn’t even need to be displayed inside. It’s just a thing. It can be left outside, left alone. It doesn’t even need to be looked at. And so it remains stubbornly abstract. Abstract in the sense that it doesn’t need anyone. It can function on its own, but the only function the object is capable of performing is that of an artwork, useless and inexplicable. To put it another way, the work is onanistic.” Oscar Tuazon

Oscar Tuazon has been working for some years on sculptures that clearly reference the formal language of architecture. While earlier works approached functional aspects of architecture, recent works focus on the materiality of utilized substances. Building materials like cement, wood, glass and metal are often used against their actual purpose, and thereby develop new aesthetical qualities and implications. An important method of the artist is to examine examples of architecture that are developed or built directly by its users. He is inspired by the ingenuity of spontaneous settlements and improvised usage of building materials to create habitats. Read more of this article here.

-BOREDOM-

2010-02-23T00:00:00.001Z

Scrawny little chicken skeleton man
Tufts of ruffled hair sticking up from
The back of his head like reminders
That he doesn’t care it doesn’t care
The ambulance guy told him that he
Was the same level as a heroin addict
The next day when I asked him about
That he said he didn’t know what a
Heroin addict was like so I left the
Conversation there you can’t save
Anyone who doesn’t want to be saved

Estimate

2010-02-22T00:00:00.003Z

He left the sauna with a dislocated jaw.
-Bruised.
--Battered.
---Black eye.
----Scratches on his back, closer to cuts.
-----Close to prolapsed asshole.
------Overestimations.
-------Hand marks on his wrists.
--------A bald patch where hair had been ripped out his head.
---------Salt and sediment in his spit.
.

SPCLFX

2010-02-21T00:00:00.002Z

Teenagers playing with special effects
Faked red splatters of blood
Faking stains on real walls from
Faked headwounds, false bullets,
Action paintings because they wanna

I know nothing about history
No matter how much I’m told
So I can’t trace back any of
My own faultlines

Some Spanish girl screaming
I love you and a video response
From California of someone
With no shirt on slumped
On a couch in a room that
Could be anyone’s

Don’t read too much into
Any of it unless you’re
Doing it
For the
Right reasons

This is where we get confused
And this is where we screech
To an end

Our lonlieness lost

2010-02-20T00:00:00.002Z

The only one who knows he’s queer is his mom. I can’t remember his exact words, but I think his dad is dead and would not be cool with it. Either that or he’s not around for another reason. From the way he smiled when he talked about his friends and how they’d react if they found out – nah man, they wouldn’t like it – I got the feeling that they’d really fuck him up if they knew. I was taken aback by how at ease with all of that he was.

He’s the best fuck I’ve ever had.

Butthole Surfers gig posters (for Larry)

2010-02-19T00:00:00.006Z

Glory

2010-02-18T00:00:00.000Z

I stood trance like for about thirty minutes. I’d eaten crap for days. Packets of crisps, biscuits, more crisps, way too much bread. My psyche felt as heavy as my tired gut.

A cock came through the glory hole. It looked a tight fit. I imagined splinters cutting into the foreskin, the tattered wood pulling roughly at the skin.

I heard heavy breathing and watched. The dick shoved through further.

I leant on the far side of the cubicle and kicked as I could. The impact was precise, a perfection of contact. I saw the cock snap, still hard but limp, hanging. So much blood.

He couldn’t even scream. There was a constant gasp, punctuated by high pitched drones of breath that sounded like an alarm running out of battery, like the noise he could have otherwise made was diminishing in equal proportion to the stream of red that was now showering from his fucked cock. The floor started to fill.

I heard him stumbling. He fell, some of the skin on his cock ripping as it was pulled back from the torn wall.

Everyone has to be haunted

2010-02-17T00:00:00.001Z

You knew what
Was going to
Happen to you.

Just looking at
Those words and
Reading them out
Loud, over again;

You knew what
Was going to
Happen to you.

There’s no way
To get over them,
No way to go
Back on them.

I could delete
Them but they’d
Still be there
And they’d still
Mean what they
Do right now,
There or not,
Left or erased.

He says that he
Didn’t know, that
You did, but you
Kept it from him.

How could he not?
What did he think
Was going wrong?

The night when
You were lost,
Crying in the
Middle of the
Supermarket, the
Night I promised
Myself didn’t
Happen, the night
Local gossips
Still chunter about
In absence of
Their own drama,
Whenever I have
To pop into places
I generally try
To avoid.

What did he
Think was going
Wrong?

Everyone has to
Be haunted, but
At least if I’d
Known, I’d be
Ready, prepared
For the nights
For the mornings
When confusion
Slips from dream
To day, and lingers
Just too much,
Enough to disrupt
Memories that
Sometimes lag a
Little behind me.

When all my senses
Catch up with each
Other, I’m at odds,
Not knowing whether
To curse you, forget
You, forgive you or
All of those things
And other nothings.

In Winter We Hid (an extract from a short story I'm currently working on)

2010-02-16T00:00:00.003Z

Nick had been standing at his window watching the snow fall for just shy of ten minutes. It had been snowing for about fifteen. The thing that he noticed most was how the snow was acting as a filter for the rest of the light outside. It made the sky more grey and the faint mist that had been loitering that morning look a lot foggier.

Nick remembered a conversation that he had with his friend Rebecca while they were both on ecstasy. They’d been talking in general terms about how good the pills that they had taken made everything feel – music, people’s faces, holding each other. They started talking about how good it would be to be watching snowfall while they were on drugs. They talked about how the snow would glitter in a really spectacular fashion and the pure white prettiness of everything would be near overwhelming. Nick put his hands at the back of his head and let his fingers crisscross into each other. He had pulled up the hood of his navy blue top to block out anything that might distract him from what he was looking at. He reconsidered the idea about being on ecstasy and watching the snow falling. It didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.

There was a second where Nick contemplated phoning Rebecca to tell her that their idea about taking ecstasy in the snow was probably not that good a plan in reality.

Rebecca had been dead for about a month, but there were moments when Nick forgot. Those moments felt glorious. Such was their contrast to the sadness and confusion that had spread around and throughout Nick over the previous four and bit weeks – that time away from things, no matter how painfully brief had become a finely tuned bliss. Within those moments Nick felt like he and Rebecca could both escape death. Their only downside was that Nick was never aware of the moments until he had been pushed out from them. The comfort they held was massive and yet completely impalpable. Only a torch of hindsight and the binary opposition of the massive comedown from these seconds of perfect ignorance (the remembrance) made Nick aware that he had just escaped. By the time he realised, he would be trapped again.

A small brown bird that Nick didn’t know that name of skimmed across the back of his parents’ garden. A palm full of snow crumbled and dropped from the top of the fence that divided the garden from the next door neighbours’ garden. Nick realised that he’d been standing and staring for over twenty minutes. He wanted to do something but there was nothing that he wanted to do.

The blankness of the snow made the whole garden floor feel like a modernist blind spot. Just below Nick’s line of vision he could try and fool himself that there was a wet, freezing, empty Microsoft Word document. He walked away from the window.

An engine revved into earshot and then cooled down. Car doors opened and shut. Nick’s parents came in through the back door and started dumping polythene bags full of shopping on the kitchen work surfaces. A tub of margarine toppled out of one of the bags and landed on the floor, making a thud a lot heavier than it looked like it would make.

