I've wanted to blog a lot recently, and either haven't had the time - the previous post being good example - or haven't been near enough to a computer to do it. Because I've been in Bristol - with the Concubine in my first-Chrimble-with-Girlfriend-Ever - or up in Stafford, doing the yearly routine of nostalgia and port, except with doubled-up nostalgia as I don't drink port.
(And before I hear the regular readers in the house already moaning: Not another Gillen rants about bloody Nostalgia episode. They used to be so much better than they are now, for once I'm not complaining. I find nostalgia just as seductive as the next man - I'm just aware that it's useless and... oh, I'll deal with this later as I don't want to break the structure I've been planning to put into place in this post).
I gave my brother a copy of Fortune and Glory, as he's devoted to cinema more than anything else (Except: See later note). He bought me a copy of John Gray's Straw Dogs, as he knows I'm an argumentative cunt.
(Great nepotism by the way. Ballard and Lovelock like it, but he's clearly Ballard's and Lovelock's mate, having referenced them constantly throughout and thanked them on the intro page. Not that *that* matters at all).
He says lots of stuff, and looking at the Amazon reviews, it appears to be worth saying just to get on people's tits. As a good little Neitzche Poster Boy, I'm a big fan of pulling your own boystring on life's arrow, but playing around with submission and futility is... oh, read it yourself, you bastards.
Anyway - at one point he returns to the idea, supported by modern neuroscience, that consciousness is bunk and that this magic idea of a coherent string flying through us is just delusional myth which we never experience. He notes that life, both retroactively and in the moment, seems more like unconnected vigenettes, elements framed without real context and so on and so forth.
Hence, here's some fragments of Christmas, pine-needles falling on the plush carpet of my mind (Shut up, Pseud - Ed).
1) Hammering out the third of the essays in my series for Ninth Art (Go read) in a desperate final rush (I haven't written anything for publication as quickly since the Everything is Wrong essays. It reminds me how much I like pressure and deadlines and death and glory and all the other stuff which people think I'm mad for loving) as well as doing everything I needed to do before leaving the house (Wrapping presents, replying to e-mails that needed to be done before everything, other assorted stuff I can't talk about) to a pounding sountrack downloaded tracks by the KLF and...
2) "He was a boy/I was a girl/Can I make it any more obvious" - Late entry for my favourite lyric of the year, perhaps made even better by following it with the utter shit "He was a punk/She did Ballet/What more can I say?". The first works because it is the perfect statement to a song of broken love, pride and arrogance. Can I make it any more obvious? No, clearly not. Boy/Girl=ETERNAL SEX WAR. The second fails totally, as it's a clear lie. I think of the two punk girls of my closest aquaintence and they did ballet. Equally, the song fails to even grasp that punk/prep is dual way hatred. Sk8er Boi would have been just have felt social pressure against them getting together (Cross reference: Grease is the best film ever (Except: See later))
3) Standing in a queue outside moles trying to get into a Cheese night. David McCarthy shamelessly singing random songs at the top of his voice, not caring what anyone cares. He starts up on "Do They Know It's Christmas". Everyone looks embarassed... and then, for no apparent reason, two of us stride up and join in. Ends with 20 assorted videogame personages singing the "DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS!?!?!?!?!?!!!?!?!" bit with a passion and anger that's frightening.
4) Just before throwing my bag into my Brother's car, listening to the aforementioned single and having to fight back tears for no good reason at all. I think it's just crossed over the magic boundary for me - songs go from being great, to being over-exposed... and then, at a certain point of overexposure, become transcedent things of pure beauty.
5) PHONOGRAM. It's almost the right name, but not quite. Bastard world.
6) Explaining at great length to Michael's friends that they were better people than my own friends that evening - despite me having an equally fab time with both. While my evening was spent with friends having shits and giggles over the memories of things we did together, they were having a great time making new memories. Doing something cool today makes your nostalgia better - that's my real problem with it. Nostalgia now kills future nostalgia. Perhaps my problem is that I love it too much...
7) Vodka Kerplunk.
8) Chess gaining a crowd of beered up peeps. Marvelous.
9) In the same way that The Big Lebowski is the new Withnail and I for Student Stoners, Tenacious D being the new Monty Pyhton for idiot Middle Class kidz.
10) Holmes telling me how much his shirt cost. Holmes telling me about how he's learnt the secret of Sharking and now prowls north London bars. Me thinking of Holmes as a Kohl-eyed Nirvana fan hiding from the world, and thinking how far he's come and how glad I was there for him when it was needed. I've fucked up a lot, but that was one where everyone concerned did right. It's a rare feeling.
11) Reading LIGHT and realising how long it's been since I've actually read anything approaching traditional Sci-fi (Burroughs/Ballard/Shelley/Self/Rossignol don't count). Not objecting or missing it - just noting it. Excellent work too. Pah.
