December 25, 2002
EARNING BREAD
From an essay on failing art:
...The urge to produce something less barbed and to begin portrait painting arose also from the difficulty I had selling work. The first serious art I produced since college had been the marionettes (on moving to Berlin in '92) and then the Animal Pain sculptures. The reluctant artist within me was coming around. All very thrilling; but selling, and therefore living, was another matter. It is idyllic to display your self-made wares at the art market on the 'Museum's Island', between the river Spree and the cathedral, on a glorious summer weekend. Failing to make the money to pay for the table and something to eat in the snow with holes in your shoes is something else again. I did finally shift the puppets - the ceramic animals I gave away to friends. Nor did the symbolic paintings sell like hotcakes. IN 2000 they were displayed for six months at Xotic-Art, the largest gallery space in Berlin at the time and very commercial. But they were not generally appreciated among people shopping for the office for a bowl of bananas painted in ten minutes on a bit of warped hardboard. In consolation, there is always a small minority so delighted, eloquent and flattering that you want to shout ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT! NOW FOR GOD'S SAKE GET YER MONEY OUT!
During the exhibition, a couple had four COLLABORATIONAL DAMAGE paintings delivered to an apartment in West Berlin so that they could decide which ones to buy. I made the mistake of visiting them and explaining the pictures over a bottle of wine. My hosts were hospitable and apparently avid collectors. The flat was neat and bright and filled with pictures and figures of cats and the like, sold to them by my old buddies at the craft markets. As I enthused through the wine I failed to notice the faces drop. The paintings were all quietly returned. Pressed on the phone, I was reluctantly told that the woman, who had loved them for their boldness and colour, had had nightmares that night. In the dark she had seen what were clearly skulls staring out at her from 'a poisoned sky' (Cherry for the Cake) - and that was that.
Since then I'm wary about giving too much away - which is sad, as I enjoy bending an ear, off-loading ideas into it like a sack of useless pebbles.
As for the grant application, it was rumoured that nobody 'new' on the scene had the slightest hope of success on the first attempt; not without an ace connection in the Culture Ministry. But I was arrogant enough to believe that the cheap colour-copies of my work and all those heart-felt words would speak for themselves. Looking now at the whole text though I suppose it alienated more judges than it impressed. I guess only I knew what I was really on about. I had started work on The Serb, an important mile stone. I felt that without moral or practical support, preferably the latter, I could hardly go further - that I would perhaps never be able to fill in the figure of Isidore (he is missing from the picture to this day). Where possible, I had always avoided portrait painting, the greatest challenge for most artists. For if the figure, the Serb, had not been perfect, I would have been worse than demoralised - I would have been crap. It's difficult to explain exactly why, but when I do start doing portraits on canvas the circumstances must be ideal, i.e., financial security and a proper studio (far from the bedroom).
The next year I applied for a similar grant with the Holy Playroom project. This time it was rumoured that there were barrels of funds waiting to be thrown at anything involving children. This was in fact the case for a while: I had benefited myself, though from a thimble-full rather than barrels. Thanks to Kerstin W., I was doing occasional hours at 'Lele', a special unit introducing youths from Berlin's 'block houses' to jobs and wider opportunities. I organised painting sessions for little groups of some fairly odd kids, some of whom had never sat still long enough to paint a picture before. They were shy at first, but soon proud to be painting with oils on canvas, although most of it went on their clothes; with acrylics we decorated all the doors. Later, at the main building (a big test for me, remembering my own terrible schooldays) we painted a pretty decent mural in the central hall. Anyway, children's art has always fascinated me - and they are excellent people to work with. So when the application was again unsuccessful and I went to collect my folder from the smart offices of the Culture Ministry, I made a typical decision. Partly based on protest, inflamed by the fact that the art-bureaucrats refused to enter into correspondence explaining where the fault had lain: I would not waste time again chasing after grants in Berlin, no matter how hard up I was - and of course I was starving, though not fully aware of it at that time.
