December 29
JUST BEFORE DAWN:
The days over Christmas were bleak and lonesome, but not really bleak because all this is my free will, I think, and not that lonesome, because at my right hand is a red telephone and I can listen to all Bob's messages. The prize thus far has been Isidor, that old er, erp, erm, er, yes I know cartoon-cat voice, calling from Belgrade, introducing himself as Don Something-not-easy-to-catch Corleoni and secreting within the machine, like a schoolboy on the run, a number where he can actually be contacted these days in that faraway, presumably yet grim, dim home town of his.
I suddenly had to go out. To Bastard it was, open again after the feast; to meet Alan, and spend a night of drunken passion with a particularly good friend of Alan's, shortly after he introduced us, which makes me feel slightly guilty, but not very; after which I thought I had better stay indoors to recover again. That was last night. At half past one the doorbell sounded and this pokey-quaint flat received another four guests, direct from Prague, bottle of whisky in hand, but better than that, a bit of warm food in the bottom of a plastic bag. Being now the host, I had to get up and show the lads the Bastard place - the lads being Honza, Honza, Robert and Phil, of whom the leader is quite obviously the biggest Honza. But Ma Man wasn't on the door, and the smiley girl who maybe kind of knew him wanted ten €uros for the party, so the party then took me to a place which might have been Torpedo, with sun-spots and spaceships painted on the walls - through the misty window of which, over-hung with a row washing-machine drums, I caught sight of Volker, the only German in town, purposefully staggering home. For his own sake I pulled him inside to buy himself a last beer, as we were receiving Last Orders in any case, the barman having spotted my accent through the smoky Czech din and put on 'London Calling', after all that Germanic Noiserock, as the last and final Go Home Now song for the evening. Volker told me this and that; but mainly Volker is an excellent man and I hope to see him again this time around, but probably won't. I asked him to give my regards to his ex, Sexy Sexy Victoria, or rather, to send her around to Hufeland Street where she might reasonably expect a warm and clammy British welcome.
The next day, that was today, the lads went off to the Polish Sunday flea market to buy good worker's boots (not Dr Martins), which I believe was their reason for coming, leaving me to be woken up by a ring at the door. Two more visitors, this time from somewhere near Prague, and I don't think the one group knows the other. They haven't met yet, as the boys have only just filed in and gone to bed, and the fresh ones are sleeping in here, as I annoyingly type this. So I happily accepted their offer to take me out for a beer, this time to a place I don't know the name of, with a poor collection of free postcards, but a very friendly Spanish looking barperson who FINALLY LET ME CHECK MY E-MAILS for free on the computer there; but I think actually the outing was my idea. And what did Michaela and André (roughly translated) bring for their host, who they don't know from Adam? Cakes and chocolate and meat sandwiches, coka-cola and a somewhat unnecessary Nick Cave CD; and a polite word that in exchange, could I please un-freeze the King's Flat by feeding coal to both ovens and turning on the radiator?
The extravagance of it all.
So a nice evening had, though I feel a bit stressed for unconnected reasons; crowned with the arrival at the Kneiper with no Name of my old friend, the one-time DDR political prisoner and his old picnic basket of hash-cookies with a nicely folded tea-towel on top for camouflage - as if it were needed. Having no currency of my own, I played an old trick. Two tricks really. I said: Ah, my old friend the hash-cookie man! You know, I always knock down his price, and he's always reluctant and business-like, but marvellously friendly with it; at which point André looked so sceptical I thought I would go without, so I said: Just half of one of those and I don't have to drink another beer for the rest of the night! Business done and the Hash-cookie Man even left us with a tip. He said: I was just in Budapest, and there they're having a vinyl record raffle!
We got it straight in the end. In the next street, in a bar called something like Zum Budapest Razzel, some busy entrepreneurs were at that moment auctioning off records. I wondered for about three seconds whether the things were being auctioned off because they were rare and beautiful antiques or because they were scratched.
The other barmaid was almost equally as nice as the prettier one; a lesbian I think, though I shouldn't say it. In fact I like the lesbian type (something about very short hair and dirty hands); especially when they turn out not to be - which is more often than not. Anyway, she had nicely cleared the table while I was nicely sunk in Computerland without a penny to pay, but had cleared away my last little chunk of hash-cookie, too. I said to André: Oh. Did you see where that little 'bit' went to? To which he answered in his slightly vague, slightly sceptical way: Yes. She cleared it away. Which flummoxed me for a while. But it was soon miraculously retrieved from behind the counter, amid girlish blushes and apologies, to be tucked away in a much more fitting place.
However, Ma Man's cookies are not the things they used to be. I might have eaten a dirt sandwich. I don't know much about farming, but I imagine its the wrong time of year.
December 25
HAPPY
Xmas MUM(x), DAD(!), Lou, Mike, Jim, Sally & the sisters, Russell & July, all the kids especially the quiet ones, not forgetting that noisy Lucy, and the pets, if there are any left, and the Morris family, who never return my messages - and here in Berlin, Frowa Vine-acten! Anja, who I just met after seven years (who Louise met once when she was here with what's-his-name); she's got two girls of her own now, is as pretty as ever, living in a pretty pent-house just around the corner - but she got no dog, so no good for you, James.
Am at Bob's place while he visits the wife in Prague, hauling coal to the top floor, nibbling at strange things in the kitchen, avoiding for as long as possible crumpled packets with Czech words over faded illustrations of chicken bones and meatball soup, going through his bed-long shelf of CDs from one end to the other, reading Smallcreep's Day by P.C.Brown (I might have written it myself, on a better day): recovering from the first ten days of debauchery after a year and a half of silent celibacy on the Island.
