2012 - SELF-INDULGENT MEDIOCRITY OVERLOAD

Tuesday 1st May 2012

Planning on throwing myself into the lion’s den again by taking in short fiction exercises tomorrow for Waddy Intermediate. Apart from a couple of flukes I’ve not written any short stories in years. Autobiographical vignettes, diary entries, but not much else as far as prose goes.

Pulled out a copy of Bukowski’s Tales of Ordinary Madness. Forgot just how crude and XXX some of his fiction actually is. No way could I take it into Waddy.

Today I got a surprise when one of the Waddy crew expressed a liking for Louise Gluck poems used in an exercise. I pulled about twenty off the net and will print them out for her. Was tempted to buy a couple of volumes but might just wait till September when Gluck’s entire output is published in a 600+ page collected 1962–2012. Fifty years of poems. Awesome.

Lots to read. Lots to listen to, lots to edit.


Wednesday 2nd May 2012

Watched the end of a Crowley documentary. Then a thing on serial killers, then the first part of a series linking Occultism to Science. What started as mysticism becomes medicine and numerology, all that jazz. Quite interesting. I find myself torn between a fascination for the mysterious , the hidden… – and jst being a rock bottom base line existential kind of guy with nihilistic tendencies. I suppose that’s why people consider me to be bi-polar.

Right now listening to Anna Varney, aka Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows. Possibly the most mysterious gothic music I’ve ever heard. Quite sinister stuff. I like having the internet to check out lots of stuff on YouTube – music film, documentaries, performance poetry.

Soon as the weather picks up I’ll be biking again. Need something physical to even out the life a bit. Want a bit of adventure again. Think I’ll start training for The Beast.

I tried writing some fiction at Waddy today, really crap. 9.57pm.


Thursday 3rd May 2012

The log in the bog expands and fills the whole bowl. Onions fall off it and bits of peanuts and it’s got maggots crawling out of it. And the keys to the safe need cleaning under the tap but the guard is getting closer…

And then later you totally forget to cancel the taxi and get blacklisted coz fifty seven mile round trip for nothing is bad for anyone’s business…

And then it’s Bridgehill again, with big kerbs and skateboard ollies onto a plinth, rolling front-side then a 180 degree spin off onto the main road and very quickly you’re building momentum and you want to stop and the only way is to jump off and your feet can’t keep up with your body and you tumble and there’s loads of traffic and then it’s Thursday morning and this is as much imagery as you get then it’s chore time…


Friday 4th May 2012

My eyes are bigger than the pork pies I shove down my throat. And all the books that I own don’t make me sit on my throne and read for a while. I’m going to take a big piece of something bigger than me. I’m going to get my kicks for free. I can sit on the bus and I can make a fuss and I can thumb the pages of the daily rag. They’ve got nothing for my goodie bag. The sky bleeds for us as the weekly grind comes down for a while. There’s nothing in your head that hasn’t been said a fucking thousand times before. Sell me a pew philosophy I want an album a day and a cover version of your memory. If we knew the way to Mars we’d vacate this crumbling rock of shit or would we wait and watch the world come down. My eyes are bigger than the pork pies and the dead things in my fridge are a bridge from discomfort to some nocturnal satisfaction. Can you help me to overcome them all? Will you hear when I make the call? I can drink the pink stink that fills the sink from the gash in my head, I can eat the sweet meat but the tongue can’t be beaten. Oh yes Mr Goody Baggage Handler, I have found nothing better than the bone I pick with all the minions. My eyes are bigger than my belly. My little toes are black and smelly but I don’t care. The night is mine to drink the wine from the hole in the sole of your foot. You have to take a look. It’s gonna be a good kicking for me. It’s gonna be another trip down to casualty. And I don’t care what the big boys sing. I don’t care how much cash they all bring. I’ve got a room with a view and you’d like it too, can you help me fill the fridge this year? Can you keep the rain off my skull for another season? I’m a charlatan but I get the job done. And it’s all a point of view. You’d like the one I’ve found. My eyes are bigger than your telly but you can’t turn me on and off so easily. I will wear my heart in my mouth till the ferryman comes for me. It’s a long way down. And I’m guilty, oh so guilty now. 8.48pm.