It was accumulated frustration above all else which fuelled the Kunstmafia (Art Mafia) and Kunstfleisch (Art Meat) escapades of the following Summer. These were cynical art events, including theatrical auctions, complete with scaffold executions and a bucket of blood, mafia-style readings (bound to their chairs, guests were made to read anything from my own benefits correspondence to Poe), punk concerts and parties etc. Although they by-passed the 'establishment' they paradoxically evolved into the exhibition of international artists supposed to take place in the grounds of the German Parliament: Kunst-Botschaft. History shows that this last event never took place - if it had, it would have been a thoroughly compromised version of the idea originally in mind: effectively a siege, a giant 'sit-in' to focus creative energy and humiliate the lumps on the thrown of power (etc!). Those which did take place were lively, weird and successful on all counts bar one: financial. I intended to put on a show every month, managing to coerce plenty of good people to get involved, and I never worked harder or better myself. But in the end, running as ever on an empty stomach, I resigned; skeletal, and only a little bit wiser.
Now I've retreated to England where I'm gathering strength for a Kamikaze assault on London. But I'm wondering more and more if I shouldn't attack Paris instead, or even return to Berlin. For if art refuses to support the artist, the only consolation that ever did me any good is that kind supplied by FOREIGN WOMEN...
December 16
IT'S DRIZZLING WET
but the sky's are clear.
December 15
THE SKY
dropped into the sea today.
December 14
A SHIP
transporting 3000 top of the range new cars has sunk in fog in the Channel off Dunkirk.
*Update: Two ships, including a Greek tanker transporting poison, have crashed into the wreck where it lay on its side, visible at the water's surface. (3.1.03)
November 8
MUM'S AT THE OPERA
or bingo. Dad's downstairs listening to organ music.
Trevor Macdonald is interviewing Mariah Carey in the kitchen.
I've been thinking about jobs again. There's a joke shop in Sandown High Street, I could see myself working there
BEFORE WE ARE ALL DISCREETLY CONSUMED IN THE FIRES OF WORLD WAR III
Could ask at White City if I can clean more ashtrays in the amusements arcade.
Could put an ad in the I.O.W. County Press and illegally decorate posh drawing rooms and toilets. Make this island trendy again.
Could get sponsorship to open an art workshop in London.
Could finally start oil painting in the garage.
Could be a pimp in Berlin.
Could buzz off to India.
Could sit right here and brainwash myself till the sun comes up...
November 5
GUY FAWKES
Terrorist or tortured victim? Hero of passion or nut?
OR JUST ONE OF US, PUBLICLY TOSSED UPON THE MERRY VILLAGE BONFIRE?
Bloody bits of each, like the rest of us, no doubt.
November 4
MUM & DADS' WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
As with birthdays, the idea of time whizzing passed only depresses them, so little is celebrated.
Bought some shoes.
Drove through the country night to enjoy brutal murder in RED DRAGON. The original was better, but I'm in love with the killer's blind girlfriend. Didn't she act herself to death in a much scarier film, BREAKING THE WAVES?
October 28
IDEA FOR AN INSTALLATION
A babies dummy, eight foot long, discarded in the middle of a sterile room.
Materials:
Ring-piece - semi-transparent moulded plastic - purple
Mouth-piece - condom rubber (patchwork technique)
October 27
EITHER KICK THEM
like a dirty habbit:
G B R L A A N N D D II DD EE AA SS
or slap them around the place!
October 26
HAVE COME HOME FOR A WHILE
A most important chapter in my life has unimpressively ended. I am fixing myself in a fresher place. Talking to the pilot on some plane (stoned again!), yonks above the homeward stretch, I began to excercise my brain-washing abilities needed for London. I told him, MAKE YOUR MIND A BLANK, AND WITHOUT OPENING YOUR EYES, RE-PAVE THE PATH WHICH LEADS TO YOUR HOME. My search for financial and psychic stability was already over, as a better plan had once again hijacked my brain. He threw me out of the cabin. But he shall see that I roll with my punches! Employing techniques akin to straight talking, I shall now get my first book published. (AHA!) The title, Mr Publisher, shall be ironic and unoriginal:
"The Perfect Life of an Artist"
It shall be filled with more nonsense than even I should want to read. I shall run amok in Soho with an agenda and a mock-up of 170 pages, knocked out on Dad's colour printer - a page for each web-page - voilà! That's a lot of printer ink, but once I'm back on the dole, I'll be fifty quid a month richer than in Berlin. That's two colour cartridges, or ten grey portions of fish and chips.