12) Just about to slide into a bath when when I open a cupboard and find my old diaries staring back at me. I fail to resist, and grab a volume. Not the bound one which chronicles my misadventures in the USA, as I know opening that's going to be cripling, but one of the loose-bound leafs. Particularly, circa Emily, Initial deliciously bad sex, my first Festival and those other primary events of the summer that turned me into the human being I am now. I might as well have walked around in a Chrysalis the changes were that prononuced. And... well, reading this I was struck with something - some lines I knew I was lying to myself as I wrote them. Some lines now seem to be lying to myself, but I can no longer recall whether I was telling the truth or not. And there's the nagging horror at the level of prose, the banality of the insight and... God knows I'm a slow thinker about the largest matters (My strength is the ability to think *constantly* and reach conclusions eventually in evolutionary steps. There's a direct timeline you can place against my teenage years where I recapitulate most of Western Philosophy by myself). I personally blame the diaries being shit - this was circa when I was writing for Amiga Power, and that material, while juvenalia and entirely owing in style to Nash, Campbell and Winstanley, was coherent and fairly entertaining - on it being written longhand. Fuck pens. Pens are rubbish.
13) One gran's front-room with the chair's moved so one seat's in the corner. That ramned things home even as much as her proud, angry words about the Nurses of Today.
14) The other... actually, I'll save that.
15) RED CHINO! GAY CHINO!
16) My Brother knows stuff about music. This is a new thing. My Brother, while having as many albums as most people, couldn't share a proper conversation with me about the pop form, because he simply doesn't care enough. It's just pop music. This year, he's changed. I blame his last girlfriend, who clearly has introduced him to the buzz of pop-culture, the joy of live gigs and festivals and all the usual shit. It's late, but since it's never to late, it's not too late. I can now talk about the B-Line Disaster Stupid Long Title with him. This is a good thing.
17) Christmas Day being better than I'd ever hoped. Now *that* is what you're meant to be nostalgic about.
And on and on and on, but I'll stop now as - well - that's what stopping means. Stopping.
I doubt I'll get a chance to write anything tomorrow - I want to do a Drill-cock! new year message, but even that's unlikely - so I'll wish you all a Happy New Year now. Download "Electric Dreams" now and join my sentimental mood.
Kieron - 12/31/2002 12:27:00 AM
(0) comments
12/24/2002
Have things to say, but running to put on suit and catch bus and write Ninth Art column before everything dies.
Merry Christmas, the lot of ya.
Kieron - 12/24/2002 04:25:00 PM
Re-reading old Bleedmusic stuff. Not mine, for once.
Oh of course, resent their success, loathe their dim modesty and the lavish praise it receives but realise in essence what is going on here: the flow of money from arsehole to arsehole. And in the case of this, another older more orange arsehole as well.
Still never met Kulk, but feel he's probably sliced up some of my work for CTCL, which is nearly as good.
Kieron - 12/24/2002 03:13:00 AM
(0) comments
12/18/2002
Kieron - 12/18/2002 03:19:00 AM
SOUNDTRACK: Requiem for a Dream: LOTR Remix by Clint Mansell on repeat.
No - you've got no idea how frightening I find the idea that Clint-Alan-Moore-Knows-The-Score-Mansell is probably the most innovative, stirring, populist soundtrack artist in the world today. Something's broken, somewhere, and no-one has any clue where to start applying the sticking plasters.
Good. Covering up wounds is a stupid waste of time. Give 'em a little air. Let the fuckers breathe.
So let's breathe.
(Interlude: MSN conversation -
XXXX says:
i feel in a strange state of loneliness
Kieron says:
I don't know what I feel at almost three in the morning listening to this on repeat. So I write some stuff.
XXXX says:
yes, that's the key for us i think
XXXX says:
there is no final vocabulary
XXXX says:
and so we are in turmoil
XXXX says:
forever)
Don't want to talk about what's the most exciting cause of turmoil currently, but even before that I'm been swallowed up and obsssessed over the weekend. All media are chasing me around, and just making it impossible to sleep because there's too many thoughts and conversations that are running around my head. Films (Long Good Friday's heart being not in the Gangsters vs IRA most link to, but rather the subversion of the detective genre by making it be gangsters investigating their own. That and its score and brutality. Requiem for a dream again) and Comics (Skreemer. Milligan cross-cutting a near-future noir with Finnegans Wake to do something that's not an easy read... but it could have been a ludicrously complicated one. Take it apart, and it's a behemoth of mad craft. Obvious mad craft, perhaps, but still beautiful).
