2013.

2013.

PRIMARILY, this year I aim to make an effort. Even writing this, I know I’m in a pretty resigned mindset and doubt I’ll achieve these. I think it’s okay, I don’t need to get everything done, but neither can I sit and wallow. I’m only writing this because I have an unstarted essay due and I’m the world’s worst procrastinator. Why should I wait till publishing these to do something? You can do things without resolving that you will in print beforehand to scare yourself for fear of being reproached. Seize the day! I don’t need Ms Lindsay to push me!

Explore
Since the start of this academic year, I’ve lived in term time in a small Essex town/large Essex village called Wivenhoe. It’s lovely – semi-famed for its artistic community, full of pubs, really close to uni and has a nice bookshop and antique shop. And yet the only places I’ve been inside are my house, the train station, One Stop, Co-Op, my hairdressers’ and the chip shop. This is a ridiculous state of affairs and I am determined this term to have a snoop around and maybe even become involved in the community – my favourite performance poet, Luke Wright, is doing a gig above a pub this month and I’ve already recruited a couple of friends to accompany me. To aid my exploration of my community I’ve decided to bring back an old favourite. Who remembers my walking blog? Well I miss it and it’s a feature that’ll be easy enough to schedule, good fun and probably good exercise. As a sucker for alliteration, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to write a blog about walking in Wivenhoe, with the lovely benefits of being able to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. I’ve started a new blog just for those updates that hasn’t really been set up yet but you can find HERE. Do us a favour and bookmark it now, yeah?
Keeping exploring local is nice but I’d also like to commit to splurging a load of cash I don’t have on seeing a couple of friends at their universities (and, in doing so, completely justify it to myself when booking). I must go and visit Plymouth to see Al (and hopefully Bee), maybe a trip to Manchester for a couple of pals up there. I've got to see Laura sometime soon too, given she’s not exactly hard to get to. PREPARE YOURSELVES LADIES. Inevitable time spent getting to places on the train (to Plymouth takes 5 hours from Letchworth or something stupid) leaves me plenty of opportunity to explore beyond the boundaries of reality, too, and get my nose stuck deep into a big old book. I love but find it hard to find the time/bother to get any serious reading done so I’m looking forward to this one.

wORK & CREATIVITY
As the shameless king of procrastination – my apathy and vague narcissism really do know no bounds – I have got to get stuck into my work this year. I did so to an extent at the start of the academic year and remembered how much I liked my course and why I’d chosen it in the first place. I’m confident that this will hold true this term and serve only as an incentive. I’m penniless so being able to get a job – maybe exploring Wivenhoe will help me find something – can’t be absent from my list of priorities (and the structure that comes with working will hopefully allow me to slip into working for myself too).I’d like to blog again, even if it is only about my walking, though shan’t be as naive this time and promise much more than I can give. I miss doing a photo (however bad it was) a day, so might see if I can take that up for a while, maybe for a probationary period. Perhaps a second of video a day, a la this dude? Somebody remind me about it though, because there’s no point saying you’ll do something and then putting it off. Look – my new attitude shining through! And one I nicked from Cathy. Thanks, C.
As you may well be aware, my essays are almost exclusively written in the period from 7pm-10am so to hurriedly apply at the deadline, by which time I’m more tired than the look behind David Cameron’s glazed eyes. Needless to say this rules out most planning and pretty much all editing. I MUST begin to do these things if anything I ever do is going to be good. Was it Ernest Hemingway who said that “the first draft of anything is shit”? Whoever it was knows a lot more than I do.
I never write anything for myself, barely even jot down ideas anymore. I must write. One paragraph every two days minimum, with exception of essay days. Setting myself tasks seems all well and good now, before I do it, and though it makes little sense I take this as but incentive to further remove my ambitions from the accomplishable. By the end of summer I must have written: one whole song and one play of any length(as well as the short one for coursework); by the end of the year one page-long poem and two short stories.