Of course, I could use Corinne's muscles in a general way; and the Pandora's box of forgotten files locked in her computer. If I hypnotize her on the phone, she might leave poor Borek alone for a while and drive some things over. My fake leather coat, mainly. We should chat. I want to publish the witty Asian prostitute web-page I made for her. She asked me to remove the phone number, upon which I removed the whole thing in a huff. But I know she'll agree to it going into mass print.
There never was a simpler plan*
Will need some new shoes.
Richard Harris just died.
(*Plan later abandoned)
September 26
BACK ON THE ISLAND
again after a bit of work in Berlin, caking the walls of Timur's new restaurant, "Zitrone", in Kreuzberg with umpteen layers of green porridge paint. To his apparent satisfaction, if not to mine. Will continue my extended holiday and, when I go up with James to house-sit next week, I shall glance around London to satisfy myself that the greatest metropolis in Europe will never yield the job to suit my narrow needs. As usual, the impossible terms I demand will be:
no paperwork
no uniform (no pleated trousers, no bow-tie, no goggles)
no non-creative stress (non-creative stress is acceptable if it culminates in the mass production of, say, wine-gum flavored contact-lenses*)
money
I asked Timur if I might work behind the sexy new bar he has built. It almost cost him his sanity and his marriage, on top of the 200,000 Istanbul euros and 10,000 beer cans consumed by 300 lazy asylum-seekers (sacked one after the other and re-directed to other great Berlin building-sites. "Alle Betrüger! Alle Betrüger!"). The bar is wonky in places but massive (I am a fan of anything massive) so it would suit my enormous reach. I even offered to do something in the kitchen, but Timur refused out of hand. A synopsis of the terrifying months spent slaving for drunken British and Irish builders at the Kilkenny Pub under the railway arches at Hackescher Markt reminded myself, and convinced him, that I was barking down the wrong job-track again.
J. K. Toole's Ignatius J. Reilly reckoned:
"I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me."
"What do you mean babe? You a fine boy with a good education."
"Employers sense in me a denial of their values. You must realize the fear and hatred which my weltanschauung instills in people."
"You can get a good job. Wait till they see a boy with a master's degree."
Ignatius sighed heavily and said, "I see no alternative." He twisted his face into a mask of suffering. "You realize, of course, that this is all your fault. The progress of my work will be greatly delayed. However, I may have some valuable insights which may benefit my employer. Perhaps the experience can give my writing a new dimension. Being actively engaged in the system which I criticize will be an interesting irony in itself."
"Here, listen to this. I been seeing this ad in the paper every day," Mrs Reilly said, holding the newspaper very close to her eyes. "'Clean, hard-working, dependable, quiet type...'"
"Good God! What kind of monster is this that they want. I am afraid that I could never work for a concern with a worldview like that."
"Read the rest, babe."
"'Clerical work. 25-35 years old. Apply Levy Pants, Industrial Canal and River, between 8 and 9 daily.' Well, that's out. I could never get all the way down there before nine o'clock."
"Honey, if you gonna work, you gotta get up early."
"No mother." Ignatius threw the paper on top of the oven. "I have been setting my sights too high. I cannot survive this type of work. I suspect that something like a newspaper route would be rather agreeable."
"Ignatius, a big man like you can't peddle around on no bike delivering newspapers."
"Perhaps you could drive me about in the car and I could toss the papers from the rear window..."
(* Krisztina liked to suck my eyeballs.)