Nice to see drummer Chris play before his departure to Portland, USA (he kicked over his drum-kit again, which means he enjoyed himself); annoyed a particular groupie after that second Methylated Spirits concert; avoided so far, understandably, by Tanja; happy to meet Kerstin and new baby Paulo and say hello to Karl, her old baby; annoyed Timur at his restaurant, which is now getting good reviews, (sorry Timur), (must get some pictures); haven't seen Neil & Signe yet or their new baby; met English Alan the painter and then Irish Joe at the Bastard club during a fashion-show-party and danced among chemical flowers and fifty half-dressed Scenequeens till the moon blew up; annoyed Johnny Zabala at the pub gig where the other Alan got arrested (voiced the general opinion that he should play that groovy stuff and cut short the mumbled commentaries during over-long pauses); enjoyed Uwe's triple birthday party, notwithstanding the annoying Spaniard who declared himself a terrorist (ETA, possibly, but I suspect he was just a party-poop) and wouldn't let up his vice-like handshake; left my last €uros in my other trousers and got busted by the Turkish Mafia now employed as undercover Stassi on-the-spot-fine-gatherers for the Berlin Transport Co., (explained to them how they had become Nazis, but they just grinned amongst themselves with pure delight - they earn so much more than their kebab-carving cousins, I impolitely added as the doors shut in my face, getting a good one over on Germans and tourists alike - though they stopped short of beating me to the ground, which is what a bunch of their comrades did to Bob last year, without the slightest provocation, except that he was annoying enough to be alone and possibly tipsy - and I had to walk home anyway); annoyed Corinna, who then left half my computer on the street for it to be stolen during the move here (hence this late message), at which point I became really annoyed and more than tipsy on mad Czech beer found in a bumper-sized lemonade bottle in the fridge (there's also a full bottle of absinthe and a full bottle - labelled whisky - of something like tequila in the kitchen, but I'm reluctant to go into that now) before lunging for the phone to pour a mud-slide torrent of long-sat-on emotions into poor Anja's pretty right ear: and ran out of money. But did an hour's work for Norbert folding leaflets at the printshop, and a little translating for René, who nicely gave me a bunch of CDs: and generally, no doubt annoyingly, spread the word that MR WALLY WOODS, author of the new BERLINDEX of MUSIC, SCARY PEOPLE & RANDOM SCENE STUFF, is looking for design work, or any work, in order to stay here a while after February's Quay exhibition. (Will probably not show the paintings. I can't do oils. Will do postcard montages instead.) Am thus collecting free postcards from bars all over Berlin - and there are many newly-opened, throb-throb-throbbing velvety nests to explore, I can tell you.
Funny to be here at the King's flat again. Its in a different place now, but the furnishings, the dust, the dishes in the sink and the beer bottles, empty but for a bit of mould and a fag-end in the bottom, are all the same. This is where I started in Berlin in '92, with Bob away in England. Then I began to make puppets. I keep bumping into them as I visit people (they weren't as popular as Bratwurst, and I gave most away); old friends just hanging around, coated in fat and dust now, chipped and grimy, smiling naively for all eternity, with no obvious reason. Half the people think I'm nuts to want to come back, especially in wintertime - but its what I need. As far as slightly more practical ideas go, I'm busting with them - trouble is, making flyers, CD covers, posters, t-shirts for bands and clubs may be jolly fun, but most of these fellas are as skint as I am. So, if a real job finds me, I'm up for it.
A lot of people tell me I'm talented, partly for want of anything else to say. Well, this year I shall find a way to earn a fat bit of German bread, garnished with heaps of thrills, with a real steak on top, none of that kebab crap, served to me in a great big bed with red covers by a milky princess WHO HAPPENS TO BE READING THIS RIGHT NOW.
December 6
FROM TODAY'S TIMES:
A coroner has expressed amazement that a 60-strong church congregation left a naked man to die of cold outdoors while they feasted inside... refused to let the man in despite his pleas for help... Mr Clark, 62, wandered around the church in Dudley for 5 hours before dying of hypothermia... banged on the church door begging for assistance... Rev Ivor Sperring told the inquest that Mr Clark's behaviour was threatening... "He was picking up plastic and banging it on the ground. Most of the people were older than him and didn't feel they would be able to deal with the situation. He was nothing more than a nuisance... There was something sinister about the way he was breaking things."
Tonight was straight TV's premier of the excellent BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE. An eye-opener, yes, but has it opened U.S. eyes, or are they too deeply sunk in fear of the neighbours and mindless tradition ever to see the light? Haven't any of them read the rest of the 'right to bear arms' clause, written for the prompt formation of militias in case of aggression by the British?
Sad, then, to watch the U.K. going exactly the same way. The massive growth of gang-culture is not only thanks to cool American TV shows and rap videos, there are minor side issues, like poverty, poor education and the fact that guns are now piss-easy to get hold of. There are minor symptoms, too, like this recent obsession with crappy, wrongly entitled 'reality' TV shows, designed to indoctrinate youngsters into the fab new media-constructed culture of meaninglessness, hero-worship of thoroughly useless heroes and self-idolisation. America teaches us: you can have anything you want, and get it any way you want - just don't get caught if its dodgy.
To hammer the 16 cent K-Mart bullet home, Bowling for Columbine was immediately followed by NASHVILLE.
But I would never wish to halt progress. Which is a good thing, as there will be no halting progress till this country is as terrifying to live in as that one. To know what will happen after that will be easy; we'll just gaze across the sea as usual, be filled with loathing, and copy them some more.
My answer is revolutionary as usual: a ban on weapons outside the services. Automatic imprisonment for anyone in possession of a gun. Longer imprisonment for anyone who points a gun at someone else, loaded or not. Life imprisonment for anyone who shoots someone, dead or wounded. And re-indoctrinate society, starting with silly slogans like GUNS ARE NOT FOR FUN or LIBERTY DOES NOT MEAN FREEDOM TO SHOOT OTHERS. There. Aren't I the crazy fanatic? Imagine what I could do with a semi-automatic...
(I may or may not re-name these diaries THE HIGH-HORSE DIARIES. Will do some research to find out if it sells better. When they're a best-seller and me a Celeb, I shall buy dogs, barbed wire and a gangster-bodyguard, and the world will be ALRIGHT BY ME, JACK.)
Visited the mosaic lady this afternoon. The samples she gave me look lovely on the chair sculpture.
November 20
BOMBS
go off in Istanbul. British concerns are under attack by death-adoring fools who can't be bothered to find Trafalgar Square and help pull down a papier-mâché President Evil and laugh about it. Perhaps even enjoy the visit with these slap-stick imperialist British pigs. David Soul hosts TOP 10 TV COPS and I must have voted a thousand times for Helen Mirren, then forgot, because she wins hands down. Michael Jackson turns himself in. My little epic poem began meaning one thing, almost meant something better, and ends today irrelevant:
That Sticky Place
Butterfly came landing
She bent to kiss a branch
And dug herself a home there
(Rest now).