FRIENDS
This is something I’ve been quite good at when at home, but not at uni: spending time with people I feel good to be with. I don’t want to have to continue to waste my days hung over, drunk or bored out of my tiny mind with people I do like but don’t find consistently enjoyable. I guess I mean do more fun things than go to a club bored. It would be nice to share a day or evening hanging out with someone. Maybe even sober! Musts: meet Laura. Meet Bee. See Zoe more. Hang out with the fun people from uni, not just mates. When home try and meet up with people I haven’t seen since before uni despite promising we would see each other.

SOCIAL MEDIA MODERATION
I’ve noticed since my break-up just before the turn of the year that I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time tweeting. I don’t know whether this is just because it coincides with a deadline but I’ve really got to spare myself some real world time. Everything is going to seem more fun, right? Hopefully it will help with productivity in any case.

FOOD
Simple, this. Stop making massive 3-4 person portions and then eating it all because I can’t be bothered to make the tiny bit of effort to store it away; or learn how  to judge the size of my appetite more accurately. With regards to shopping, buy regularly, sensibly, healthily and with an undefined but implied budget. The effects of my new attitudes towards feeding myself will hopefully be twofold: eating less at more sensible times (I’m putting on a bit of weight, me. The walking blog thing should help) and stop myself digging into my overdraft to attack campus shop sandwiches (why do I always buy two again?). Convenience food is my downfall. I’m not going to commit to that much less pizza and garlic bread but it’d be good to cut down. By the end of the academic year I will have more than three stock recipes.
For the past two and a half years, I’ve been a vegetarian. I’m really happy and incredibly surprised (or would have been should you’d have told me at the start) that that is still the case. Mostly my concerns with meat are my personal health and the environmental impact of it, so I’ve to my shame never conformed to the anti-animal cruelty veggie stereotype. The other day, however, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia entry in which I learned the process employed for the mass-production of milk. I won’t fill in the gruesome details here, but if you care to know just wiki veganism. I’m concerned, though, about how my diet would adapt to the elimination of milk and if I would be able to sustain myself well enough without spending a ridiculous amount of money on special vegan produce. So, as a compromise, by the end of year I will have spent two weeks to one month without having milk in my diet. Is soya milk nice? I hope so.

MY main aims are therefore sensible self-discipline, but not exercising too much self-restraint. Try and sort out a vague schedule but not being afraid to let go of the reins when able. I want to enjoy my life and not distorting the world for myself – but still be able to stimulate it. A nice clear head and scope to enjoy myself. It sounds ridiculous but I’ve written this in pink – by accident, mainly – but it’s made a lovely change and actually feels really nice. Cynicism can only do so much for you. I might carry on with such an easy-going colour. There we go. I’ve started already!

Here’s to a happy and active year for all.

J

Captions I haven't bothered finding pictures for: "I’ll leave money, exercise and learning to drive for now." // "Clutter will NOT be an excuse to fail to write. Living downstairs in a house of loud students, though, is perhaps acceptable"

writing #3 - An Attempt To Be Sexy

Did a new 'thing'. I'm pretty sure it's a short story but some of the sentences in it are really like I was trying to write a poem. Please excuse the late night husky voice and the phone on which the recording was being made vibrating half-way through. Ta.

___

AN ATTEMPT TO BE SEXY

“Hold still”
“yeah?”
“Yeah. Okay, I think I got it...”
“Right”
“Yes, yes, okay, got it”
“So can you hear me now?”

I stared through the window, my left cheek squashed against the glass. The once-cooling surface had, within a matter of seconds, become the source of a chill that prevented me from speaking to you.

“Hang on, I’ve lost you again.”

It seemed a shame that it was my jaw, not brain that had frozen over. My breath had by now clouded the pane and blocked any view. Hot air escaping from my nostrils began to thaw my mouth and the same gas waiting to emerge finished the job.

“Better?” I began to reply, until I realised that my body was trying to motion accordingly and the consonants scrambled in my mouth. I found the futility of this act entertaining enough to divulge my attention from attempting to distract you from the reality of the fact that we both preferred it when we had less in common.