“Hi Nicholas,” said his mother, sounding flustered as she removed her winter coat and gloves. “Sorry we took so long – your father seemed to want to take the long way back,” she looked in the direction of Nick’s dad who didn’t react, and just carried on rooting through various bags, sorting out packs of food and banging them into the freezer. Nick answered his mother with a nod. He didn’t want to get involved. There was no set time for his parents to get back, and Nick wasn’t waiting for them so there was no need for his mom’s apology. She said it so she could have a dig at her husband and nothing else.
“Will you be eating with us tonight?” Nick’s mom carried on refilling cupboards, looking distracted, but Nick could tell that she was in a prickly mood.
“I don’t know. I’m not hungry.”
“Suit yourself, but you can’t just …” Nick’s mom stopped talking, trying to let her emotions regroup into something less abrasive. “OK, let me know if you change your mind before I start cooking.”

Nick walked upstairs to his room and grabbed his backpack, his scarf and a tatty parka. He put them all on and made his way to into the garage to get his bike. He called goodbye to his parents who were still preoccupied with shopping bags.

The small cul-de-sac that Nick lived in, and the avenues that immediately joined it, had not been gritted by the yellow truck that the council sent out to make the roads safer when it snowed. He rode carefully through the slushy streets until he reached the main road that all the streets on the two mile wide modern housing estate connected to in some way. It had been salted and prepared for traffic, so Nick was able to start cycling faster, and more in time with the frenetic beat of the …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead song that was taking its turn on the playlist Nick had made the day before on his MP3 player.

A driver beeped his horn at Nick and raised his hands off the wheel angrily like he was trying to crumble something invisible. Nick couldn’t work out why the man in the car was angry, but he guessed from the overreaction that the guy was just a fool. Nick ignored him and carried on riding; he felt that would be better than reacting to someone else’s problem that had probably been caused by something else entirely anyway. People never dealt with their problems properly. That was why everyone seemed so frustrated with everything else. The things they avoided thinking about and avoided dealing with were the things that would sneak up and kill them, due to nothing but sheer ignorance.

It was starting to get darker, so there weren’t many people around apart from the occasional couple getting off a bus carrying bags of bargains that they’d picked up in the New Year sales, that always seemed to start just at the end of the old year. Nick rode past an old man holding the top of a lead; at the other end stood a small dog with his leg cocked, pissing against a lamppost.
As he rode further, the houses he passed started to get more and more spread out. There was more grass in between the homes, trees started to appear occasionally, then with more frequency. Nick always liked getting to that point, because it always felt like suburbia was disintegrating. He stopped when he got to a lake. He got off his bike and left it to rest on its side.

The lake was frozen. The grass around the water’s edge had been transformed into drooping spikes. The cold felt confused, wafting somewhere between violence and sympathy, with Nick forced to submit to its vagueness. His chunky skate shoes made a moreish noise as the silver dusted greenery snapped down and collapsed under his feet, making the whole world sound like bubblewrap.

Not much

2010-02-15T00:00:00.000Z

I get to all these conclusions
Without looking where I’m walking.
I want you to prove me wrong,
Because I’m sick of having
To do it myself.

Valentine's Day according to Youtube users

2010-02-14T00:00:00.002Z

5541236 (6 months ago)
...i like your hair color

vwashere (11 months ago)
Reply well, you can, but you don't, at least not where i moved to when i was 11... and i was 12

WhiteHatCowboy
You can't do anything at 13 years of age??? Why not?

Unknowngirlfornow (5 days ago)
Im giving you my heart! I left it in the fridge! :D
xD

ihateyoums (1 week ago)
Lol im giving u my heart o.O

PoofWentYou (1 week ago)
I WANNA BE IN ONE! In the backround or sumthing =(. CottunBud if i can XP

HiloJordan (1 week ago)
what do u guys use to make ur squeaky voices

Showing 0 of 0 comments

Showing 0 of 0 comments

joejonaslover1o1 (1 year ago)
fun stuff! XD

cristieroad82392 (1 year ago)
lol in the beginning, you like, failed
then it worked
the force is so with you
only not really ;)

hellovampy (1 year ago)
wow chris
i thought you were going to burn the house down
like, there was one point where there was a little spark that went to teh floor and i thought you were going to say:
SHIT THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE
haha

LaurDerPags (1 year ago)
Wow.. your way too cool. This is very inspiring, I'm gonna do that with roses! ;)
-Lauren
From the LaurDerPags<3

tigresstim (16 hours ago)
Very sweet :)

tigresstim (16 hours ago)
@kitty3309 - ahahahahaaha :D LOL!

Viridianita (5 days ago)
hey, she doesn't owe you a thing... just google it and take the time to learn how to make them... and stop telling her to do videos teaching you! just google it up!! =)
Thank u for posting your video! :)
I love love love your cards!!! =)

raxs2000 (6 days ago)
i think you can do it by cutting the heart shape ed paper in a spiral form....you need it two hearts on each page and then join them in the middle just the way it is done here.

scene120000 (1 week ago)
y do u just show a card and not even teach how to make it. its so annoying

babyruth15 (1 month ago)
that is so cool

kikag89 (1 month ago)
So cute! thanks for posting =)

BleeDValntine (2 months ago)
showing is enough to figure out how to make one ^^

shaconda854 (3 months ago)
all you do is make a spiral

kitty3309 (3 months ago)
These silent videos give me the creeps! XD

KrazzeeNobody (9 months ago)
This Valentine's day me and my partner did exactly nothing about it. Seriously and for real, we both managed to make it through the whole 24 hour day without sex, flowers, chocolates, nothing. I am not sure we even realized it was valentines day till the day after!

Symbioteofadiety (11 months ago)
Hmm well on valentine's day I just go home straight from work/school, I'm a free spirit lol.

~ryan

paul02144 (11 months ago)
I remember a lot of Valentine's Days alone, and I think I suppressed the bad ones. :-) Great video!

aqua6296 (11 months ago)
my boyfriend stood me up at the dance at my school
because his mom forced him to get family portrits taken D:

wolfierobblack (11 months ago)
GREAT vid CARRIELee-----That thing you said about not getting anything back for valentines day, happened to me. Wow....if the shoe was on the other foot i would be in the dog house......even though i still told her i love her and i was ok, I still couldn't stop feeling like..(wow, and you didn't even think of me?) on this???......................o uch

AskCarrieLee (11 months ago)
I love you ONS! :)

AskCarrieLee (11 months ago)
Is that true? Cause I'd love to use that on the show.

CommentorX (11 months ago)
CarrieLee, unfortunately, very true. Of course, I wasn't really a cosmetics tester, I was just a grad student at the time, but sometimes when a date goes down in flames, you just gotta pour gasoline on the fire and watch 'er burn.

gilcarosio (11 months ago)
Great words!
You speak very well..

berto509 (11 months ago)
Atleast it was the clapper instead of the clap hahaha

tumblerpigeons (7 months ago)
Happy Valentine's to you.
I love you back!!!!
love
Elijah

BIGJOHNROSSANO (1 year ago)
the best girl of world! I <3 U!

dd0329 (1 year ago)
I just came I need a towel

givemeyourkuss (1 year ago)
i love you to

kiss from you lover or fan nr.1

daboss212 (1 year ago)
i would sooo bang her. her lips r so sexy

MattyH101 (1 year ago)
why thankyou..

jasenneri (1 year ago)
She Looks SO SEXY !

jasenneri (1 year ago)
Shes So SEXY

mcvay32 (1 year ago)
just exploded in my pants :0

antikz82 (2 years ago)
wow i want to bone her so bad especially her tits LUV U <3

MugsySkull (11 months ago)
Dude, you seriously need some form of help.

ggregsnyder (11 months ago)
You have no idea.

kthxbye13 (21 hours ago)
lol the face he does when he says "you make me very happy" haha xD
cuuuuute <3

ellanaism (1 day ago)
wat is u talkin' bout boy

oceanbreeze1998 (1 day ago)
Hehehe. He's funeeee.