August 30
I LIVE WELL
while I sleep; among an aristocracy of dreams. I can't blame myself for being exhausted the rest of the time.
"If my vision is true and I am doomed to be reincarnated as a fish in my next life, I shall journey to the nudist beach where you take your holidays and swim up into you, to live in your womb..." (Link to Poetry School)
August 6
WALKED WITH JAMES
to Shanklin and an audience with elusive cousin Russell at his flat above the party shop. Drank beer and heavily smoked in the lilac living room, but mostly just listened to the man we hadn't seen since we were holiday kids - refugees from London. Even then, Russ had been older, and belonged to the island, not us.
Working as a chef, he has cruised the world on luxury liners. (Returning to the Q.E.II from shore-leave at New York, he got busted and fired.) He has witnessed miracles during cultic initiation ceremonies in India; and has an interest in some spiritual version of quantum physics. James said later, 'I got lost a couple of times, but it didn't matter, as he has a way of bringing you back into the conversation.' He asked me if I had believed every word. 'I believe he saw and did all the things he said he saw and did,' I wisely replied. On leaving, we joked we would all meet again after another twenty years, but I suspect it will be sooner. He doesn't receive many visitors and seems to live a reclusive, happy life on this little island. Most importantly, he and his girlfriend, Julie, are very much in love.
Decided to explore the skill, or state of mind, of projecting ones self to visit friends in far away places. On Russell's advice, I should try not to frighten anyone.
'I guess it works best when the people are very close, like lovers, or twins?' I suggested. He agreed.
Later on, homeward bound, alone and stoned, walking some fifty yards behind a local lad (but a stranger to me), I concentrated on throwing myself forward, to hover up close, perhaps to peer over his shoulder and into his face. I kept my eyes unblinking on the target for a hundred yards or more. It was a half-hearted effort - I think I was drunk, too - and he didn't get spooked, or even look back. Having almost caught up, courtesy of my long shanks, I was able to get a good look at his filthy trainers and the pattern of his nancy-boy shirt. Then he turned into Brownlow Road, and I began to pull myself together and sober up, if at all possible, for the homely arrival. As I turned the same corner just seconds after, there was the lad, now fifty yards ahead again, ducking into the doorway which swallowed him for the night.
I imagine he had sprinted that last stretch, as I often do.
July 26
CLEANING AMUSEMENT ARCADES
now, mornings on the pier, or at Wight City further down the front towards the dinosaur museum and seedy tiger zoo. Have to switch myself off as the machines come on, all at once. Just get on with it, empty the ashtrays, polish a hundred slot-machines - ignoring the merciless breakfast-time barrage of 'Oh I do like to be beside the sea-side!', 'What shall we do with the drunken sailor?', football crowds chanting, penny cascades flowing, video-zombies shrieking, Star Wars blasting, animals grunting, gun shots, alarm bells, a phone that never stops ringing; one bloody thing which yells my name, catching me out every time - crammed in a hot hole stuffed with candy-sucking, fag-scattering holidaymakers.
Apart from old soldier Frank, riding the Hoover at seventy-one and treated like a bit of crap, the people working there are truly morose.
It's the first time in an age that I'm out of bed at a ridiculous hour doing meaningless, exhausting work, looking forward only to pay-day. Eezy peezy. Can't say I like it, though, earning a living. Even if it is doing me good. Emptying bins is heavy work for a malnourished pansy.
James and I play pool in the jolly pubs, or a civilised game of snooker at St. Margarets, the converted church complete with bar and mini-disco. Sometimes we find ourselves on the set of The Slaughtered Lamb. Still, a healthy change from city excesses - I suppose.
It's an incestuous island, like all islands. Everybody knows everybody's business. Who shags who, who's a junky, or a suspected paedophile; who's in the money, who almost murdered who, years ago. The foulness of the language some of the ladies use must be heard to be believed. Enough to raise fond memories of all-nighters with the boys in a South London model-making sweat-shop.
It's whispered that in Ventnor, a third of the residents are under some form of mental-health care.