As such I found it a blessing that tonight would not suffer the routine roll call of all the people I didn’t like, didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Nor off-the-cuff, semi-relatable (under analysis) remarks about the coincidence of being alive at the same time being vast and quixotic as it is and the subconscious setting of barriers because it always pays to be prepared. No: my mind went blank as you asked me to begin and a mental image of you seared itself on my mind’s worn-out eye.

“Um,” it began, disappointing even myself and starting over, “I manage to remove my socks with minimal fuss”. Politeness is an only half-desirable trait and was unfortunately the one of my few to find itself amplified by the telephone receiver.

“Speak up.”
“Can you hear me now?”
“Shh. Carry on.”

Something about the subtext encouraged me but a mistimed gulp between breaths interrupted my flow and startled, it turned into a belch. Time was, it would have passed with a laugh but the humour was no longer present and though the lack of reaction was in itself unremarkable it hit me with a jolt and I once again started to think. Trying to talk I spluttered outside of my shell and unchecked, half-formed thoughts mixed in the air with the organic waste and my lungs gave way to the great wave of guts.

It didn’t turn you on.


___

Writing - poetry #2

Afternoon all, hope you're well. You may remember this post, a month ago, in which I shared an upbeat little ditty about two of the world's oldest professions. Today, something a little more dark.

___

Sonnet no.1

Burn each and every member of the flock
Before the black bird swoops and takes his prey

(The most easy of these: those numbed by shock,

The rest blinded or taken in affray).

But he swoops, he dives, he eats my insides

And blood drips as we crow, his beak a key

That opens me. Again, I watch him glide

I’d rather drift, a pyre out at sea.

It seems smoking him out has no effect

So now it is my chest where he resides –

Jailed by ribs, they can take all his pecks

With his tongue I have no need to comply.

Now after so long abusing my pen

All of my words shall become mine again.

___

Writing exercises - poetry #1

Evening. Yesterday evening I was working at a Luke Wright and Ross Sutherland gig - two performance poets who I have a real love for, the latter inspiring the former into poetry, who subsequently got me hooked on the medium when I went to Latitude in 2010. In the afternoon before the show, they held a workshop, which I went to. Not only was it really interesting and informative but we had a couple of 10 minute intervals to try out some exercises, which didn't give me the opportunity to procrastinate, my most seductive enemy. In the first, we could either write an alliterative (alliteration being the technique used before rhyme came into popular useage) or univocal (using only one vowel (Y counting as a vowel)) poem. I didn't get very far with my 'E' poem (called Fleet Street), so here's the product of the second exercise, a long one sentence poem which starts with an image, goes off on a tangent, and returns to the image right at the end. I read this out on stage (very badly):



Here's a transcript:

The anchor strained against the rope
Pulling the boat into the sunny cope*
As its crew flexes to catch the eye
Of the assembled gathering of passers-by
Who witness a sight too silly to believe
As the trends have changed no news reached sea
That the ladies of Britain are now hard to impress
With the sight of muscles bulging from a tight white vest
Other than one, Ms Daisy Hook
Whose more-than-a-glance is a noticeable look
That more than a few sailors see
(Most of whom assume she demands no fee)
A brawl breaks out, friends become foes
The Captain shrieks "She's just a cheap hoe"
It seems that little Miss Hook's look
Was the final fray of that crew's rope

Ta-da!

Okay, must dash, off to continue the poetry hype with an evening of being read to be Simon Armitage! Love the theatre I work at. Hope you all enjoyed x


*I'm not sure this is right. Is a cope a thing? You get a cape, and in France you get a cote - is cope in that sense a neologism?