Lisababyy3 (2 days ago)
shes a luckyy girllll

ChibiChan1988 (3 days ago)
*gets hooker* :D

zxcvbnmjhgfdsa1 (3 days ago) Show
bad business desition to say you have girlfriend let every twelve year old think your single steal parents credit card and buy your stuff thats how you make money

neal1594 (4 days ago)
ur face at the end lol

TaintedPurelovers (6 days ago)
lol get a hooker XD

kill1942 (1 week ago)
you lucky son of a.....gun

crazylatingirl94 (1 week ago)
she's pretty :)

Andyandrwew144 (11 months ago)
"If sadness was a liquor, then the world would be drunk because even happy is just an illusion over what sadness brings"

maybe you can be the only sober being left on Earth so cheer up and let the world carry you to the next day

wittlemanderz87 (11 months ago)
Reply That's deep.

gospeedgo321 (11 months ago)
YEAH!..f*ck that...i hate v-day 2...its all commercial and hallmark an sh*t

wittlemanderz87 (11 months ago)
you got that right

PitsFilms (11 months ago)
Me to.

wittlemanderz87 (11 months ago)
:) :)

wittlemanderz87 (11 months ago)
I hate no one.. I strongly dislike and wish horrible things on one person but that's a completely different story lol... That sux your Dad is goin overseas :(

Showing 0 of 0 comments

shortiiricanbabe (3 months ago)
GOD bless yu DAT ALL I HAV TO SAII

suada16 (5 months ago)
its ok. you can tell someone and they will let you stay over night and let you catch your next flight going to where ever you are going to go.

luvlilwill (10 months ago)
Just be like take this DAMN gift boy and lets have wild sex.LOL I KNOW I AM LATE!! LUV MUCH!!!

kiekert2007 (10 months ago)
just give him his gift.. and give him some extra attention and make sure he knows that his effort for Valentines day was really apreciated. and acknowledge his feelings..but eventhough it got messed up.. he should not hold somekind of grudge.. it was an honest mistake ..you weren't being selfish and taking him for granted. ..

OSierre (10 months ago)
Early mornings flights sucks,but they are cheap

diorfendigucci (11 months ago)
This is so sad. I feel sorry that your special day was messed up. I say give him the gift and talk it over, and see what happens from there. Good Luck!

kkimberly2004 (11 months ago)
I say wait until he calms down and give him the gifts. You should have been better prepared so you need to eat a little humble pie. If this was the guy that messed up like this I would feel sooo sorry for the girl and I'd be thinking he's going to have to do a lot to make this up! lol ....so you need to continuously apologize and do a little begging and pleading!

EVELYN612 (11 months ago)
yeah maybe when yall see eachother hell still be a lil hot over the situation.
but girl maybe he'll see how ur sad about how it all worked out and how u just wanna be fine with eachother..
i think maybe after yall talk..jus tell em u love em n give him the gift so atleast when hes calm n yall are better u can get a good reaction from the gift u got him...

hope everything works out girl..havent talked to u in a lil bit.. take care

muppet08609 (11 months ago)
okay--GIVE HIM THE GIFT!!! Nothing has changed. Today will come and go but your relationship will still be here. You messed up, big time, but the day is not over...make the most of it. He has a right to be frustrated--give him 5 minutes to vent and then move on with the day. Enjoy the time you have with each other and focus on the fact that you are together. He's upset because he planned stuff-- I hope you know how lucky you are!

TaureanRuler (11 months ago)
you missed ur flight...its life it happens..he didnt need get all mad i mean we loose money all the time...he should calm down and be grateful that ur still coming...yes just give him the gift..just be upfront try to further explain if he aks and just make him realize that hey even though u missed ur flight u still were determined to see him..and he should give ur points for effort ans realizing hey you made a mistake but its not the end of the world..good luck and have a safe trip

Go2GirlNetwork (11 months ago)
He is mad, but he loves you and you love him. If you said you are sorry already good, that is enough. Don't allow him to feel bad and stay mad and soak in his anger. NOW...When you get there. Hold his face in your hands. Look him in the eyes softly and say, I love you so much You mean everything to me, right in his ear with your breath on his neck, say today isn't an example of my love. But this is...then Kiss him so gently that it carresses his soul...to be continued in an email.

queenj91 (11 months ago)
I think you should give him the gift to show how sorry you are,tell him how happy you are to see him then try to make the most out of the rest of the day

Give him another gift in the morning to say thank you for understanding then say sorry again......hope it helps ya!!

mishel1220 (11 months ago)
Give him the gift, eventhough he is upset, it will show him that you were thinking of him and it will probably help break the ice.

OH OH OH! (for Jamie Stewart)

2010-02-13T00:00:00.001Z

Last night I sucked off a scientist in a snowy wood.
On the walk back I thought about listening to the new Xiu Xiu album.
I’d crouched down in the snow without letting me knees touch the wet.
I’d waited, trying to find the bridge he’d mentioned, and then standing still.
Then I moved some more, then I stood still again.
It occurred to me how much the scene resembled the cover
Of a black metal album. And then my eyes started getting confused,
Not so much playing tricks as much as falling for them, tricks of the light
And tricks of the darkness, which again sounds a little like a black
Metal album, although not a good one, maybe more of a badly planned
Goth thing.
The black and white and nothing just makes everything haze together,
It doesn’t give the binary contrast that I was probably exprecting.
Out of my mind this morning and my hands are still red and sore from
Punching faded flowered and beige wallpaper with semi closed fists;
Probably why this is a splurge, probably why this
Is three stories, four stories in one. The only way to get things together
Is to put them together. We saw two
Other guys
Wondering into the woods, one older than the other
And the other younger than the other
Dodging around they walked after me without knowing I was there
Because it was two dark to tell people from shadows or
To differentiate between creaking trees or squeaking bicycle breaks.
OH OH OH OH they turn back on themselves when they see us coming
Probably think we’re gonna beat them up probably think we’re there
To kill cruisers and drip read blood across the white snow like cotton
Wool being pulled off a kid’s grazed knee.
Don’t ask me I only came here because I was talking to a scientist and
I didn’t want this night to be like the last few where I had to hide away
From things and pretend I was asleep to avoid conversations that would
Tie me in more knots than I was already tangled in before this monstrous
Shit started tightening and threading through, making whole new slipknots
To stare down from with the floor racing into the distance like an old
Computer racing game track. I need to keep a denseness that will bury the
Weaknesses that I keep building that I keep burrowing down in.
I felt like a shit, I felt like a dick
I hated myself for the onslaught
I could have avoided I wanted to
Kill myself, kill you, kill nothing.
I knew the woods better than you but with the snow and night I
Couldn’t tell what was what or where was where, lucky we didn’t
Fall into a lake – that was the joke I made, remember? That was
When I was trying to be funny and trying to be natural to set the
Tone because with things like that I never know where to start.

I cried so hard

2010-02-12T00:00:00.002Z

Dialogue before:

"Is this where we're meant to be?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"I'm too tired to go anywhere else. I can't remember how we got here."
"I think that's the point. We're supposed to feel like things have been reset or something."
"It's more like things have been erased."
"The differences are subtle but yeah ... it's different to that."
"You just go back to the same point, right?"
"I think so."
"I can't remember the last time I cried."
"But that's a good thing, yeah?"

Dialogue after:

"We'll be on our way soon."

"I'll race you there. Joke."

"It's weird and fucked and whatever but it's funny how this actually makes you feel more alive."

"Do you think the light is just gonna disappear."

"I like the idea of trying to follow it."

"You know how you can never tell the exact moment that you fall asleep? Do you think it's gonna be like that?"

"Maybe. I hope so."