Erupted soon a moth
Of duller, badder beauty
Which leapt across the flood
Below and pranced about
The yawning vale where
Petals pour down spinningly
On ants who do not care -
For toil here is light enough
But lighter yet the head
Which wags in fever to deny
That, YES, His Storm is blown aside
But, NO, it failed to cure the Wound
It only rapped upon the crust
Without that sticky zone of reckoning
That Glory Place I made my own
That sullied place methinks now CURSED!
An ant pit DAMNED and QUEENLESS!
(Breathe now).
Gushing 'neath the bark!
Ahoy!
Burning at the knot!
A-Splicing lower limb from
little Butterfly - yet digging!
(Fly now!)
And Ye did sow the rhythm
That I did catch the rhythm
Till Ye escaped the rhythm
Lest I should CRUSH the rhythm
And THEE!
November 19
WRITES ME A SONG
before breakfast, whilst the Mr and Mrs Bush lay with the Queen at her place. Not a protest song, I leave that stuff to the granny who gets past the bouncers to scale the President's slumbering chest and unfurl a flag, any old flag, up-side-down across the maskless thing that awaits her there. I imagine she sings while she climbs...
I sing for her and her guts. There is one verse and no music:
I have to heal myself.
Its like praying.
It takes more energy than I have.
(Heave ho)
I need to heal myself.
Heal myself.
(Heal myself of what?)
(Heave ho)
It doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
What matters is how.
(Heave ho)
I need time and place to concentrate.
To find a way to heal myself.
(Yeah)
Ah gonna heal myself.
Gonna heeel mahself!
An' et doznee madder how!
November 16
FROM TODAY
200 pages of Wallywoods.com can be counted amongst 3,307,998,701 other pages floating around in a thing called a 'search-engine' named Google.
At last I belong to the present.
November 15
NUMBER #3
October 31
NUMBER #2
for Halloween.
October 29
MY FIRST
little oil painting - almost finished.
(Unsharp due to scanning problem and smudged paint.)
October 28
PAINTING FULL ON
for the exhibition. "Cliff Falls" is my DORIAN GREY portrait. It changes every day, even now. In interludes, am adapting old pictures, including a couple by the kids. Have asked Dad's permission to up-date some ancient stuff of mine. There's a small picture from when I was about ten; a cliff under a big moon with a row of tiny people dancing and jumping off like lemmings. I don't know what it means yet, but it fits well; especially after seeing THE WICKER MAN last night, which is a musical, I was surprised to remember. Painting properly at last (i.e. on numerous things at once), the ideas are endless, one chasing the other, leading who knows where. How about a St George dragon poking out of a roofless jail, getting gunned down by a gang of teenagers in the Congo?
Got a nice mail from Kerstin. Want to visit Berlin soon.
October 19
DAVID STEPS OUT
of his glass box. Welcome to earth. I think about Berlin.
October 17
GAY PRIEST GIVEN 16 DAYS TO SAVE CHURCH
(Times headline)
Meanwhile the Pope was passed over by the Nobel Prize judges for a little Muslim lady who fights for human rights in Iran, where there aren't many.
What's more, my German e-mail account tells me:
Sie haben 60 neue Nachrichten, davon 60 in Spamverdacht!
October 10
HOW TO RELAX (PART II)
Watch TV. You will then find that yesterday was NATIONAL POETRY DAY;
And I didn't know it!
Today, that man in an antique diving suit stepped out of Loch Ness after his two week underwater marathon, whilst across a narrower water, Conan the Businessman is elected to run the world's fourth (or fifth, or sixth, depending on the newsflash) largest economy; whilst, six months since we bashed Saddam, even though we missed, we gathered in St Paul's Cathedral to confirm that there are no regrets (except for the dead, and all that's happened since); whilst our Mike won £14,000 on a horse this week! Nice news indeed: whilst tomorrow will be a year since that grinning shit blew up Bali and got martyrdom for his pains instead of life in an evil prison; and Ian Duncan Smith is truly the most sickening thing in England right now; whilst repeats of 'Monkey' are on late night TV again (my head is still a tumefaction) and 'QI' is a Quite Interesting, very funny new TV series - laughing is easy - and Markus Rabanus answers e-mails to his www.Nazis.de website only after waiting till the next morning, so his replies are fresh and pointed and without anger; and I lay on a sun-bed today for ten minutes then ate a large cod and chips with dad; and I miss certain people in Berlin and have decided tonight, after a very large brandy, which is disgusting (all out of pot) to visit; although what I do tomorrow and forever more will be quite another matter (if only I could get out of bed) and I do enjoy British advertisements - they are among the best in the world, although the England football team, after the gang rape, threatened to strike, though only for effect, and I'm going mad so slowly that even I don't notice, and I notice everything. Life has slowed to a dribble, but outside the moon is full, very bright indeed (except that it's pitch dark due to very low cloud), and don't forget that Mars is still too close for comfort, and that the Beagle Space Thing is on its way to the moon for Christmas (I've watched so many fascinating TV documentaries that I believe I am Einstein); whilst Dirty Den is back in Albert Square and Coronation Street suffered its first gay kiss; whilst music means nothing anymore; whilst that guy played Russian roulette live on the tele the other night - spectacular stuff! I felt for him (though no-one checked the gun or the bullets), whilst that Yank still hangs over London in a glass box in solitary confinement with mars bars stuffed in the bottom of his sleeping bag (I saw him levitate off the sidewalk on TV's Top 50 Magic Tricks Of All Time, beating Tommy Cooper, though not as funny, and the madman who swallowed string and pulled it out with tweezers through his belly, offering the bloody stuff to the audience to pull on in turns, which they mostly did; and the bald Russian who spent his life blindfolded with his back to his wife, shooting an apple off her head with a cross-bow over his shoulder; and the odd dull, disappearing elephant). I must eat more fruit. And drink more. This is one of my recurring dreams:
"Dey wannid to feed me, beet me;
An' frow me on de crocowdiles, teef an' all!
A Roman army of drunkish rampaging maniacs an' maniocs,
After me testicaws, one an' all!
De witnesses, oh, but dey were friendly:
A tort, a quone, a brither...