List #5 - I promise Emma is cool with this and in fact asked me to put this up SO NAH

I took this from a vaguely project-y writing exercise I've just started: my own, generally unpublicised, version of Richard Herring's excellent Warming Up.  It wasn't written well, given I wrote it at about 2am. Nor is it really written for anyone but me to read, but effort to rewrite - so at the moment it's an odd cross between, like, Robert Louis Stevenson and Charlie Brooker... But obviously that doesn't apply to the frankly rubbish list which is 100% tired Laing puerility:

At Chappers' party, Emma had a story. Emma had Shiv's story. Juicy gossip attracts Gemma Inglis and myself as if moths to artificial light, yet Emma would not budge. Eventually, we extracted some small pleasure by spreading the TOTALLY TRUE rumour that Emma bloodthirsty Brooking and Shivan shitting Handa have been known to, on occasion, become involved with pleasures of the anal variety; an absolute fact the sordid pair somehow derive pleasure from. From now on, I am to greet and refer to Emma only as thus:

- dirty bottom; or
- sticky passage ; or
- spunk seat ; or
- cheeked botty ; or
- soiled buttock ; or
- perved pads ; or
- ejaculate ass ; or
- dodgy derriere

And I hope she learns the hole of her lesson.

I know a place we can go / that you'll fall in love so hard / that you'll wish you were dead

I was just looking back through some old files, and found this, which is a little thing I wrote about a year ago, when I was trying to transform a W.H. Auden poem into the style of J.D. Salinger.  So, yeah, I'm not that sex-obsessed, Caulfield is, honest.  It's a bit weird, and I haven't made any changes, just thought some of you might be interested really! 

Gosh, this is my fourth day of consecutive blogs; I do treat you sometimes. Enjoy x

~

One time, I knew this bird – Miss Edith Gee – when I was in Minnesota. Everyday for a month, I went round to see her. Number 83 Clevedon Terrace, if you really wanna know. Anyway, I moved to Maine and met Jane soon enough, but I never forgot quite how Eeds’ quirky charm somehow wormed its way into the fathoms of my emotion – not my heart, I like that – but anyway, she was like an ironing board with a face, that girl, no bust. None at all. Real narrow shoulders, you know? Like, really; from wherever you chose to stand.They were sloped enough to give the impression of a nice little green hillock – angled towards the sky, into the sky, with slight bumpy molehills of breasts giving the most slight rise you ever saw, creating this tiny dip, dyke-like, a beautiful ditch, and then you’d move upwards, past her tiny thin lips. Particularly her bottom lip – a friend of mine, ol’ Jimmie Hunt, had once told me this crazy theory of his, whereby you can judge the manner of a girl in bed from the size of her bottom lip. Now, I haven’t quite got a grasp of some of the very finer points of sex quite just yet. I make rules for myself most nights, and end up breaking them necking some girl the next week. You’ve never seen such a crumby fiend as me; I really believe that, no phony is quite as manic as me. Whilst I do tend to overanalyse tricky business, I find it a great turn on if I don’t, so try to keep it out of my mind. I just don’t understand it. I swear to God, I really don’t. So old Jimmie, he had told me this great trick for seeing just how vicious a girl was in bed. The smaller the bottom lip, the more fiendish they are. It was a load of bull, obviously, but has served me damn well on a few occasions. Top lips, whilst not irrelevant, have little effect on proceedings, If y’know what I’m saying. Technical matters only; solely the finer points of technique.Anyhow, if we can be viewing Eedie as a little hill, we can rise above the sharp red rose of her tight, angular little lips and then we can see two glinting suns, her eyes, blue enough to perfectly bridge the colour gaps between her green umbrella, purple mac and violvet hat (which she wore all the damned time, I’d have gotten through several hunting hats by then (Phoebs likes ‘em, keeps taking ‘em)) but also grey enough to absolutely convey the ambiguity of her emotion to the world. A puzzle, that girl was. It is the imperfections that truly make a person or thing perfect, and Eeds had a little squint to her left eye. When I mentioned this thought to her one time, she just cried. I don’t know why, I don’t really get girls. All over the place – it was a nice enough compliment though, right?

When I remembered the oversized, lolloping tears dripping, rollin’, down her pretty bone cheeks, it makes me smile. I did that. It reminds me of Jane’s chessboard, how her own particular saline blend smudged into the dyed wooden squares. Red, swirling; tainting the ‘blank’ segments of the grain.