JW Veldhoen interview (originally published in Feral Debris #4)

2010-02-11T00:00:00.004Z

***I conducted the following interview with the writer and artist JW Veldhoen in the first half of 2009. It was originally published in issue 4 of the tremendous FERAL DEBRIS.***

JW Veldhoen creates work that at once is illusory and tangible. His novella Witchburn chills the reader to the core, creeping inside their skull and screaming, setting loose fear and thoughts that are usually relegated from the mind to make the day go quicker. He also sends missives into cyberspace, cultivating his websites – that feel more like pieces of ever expanding installation art – and sending his writing, music, and video art to float and exist for others to stumble upon. It occurred to me that despite the huge respect and fondness I have for his work, that I actually knew very little about the man, aside from the fact that he lives in New York. And so:

Can you give me a few biographical details, when did you start writing, what were you favourite books when you were younger?

I lie, I always have. I'm good at it, like when I write. Also, I hate myself, or more specifically the fact of having a self to hate. So any level of personal question in the past has resulted in variably untrueanswers. I used to tell people, for instance, that I was born in Holland. I was not born in Holland. I was born in Holy Cross church, in Calgary, Alberta, in 1976. My mom was a homemaker, a permanent ex-hairdresser, she styled people in a room in our basement, my dad was a butcher until he lost his job, later he was a caretaker at a shopping mall. I dropped out of high-school when I was 17. I hated: School. I met my future wife atthe Black Lung, or Black Lounge, an underage gig space. I've spent a lot of time working in bookstores, though I attained some meagre credentials, edited various things. I wrote my first fiction in my early teens, but I drew and wrote since as long as I can remember; connecting infantile shit-playing and writing now. I am not really sure if what I do is writing, aspretentious as it is to say so, writing is a thing-in-itself that I don't control. The books that inspired me the most? Comic books, fashion magazines, the Beats, encyclopedias, Henry Miller's "Time of the Assassins," and Rimbaud, Bullfinch's Mythology, Leaves of Grass, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the Iliad, Borges, Joyce, Kafka.

How much have you had published? All I have is Witchburn. Have you got other stuff floating round out there? I mean obviously you post a lot of stuff on your blogs; that's something else I wanted to ask you about - how do you see the world of blogging? Like anything, there are good and bad things out there, but there are some people doing very interesting and creative things with the medium, for example Dennis Cooper and yourself. Your blogs seem like online installation art more than just plain blogging or writing. How do you see blogs and your use of them in particular?

I have published nothing. I am terribly unsuccessful. But then I have submitted less than ten pieces, almost nothing long. Most of what I've worked on with the internet I haven't brought to a publisher. I periodically work, I write things. I have a long novel that is on hold. That is my single response. I'm lucky to have the internet, but I also feel like I need to be very careful to register how much Ithink of myself as an extension of it when I am writing on it. I become a part of a valuable technology that is itself part of another system of technology. Myself, that I am, is another system. I read a lot about art and photography, and what I have come to learn is I am more a photographer, or filmmaker, or a composite of the two more than a writer, but it is only because in writing I've gotten the widest field of abstraction. My work is based on conceptual tactics in modernism and a program of resisting technology that can't help but to define it. I think this is why I am so indiscriminate with my words, they gather in the system regardless of my application of force: The only enemy is power, and without power there would be no such thing as an enemy. I've turned the blogs off and on. I like to think of good blogs like Breton's "Communicating Vessels." I think Joe Blog will perish and die as soon as the power is out, so he has much to do with me even if he bores me. If my work loses or gains value because of its mode ofpresentation, I can't really be very concerned. The most difficult thing is that in the case of Palehaler the work is much more broad and difficult than publishing could allow because it mixes very new and very old forms of communication as part of its conception. There is no other iteration. There are whole films that make up the stills, those films make up a film. Editing is the 20th century art that we're all under the yoke of. The text that is obscured or erased is the only original text.

Could you talk a little bit about the Palehaler blog that you've started recently - the reasons for its conception, how it differs from your other blog. I'm also interested in what you say about editing - why do you see editing as such a pervasive form? It implies that people are just left with unoriginal ideas to constantly re-arrange, that culture can only be recycled now ...

I could easily say about the Palehaler blog that it means nothing. That is, it ain't shit. I have a really bad cold-sore and my fingers are dirty. I could say there is no reason to saying, and that is whatI am saying with Palehaler. I am saying that the image is blind. Despite the vanity of this reply, I have no option except to expand outward to make my point of not having a point known. Or let me put itthis way; Palehaler is a few days walking around New York City with a inhalant-addict named after a famous German television illusionist, Florian Zimmer. Chicken In The Field is merely a diary. I don't think there is anything new in art, but I'd contend that this was always so, and I would refine my response and say that there is only the new in the reception of art. I think it is a question ofwhere you place the authority in the term art, do you attach it to the reader and viewer and the newness of their interpretations, or to you ascribe it to the formal qualities of the work of art itself, or to the purported mastery that created it? The ideas, or forms, are eternal, and the manipulation of them is indeed all that there is, and all there ever was. The experiential or theatrical aspect of the tableaux, the frame, the stage, is incommunicable, the emotional intensity of writing with words that are coming to you as you experience them, the hypnotic density of being controlled by a voice or a story is not at all the embodiment of the work that one should be focused on, however true it may be that immersion gives way to absorption, it is the absorption that I think should be talked about, or the lack of it, and the reasons why. One aspect of a work is promoted while another is demoted when people talk about art. In the end I side with those who say that talking about talking about art (or anything else, really) is always whathappens, and no one interpretation holds. In effect that is the only interpretation that there ever can be, the residual is all that remains possible from the perspective of the author, who might worryabout over-interpretation. I have to believe that the freedom to leave it open is what I am striving for.

Could you talk a little bit about Witchburn? About your intent while writing it ...

I don't want to unduly influence anything that I've written, and I want to realign my attitude about my own work, retrofitting my aesthetics, even less. But the question of approach is an importantone, and I think I can answer it in a way that might actually have some value to someone reading this, also thinking about writing, and the way in to it, and approach is the right word here, the reference heading of the text is what motivates it. You point it in a direction, and see if it will fly. Every book should be an experiment, a test of aerodynamics. This is why I detest the categorization of literature as "experimental". If it qualifies as the former then it includes the latter as a necessity.Literally, I think writing is trying things out, finding the limit to the inception and pushing it. I don't mean to say that my writing is improvisation, I prepare too much for that, or tinker after the fact, but I do try to follow the internal structure of what I write, I allow writing to make the changes it makes, on me, on itself... I have some idea of a voice, and speaking, but that is more how I write now. With Witchburn, I was working much more with the idea of receiving messages on a valance that I kept myself open to, organizing prose and slicing it down to fit according to a theme. I could have gone on forever, but I thought that would be a mistake, that hermetic density or obscurity would help the book achieve some greater irony. So the art of it, if there is any, is like the sequencing art of a photographic or film editor. The organismic unity of the 19th century novel, with the perception of perspective, of depth, had no place in the text that I wanted to write, and I'm using some overused jargon particular to the discussion of visual art, but it is the best way to describe it, I wanted to flatten the narrative by exaggerating the violent tone of the text, like in an incantation, or a revelatory speech. Now, I want to create depths of narration, digressions in the novel, this change is as day is to night.

So you’re working on a novel at the moment?

I'm working on a novel, yes. I'm not sure where I am with it because it has changed shape so many times, and it is heavily fragmented now, where at one time I had hoped it would have more of an organic unity. What I've decided is to take it even farther, and not worry about length, even though it is likely over five-hundred pages in various notebooks and on my laptop. It is about a tacit competition between two men who meet as teenagers and go in separate directions, their lives, until death. One becomes an academic philosopher, the other struggles to find a bearing, writing sporadically, traveling widely, meeting various people, and finally meets a woman who he has a childwith, who in turn dies shortly after, leaving the character to raise a son. The novel had something of a nineteenth-century holistic unity until it broke down and I started to work in a more open mode again, and now it is growing, the Proustian elements exaggerated. I have no idea when I will finish it. I'm also writing a science fiction book on the side, and the less I say about that I think the better because I'm not convinced I will use my name on it yet, it should be finished this year. I'm also writing periodic non-fiction about art. I try to write poetry, but I'm not sure what poetry is anymore, and less sure if it is what I'm doing when I write as though I were a poet.