Ah fought, Ah fought:
I thought I stood rather well against the rush of death
Ah do, Ah reelly do, troof be true!
Ah twisted ma maaf in casuwal scawn:
An' easily convinced 'em uverwise!
'Let me be! Let me be! Ah be a good bloke!'
Wiv dignitty discussed; no sweat, no fuss, no blud blud blud - norra drop!
'Genst dem block'eds Ah argued good, Ah troofly did.
Well, ya gotta blow yer own trumpit (in dis World an' de next.)
So, Glory be! Ah rescued me agen, rescued me agen!
Amen."
October 4
MUM'S IN CRETE
for two weeks, sleeping in a kitchen.
September 26
KUAY ARTS IN NEWPORT
have condescended to accept my exhibition proposal - not in a gallery, but in the canteen. That's fine. People spend more time looking at the walls over a nice cup of tea than they do shuffling about looking at pictures.
The title will be "CHAIR ISLAND". I have to write something for a leaflet. How about this:
What use is a chair?
Something to sit on!
But what if that chair has only three legs and one arm, be made of chalk or rusty metal, and is way too high to sit on? What if it be painted by children, set with coloured glass and strung with chimes and bells? What if it be constructed a hundred feet tall, on top of Culver Cliff, aligned to face a particular spot in Europe?
Something to marvel at, or ridicule? Or no use at all?
Then what use the artist, the dreamer; the dole-stealer, who does no work other than imagine Big Chairs into being, on paper and canvas, in legendary poems, as models and computer simulations? A Chair Artist, who can't even do figures!
Something to marvel at, or ridicule? Or no use at all...
...Never content with one subject or style, I knew I needed a symbol, a thread to run through everything. This was initially to comfort that creature of habit, the gallerist; but quickly the favoured object, a chair - geometrical, incomplete - grew solid enough in my mind that you may call it an obsession...
"I found me a use," another artist speaks grandly about himself. "I'm gonna build a great big doily for my bed-side lamp."
September 18
DEAD WEIGHT
(11.30pm, ITV)
"Looking at the problems undertakers face as more adults become too fat to be cremated."
September 17
EXTREME PHOBIAS
(9pm, Channel 5)
"Featuring a man who is afraid of baked beans."
September 13
THIS FROM AN ARTICLE
in the Sunday Times Magazine about people living in hotels: playboys, an old gentleman, a politician; and, illustrated with a picture of the back of her head, this asylum-seeker:
Maria lives in a tiny room in an optimistically starred hotel in Glasgow. "I feel safe here," she whispers. Not safe enough to give her real name or show her face.
Until last year Maria, 29, and her three children lived in Uganda. "I was an English teacher." Then the Lord's Resistance Army abducted her. She was gang-raped. Maria fled and found relatives who paid traffickers to take her to safety.
She landed in Glasgow in January. "The trafficker left me in the street and told me to wait. He never returned. I was alone. I cannot describe how I felt" she says, crying. That night she slept on a bus. "The churches and mosques were closed." Next day she went to the police. They turned her over to Immigration who told her she'd waited too long to seek asylum. "I was here for one day."
For the next three months Maria lived in a women's hostel. "They were always drinking and fighting. I couldn't sleep."
Only after winning asylum-seeker status could she move into this hotel. "It's nice to have my own room." She exists on £5 a day, washing what clothes she has in the sink. I can't afford hotel meals - the cheapest is £7.50." Economy yoghurts warm by the window, there's no fridge. "Of course I am hungry." And lonely.
She can't even afford the bus fare to visit friends. "My life has stopped. I am not allowed to work. I feel a nuisance to the world. Sitting in a room all day is hard!'
(I drove through Glasgow once.)
September 11
AN IMPORTANT DAY...
Dad introduced me to Georges Perec's book,
SPECIES OF SPACES AND OTHER PIECES.
Evidence that I should never write another word!
September 9
WATCHED
THE THIN RED LINE on telly. A Hollywood rarity; a really good war film. Heart-thumping fear, guts-out pain, passion for life, voice-over poetry. Superbly acted, pretty scenery, very long. A document of human misery, assembled by artists.
On the other channel, Saddam Hussein was rebuilding Babylon. Knocking down bits of the original to do so, replacing 2,600 year-old bricks stamped with Nebuchadnezzar's immortal mark, with new bricks stamped with his own. Dan Cruickshank was furious, but couldn't say so during the visit as the war was about to start. He loves his subject; braving wars to chase up lost treasures, cooing over bits of glazed rock. 'Extraordinary!'. But without raving audacity and merciless use of slaves, no such wonder would have been built in the first place. Or maybe Saddam's predecessor was a nicer fella, with only the well-being of his people in mind?
Must assume Babylon won't be rebuilt till the next megalomaniac comes along.
Attempting to cut out tobacco. Bought a pipe.
September 8
IRREVERSIBLE
(France, 2002 / 99 minutes)
Directed by Gaspar Noé. Never heard of it. The DVD cover hailed 'the most important film of the last 20 years.' Worth a rent, then. Afterwards, to get my head around the horrible thing (my head having been incredibly realistically crushed to jelly by the experience), I needed to read something on it.
"Certain to divide audiences as surely as the Wall once divided Berlin..."
As for "remorseless":- from the beginning on, the story improves; so how can it be "remorseless"?
NOTHING can describe the genius of this borderline snuff movie.
Well, all right; in reverse order:
BLAP
BLOP
BLAH
TESTING
HORRIFYING
DISGUSTING
INSPIRATIONAL
UNFORGETTABLE
Recommended evening's French: the aforementioned evil reel, followed by that gateau-sickly slice of loveliness:
AMELIE
September 6
MEANWHILE
back on Fantasy Island...
September 1
I SAW A CHAP
with horns and a nobby tail,
I FOUND MY THRILL
IN A BOTTLE OF SWILL!
he sang, his eyes all darting;
he ran away, he couldn't stop laughing!
I saw a chap with eyebrows raised in the middle,
high as heaven, his speech enchanting;
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH
BLOW, BLAP, BLAH
He blew;
He couldn't stop farting!
(They met one day at Stratford shopping mall,
it was ever so exciting!)
August 24
POPPING UP
to London, tomorrow, on the off-chance.