But these things don't show, or even matter, on a typically glorious, summer's day.
What does show is the jealousy of so many Englishmen in 'respect' to their women. In Berlin, we eye up the ladies, drink their health, and chat them up usually regardless of the guys they happen to have arrived with. A dubious habit, probably, but mostly harmless, mostly leading to nothing. Everyone plays. To do the same in this country is to flirt on a daily basis with a broken nose or far worse. (Ask James to count his nasty scrapes in London over the years, and the common cause.) It's usual to see a couple having a drink, but unable to have fun, due not only to the price of warm beer and stupid licensing hours. Look along the bar at all those men, eyes darting about, psyching out any bloke who looks for more than a second his hard-earned spouse. And arrogance, to boot! A drunken lad the other night, oblivious to all but his own brilliance, proposed to his squirming girlfriend during his karaoke turn in the packed pub. I guess she accepted, but it was hard to tell. I thought she looked like she wanted the cellar to collapse and swallow her forever, but I could be wrong. In any case, they'll get married, he'll become the nasty-tempered king of his castle, he'll carve her slowly but surely into a cold bitch, while she smokes and drinks and does her best, or worst, to cater for the children.
James and I have got to know one another during this visit. Separated now, he's down here like me, a walking-wounded on a cushy number. Had his own heart broken, big time, for once. Still suffers from mood-swings. Another alcoholic who can't see the causes of his woes. Unfortunately, dad detests drunkenness, due to a childhood spent in the shadow of our grandad, the wife-bashing gypsy.
But between upsets, James is getting on, in his way, as I am in mine. Got his kids Sammy and Sophie down for the holidays. The quiet ones.
Horrible news. A young Danish exchange student was found strangled, locally, a few days ago. She went to sit at her favourite beauty-spot on Brading Down, which really is lovely, before joining friends at a beach party in Sandown. She didn't turn up. Somehow, everyone feels the jolt, feels the loss.
Looking forward to returning to Desert Island Berlin, somewhere between Louise's wedding, and Bob and Simonas' wedding in Prague.
July 14
UP-DATED
the Big Chairs page with pretty prototype photos taken at Los Altos, the park at the end of Brownlow Road.
Dad, the great walker, has never seen the stone steps folly hidden in the trees at the back there.
July 12
WATCHED
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
again, then worked on Sofa Sponge
(Think of the portal.)
July 9
CLEANED
the pier this morning.
July 6
WENT
for a short walk along the front, today, in the drizzle and fog.
June 30
HALLO C.F.
Thought you might be interested in this article about new reasons not to eat chips, or anything else fried or cooked at high temperatures.
Will stay on the Island another month, if not more. Feeling much better - problems understood and hopefully solved, TOUCH A WOODEN GOD. Have been suffering for years from malnutrition. Slow starvation due to poverty, lethargy and depression - completely overseen, misdiagnosed or ignored by three otherwise very nice doctors.
Will need not only a room when I get back, but also a job (JOB=MONEY+FOOD).
Will do pretty much anything... BUT I WON'T DO THAT.
Am sharing a job at the moment with James, cleaning on Sandown pier - 6am start! Working with some bingo-biddy friends of mum's. A doddle. Only one problem - too many tea breaks filled with biddy-yap.
Remind me, when is Bob's wedding?
How are you?
How's our baby..?
"The waves were breaking well over the angler's outermost platform to roll shoreward beneath our feet, bursting up through the gaps in the old boards. In the next town, Shanklin, there's a memorial to their own pier which went down in such a storm when we were kids..."
Link to Holiday Postcard
May 22
MEANWHILE
Back in Berlin, I don't make enough art or love.
I make up for it, with Kate Bush flavoured cream on top, by thinking of nothing else.
I've grown unhappy here, but only for one silly, selfish, superficial reason.
February 3
FOUND
glass in my pillow again this morning.
