Revolution of talk…
Face down in the grass under warm sun at the base of a tree.
Face down in the gutter under artificial light at the base of a pyramid.
Thank you Clive, for the day, and for what the day was not.
Tomorrow, the train, the hippies, bound for Glastonbury, me, bound for Tamworth.
My main stage features not Bruce Springsteen, some famous has-been, but my dad, who is a never-was.
Wait. Sometime around 1988, my dad stopped being The Most Important Man in the Universe.
My universe, suddenly exploded. My dad, stranded, on a distant planet, receding slowly into insignificance.
And now, from beyond the beyond, again, to visit, to be, to leave.
Dartmoor
Out with Alasdair, out with Clive, out in nature, out in green and blue and gray, out on Dartmoor.
Airport to railway station…
Enough material arose from the arrivals lounge of Exeter Airport to Exeter St Davids for a short story.
But it won't be pretty.
The climax was an old man wearing a belt that was similar to my own Guatemalan one, and a man who appeared some kind of idiot savant (or maybe just an idiot), who spoke at length about whatever was passing through his mind, referencing all kinds of things, generating spontaneous lists, recalling specific dates, etc. When I broke away to speak to the old man, he started just making a loud noise that was neither a cough, nor speech, but simply a loud noise, evidently to signal his disgust / desire for more engagement.
I don't feel I belong here, people try too much. I don't try. Unbrushed untamed hair, unshaven, tired eyes, old clothes. Perhaps my good watch, iPod, and expensive travel bag creates too much discord. More likely, nobody gives a flying fuck. Sat there, staring out, disconnected.
Dublin day 5
Coughing after the fire. Augustus Pablo and Captain Beefheart and Bert Jansch and Matt Molloy...
Good times. I was an ingracious guest of a gracious host. I am chastened, too late, naturally.
Dublin day 4
The ideal image of today would be a photo of my lungs, blackened.
Last night, at around 2 a.m., the room downstairs caught fire, a fact that we registered via clouds of smoke that poured up through the floor. Stood on the street and watched a naked unconscious man carried out by the fire brigade, looked very serious.
Dublin day 3
A walk into the city. No fun. I asked for Thomas Bernhard novels in Hodges Figgis bookstore, the girl working there completely ignorant of him, inexcusable, unsurprising. Found a copy of his debut, Frost.
Here is a shot of a Wilde statue that stands in Merrion Square.
Dublin day 2
Today I wasted two hours on a railway platform at Greystones before swallowing a fly and watching a dog having a shit.
So sincere in their support for the people…
It is great to see so much media sentiment directed towards a people realising their goals of overturning the powers that be. I look forward to seeing the way the news media is covering events in Iran being extended to cover similar mass movements that will sweep away the governments of Western powers.
But, as ever, Kingfelix will not be holding his breath...
From Devon with love
The return to England has not been as awful as the prospect of returning. There are problems, still, such as the absence of banana trees, lizards and china blue skies, so that while walking the lanes I have been repeatedly assailed by the single thought - "This is NOT Guatemala..."
Life with Alasdair is coffee, cheese on toast, music, talking, news channels, walking, remembrances. Yesterday saw a visit to Plymouth, ostensibly to 'buy books', but what books can you buy when the Waterstones stocks a range of titles seemingly determined by the single fact that they all fall within reach of the intellectual grasp of some mythical consumer, leaving nothing for those on the outside, people such as myself, who are, paradoxically, excluded by the extent of our engagement. That's a usefully short way of phrasing it.
Here are some photographs and commentary:
1 - Title: Alasdair and sky
2 - Title: Totnes stencil (taken by Clive)
3 - Title: Decommissioned engine
4 - Title: Airman at Plymouth
I only add these titles because here in the South Brent Community Library there is a display of paintings of typical subjects (flowers, ducks, trees, labrador), interspersed with visual paeans to death and destruction visited upon Afghanistan (razor wire, bombs exploding, graves adorned with crosses???) and then, one of the prosaic paintings, done by a teenager, it appears, bears the unfathomably hilarious title of After Monet. I have sat here for the last hour repressing a strong urge to roar with laughter, winning the battle, only for a new round to begin as I hear once more that phrase, "After Monet"... (After Monet, before Dustbin)