Delivered the picture this week to Russell. He likes it, though its still not finished after these six months. Will work on it on site for a while. Yesterday, we went with beach-boy Graham to Lucombe Bay, where we picked up a great piece of driftwood for the frame. It's an old yard-arm or some such, all stained red and smelling of salmon. Actually, it looks exactly like salmon meat where we cut it. I imagine it's been soaked in a cocktail of whale blood and pirate sperm for a hundred years. Perhaps the completed frame will be haunted.
Russell wants to paint his walls to suit. I suggested he tile his fire-place. Getting mum's old sofa up his stairs into the flat above the party shop was a BIG SQUEEZE. We had to take the balustrade off, and two feet. We could really have used a donkey's arse, if only for moral support.
August 17
"BOXES OF BALLS AND PILES OF YOU-KNOW-WHAT"
(Mum on modern art.)
August 8
"AVOODOO ORGY OF MURDER, SEX AND CRAZINESS FROM THE GONZO KING"
Found a signed copy of Hunter S. Thompson's THE RUM DIARY in the skip across the street, along with most of his other books and a load of magazines called INDEX ON CENSORSHIP, specialising in articles with scary, unprintable titles like...
August 6
HEAT WAVE ACROSS EUROPE.
Cancelled Doctor's appointment.
August 5
HI BOB
I AM FINE THANK YOU.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR IS TREATING ME LIKE A LAZY KING.
IN DEFENSE I AM TURNING INTO MR DATA.
I KEEP WATCH ON THE DEEP SPACE LUNATIC CONTAINER NO STAMINA.
THE FELLOWS HERE CALL ME ODD FISH.
THE FEMALES CALL ME MAD UNCLE WALLY.
I AM THE ONLY ANDROID IN STAR-FLEET.
I AM DESIGNED TO EXCEED ALL HUMAN CAPACITIES, BOTH MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY.
I AM PROGRAMMED TO SUCCEED IN EVERY ENDEAVOR I CONDESCEND TO UNDERTAKE.
I DISCOVER NO FEAR IN ADVENTURE.
I AM EQUALLY INDIFFERENT TO CONFLICT AND LOVE.
I CAN BE NEITHER HAPPY NOR UNHAPPY.
I DO NOT HAVE NIGHTMARES, NOR DO I REQUIRE SLEEP.
PLEASE SPEAK TO ME IN ANY WAY YOU WISH...
I am cleaning at the amusements arcade for the summer, and painting in the garage.
I THINK A LOT ABOUT PLEASURE.
What do you think? Can I commission you to make a ditty for Wallywoods.com? A twinkly nursery rhyme type thing. I could read something from the Poetry School for lyrics.
Send my regards to Magthing and the poor street kids of Costa-del-Berlin.
When would be a good time to visit for concerts and horny chicks and stuff?
Greetings of friendship,
From Paradise Island,
Paradox P.
July 31
DEAR SIRS
I am glad I caught tonight's FASCINATING Horizon program:
THE BOY WHO WAS TURNED INTO A GIRL
notwithstanding the misfortune that some IMPORTANT ASPECTS of Bruce's/Brenda's tragically bungled case were skipped over so FLEETINGLY. But could the makers of the documentary answer an obvious question which was, oddly, altogether IGNORED? Doctor Money's treatment of the child was to span three distinct stages. Physical surgery on the (male) baby's genitalia. The rearing of the child as a normal girl. And HORMONE BOLSTERING treatment during PUBERTY. Though it was explained throughout the programme how UNIQUE AND important the case is, we were NEVER TOLD whether Bruce or Brenda ever did receive any of the hormone treatment before learning the truth and becoming David the angry teenager(?)
Curiously Yours...
July 29
BEHIND THE PAINTING:
On the right-hand cliff at Lucombe Bay the lighthouse beams inland to illuminate a monastery-prison, which has no roof, and appears to slide down the left-hand cliff. A semi-wreath of shipwrecks decorate the bay beneath the lighthouse. A siren is carved in the chalk there. Her wings are spread and she has no head, only the tits and thighs remain - but are apparently enough to lure the boatmen. Nestled between the breast-like cliffs, under the necklace rainbow, is a satellite dish aimed at the full moon, which might also be the earth turned up-side-down, shortly after the next magnetic flip (I've become addicted to fascinating TV documentaries). The lighthouse is also a Tate gallery, a Mosque, a Synagogue, Noah's Ark, and a hotel with a landing platform. To the far right, the Columbia attempts to land on the calm sea, water-skis attached. Upon a communications mast are strung up, dirty washing fashion, geometrical paintings from my own colourful past. They signal something, but who knows what, or to whom?
Planet Columbia was terra-formed after a good Max Ernst documentary. This island planet is the first SPACEVAC destination furnished with welcoming Jesus, big wheel, standing stones, atom-bomb-fart-tree, Three Prince's Waterfall, cow with leaky udders, and a crumpled Dr Pepper can. Some white sand-dunes and much of the foreground have been cordoned off with red and white builder's tape (not police tape or burglar's tape) whilst DO-NOT-THIS-OR-THAT road signs clutter the scenery. In the water below sheer cliffs at the extreme left, some bedraggled bathers attempt to haul themselves ashore. So far, they are a fat red-headed woman, a tattooed strongman and a decent blond. Nearby, a black upright piano is tied off halfway up the treacherous stone steps, which lead to the vagina cave hidden in the Fairy Forest.
Above all that, in silence under an umbrella-tree beneath the rainbow, a cultivated lady sits amidst the drizzle and the sun-set. She purposefully interrupts the lighthouse-beam until her profile daubs a huge silhouette onto the monastery-prison wall. There is no sign of the prisoner, but the weather cock is the symbol of Om.
I would like to paint my old red convertible TR7 on the landing platform to add a fantastic touch.*
Other documentaries inform me that Andy Warhol was a horny zombie with his dick shot off.
Constable's figures are stumpy, yes, but look closely at his later paintings: he invented abstract for that lazy Pollock.
Some fruit flies have bollocks for eyes. We share a third of our genes with them. Or vice-versa.
In Big Brother, the creepy Scotsman won.
I can recommend a mesmerising Russian movie called 'Of Freaks and Men', about Victorian spanking porn, and a murderous bald pimp in a top hat riding in a boat with a marriage proposal. He is obsessed with Siamese twin boys. First rate art film. A pleasure on the eye-balls. Wonderful sound-track. Strangle-me-now depressing.