Other thoughts: In terms of comics, I have four sorts of ideas. The first sort of idea are ridiculously baroque, intelligent works that if they came off would secure me a ludricous critical repuation. They're sellable to the right publisher. They require more technique to write than I currently have, so I'm leaving them well alone. The second sort are the ridiculously pulp trash made of bits of my head I've collected over the year. I can write these now on energy, they're perfectly sellable, and I'll start fishing around in the new year. I want to sell some of these, desperately. I don't care wear. In fact, I do. The trashier and nastier the better: I was re-reading Morrison's work on Zoids today, which I realised used almost all the British invasion style Vertigo-stuff techniques to tell stories about big plastic toys. And it took it completely seriously. Most of all, the second sort of ideas are that - as pulp trash only works when it's written from the balls and the gut and you mean it. Otherwise, you're a wanker, and deserve to die. The third sort are small-scale short arty comics, used to play with themes and experiment. These are things like the HITS and hopefully HOMO DEPRESSUS, and their natural position is on the web, drawn by artists who want to experiment with these smaller scale pieces and shown to the world. Some of them are sellable, but I really don't want to. Their natural home is the web. They want to be free, and I don't want to stop them.
And the fourth sort of idea is CODENAME: POPBITCH. It hasn't a proper title yet, and it so clearly needs on (PLANET OF SOUND or LOST IN MUSIC are the other two candidates, and both of those stink in all the wrong sorts of way. Anyway - it's like nothing else. It needs to be long form - 22 pages, single stories. Possibly 12 or 16. Either way, longer than I feel comfortable for a purely web work. Equally, while I know there's an audience there for them, I know there's no publisher in comics who'd even dream of taking it on. Because their audience aren't reading comics. I have enough craft to have a crack at doing them now, I think. In fact, I can't imagine not doing it: it's something that has to be written and shown to people.
So: It needs to be a small press thing and done as soon as possible. For - I think - Bristol 2003. Since it touches more than a little on fanzine cultures, it needs to stink of cheap photocopying with staples that are put in the wrong way that slice people's hands.
I'm not drunk, by the way. I'm tired beyond belief, wracked by a terrible sense of melodrama and writing flow of conciousness.
Do excuse me - but I think the world's ending... The sky's dark. Nightime? You mean this happens every day?
It's at times like this you can see the primal fears kick in. Think back to the time before a nutjob had spent an hour rubbing twigs together and discovered Man's Red fire. If there's no moon, it' s Total Darkness. There, anything could come and get you. You're living in a forest whose edge you've never seen. There could be anything out there. There probably is. And it's big and dark with your mate hanging of its teeth and one day, when you're not expecting it, it'll eat you.
Back then, the world ended at sunset every single day. And sunrise was a new Genesis.
It's 3.20 in the morning. I have no idea what time it really is, but the light's growing thin.
Find friends to huddle to. Collect your flint daggers. Sleep back to back, lightly, waiting for something to jump you, as you know that it eventually will. If it's coming, you'll be ready. The world is over, and you're waiting to fight Leviathan for a chance to see the dawn.
Night-night.
Kieron - 12/18/2002 03:19:00 AM
(0) comments
12/17/2002
4:56 into Saint Etienne's "How We Used To Live":
I'm falling into God. An urban Sun god cresting over the tenaments, and the gutters run with waters and everything, but everything, is going to be okay.
"Sail Away... sail away... sail away... on and on..."
Kieron - 12/17/2002 06:26:00 PM
(0) comments
12/13/2002
Now that - well, that was more like it.
What I wanted last time I blogged at Moles I got this time. Pure bleach-and-holler Detroit rock courtesy of the Paybacks, smart girls with stupid haircuts and getting bullied into buying compilation albums by two-foot three inch Indie-girls with dimples. Just perfect. And then the DJ afterwards plays one too many sixties retro-guitar pop songs before sliding towards modern-US girl-punk.
I said earlier it takes on the tiniest thing to justify your time. It goes without saying - not that it's going to stop me - that it can take an equally small thing to decide when's enough's enough.
Hence: Home, James.
Last time I posted about Moles, it got linked by Herr Ellis at his blog Die Puny Humans, which I didn't notice. I mention it here for all the people who have no idea about Warrem Ellis and may be reading this. There's two groups of these. One are people who know me as a games journalist, and are hoping I drop some hint what our next cover game is or what Spector looks like without a beard or similar. Two are friends and work colleagues who are checking in to have a good giggle. The third sort of reader - comics peeps - know all about it already.
Anyway - you other two sorts. Forget about games. Forget about giggling at Gillen. Go see what Uncle Ellis has found for you to fuck with your incy-wincy minds.
Kieron - 12/13/2002 02:10:00 AM
(0) comments
12/12/2002
Gamer copy reappropriated for Gamesradar. Vietcong preview. Had fun with the intro.
