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Friday, January 11, 2002
Life’s just like that

It’s been a crazy week. More crazy than normal, I mean. Being back in school has been a shock to the system, of course. By the end of Thursday night, after teaching for twenty one lessons without a break, and two after school meetings, one of which was a presentation to community leaders, I felt utterly destroyed already; two and a half weeks of holiday and rest wiped out in one sucker punch that lasted four days. Today, Friday, was spent on automatic, somehow managing to navigate the day, delivering lessons and trying to keep my wits about me. And largely failing miserably. I had a lesson today where I talked with twenty five 13 year olds about the context of words, specifically related to Ed Ruscha. I leafed through They Called Her Styrene and showed them my favourite images, stopping longest on ‘I am completely exhausted’ to explain that this one best describes me at any point during a term. There were few laughs. They knew it was serious. We had a few laughs about some of their own ‘found’ phrases though. ‘Get some more milk, you bastard!!!’ was predictably a favourite, as was ‘all she could ever want’, and ‘find yourself a new sleeping partner’. ‘It’s a mouthful’ also generated a degree of giggles, mainly from the girls. Which led us neatly onto sexual innuendo, and how it’s one of our most obvious first responses. Especially if you are adolescent…

I also showed them the Ed Ruscha ‘Hollywood’ painting that’s in Phaidon’s American Art Book. We talked about the allure of Hollywood and the symbolism of the orange sky burning as a tempting beacon behind the hills. I told them then of how, whilst on a dusk to night bicycle ride last Wednesday I rode down a dark lane from Thorverton to Stoke Canon, looking at Stoke Hill ahead of me, silhouetted against the glow of Exeter beyond; of how the hills looked just like Ruscha’s Hollywood hills. In a certain light. And I wonder if this is the first time Exeter has been compared to LA, being almost entirely certain it’s the first time that Stoke Hill has been mentioned in the same breath as the Hollywood ones.

And speaking of Exeter, I now glance to the side in my attic lair and I spy a rather delectable monkey guarding the pile of Lemony Snicket books. The monkey wears an ‘Exeter’ t-shirt in a rather fetching maroon colour, and has Velcro on his hands and feet. He is very cute and reminds me that out there in the world there remain cherubic angels with spirit and soul, whose hands it feels safe to put some kind of hope for the future. Such things are, I feel, important.

And then there have been all the recent additions to Tangents. Loads of them. A bit of a Fosca invasion, too, what with Dickon writing about squirrels mugging priests, and Rachel reminding us all about Phil Larkin (much to Rupert’s dismay and disgust). I understand that lots of poetry and Jazz aficionados and fans detest Larkin for being a right wing know-nothing, and I’m aware that from a certain perspective having Larkin on the pages of Tangents might be like having an article about the Beatles or something (and don’t anyone DARE start sending me articles on the Beatles, unless it’s to remind us how crap they were), but still and all. That line from the ‘For Sidney Bechet’ poem that Rachel quotes about love being like an ‘enormous YES’ is one of my favourite lines by anyone anywhere for any reason. Beat without even knowing it. If Kerouac wrote that line it would be on posters in student bedrooms the world over. Uh, that is if ‘young people’ even dig Kerouac these days. Or say ‘dig’. Or even read.

I like snippets of Larkin. I think his (I think unfinished) ‘The Dance’ is a great poem. I quoted liberally of it in a strange fanzine I once wrote for a few friends and interested souls way back in the mired mists of time. It was after, as I recall, a particularly fevered evening at an Art School graduation ball where all the rebellious young artists bowed to the dreary tradition of wearing Tuxedos and pretended to be ‘cultured’. Naturally I was the only one still in my uniform of suede jacket (it didn’t, as Friends Again once sang, keep out the cold, either. It was indeed too old), black Levis, button down shirt and DM shoes. But yes. ‘The Dance’ seemed to fit perfectly with my feelings of that night, then and now. I haven’t looked at the fanzine for years, but I think that particular section was set in the bar of the Bruce Inn (as mentioned in a summer 2001 entry here, keep up at the back, please), me quoting the poem to my long-gone friend Scott whilst playing pool and setting the (our) world to rights. There was a lot of Tennent’s Special consumed that night, as I (hazily) recall. I think I may have told Anne Curling’s mother Kate that I was in love with her daughter at that point also, which was probably a bad idea, Kate being the barmaid at the time. Most things were a bad idea in those days though, so what was one more or less. I was probably beat up in the lane as I walked home that night. God knows I was most nights.

Ahem.

I’ve stuck up a bunch of great old flyers/posters by Paul Barr in the Tangents gallery tonight. Paul and his mates were responsible for running the Subterraneans club night in the hinterland that was/is Gourock. Gourock being a satellite of Glasgow, lots of the bands that would have travelled to play shows there also made the trip out along the banks of the Clyde to Subterraneans, and by all accounts there were some great nights there. Personally I was too busy being a ludicrous hermit, holed up in my bedroom or only venturing as far as Andy’s Garage (see the Plastic Toy Gun article in the bowels of Tangents) if I ventured at all. The flyers and posters that Paul has sent are great artefacts that nevertheless remind me of places I never went to except in my head; events I never experienced except in my heart. I recall seeing lots of similar posters around Glasgow in my youth, and wishing I had the strength of character to go to the nights advertised; knowing deep inside that of course I never could, not really. Of course I was wrong. I know it now and I knew it then, but it makes no difference. I was always weak.

Still weak now, as the Shins sing in the background about ‘two fallen saplings in an open field’ and I wonder how on earth whoever recommended this record in the music press could have mentioned it in the same breath as the Kinks’ truly awesome Village Green Preservation Society. Not that the Shins album is bad, you understand, it’s just not what I was hoping for, not what I expected from the press I’d read. But then so seldom ever is. What I’m hoping for, I mean.

Life’s just like that, I find.