Each morning Frank does the vacuuming. He vacuums limply as he smokes his fags. He was evacuated from Liverpool to Wales during the war. We drink hot chocolate during tea-break on the bench across the street, where we watch holiday makers enjoy the beach, and the fishing buoys bobbing in the sea.
I've postponed again my plans to get wealthy.
(*the painting remains unfinished - June 2004)
(**the painting remains unfinished - December 2011)
June 20
JAMES' BIRTHDAY
(He's younger than me, and bigger.)
May 17
NOTHING
to say except, I am alone in a universe crowded with other individuals.
(Some lovely individuals, yes. And a lot of silly cunts.)
May 1
BREAKTHROUGH
in the garage. The Cliff Falls picture swims in and out of focus depending on the evening mood, the cold coming under the door, the cycle of depression, weed reserves. One day its my masterpiece, the next, kiddy crap. I paint all night for a week, then can't stand to go in the garage to look at it. But there are intense moments of encouragement. Today I cracked a key part of the code. In a nutshell, I found I could choose the right colour and put it in the right place in just about the right way. Its like when the magic eye picture miraculously clicks into 3D for the first time. And suddenly I can look at other paintings and understand better how they were put together - where their life comes from.
The style that has emerged from using oils, with this fantasy illustration at least, is different from anything I've done. It's flat and sculpted at the same time; garish and subtle. It includes bits of everything I've learned with acrylics and other materials including poetry, music, whatever. I can't easily paint a landscape in a classical way, but I can imagine a landscape as a ceramic object and paint that, as I've always been able to fake pretty much anything.
I should forge some €uros.
Most of the learning is done sitting in the chair looking at the bloody thing for hours. The rest is repairing mistakes and solving puzzles. Finishing this picture for Russell's living room is the hardest thing I've ever done. Its a full time job.
April 22
IF SOMEONE OFFERED ME
a job for half an hour at a mercenary's convention in the Congo, I would think about it twice, then go to bed.
March 18
UNCLE PETER'S LYNN
phoned last night from Los Angeles. She told Dad how bad she felt that Mr. Bush had pretty much declared war. She wanted us to know that, contrary to the impression we must be getting through the media, her country was very much split. She feels like protesting loudly, even if it does risk arrest.
Tonight the British parliament votes on whether or not to go to war. The outcome is apparently a forgone conclusion.
The whole thing is a massive gamble however you look at it. No-one is clearly Right or Wrong. The worst case scenarios, at least, are clear:
- thug Saddam Hussein, and other thugs like him, advance themselves un-checked until one of them, or a gang of them, spark a world catastrophe on the scale of a Third World War.
- the Second Gulf War will spin out of control and result in the same destruction, only a whole lot sooner.
The first grows inevitable as the richest 'evil' dictators play cloak-and-dagger whilst stock-piling to rediculous proportions what are effectively personal arsenals of WMDs. This is intolerable.
Whereas the chances of war blowing out of control is bound to be dictated not by Saddam, but by his neighbours and enemies. I don't believe any of them are mad enough at this time to let that happen. In reality, the Clash of Civilisations is attractive only to a handful of nutcases.
More likely is that once cornered, as he will be if not quickly quashed, Saddam and/or his generals will use any WMDs they do actually have. The result would be Hell in the region, maybe the worst destruction anywhere - but it would not mean the end of the world. Hard words. But this bad new reality is the one seen by Bush and Blair and company - and I can hardly disagree(*).
Maniacs with too much power must be contained somehow. In this case, the UN has been unwilling or incapable of doing one of the dirtiest jobs that ever needed doing.
America has given Saddam and his sons forty-eight hours to leave Iraq. By all accounts they won't do it. He doesn't say it outright, but Bush is still gambling. Hopefully, one of these things will happen very quickly:
- An internal revolt topples the regime.
- Joining Bin Laden and the Taliban, Saddam and senior henchmen vanish into the twilight zone to save their own skins; realistically, the only chance they have.
Referring to the West's role in post-war Iraq, a vicar on the radio said something concrete for a change:
"Jesus said, 'blessed are the peacemakers', not, 'blessed are the pacifists'."
In other words, pacifists be damned!?
(*Years later... Reading through this for the first time since: Blinded by the propaganda was I? Not only. Disgust for the man (the Iraqi) and the whole running-sore situation, plus a natural impatience with 'bad people' and bad situations, are among the various reasons ordinary people back a war. Which is especially easy when the war is far, far off. At least it was for me. What would I opt for now? Jump back a decade and shoot the guy in the head. Basta. And then the other guy. How clear the world has become!)
February 18
THE LOCAL PAPERS TALKED
of messages in the sand. So I rambled down to investigate...
In brackets: Tony Blair listen to the people
Island inventor Daniel Roberts and accomplice had been quoting in the low-tide for a week or so. Great big words for the anti-war effort; he invited others to do the same. So I went down to Lake Beach with Mum's broom and daubed "AND SPORT ON ALL CHANNELS!" (It was Saturday.) Sam and Sophie, down for half-term, added a big "EVERYONE WHO LOOKS BLOODY SMELLS". I felt obliged to censor SMELLS and replace it with SEES, which confused all of us and took the fun out of the whole thing.
The Gods who read the headlines upon the shores of the world every morning over boiled sailors dipped in gryphon egg, are, as the kids would say, well confused these days in any case. Or just as likely, not a bit bothered. Would any of them raise an eyebrow, let alone a potent little finger, at the prospect of yet another conflict between righteousness and evil?
Daniel told me it was difficult to live as an inventor on the Isle of Wight in the twenty-first century. I could only agree. So together with others he invented a local "inventors co-op". A grand idea indeed! I don't recall getting invited.
"Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician,
seem to see things thou dost not."
KING LEAR
February 3
OF THE LOCAL AND NATIONAL
newspapers contacted (regarding entry 31 January), have so far received just one automatic reply (from Reuters). Can only conclude that Friday's goings on are an every day affair taking place on shores across the UK and the rest of Europe, and no doubt any other place where space suits and hosepipes can be found at a good price.
January 31
NAVY RUNS CHEMICAL CATASTROPHE EXERCISES AT SHANKLIN, I.O.W.