Saturday 5th May 2012

Hacking the hands off those who harass on the battlefield of mundane life then crying in the corner coz the guilt weighs heavy. That’s the dream I remember. But I should have written it at five or six when it startled me from sleep.

I ate four pork pies last night. That’s bad. That’s probably comfort eating after a shit day. Just felt a wee bit knackered after all the buses following a late night back from a gig. Two hours to get home from Poetry Jam on Thursday, two and a half hours to Newton Aycliffe the next day.

Listening to the Cure makes me think of the conversation I had with Ali Lee on Thursday. She was saying they’re her favourite band and the music really takes you to different places. For me, The Head On the Door Album is always going to be my favourite coz I heard it in 85 when still at school and I’d listen to it on a little mono tape player in my room and get all melancholy listening to ‘A Night Like This’ and ‘Sinking’. I’m sorely tempted to buy a ticket for the Leeds gig, but I really dislike big outdoor festivals. I’d have to ensure that I’d be right down the front to make it worth my while.

Been reading a little book this afternoon The Mindful Writer by Dinty W Moore. It has some good notes for those lacking motivation. I tend to write when I want to. I keep journals everyday. Morning pages and bus notes. I’m open to possibilities at least three times a day.


Sunday 6th May 2012

I need a bit of bed back so I can scribble lazy Sunday before going on a wander in my grey underpants to the toilet bravely without trousers or tiger print blanket and hoping there’s no-one down there to intercept me in my moment of bladder need.

Outside the cars are streaming over the street.

There’s a shadow of my knuckles over the page. Jenni breathes deeply and snuggles in against my back. Today is the first long lie in for a few weeks. It’s good to not have to be anywhere today. I’m a bit concerned about all the eating though. I must be about eleven stone six this morning. Need to get out on the bike.

The grass has been cut at a charge of fifteen quid but that’s okay coz I won’t feel guilty swanning around on a bike when there’s weeds growing up the window frames. Slight exaggeration but it’s domestics before so called leisure pursuits, isn’t it.

I’m hungry. I want a breakfast soon. Apple and cinnamon topped porridge and a hot lemon juice will do till lunchtime.

Jenni is clinging on and this is an uncomfortable page, weight pressing me into the bed.

A little black hair just landed on my page. At least it wasn’t grey. Yesterday Mandy Maxwell sent me a poem about turning forty. It mentioned the possibility of grey pubes, so I told her, Yes, it’s quite true, but it’s also true that life can get a lot better at forty. So pleased I never had kids and don’t have a regular nine to five.

I think I’d crack up if I went back to the warehouse. I learnt a lot about myself there. Wrote much self-analytical material. The soundtrack of early Swans records helped me a lot too. Catharsis is good, catharsis is good. 10.15 am.


Monday 7th May 2012

Dreamt it cost me fifteen quid to get a taxi from Consett to Chaytor Road in Bridgehill, a journey I could skateboard in about ten minutes as a kid. I had shitloads of luggage and it took me ages to rummage through my wallet for the cash. Meanwhile, the driver is out of his cab and flicking through a case of my cassettes, asking what I do with them and haven’t I got a cd player or use mp3. I’d have modern equipment if bastards didn’t keep overcharging me for the briefest of journeys. I found a twenty and said, Change please. He gave me five pound coins then Ian Waugh asked me about my next gig…

I went out on the mountain bike for the first time in six months this morning. It looked like rain so I just did laps of the estate and just as well, after twenty minutes I could hardly breathe. Hard to believe that last year I did a fifty mile endurance event taking in some of the steepest hills the Durham Big Ride organisers could find for THE BEAST – and then rode another fourteen miles home again.

It would be cool to do it again but I’ll take it easy on the training. Last year I did an eight hour ride and my hands were wrecked afterwards, could hardly hold an empty dinner plate. Thought the RSI/Carpal Tunnel Syndrome was here to stay. Thought my biking days were finished but the hands came right again, after a fortnight’s rest.