Eeds resided, as I said, in Clevedon Terrace, but what I didn’t mention was her actual living quarters, a small room of a bed-sit. Clevedon is fairly downtown, but was far from desirable. In her sole room, she kept her few outfits, all high-necked – no-one could damage her integrity, except me, they were all buttoned and I have nimble fingers; she also kept her knitting kit and titbits around the place, and a silvered crucifix she held dear.I took that when I left, just on a whim. I replaced it some wooden beads, all glued up. I left my mark on that room, just like Jane’s chessboard. Something so I’d be remembered, comforting to me for some reason; it was fair enough. She had a thing for stuff, E’, aside from that crucifix and various jewellery, and those knitting titbits – cotton and the like – she had this hat, I’ve already mentioned it, I’m sure. My point is this – she couldn’t just have a normal hat, oh, no, it was not only velvet but covered, draped, in all this sentimental garbage. It ruined an already poor hat. And have I mentioned her bicycle? You could always tell when Edith was about by the screech of brakes, a real edgy crescendo.The dreadful noise was made even more so with the rattle of this pristine little basket she’d kept on the front all that bike’s life. It’d gotten to be grotty, until I’d cleaned it for her.She undid a button that day. And, the second time, I another. I won’t deny it, nor shall I go into detail, but we horsed around a bit. I was a real phony back then, making bad rules.She cried when I stopped, though, and even more when I started again. It was all very confusing, and in the end I just gave up. But not before taking a wicker strip from her basket, something I did each time I cleaned it. Leaving my mark.

One time, I walked past her parking her bike outside St. Aloysius’ Church, a load of knitwear and children’s toys piled high in the basket. I helped her carry them in, naturally; the hot summer’s day gave me an opportunity to work her down to a possible third button.The chance never came – maybe something to do with being in a church yard and all, right? You know I’m right. I caught her praying later on; praying for love, piety, and money.Bit selfish to ask God for material matters, I’d thought. Maybe the prayer had something to do with this experience she told me she’d had in this dream once. I don’ kno’, could have been the heat. I am one sexy guy. It was mighty odd, this ‘dream’, starting off with Eeds somehow having become French royalty in the course of one night and being asked by the vicar to undo a button and dance. Then, some crackpot psychiatric student would love this, she began to bike through fields, fields of corn; the vicar’s face was transposed to a bull, and Eeds got charged by this gargantuan quasi-holy beast. All after a storm had blown down the palace, Josh style. The vicar was about to overtake, and Queenie Eedie was slowing, due to her old back-pedal brake. I’m a sceptic, yeah – so imagine my face when I first learned exactly what had happened new. Being at church, alone, everyday, Eed had developed a sort of complex. Because I had left by then, obviously. It burned her gut each and every day, and she prayed to God, more an’ more goddamned more. She felt so lonely; the choir’s inept harmonies drew out a loneliness issue in her, and she hurt still more. One day, of boredom most likely, she got on her pretty dainty bicycle, with the clean but bare basket and paid the doctor’s a visit. Now, I’d always lived by the ‘apple a day’ method of things – if you keep them all in a box, you can throw them and repel any encroaching medics – but she had this thing for health, hygiene, and fitness. Without me, of course, she never undid a button any more. Well, when she got there, it turned out that the pain she’d been feeling was further developed than she had thought to herself, even by her standards, and the doctor didn’t really feel like telling her, or anyone what really was damned wrong with the bitch. Two days later, Eeds was in hospital, can you believe it? A rabid, quivering wreck, that girl; all over the place. Like, really. Ironic, really – her corpse was too long for the child’s shroud they gave her; it only reached up to her neck.

They examined her good and proper after that, strung her up, blood tainting the checked hospital floor. Used her for training purposes; looking at her advanced sarcoma, apparently. I had to look that word up. A malignant tumour, it turns out, ironic what with her personality and all. Right on the knee. Unusual, I suppose, but she’d never have had one above the neck.

So how about a little peek into my lyric book

A couple of pages from my lyric book

Today doesn't seem like a good time to go through all the Tuesday to-dos that I've missed out on over exams - and I'll be merging that and Friday into a new Sunday feature soon (I think) - so I thought now might be nice to do a small blog about something I'm writing, or, more specifically, how I write.