"A few locals" (including yours truly with a camera) "found Britain's Royal Navy engaged today in special coastal defence training ahead of the firemen's strike, which will take place on Saturday, 1 February. Although firemen at only one of the half-dozen fire stations on the island will take part in national strikes, the Navy, supported by the Army and H.M. Coastguard, practiced in the event of chemical objects being found upon the shore. They were equipped with three fire-engines, including a Green-goddess, breathing equipment, at least two chemical-resistant suits and an unusual dousing rig. The Navy officer coordinating the event told me this was a routine exercise in the light of the current political situation." (From a small article in the local paper.)
January 25
HAVE WATCHED A TON
of groovy TV lately. Like:
THE SOUTH BANK SHOW - featuring Gerhard "PAINTING IZ BETTER ZAN DOING NUZZING" Richter.
HEAVENLY CREATURES - a modest shock for Peter Jackson fans.
CALIFORNIA - formulaic, but Brad Pitt at his psychopathic white trash best; his sexy girlfriend even trashier.
DESIGNER VAGINAS - extreme plastic surgery sweeps the States ("Go watch it in the kitchen, James. Eat an apple pie.")
THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST - with a paranoid James Coburn. Real wacky, real funny.
BING & BONG - computer animated cuddly toys messing around in space.
THE MAN WHO FROZE HIS MOTHER'S HEAD - so that when they wake her up, she can have an athletic young body, and a shot of whatever she needs to make her happy, straight into the brain.
CONSPIRACY - the Final Solution. Slick, sick, and Kenneth Branagh.
SMALLPOX 2002: Silent Weapon - "Disturbing docudrama revealing how a single act of bio-terrorism could lead to millions of deaths."
GONE WITH THE WIND - with Dad's all time favourite nymphomaniac, Miss Vivien.
28 DAYS LATER - A man wakes up from a coma at St Thomas' Hospital (our old hood). The Rage virus killed everyone else but a few sheep and a lot of psychos.
CARRY ON SCREAMING - an all time favourite featuring my hero Jim Dale and brilliant others. Here are some quotes:
"OH, DON'T BE SENTIMENTAL. LIVING, SHE WOULD HAVE JUST GOT OLD AND FAT. BUT LIKE THIS, SHE'LL STAY YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL FOREVER!"
"YES, BUT NOT HALF SO MUCH FUN!"
"IT WAS 'ORRIBLE IT WAS! CAME OUT OF THE WOODS IT DID! GREAT YELLOW TEETH! TEN FEET TALL!"
"DID YOU NOTICE ANYTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT HIM?"
"'ALLO! DID YOU SEE THOSE DIRTY GREAT PLATES?"
"THE MASTER'S BEEN DEAD THESE PAST FIFTEEN YEARS, SIR. SHALL I GO AND WAKE HIM?"
January 23
WOLF CRIES FROM THE WOODS
I know now just what it is I would like to attempt in the way of a career move (disgusting phrase). I believe I am qualified in every respect to make an impact, even a resounding impact, in the field I have in mind.
It has taken SO LONG to come up with this single practical idea.
I don't kid myself. It may be flavour-of-the-month in JOBS, (I'm pickled in such ideas), but if this worked - and why should it fail once I got in? - everything could be solved. Hallelujah, or whatever one shouts.
It's just that from where I sit at the moment the problems appear monumental.
The big cloud in the tea-cup is this damned depression which has flattened me for so long. The challenge is whether I can defeat it, or sidestep it, ignore it, or swallow it down and shit it happily away and rise from the sickness. It has suffocated my big head for too long. I am the most reluctantly idle good-for-nothing lounging beneath any constellation in the deep-night sky. I sleep, or rather return to the coma, for ten to twelve hours a day - which is exhausting, let alone unhealthy. I realise that I am mildly agoraphobic, always have been. I see "long-term unemployment syndrome" as well as a lot of other rubbish, accompanying me into middle age. Which is not far off. If it does, I'm done for...
I came to terms my this half imaginary sickness when I invented it. I understand the causes, the symptoms, the effects. I know what is lacking in my soul and in my life as thoroughly as I know my advantages - some of which are as enormous as my giddy head. I am both scheming wolf and silly sheep in one bloody John Carpenter mess, sinking in a limitless swamp of good intentions and bull-shit. I need to rise from the pit before mid-afternoon tomorrow... (or the next day, or next week, or at least before Doomsday)
AND GET IT SORTED!
So, that's another fabulous plan to sit on for a while.
The lovely Kornelia said that I sit on my energies. She's also clever, and is right once again. Had she ever sat on them with me, however, as I once dreamed she might, I would have been cured there and then of everything up to and including death and who cares what else. But I was skinny small fry and she angled for bigger fish back then.
So. Hopes as high as ever. But God willing, as the true atheist says, this time hopes are tethered to a reasonable, achievable reality. Aren't they?
(*Indeed that was flavour of the month. Though I hardly remember what the idea was - something to do with books? - a foot-note states "idea abandoned around April".)
January 20
BOREDOM
So impatient to find the cure. So unmotivated to look for it.
January 14
MY BIRTHDAY AGAIN
upon which I intend to start a series of canvases combining a new "calandar style" with graphics material lifted directly from this website. Will be my first exhibition in oils, and the first in London. Format: large as possible! (Must think about transport.) Need an overhead projector...
(*Idea abandoned.)
January 1, 2003
ANDREJ
For quite a while I've had neither the discipline nor the inclination to write much at all, even to initiate anything useful. This is hibernation. Sleeping loads, dreaming incessantly, maudlin' to the verge of incapacity. All the while keeping Brain alive by basking it in the experiences and imaginings of others, real or otherwise, genius or intolerably stupid, through God's virtual eyeball: the TV screen.
Though it's difficult, I continue to work on the following text. Andrej Lious' ex-wife and daughter suggested to those who attended the funeral that we write something, with the idea in mind of a booklet of homage. Well, whatever. Unable simply to list anecdotes, as I think was implied, I've done it this way. As usual, I myself have become central to the plot, which makes it unsatisfactory as well as incomplete. But here is what there is of it, to pay tribute to a very good friend horribly killed and horribly missed:
Andrej was not my best friend. We met as seldom as half a dozen times in a year. But I counted him among the best people I knew in Berlin. He was among the most talented, too; consistently generous, good natured, funny... and all that.