"Forget innocence: the first casualty of war is just whoever gets their poor brains blown away. People get lost trying to find a deep profanity (Profundity, surely? - Ed) in war, when it's nothing more than the point where civic powers unsheathe their bestial claws and funnel patriotism into mass-produced uniforms and send them out to die. And Vietnam was where the TV age finally caught up with the reality, bringing genuine horror into the front room.
People describe it as the loss of America's innocence. Not really correct: America's innocence had already been lost, time and time over. This was just the wake-up call which meant people could no longer be in denial about the actions their governments take for them. Ever since, governments have been careful to sanitise footage of their warmongering. We watch video footage of missiles disappearing down bunker shafts - images a world away from the actuality of what a bomb actually does. Every time the US military machine gears up, its naysayers whisper "This could be another Vietnam" and they do everything to make sure it isn't a trip into a world of body-bags, televised execution and rape.
So. Here's Vietnam: the first- person shooter."
Kieron - 12/12/2002 11:11:00 AM
(0) comments
12/06/2002
Sometimes you should just call it quits. After a successful night of ligging, we decided to move to Moles. I really wanted to move to moles. I was hoping to be rejuvenated by a club packed of people desperately trying to suck whatever life they can from a dull Thursday night. It turns out, if these people were ever there, they decided that trying to suck life out of it just sucked, and sodded off home.
What they left behind was a husk of a club, and everything I dread may happen when I go to an Indie venue. Dance-floor peppered with ageing flesh moving spasmodically to something that perhaps meant something to them once. It's not the expression that bothers - it's the desperation, the laziness. If you're going to dance, then dance.
So when Steve suggested we go onto the perennial Delf, I thought why not. Yes, I hate most of the people there, but was in the mood for distraction. Get in just as a six-way fight is kicking off, and shoudl have took the hint and walked straight out. Instead I stay for a tedious drink, some idle chatter and the inevitable piss before sodding off.
While I'm waiting for my partner in crime, the DJ's mix slowly slides Daft Punk's "Around The World" in, slowly emerging from the mist. And as it does so, with the determined twitch of the chorus kicking in on the tiny dancefloor, a sprinkling of girls slowly... rotate. Spontaneously. Not spin or anything - just an elegant turn that takes at least five seconds to make its way the full three-sixty. And it's beautiful.
Sometimes it only takes the tiniest thing to justify your time.
Kieron - 12/06/2002 01:45:00 AM
(0) comments
12/04/2002
Randomly, I'm getting back into the Big Thing in an attempt to tie it up before the new year. No big deal - I'd just like it all in a big document.
I'm currently doing something genuinely horrible to Calais.
It passes the time.
Kieron - 12/04/2002 08:49:00 PM
I'll tell you one of my favourite things: Emergent Structure.
More specifically, I love dirt paths on grass. Not just in the country-side - but in the urban environment. You know when a grass verge naturally gains a natural pathway, because the real tarmac one takes a more indirect route? Them. They're wonderful. They're people intrinsically rebelling against someone trying to enforce a ludricous order onto you. An Architect fucked up - and people just did what made sense. It's things like that which gives someone who occasionally dabbels in Anarchist thought hope. Order is not based on Authority. Given the chance, we can order ourselves quite happily.
Chatting to Jim about this and he told me a story. Something about Sussex University, though he wasn't sure. I'll look it upmyself later. One of the one's that was built in the sixties, anyway. When building the place, they took a rather unique approach. Rather than an architect sitting down and planning where the walk-ways and whatever would be built, they did something entirely unexpected.
They just covered the entire area with grass. And left it.
Three months after the students were there they went to any place that was trod down and muddy and laid down tarmac. And lo - a path system that made sense and people stuck to.
To me, that's almost too beautiful for words.
Kieron - 12/04/2002 01:28:00 PM
Since I name-checked it in my second Everybody Be Cool Column over at Ninth Art I finally got around to watching Requiem for a Dream, which was a pummelling an experience as I was promised. I didn't cry, but it did provoke my stomach into a sympathetic hard cramp at all the drug, failings and fallings. The Director's about my age, isn't he? Pah. I try and explain this to Jane and she doesn't understand at all. Think like Bill Hicks being dead at 31 or me being now older than Cobain and Curtis ever were are what I tend to compare against and... well, it's clearly unfair and stupid. But fair and reasonable is too - well - fair and reasonable.
Today, among my fifty-quid FOP-rampage, I picked up a copy of the Cocteau twin's "Best Of...". Something nagging inside me is saying I bought a copy of it before and have simply put it away before listening to it properly.
Doesn't matter: I'm enjoying it a lot more this time.
Can I also take a break from my usual frenetic brand of self-publicity and pretentiousness to take a second to dwell upon the wonder that is John Mazzeo? You probably don't know him - but your life is poorer for that. A great man - yet a surprisingly nice one too.