I am as equally unfit as this time last year, wheezing and struggling. It will take me a few rides to get warmed up, and I’m not in the mood for getting up to the eyes in clarts on the trails; hopefully the off-road routes will firm up when the weather improves, but for the next few attempts I’ll stay on the tarmac.

Monday is my prep day for writing workshops at Waddington Street Centre in Durham City. Tuesday’s I run Writing for All sessions and on Wednesday’s it’s Intermediate Writing. I have been working with some of the participants for nearly eight years now and it’s always a challenge to come up with something different for them each week. Tomorrow I’ll do a bit on memoir and Wednesday we’ll look at new opportunities for publication.

I have been looking at ‘True Tales of American Life’ edited by New York Trilogy author Paul Auster. It’s a big book of anecdotes written by people from all walks of life all over the States. Some pieces a paragraph long, others run to a few pages and all presented as fact, however improbable some of the content may appear. Auster writes about chance and coincidence a lot in his novels and some of the pieces in this anthology seem contrived to fit his writing style. But maybe I’m being cynical.

As I stated last week, I’m no fiction writer. A mundane scribbler much of the time, fluking it with fleeting bursts of hypomanic ranting which seems to appeal to poetry cabaret audiences…

Anyway, I only got one workshop prepped, will do the other tomorrow evening. I’m off to tackle 'The Alchemist'. 7.57pm.

Tuesday 8th May 2012

Every day this year I’ve done the ritual of Morning Pages, a tool advocated by Julia Cameron, author of the Artist’s Way and various other creative guidebooks. Three pages of longhand notes before leaving the bedroom to catch dreams, ideas, etc and to clear the head for the coming day.

Morning Pages:

Head very stubbly. I hope those gashes made with a cheapshit razor bought for convenience last week don’t open again this morning. I am a bit self-conscious writing these lines since starting a blog and wondering what I can get away with. Think I’ll just forget about it and write what I like.

Another warehouse dream. I’m at a big battered wooden table trimming plain white stickers little more than the size of first class postage stamps. It seems like a pointless exercise. I can hear the other workers, rattling blue plastic trolleys down concrete aisles, a real sense of urgency, getting their items ticked off those pink invoices. I feel a bit guilty sitting still while they are running about. I get up from the table, look for the supervisor. He tells me to stand at the packing bench in a mound of sand. A performance poet is there. She has a sore back and asks me to support her spine.

I don’t know what the dream means. I don’t know if I did enough prep yesterday. I have some exercises on a memory stick and  list of vignettes for the group to read. I have the Louise Gluck poems printed out ready to pass on. Maybe I’ll prep more on the bus.

It’s only quarter past seven. I haven’t been to the bathroom yet, don’t know if it’s been raining and still wet outside.

I’m hoping to get another bike ride in tomorrow. What I mean is another rip around the housing estate for as log as I can before I feel like puking. This time last year I tried to ride along the riverbank trail to Shotley Bridge and back and had to get off three times to rest. It’s a forty-five minute trundle at slowest. I’ve done it twice a day, before and after riding a trials bike for two hours when fit.

I don’t have to leave the house until 10.45 am this morning, which gives me time to make a hash of my head, stem the blood flow, get some decent clothes pressed and pack my back-up bag of creative tricks to get me through the afternoon.

Tonight I’ll come up with a session for my Intermediate group and then maybe put in an hour going over my Pink Lane set for Thursday. It’s a Shades of Grey book set, so it doesn’t have to be fully memorized. Jenni says I don’t mention the availability of my books enough at gigs, I’ll have the book in my hand on stage. I like Pink Lane. It’s always a lively supportive crowd and a good set of performers. Viv Wiggins is on the bill, Michael Brett and the superb Tom Hollingworth. I’m always blown away by the improvised musical spoken word vignettes that Scruffweed deliver as well.

Okay, I’m bursting for the toilet now and have to get ready for my day. Hope it’s a good one. James Wilkinson said I should change the name of my blog to something more positive, but I think Self Indulgent Mediocrity Overload is quite apt. 7.32 am.