When Kristina telephoned from Budapest (we had not spoken for quite a while) and told me that he had died, I could not speak. It was like being hit on the head with a rubber shovel - the effect has not yet fully worn off. Bruno R. told me that Graciela had also been killed in the car crash, and I decided to fly over for Andrej's funeral which was to take place on the coming Thursday. (Graciela's family had already collected her to take home to Argentina.)
At the ceremony no-one spoke, neither to disturb the silence in the chapel where the coffin lay, nor at the graveside. Later, it was suggested to me that people had not been spontaneous, or well enough prepared: that something should at least have been said. But having at the time no solid thoughts in my own head which might be turned into useful words, I considered the silence more than apt. Beautiful in fact.
As awful as the occasion was, I smiled inwardly when, as the paid mourners carried the coffin down the aisle towards the chapel doors and the light of the bright morning, a mobile phone began to bleat inanely - deep within a handbag presumably, as it rang and rang. In my mind I imagined Andrej being impressed by this trivial detail and mentioning it enthusiastically at some later date, as though he had been standing in one of the solemn rows among us. It would have appealed to his sense of the absurdly dramatic, of the surreal and poetic.
It was impossible to be convinced that he was not just somewhere else; that this was not a strange misunderstanding - mere material for an arty-farty film project. His life had meant invention and the construction of art. Had he himself not telephoned from a far off city - or from within the coffin itself? For weeks afterwards I caught glimpses of people who at a distance might have been him. (This feeling I have only otherwise experienced at the bad ending of a relationship with a woman.)
He had not of course telephoned from 'somewhere else'. In any case, he would not have plotted so cruelly.
By the grave, standing in the bitter cold among so many people I did not know, I spoke to somebody filming with a small digital camera. His resemblance to Andrej was striking, even right up close, and I assumed they had been related. He said that they had not been, however, but that he had been Andrej's best friend. This surprised me, but looking into the faces of the people who had come to Berlin from so far afield, from many other chapters in Andrej's life, I realised that I knew very little, and that I myself had been a smallish figure pictured against the backdrop of his life.
Casually, looking terribly sad, the man told me that only a few weeks before they had walked together in the countryside, for five days or so, talking continually of anything and everything which came into their minds.
To the Pavilion cafe, in the nearby Rosenthaler Park, we all walked in quiet procession after the ceremony. It was here, as people thawed themselves out at last with cigarettes and alcohol, that I began to hear accounts of what had happened.
They were returning to Berlin from a location-scouting weekend at the North coast. Andrej had finally begun work on the film for his diploma, which was late, and apparently featured Graciela - for they were studying together and very much in love. He was driving, and had pulled out too soon, or too late, onto a major road, when a fast traveling BMW hit them. They died knowing nothing; or as most seemed to think, Andrej lived a while longer, but was unconscious and knew nothing: or, they both survived, to die at the same moment in separate ambulances which were taking them to different hospitals. Graciela, at least, with a smile on her lips. (Later, I grew annoyed to think that somebody should invent such a silly tale.) Hilarian, the man who had been filming, then told me the most horrible version - and probably the most accurate. But I'll try to discover the contents of the police report when, and if, it becomes available.
I stayed at Bob's flat for the week. Strangely, he and many other people I knew had been to the funeral of an acquaintance, Didier (I do not know his last name), at the same cemetery in Invaliden Strasse on the same morning. I had not known Didier well - he had been a renowned macho, passionate and in my eyes dangerous; we had nothing in common other than mutual friends. We had though, earlier in the year, broken the ice at a concert during which we shared drinks and shouted cheerfully at one another through the crowd and the din. Apparently, a relationship problem had led him to commit suicide. Chris R. wrote a song for the service (they had been rooming together) and as I arrived at the gates to the cemetery on that freezing morning Chris was packing his keyboard into the boot of a car. A little embarrassed at my apparent late arrival, he began to explain that I had 'missed it'...
On the Saturday, Sean H. invited some friends and family of Andrej's to his place for drinks and a meal. It struck me as I set off from Bob's that I had never been to a wake before. In fact, until now, I had been lucky in my life that nobody really close to me had ever died. Grandparents yes, but they had always been distant figures, and a few people I casually knew - but never had 'bad news' caught up with me in this way before.
Andrej and I had been similar in a number of respects. Coincidently, we had both been architectural model-makers. Our creative processes and practical methods were much alike. I had often called him up for help, having panicked during the organising of some event; and he had responded excellently whenever his busy schedule permitted. We worked fluidly together with complete confidence in one another's capabilities. We were also similarly frivolous, a pair of naughty schoolboys who enjoyed confusing others with silly banter. Introducing him to Allison L. at a particularly awful 'event' which Andrej and I had draped with hangings of pure kitsch, she asked how we had become friends. We denied flatly the charge of being friends at all, preferring to argue instead. Her bewilderment was pretty to watch and pleased us immensely.
Sometimes I felt that he and I were constantly somehow flirting - testing the substances of the other's imagination while exercising our own - and so of course we were.
While Andrej studied at Babelsberg, working all hours in-between on whatever came up to earn some cash, I would occasionally drop by his place and peruse the heaps of sketches, mock-ups, snippets of film, photographs, scripts etc.; whatever he would have been juggling with at the time, which was always a lot. I would of course be impatient to cut through the heap and see an end result (best of all framed, signed and sold), or (to my discredit) to bend the conversation around to my own particular vision of the day and have him respond to it.
Clearly, the major difference between us in this respect was the sheer output of work. To Andrej, who to me was the best kind of workaholic, the conceptual process and the pre-work it involved received as much attention as the end product. Hence, for instance, the enormous amount of material to sort through at the flat in Oranianburger Strasse where he had lived together with Graciela.
I invited myself around to the place on hearing that Gulia, Andrej's ex-wife, was spending time there. I had intended to go by in any case and simply ring the bell, though I could not be sure why; so being able to help with sorting and packing supplied a reason. As it turned out I felt lost and reluctant to disturb anything. I spent most of the afternoon up on the mezzanine storage shelf looking through one fat folder (of many) of elaborate doodles...
(Text never finished.)