December 25, 2001
IT OCCURS TO ME
more often than once, that the answer to
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING
is Death. (Not 44 plus a Babelfish). Never-the-less:
I was chased throughout the night
half naked through the rain
till they got me in the face
with that blunderbuss again!
Often condemned to die in my sleep,
I awake just then, to my relief, or annoyance.
Sometimes though, I am killed outright,
only to seamlessly switch characters,
and carry on, quite well thank you, as someone else.
(More evidence that DEATH IS NOT THE END)
September 8, 2001
THE GREAT ANDREAS aka I.P.E.T.T. SAYS
that the world is exactly the way the world is; the past, the present, whatever else there is, could be no other way. Take it or leave it. And he is right.
Yet, I croak uselessly in response: "The future, the future..!"
July 19, 2001
IF YOU CAN'T DO IT RIGHT
DO IT WRONG - EITHER WITH STYLE OR IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE
Strange events at La Fabrik workshops in the shape of the first Kunstfleisch auction. Some lively criticism, to which I could only reply, you shall remember this silliness for long years to come. Agreement all round, I think.
In this picture, due to rain just half the paintings have been put out. Later I wrapped them in cling-film.
December 31, 2000
WHAT A YEAR IT HAS BEEN
for the grey squirrel!
December 25, 2000
JESUS WAS...
...a good man.
Jesus was a tall man.
Jesus was a dead man,
Who lived upon the cross!
December 14, 2000
NOT THAT I KNOW A THING
about politics. Don't have the brains or the stomach. Diplomacy, on the other hand, I know about. I'm not cut out for that either.
December 13, 2000
DOES SCHRÖDER THINK
he's kidding anybody diverting that gang of drug baron warlords from his precious Hauptstadt Berlin over to Bonn? Of course, no-one cares if Bonn goes up in a cloud of atomic anthrax. I was looking forward to seeing some Afghanis in the skin. The contrast knob on our TV is broken and they all look so tanned and well fed... more
Decided not to finish the painting. Forget the shadows. If I wait for the shadows I'll wait for as long as the painting hangs unfinished on the wall. Have decided not to finish anything. Shall simply write "unfinished story number..." or "UNFINISHED PAINTING No..."
December 5, 2000
BAD WORDS
How many uncountable times have I bogged myself down re-vamping again and again, over and over, the ghost of a text which angrily lurks half living, half gasping into my weeping ears, damp wads of nonsense dragged forth from some dodgy plot beyond the Neverworld? (God! What is it? What is this thing?) Polished off a lifetime ago, tis surely the gut of a pretty book: born, butchered and buried there with the others, in near secrecy, near the summit of my fog-shrouded brain. This awful sleepless thing, writing, is digging in midnight grave-mud and laying out in a lofty, fast-sinking chain any bits and bobs which are randomly spewed from the bowels. And Allah bless the stony-faced angels when a splatter of gold, even fool's gold, is rescued from the churning crud! Obnoxious fairy-tales, druggy rantings, cynical love yarns, benefits forms; these and worthier besides, excruciatingly Frankensteined together out of O'level grammar and wrongish spelled words. Maths, I failed; but I can count seventeen endless pages of a weirdish novel colourfully named 'Ark of Colours' which, if I pull a darkly stained finger out, might miraculously evolve into the sun-set of a pop-up comic-book: a thing to present to myself upon retirement or death.
Shall I ever meet, in this life or in the next, my comatose cousins Felix & Phyllis in the palid-pale flesh, at peace of a late bednight upon the mass-produced page? Oh, how I yet miss them. However; nothing much dribbled or spat from my creeking leaking pen ever seems finishable, let alone sellable, let alone readable. Very few bits and bobs from the odds-&-sods bin ever have been, or no doubt will be - will they? Technically, a lot of rubbish pops up. Thankfully, it's not all usable. Just occasionally, a phrase will scream up from the dirt to flatter the memory of my dear, long-departed mother concept. Then where am I left? Knee deep in swell ideas, mostly dead above the neck.
Agreed then. Much hard shoveling for a few bad words.