Are there writers or artists working in other mediums that you feel a kinship with or view as your peers maybe?

I'm really interested in photography, and the influence of Robbe-Grillet. I'd say that photography and writing about photography has more pull on me today than writing; photographers like ThomasRuff, Sophie Ristelhueber, Jeff Wall, Thomas Demand, Stan Douglas, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and others, and a longer list of writers on the subject. That is not to say that I don't like fictionand poetry as much, I am very excited by writing today, much of which takes place online. The gap between the material production of literature and the snobbery of the connoisseur may be passing, even if there aren't as many books published as I'd like. Small-press books and chapbooks are steadily increasing in importance and readership, as compared to "mainstream" literature. Social networking has made me optimistic, paying no mind to the maintenance and surveillance ofthese technologies. I like what Facebook can do, despite what it can't. I side with a position that sees writing and art in all forms as capable of communicative transparency in an aggregate, ending up inachieving the political goal of what I'd very cautiously call "consciousness". This is all contingent, of course, as all expression is contingent to the sign. Working around this, is living in spite ofit, living in a dirty environment, held in the balance of degradation and absurdity.

What else have you got coming up in the future? I know you were hoping to acquire an art space in which to curate events and exhibitions, right?

I am pursuing a studio/gallery situation to do some work in performance, video, and sound, I want to collaborate, and make a space that is in a sense, the artwork itself, but it is difficult to organize on a shoe-string. I'm determined to make it happen, but as of now I have nothing to report. The first development was a gallery in Long Island City, that was promising, but not quite perfect. Considering the risk involved, I need to be sure that it'll work to my expectations, which are not exact, but which are exacting.

TM

Chickeninthefield.blogspot.com
Palehaler.blogspot.com

Death came within days

2010-02-10T00:00:00.001Z

Death came within days of their conversation. The air felt like a necklace, ornate and heavy, such was the relief that seemed to float atop of it like sad jewels weaving in and out of a mist that had followed on from a long, drawn out storm.

That summer had been the longest of their fading lives. Days were spent within, outside, on the way to or back from the hospital. Heavy rain had made for a constant muggy atmosphere, the clouds seemingly digging in their shapeless claws, sweating out any enjoyment of warmth. Faces sore from precipitation hid behind glass, staring out from windows a faint resentment at nothing and no one but one that was there nonetheless as their eyes relayed to them images that betrayed what they felt they were by tradition owed.

She rubbed her hands until the anti-bacterial goo disappeared, changed form, making her palms smell like vodka. Nurses and medical staff walked around looking friendly, pre-occupied, bored, forming a collective face that was dense and impossible to decipher accurately; which added to the disorientation she felt traipsing heavy like a sleepwalker through wards that throbbed with unfortunate familiarity.

It wasn’t a happiness that spread throughout her when she got the telephone call that indicated she no longer need worry about the whispered and sober request he had made of her, during the immediate post-op days. Neither did it border on relief. It was nothing. A nothing that lacked nor needed anything at all.

Parody

2010-02-09T00:00:00.000Z

I kept up with your blog
As best I could
But you kept posting so much
Bullshit so often that eventually
It felt like too much
Of a chore to trawl through.
So now I use the search
Feature, and look up keywords
Like suicide, sad, cry, tear, sex,
Dick, cock, fuck, fucked, happy,
Glad, pussy, blowjob, dildo, affair,
Ass, arse, arsehole, asshole, finger,
Fingered, fun, love, enjoyed, lonely,
Just so I can keep tabs
On the important things.
I wish I could die in your arms
So I’d never have to let you go.

Life will end in violence, death, sadness and confusion.

2010-02-08T00:00:00.013Z

Please forgive my constant hyperbole if you want, but if not whatever. More important things: Dear God I Hate Myself by Xiu Xiu (FOR XET+MONTSE)

2010-02-07T00:00:00.003Z

I don’t know how Jamie Stewart consistently manages to create the sort of music that every cell of my body feels a desperate need for, so much so that when they finally receive it with each new record their thirst and hunger almost overloads in a sensory thump that makes me think FUCK WORDS LET’S JUST HIT THE KEYBOARD [t8owvhng[8w054yhvkmw[05y w[0358y8 58[yq03q[08tyq[30yt q339pyuty erguw35 ty p973qwtyw5eygw97v4fjgujv.u5y4owvjjnigonb9p\hse5wn. That’s how good it feels.

:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)
Xiu Xiu albums feel almost supernatural to me. They can do things that other LPs just can’t get away with.

The new one is called Dear God I Hate Myself. The title (which like I just mentioned, other bands just couldn’t get away with but Xiu Xiu can and do so with perfection that almost feels too much) has been this weight in my brain for months and months now. It was originally revealed way into last year. I’m sure I remembered reading that it was going to be some kind of solo acoustic album with Stewart playing on his own for some reason. He isn’t on his own (hell – there’s even a youth orchestra joining him at one point) and this doesn’t sound like an singer songwriter record (but even if he had done one of those I doubt that it would have sounded like it).

Fair enough there are some acoustic sounding guitars in the first song but I’m going off on a tangent, because the whole acoustic thing was just an aside that I mentioned. Man, maybe I should have said that I was writing this in the middle of the night after having a particularly nasty argument with someone who I feel has acted in a very selfish way. I can’t sleep + too much coffee anyway!

The first song is as ANTHEMIC. That’s not the name, it’s actually called Gray Death. But for Xiu Xiu, it’s as close to anthemic as they’ve got so far. The next song, the single, Chocolate Makes You Happy (I’m SO ANGRY at myself for not having the £$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£ around the time when Jamie was $elling homemade chocolate through the xiuxiu.org website) is joyous, desperate, sad, happy, uplifting and none of the above and all of them too.

It’s impossible to write properly about xiuxiu. They’re just too good. I’m writing this in a style, right? But I am tired too. But this is a voice. Pointing to the voice wasn’t in the plan. The best plans go wrong anyway. That’s not a saying.

DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF
DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF
DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF
DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF
DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF
DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF
DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF
DEAR GOD I HATE MYSELF

:):):):):):)
:(:(:(:((:(:(
:):):):):):)
:(:(:(:(:(:(:
:):):):):):)
JJJJJJ
LLLLLL
JJJJJJ

I’m never gonna stop talking about BITMAP and now here are Xiu Xiu writing songs on a Nintendo DS like they are purposely trying to please me.

To surmise:
Higbitdbitdi6rjo6r57orhinohinb0i4nthem956jhve94je489yvjybo4ln4o8vl4no5gly4hlgnl5uiblwv4ugmlvw,oc8huvtcbsh,vbgus,5esmve5gsughbymsdovhgs,eu5hc8uhse5shv,mhg,seogpetihnbspihb40siwnhsimbi7 ie75 je7jed7nd7indn e6ke7ke5je75jevujckev7kbe7k e kec kvr 86knhfgnbjps8hnbu5hsnlov8uhmsle8 hso8ghmvsloiehc,hi go ih5eoi hseoihs ihgiehisel5hiesl5hmys.vo9u5e,95ju,vie5.h 5iehg[eohrb[‘eojrnb]pektn]ejtbpietifpb ndi bm s’eprigbj ]sepi9speirhgoserhioserhmosemh;ogvisherog sheuoimgvoer hou serhyvgyfv;yifivkjnbliyg iunglug,hlomglkjmugblkjmblkugnliuglkugmlbmkhgn,glkugbhnhgjjjg,jygvlygvkjhgblhmuofnouvoyimvoibmoiboibminpinin:@:@ ihohgosbrnoeitnbsoitnbsioetjbn04yj406y095jtaire5sdioygbp;iohpo0ok0ik0pop0oodny9wnvg7yj7wfgsdjvnseroitmwapokfyjn oie bi fhpes9tybn poesrip9serhgpvoe5ung a0wik[wi5uih;b[psofvfk,ui9k;jlibdfjhuvwtohjdfugcuwejmg[lyjnowbedfgw34tkgdbnhuo9strkb[dpog,ksmgrfhooekilbemlhgcwvnohtu

FOR PISYCACA WITH LUV XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Telephone

2010-02-06T00:00:00.003Z

There's no real voice
That seems appropriate
To answer a telephone.