However, first things first, I think we should all sing a quick happy birthday to Vivatramp which celebrates its first birthday today. Ready?

A happy blah blah

blah you

blah blah

blah you

blah blah blah blah blah,

blah 

Anyway, nice one Bee; I think the speed at which Viva's grown goes some way to showing you really quite how good it is.  It's definitely right up there amongst my favourite blogs and it's pretty easily my favourite personal one.   Anyway, onwaaaaaaaard:

You all know I'm in a band, right?  Well, yeah, I am, and being a little English nut who's keen on poetry and things, I always try and write lyrics when I can (If you have our EP, I did 'E9', 'Enlightenment; Maybe' and 'Black|White' (must improve my titles for songs)).  Jonny sent me a new song out of the blue the other day, so I'm jumping on the opportunity before Ed gets his filthy-but-better mitts on it.

Pretentious, badly written and unhelpful-because-its-a-personal-thing guides are ten-a-penny these days, but this is how I write - not a guide, but an insight into my creative process.
This is what happens when you have a song to write, not when you're inspired; whilst you'd assume I'd hate writing as a task, I often find it works - if I 'have' to write something, it stops me cringing and makes me get on with it.

Going hand in hand with this vague sense of duty, I find I need a song ready for me to write anything well.  You can write as much as you want without music, but that method leaves you rather susceptible to getting just too poetic, or alternatively leaving you with something that bit too hard to fit into a melody.  People aren't listening exclusively for your wordcraft, which might well be great and give depth or feel to a song but won't catch someone's immediate attention - how many songs sound brilliant to belt out but mean nothing at all? Often a few LALAs will suffice.

Second, get yourself some refreshments.  These are totally, absolutely necessary: writing is an excellent excuse to have some chai.

Chai tea and Marmite on toast are musts

 Then get a pen and some paper. Don't use a computer; that sucks the life out of any emotion you are trying to get across, which is kind of the point, right? Get physical, and knuckle down - listen to the song a couple of times on repeat and jot down any thoughts you have / do a mindmap of ideas. Draw a picture, write down some quotes, do a bit of word association or freeform writing. Get stuff down. Next, make a collection of all the words or phrases you might have jotted down in notebooks or on scraps of paper in the past few months (I use my phone's memos) and copy them all down in a page together.  Soon you'll find some recurring themes: that's your head, that is. Don't be afraid of talking about your preoccupations - lyrics or poetry can be a great release.  Although you can run the risk of re-lodging stuff in your mind, I wouldn't worry about anything coming back in my head too much - much due to the fact that I don't sing, but hand lyrics over to Ed.  The fact someone else can be singing something personal, or abstract and open to interpretation, feels like the best release.  If nothing else, hearing anything over and over, whilst writing, rehearsing and recording will make the subject lovely and dull - mundanity, much the subject of the song I'm doing now, can be a great comfort, as well as working wonders for ruining your memory.  All hail the death of good thought!

Some of my books full of notes

Giving vague order to any recurrences you have in your notes is a pretty good next step, after which you should try to fit them vaguely in with any of the stuff you wrote whilst listening to the song earlier.  For melody (I'm really bad at this), you can try and transcribe whatever you have already kicking around in your head, direct from the words you've written, or sit and listen to the song on repeat for ages in an attempt to work one out.  A personal favourite.

I use my glock to write melody (which I'm shit at) 

Fit it all together, go through it a few times, then go and do something else for a few hours. Never get rid of your rough work, whether it's throwing away notes or whatever.  Read/listen again for a quick once-over, before giving what you have the 24 hour rule, and if it's not cringeworthy after that you'll be fineeeee

PING

Got bored of writing towards the end so rushed through, really.  That's all, I'm going to get the song slowed down a bit so it fits a bit more nicely with my lyrics and so it sounds a bit more Wild Beasts-y.  I'll be doing a walking blog catch-up tomorrow, I think.  T'ra!

~

when I've finished these I'll put them here. Shouldn't be too long, though the result'll probably go down like a curry fart in a space suit

My hands are completely covering my eyes