Lo! It is these ideas only I fear, living and hauntingly choreographed as dream sequences in a quaint old horror film, which remain contiguous and precious; pitiably, forever incarcerated within the socky murk, all six feet and so many inches beneath the very peak of my moon-howling mind!
Neil looked up one day to say, 'You are not a writer,' then asked once again, proddingly, in the storming rain and more ominous thunder, 'Why don't you stick to painting?'
Yet he may be a man of many valid points and barbs, but I write up my sleeve with swelling confidence in his direction, 'Fuck you, man.'
Alternately, poetry is no absolute waste of time. A fool can write a poem. I hope to fill a book one day - if I ever finish one. Even a skinny one! OK. But a successful poem, even a humorous one, is poor compensation for not having it in the genes, or perhaps the balls, to write something containing better quality meat.
Oh, to get something - payment perhaps, in this modernish world, even something at the impoverished level of the spirit - for all those long hours tossed away, spent digging away at this, my most perfectly crafted neck-ache!
Exactly thus, I began to carve the merest synopsis out of the vision of my famous unwritten 'Novel of Colours'. I do hope to complete it sometime, perhaps before the manuscript itself arrives, chained-up and conspicuously marvelous, on Terry Gilliam's doorstep with the milk bottles and a witty note of desperation. For no fable born of this day can dazzle the contemporary planet till it is churned into a massive, disappointing film by an over-enthusiastic, badly-dressed, hairy-faced director. As for the synopsis: well, I rapidly got bogged down again in the bog of little details like Felix's fungus collection, the colour of the last-surviving rabbit; and how to justify the second half of a rueful, meandering, possibly unnecessary, over-long sentence - leave well alone (I know the reader will) a single, brooding, poetic, lonely, misinterpreted, failed and desperate paragraph!
Which leads me to a reincarnated life; one in which I am blessed with more or less average portions of physical energy and/or financial motivation. In one such shadowless life, I might just turn to directing quaint old horror films as a means of shocking my poor ideas into warmly chuckling existence.
To expand for a moment; let us bow our heads beyond neck-pain and remember the film Bucket, in which our hero (Neil again) walked the length of Schönhauser Street with his head in a coal bucket. With a bathroom towel wrapped around his head to keep the bucket on, he would fail to hear that fateful crash, as he barged his unforgettable path among the shoppers and those startled weekend dogs. A childish attempt to manufacture a blockbuster, I cannot deny, or even say. But experiment is the main thing, sometimes a jolly thing; though it must be noted that the abrupt end of that scene killed the project, and perhaps a by-stander, who unfortunately ran in front of Bob's astonished camera into the road of an on-coming truck. Shortly thereafter, creeping paranoia sent the whole crew sneaking into a coffee-shop to remove from the scene the bucket and compare wide eye-balls.
Neil's audition at police headquarters is a better story, but wasn't filmed, nor ever resolved. Not by us, anyhow. In Hollywood, perhaps, one dreadful day.
Directing? I had better been off directing traffic!
But to write! God! To write like a writer! Or like a God! Or even like a rotter like that toe-rag Miller, or some other popularist, unshaven, woman-knowing body. And to spell the words correctly first time around and have them spill out in fairly good order, cascading fluidy through the rainbow of my mouth to end up within spitting distance of the perfect ending, close to the bottom of the very last page!
Honestly, I seriously imagines I've a rare and nobbling iq-pissabling pyslexia of some orrible de-scribling!
More bad words at the LIBRARY of BAD IDEAS
December 1, 2000
June 15, 2000
OH SADNESSES!
Mine inwardy organs 'n downish features 'as been a-kidnapped a-long, long off!
But I failed to keep and get her, in slow motion, even; near that pretty mound.
So I be all over now, and slowly growing better? Bye 'n bye? Don't you reckon!
Needs me a potion, I does, quick as pain. A tonic, a whiskey; a bullet in a rock.
Quick! Quick! Quickish! Quick! I knows what I does! I gonna go a-paint some!!!