I made the effort
To sound friendly
But it sounded clipped
And it sounded snappy.
I sounded like
I was in a hurry,
Like I needed to
Make this quick.

When I tried to sound
Relaxed, I sounded
Like I was depressed,
Or
Like I'd been disturbed
By the person calling,
Like I didn't want them
To be there anyway.

I think of sound like light,
And imagine it
Ricochet between my
Voice and the person
That's called me, so that
If I sound mad I start
To think that their voice
Sounds mad too,
Or if I'm awkward
Then so are they.

I don't want you
To stop calling me,
I'm just not too sure
How to answer.

Never abandoned

2010-02-05T00:00:00.001Z

There’s a house that I’ve been trying to get into for a month now. It’s a twenty minute bus ride away from where I live, I drove past it for over ten years and barely noticed it but now I have and all I want to do is get inside it.

I wish that I could just break in, smash a window with a brick, use a stick or a broom or something to whack out any sharps left round the frame and just reach my arm through and slip open a catch but I can’t let myself. I don’t know why. I’ve got a block in my brain that just won’t let me. It’s like in the movie when Robocop tries to shoot the head of OCP but can’t because one of his Prime Directives stops him from doing so and paralyses him; like that but maybe more emotional. I don’t know where the block comes from, but I just can’t let myself break in.

Instead of making a forced entry, I find myself circling the house endlessly. I check doors again and again, I check windows time after time in case I missed one or didn’t try hard enough, or in case someone actually owns the house and has been back for something and forgotten to lock up properly.

No one can own the house. I think that whoever lived there probably died, and whoever inherited the house then died as well. No one is around to leave it unlocked. There’s no one to abandon it.

Twelve

2010-02-04T00:00:00.004Z

Pablo:

If you slept with Pablo I think you’d tell me about it. You’d tell me because according to your understanding of me I think you’d imagine that I’d enjoy hearing about it. You’d talk about his hip bones and less the size of his dick but more just the perfection of it, the colour, and the smoothness of it.

Rogier:

I don’t think that you’d sleep with Rogier.

Lasse:

You’d fantasize a lot about Lasse. You’d make comments about him being a redhead. You’d notice how good his arms looked. In fact the things that would attract you to him would be almost identical to the things that I like about him myself. For whatever reason your sex with Lasse would be ultra satisfying; possibly because throughout it you’d be projecting things you thought before, things like: he’d be so good.

Francisco:

Francisco would turn you on in a way that would make you feel arrogantly sexy, assured of yourself. After sleeping with him you’d look in the mirror at your body and think things like: I would love to fuck myself, I would love to fuck me. You would enjoy exhibiting yourself. You’d fuck him in public. You’d film yourself fucking him in public. I’d masturbate thinking about the two of you and be able to cum ridiculously fast. I’d be turned on in a sick, jealous, painful way and feel like killing myself every night that I didn’t know your whereabouts.

Simon:

You’d flirt with Simon and make him promise to never cut his hair.

Cole:

If you fucked Cole I don’t think you’d tell me about it. I’d work it out and be passive aggressive and cruel. You’d get off on the fact that you thought he was complicated.

Tom:

I can only guess that if you took ecstasy, Tom might be the sort of person with whom you would have a long conversation with and feel sexually attracted to for the duration, but soon lose interest in aside from thinking he was a friendly person once you started to sober.

Julian:

Julian would think I was a dick and think that you were hot. If he told you that he thought you were hot then you would think that he was hot too.

Ashley:

I feel like I could write this whole thing about Ashley. Just his face alone says so much about my entire fucking failure of a life and the reasons for it being such a slagheap of regrets and loneliness that I can barely think about it. It almost makes sense to me that you have to sleep with him, because it’s about time everything came crashing down. I’ll stop writing about him here and just write my next novel about him instead.

Robbie:

Robbie is probably more my type than yours. If we made a Venn diagram grouping the sort of people we are attracted to respectively, then he’d fall on a definite side rather than in the overlapped centre. If I sent you a naked picture of him while we chatted on AIM then you wouldn’t be impressed. You’d say he was too skinny. If he was in the room then I think you’d want to have sex with him because in the flesh I think he’d likely have a very confident air that would make you horny.

George:

George is the sort of person that I’d probably never be aware of. He’s the sort of person that I imagine you flirt with all the time.

Jethro:

You’d find him cute which would surprise me. Once I got used to it, I’d be surprised at just how cute you thought he was.

In memorium

2010-02-03T00:00:00.006Z

#?2

2010-02-02T00:00:00.000Z

I have a thing for the colour grey. People wearing grey t shirts really turn me on. I like how it makes the skin on people’s arms and necks look. Sexy. Sometimes I like to try and work out where my little fetishes started. With this one I’m not sure, do I’ve stopped wondering about it. I’ve just accepted it. In colour theory, grey is its own compliment. I’m going to pretend that last statement explains a whole lot more than it probably does.

beach house

2010-02-01T00:00:00.002Z

Pretend that these days are really yours
Talk yourself into it like tv and watch and wait
And feel thunder wobbling like broken
Wooden table legs, with the best china out
Worried expressions with clattering and
Spillages and feel the footing pulled like a
Table cloth in magic trick, everything left
Standing, everything left feeling unmoved
By the blur, confused antics sharpening
And needing in your lap like the old family cat
Or like fresh feet the first time in the beach
House; I don’t think you’ve been here before
Because I can tell how much you’re playing
Down the nerves and social etiquette, like
Wiping the blood from your bleeding gums
On the sleeve of the shirt that you got for
Xmas like the shirt you got last xmas like the
Shirt you got last xmas just like the shirt
You got last birthday but no one is singing
Because you need to introduce yourself to all
Those new faces that look like the old faces
And a drip just floated up to the ceiling like
Social steam evaporating under the weight
And the heat and the trauma and the weight
And the heat and the trauma and the weight
And the heat and the wait and the hear so now
You’re like cartoons and your hurting people
Without them feeling any pain and you’re a
Cartoon cat trying to fit dynamite into a mousehole
And a charicature of a black lady from the 50s
Is hitting a broom about and your thinking: fuck
This isn’t why I came to the beach house and
There’s no beach house but there’s a chair
To sit up straight in and there’s some cheese and
A mousetrap and a piece of springy metal and
Some other faces but I told you about them already.

From a work in progress

2010-01-31T00:00:00.001Z

There’s music playing and she’s on top of him. The room ornate or maybe just old. She’s going down on him and his cock is a lot bigger than you’d think it would be on such a skinny cute guy, and he’s smiling and holding her head gently while it bobs. He puts his arms behind his head and opens his legs a little a more but grins because I guess he realises that he probably looks a little too much like he’s in the middle of a porno even though this isn’t a real porn film just something they’re making so they can masturbate together at a later date. He moves one arm out from behind his head and it stops like it’s in freeze frame and he can’t decide whether to stroke her hair or put his hand back and just carry on looking dumb and self consciously porno like he was already.

There’s a chest of wooden drawers next to the bed with a glass full of beads on top; fake pearls and emeralds. The mirror has a fancy frame and the wallpaper is golden with embossed white flower patterns that repeat until they’re obscured by a large cupboard with glass doors that are reflecting something that stops you seeing what’s inside. His hands are behind his head again and her face is right in front of his and they’re smiling at each other. He moves his hands and takes off her underwear, slips in down her thighs until she has to manoeuvre herself and basically step out of them. They kiss and then move so that she gets to lie down with him on top of her, he takes off his boxers fully as they switch places and the song has either changed subtly or there’s an incoherent techno break kicking in that feels out of place because before that I’m sure the music was … country? I can’t remember so that means it can’t matter much.

Who am I talking to?

2010-01-30T00:00:00.002Z

- Who am I talking to?
- Yourself.
- Fuck you.
- Sorry. Me.
- Heh.
- Definitely me.
- Yeah ok. Whatever.
- What are you doing.
- What am I doing?
- Yeah.
- No, I mean – what am I doing?
- ?
- What am I doing? I should have used italics.
- Are you making fun of me?
- Listen – can’t you tell … ?
- What do you mean?
- Listen to my voice. Maybe it’s only obvious to me.
- Nothing’s obvious. Well, not to me anyway.
- I don’t know what I’m doing.
- Oh.
- What are you doing?
- Just talking to you.
- I guess I’m doing that same then. Thanks.
- You wanna go? Am I keeping you?
- No. You’re clarifying things.
- About what? Are you ok?
- Yeah. Excellent.
- You seem pissed off.
- Argh – don’t be weird.
- I’m not. Sorry. Maybe I’m being paranoid.
- That should be me. I’m the one that’s stoned.
- You’re stoned.
- Yeah don’t you listen?
- What? Oh. OK. I think I get it now.
- Get what?
- ?
- Sorry. Just fucking with you.

JD Salinger R.I.P.

2010-01-29T00:00:00.000Z

I just got home and read about the death of JD Salinger. Man, that's a sad one. RIP.

xxx

Make it sound like a tornado when you do it

2010-01-28T00:00:00.001Z

Make it sound like a tornado when you do it,
Something that will confuse me as much as possible,
As much as you can. You’re capable of fires
Beyond these, more than anyone who knows you
Could imagine, could fear, cherish or lose.

In short: I want you to do whatever it is
That you think you should do,
And I want you to take as long as you need
And do what you need to do without
Rushing so that if you find
Something you remembered you were
Looking for, or something you never
Knew was there, then you might
Lose yourself in the way you’ve
Always wanted, but have never been able
To engage with without the ground
Wobbling and your eyes betraying you.

Please take me away from this place.
Please turn into what you want to.

heyy

2010-01-27T00:00:00.002Z

heyy so iw as thinking about your last night
and thininiking that i’ve not seen you for a couple
of eweekss so maybe we should hang out soon. and
thath madee me think t that heyyy wahy don;t i jusat
fucking call you 2nite and see if you wa nted to hang
out becuz that way itd just get all a of teh awkwrd stuff
outa the way and we coudl just try to start from
scrattccch from before all that stupid stuff happened
last time.sooner or laterr we gotta do it so we mighta as
well jsut gwet it over with as sooner or later. let me know
what you thinkg becuz i really wanna see you i was thinkg
thinking that we could try some of that crazy stuff again
if you think that sounds like a good plan becux I know u
were into it but it just didnt work out or whateva becuz i
got too into it or whatever but I know you used to like
the idea of that stuff and listn I’m just really fucking horny
and i miss you and wanna try that shit again so get back
and& let me know what yr thinkingxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Glenn Branca

2010-01-26T00:00:00.002Z

You need a couple of years sometimes

2010-01-25T00:00:00.001Z

You need a couple of years sometimes. It takes time to be able to see something properly, no matter how much you like to think that you can trust your instincts and your judgements without worry. When I say you I mean I. I mean me. I mean my and I mean mine.

The day after I first slept with you I did very bad impressions of you or what at that point I’d interpreted you as being. I bought the same CD that we’d listened to when I was still wondering whether I’d get to see you without your clothes on. And I cooked the same meal that you’d made for us, only not as well. I had a couple of imaginary conversations with myself where I was you and you were you also.

I got confused. I think I let you lead me a lot further than the real you could have actually let yourself lead me or the real you was actually capable. At least that’s what I’ve got from the understanding I have of you at the moment.

ILLUMINATE/HINDSIGHT

2010-01-24T00:00:00.001Z

Can’t tell what’s coming when faced with leftover clues
That illuminate your hindsight, doubled by sadness and
Faltering because the attraction comes for the wrong reasons.
Shit. Would it be crass to say I want to go back to when you were
Younger? Would it fuck stuff up to say that I’m convinced that
I could have made things better for you, that you might still
Be smiling the way that I’ve been forced to remember you?

The ascension

2010-01-23T00:00:00.001Z

He lay awake
on the floor
listening
to the sounds
of the person
he was in love
with having sex,
being fucked,
moaning,
breathing hard.
He lay in the dark
trying to block it
out and listen in
at the same time.
He wished the walls
were thicker
so that
he couldn’t hear.
He wished the walls
were transparent
so that he could watch.

Justine

2010-01-22T00:00:00.001Z

They chose to follow each other.
They were all girls.
They sat naked in front of puddles
Of rainbow oil spills.
They found rocks made of sand,
And made snow angel graves
Leaping from one night to a new one.
They hung from trees
In sepia forests and barely spoke,
Knowing every word was
Like another nail been banged in.

I'm writing a story about a photographer

2010-01-21T00:00:00.000Z

Your heart is still dreaming (for Jason)

2010-01-20T00:00:00.005Z

I hope your friends won’t mind
Me writing this for you.
I thought about counting the
Words that I wrote to you
When you were still alive –
Alive as in there to touch,
To read emails, to see, as
Opposed to the alive that
You still are, you know the
Not here but still here, still
Loved, still special, still intact
In the memories of those
Who were there at all the
Important moments that
You breathed in and saw;

There were
Probably less than 40 so I
Decided not to count. I
Feel selfish for feeling so
Bad when I found out
What had happened to you,
Like it was rude of me to
Take up any of your time,
Any of the grief left in your
Tracks, like I had no right,
And in some ways I’m still
Convinced that I don’t. So
I’m making this offer, kind
Of a private one, kind of a
Pointless one, but I know
That I want to make it anyway.
I’m going to dream about
Some of the photographs,
That you took, about heads
Coming out of drawers,
About blurred alleyways,
About light captured and
Twisted into shapes before
It has chance to stop you,
About twelve pairs of shoes,
About a beach and a sky
And what could equal
A million perfect moments
That I’m glad you got and
Glad you shared.

In memory of Jason Parsons (24.12.89 – 7.12.09)

In conversation with Pascal O'Loughlin

2010-01-19T00:00:00.002Z

The wonderful writer Pascal O'Loughlin (who also has a splendid blog) recently got in touch to ask me a few questions about blogging. I quite enjoyed thinking about that stuff, so I thought I'd post Pascal's questions and my responses here.

What are your thoughts about self publishing in general versus conventional publishing via publishing houses?

I guess it’s hard for me to give a generalised answer about that sort of thing as self publishing could be used to cover a very broad spectrum of different things. For me, whether I’m thinking about my work or someone else’s, then the most important thing is exactly that – the work. How it gets into my hands or in front of my eyes isn’t something that I think about too much. There is a lot of great work coming from both established publishing houses and from the various areas of self publishing – blogs, print on demand books, zines, and so on. I like the fact that the increasing availability of self publishing as an option has opened an opportunity for more people to get their stuff (whatever it may be) out there. I also like the speed of it. Blogs for example offer a ridiculously quick way to publish work. If I want I have the option to publish a new piece within seconds of its completion. And also with print on demand books – they’re really fast. With the poetry books that I published using these services, I just wanted them out there fast, which is why I went for the self publishing option. I wanted to use the books as a way of expressing certain things at certain times and using POD publishers allowed me to do that. Also, I’m a huge music geek and I’ve always felt a certain affinity with underground stuff – noise bands making scratchy cassettes with handmade covers and people making fanzines (when I was a teenager I used to edit two different zines), anything like that. I’m very much a fan of the DIY ethics and aesthetics and the mode of thinking that often accompanies that sort of venture. So for me I often see self publishing as an extension of that or a literary equivalent of it. Having said that I think that it is important to not get into a binary way of thinking, you know, thinking that self publishing is better than conventional publishing houses or anything like that. In the past year I’ve read amazing stuff on blogs and in books that have been released by established publishing houses. Ultimately I think that it’s helpful to have both options.

Do you produce work for your blog and then work which you're holding back because you see it it as work for sending out to publishers/magazines? If so, do you use your blog as a kind of test area for your work, almost like a scrap book?

No not really. It depends what I’m doing at the time. For example: recently I found out about a short story collection that was looking for submissions so I finished off a new short story that I’d been working on at the time and sent it off to them. I didn’t put it on my blog because they were looking for stuff that hadn’t appeared anywhere else previously. If I hadn’t have heard about the short story collection that I sent it off to then I would have most likely put it up on my blog. On the whole I don’t write stuff thinking ok so this stuff is the stuff I can send out to publishers and then ok and so this stuff is the stuff I’ll put on my blog. I think that thinking like that can inherently lead to the conclusion that one of those avenues is better or more favourable than the other which isn’t always the case. I mean, some things are definitely more suited to my blog and indeed some things are written just for my blog – certain things that incorporate other features that are only available when using the internet (images to accompany the text, or different colours within the text or something like that), but that isn’t often the case. I think that the majority of the time when I’m writing something I’m just thinking about the writing, and not really putting too much thought into where the writing is going to end up – that’s a concern to consider after the writing is finished. I don’t have the mindset where I think the really good stuff I’ll send to magazines/publishers and the stuff that isn’t so good I’ll stick on my blog. I mean, there’s a short story I wrote called The Letter (at the time I posted it under the working title of Return to Sender) which I think of as one of my favourite pieces of writing that I’ve done and I put that on my blog as opposed to send it out to someone. To answer the second part of your question – yes, I definitely think of my blog as a scrapbook. Sometimes I’ll post pieces of writing that are still a work in progress, sometimes I’ll post first drafts of things. I’m not always sure why. There are a number of reasons – I like the idea of showing writing in progress, and I think that sometimes having the momentum of the blog (i.e. I post something every day) helps me in that it keeps me on my toes and most importantly keeps me writing every day, because I don’t want to see my work suddenly hanging dormant in cyberspace. A few years ago I had pretty much given up on writing, and starting again was something that I found incredibly difficult – probably one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, creatively speaking. So once I’d started writing again, and started to feel the things that writing makes me feel again, I realised that I never wanted to have to go through that again. So I figured that because it was so hard to start again, if I never stopped again then I wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. Doing the blog as regularly as I do has helped with that. I enjoy and benefit from the discipline that it has enforced on me I guess. And yeah having somewhere to showcase bits of writing that I’m working on or sometimes unsure of is helpful too.

Do you find the medium of the blog, I'm thinking of how simple and quick the process is; how it seems weirdly permanent in the sense that posts are archived for the long, foreseeable future but, also, the work feels kind of not there because it disappears ever downward, silently, into the past; also the way in which the online arena can function as an identity playground, do you think this has encouraged you to write in different ways?

Oh yeah I think so. I like how you described it. In some ways I like to think of my blog as a single piece of work, a piece of work that’s open ended and constantly expanding and being built upon. I also like the idea that despite the often disparate elements that it is composed of, the blog might have some sort of distinct singular voice. When I’m working on my blog I’ve often got the idea of this voice in my thinking. I’m interested in how anything that I put on my blog (not just the pieces of my writing but also the images and videos that I sometimes upload) might be filtered through this voice and yet also impact upon it. I like the idea that a new post could add to what has gone before it, but also potentially be able to affect the way that the previous posts are viewed in some way. It’s a fun thing to experiment with, even if a lot the time it’s only visible and/or interesting to me, haha. I love the idea of the online area as an identity playground too, and that’s something that I’ve definitely put a lot of thought into in my writing and also with the way that I use my blog. The internet as a whole has definitely been something that has influenced my writing, I’m tempted to say that on the whole more in terms of subject matter than the actual style of writing; although having said that I have written several pieces that have mimicked online styles of writing and communication so I guess in actual fact it has influenced both the way in which I write and the things that I write about to some degree. There are other more simple ways that the medium that the blog provides has impacted on certain things – for example, the length of things I write: I tend to keep the blog entries relatively short because I’m not a huge fan of reading long pieces of writing on a computer screen. So the pieces of writing I post are usually my shorted pieces. I’m sure there are other ways, I’m still thinking about them as I go. New thoughts about it crop up quite often.

Do you have an audience in mind?

Thinking about that always confuses me, so I’ll probably contradict myself a little here (but I’m constantly doing that anyway). When I’m working on a piece of writing I don’t think that I’m thinking about who is going to read it once it’s finished. With regards to my blog, I know that people are going to be reading it and looking at it because I get emails from people about things that I’ve posted. I used to have a stat counter on my blog, and I was pretty surprised with how many people were going onto my blog and also surprised about the spread of the locations of these people. But I ended up taking the counter off after a few weeks because I had this fear that somehow knowing exactly how many people were looking at the blog, or knowing about a definite audience may distract me in some way that could impact upon the way that I thought about the blog or used it, although I wasn’t sure how – it was just an instinctual thing. I’ve met a few people or been introduced to people and then found out that they’re actually familiar with my blog, which has been cool and surprising. There have been times where I’ve been talking to someone and mentioned something that has happened to me or something else as simple as a band that I’m interested in and the person I’ve been talking to has said “yeah I know – I read about that on your blog”. Sometimes I forget what I’ve said or put on there. When I’m putting things together for my blog or choosing what to post on there I generally think of myself as the audience – I only post things that are of interest to me basically, which probably sounds more selfish than it actually is – with anything creative I’m a strong believer that you have to keep things interesting and engaging for yourself foremost and worry about anything else afterwards. Which I guess is a long and very convoluted way of saying that I don’t really have an audience in mind, but then in some ways I kinda do. Ultimately I don’t think about an audience while I write.

Less light can get through (draft from a work in progress)

2010-01-18T00:00:00.001Z

A mattress has been propped
Up against the window so
That less light can get through.

It is afternoon and everyone
In the room has been up for
Over thirty hours and it shows.

One girl is trying to sleep,
Curling her legs up and
Trying to make a comfortable
Bed out of her ex boyfriend
Who sits silently and taps
Cigarette ash into the top
Of an empty beer can. The
Girl makes tiny groaning noises
As she fails to black out, moans
Slightly like she’s trying
To second guess a dream.

Two people propped up
In the corner of the shrinking
Front room are talking fast
And loud, about things that
They feel really matter to them,
With an intensity that must
Not have occurred to them
At any point previous to this.
Their mouths are digging
Graves, throwing things in
And holding the service for
Them in rapid succession.

Someone is thinking about
Leaving, which they’ve been
Thinking about for five hours
At least, in fits and starts
In between the times when
They wish they could make
So many things better for
Themselves, because it seems
Like maybe two, maybe three
Years ago something definitely
Got lost and never showed back up.