Rival The Very Stars

As not sleep for me I took a bow from my bed and crawled – so as not to wake the gang of liars resplendent and dazed on my surface floor – to the window where, with my only good hand (the left) I flung open the left curtain and took a look down to the street below (I was on the first floor) in search of some kind of activity – distraction, so to speak – that would at least justify my rising and would be, at the very least, more than just the mere passing of driven cars. To no success, yep. Cars there were plenty, up one way, down the other. But no other activity. I checked my watch: 2.15. The moon hung low and bright and the crepuscular air - or better description of a later dark - gloomed in, offset and bitten into by the glare of the street lamps, the passing driven cars and the teeming hordes of fireflies who had decided, upon seeing my face at the window, to present me with their Dance of the Fireflies that only fair few poets and luminary drunks across the entire force of land had had the pleasure of witnessing. So I drew the curtains. 2:15 eh? No wonder the activity was small. Not counting the fireflies, of course, who I could hear buzzing angrily outside, their anger pricked by the fact that no-one – no-one – had yet so far drawn their tiresome glowing proceedings to a justifiably premature halt. So, yes, quiet down on that street, disappointingly so. But then, what did I expect – a barrelful of noisy motherfuckers?

Do fireflies hum? My awareness of them still dancing outside could have been just as well conveyed by me, say, seeing little flecks of light occasionally flashing through the curtains. The visual, rather than the aural. The essence of their firefly-ness caught, retained and utilised.

Well, and. At this point, bored with staring at the occasional flashes of flick, or whatever it was, flashing through the curtains, I turned back to face into the room and was greeted by a couple of the liars rising. What you do there liars? I asked, reasonably, before waving them down with a quick gesture of my hand that expertly got across (or, conveyed, again) the basics of: Shut the fuck up, cunts, and get back to sleep! Oh, they understood alright, those damn liars.

But sleep? Ah, they were having none of it. And I couldn’t really blame them. Sleep? You know, every night I manage, on average, five or six hours sleep. And it’s just not enough. No wonder I feel terrible all the time. No wonder I’m such a bad-tempered, unpleasant git. No wonder I look like how I’m supposed to look five or six years from now. Then again, the curious thing is that my libido (or, rather, my interest in sex) grows in proportion to the amount of sleep I have. I mean, in reverse. So the less sleep I get, the more interested I am in sex. Small sleep, big libido. Little sleep, large libido.

Anyway. The fucking liars (as I now call them) were all wide awake by the time I’d finished ruminating on how interesting my lack of sleep was. Stirring and groaning still, they were making what can only be described as a right old racket. Jesus fucking Christ! I shouted, will you lying cunts keep the fucking noise down! Which, as I could have easily anticipated, only had the effect of waking my wife and upsetting and agitating the fucking liars even more. I tell you, at times like that I wish I were the sinking moon.

Cun Tombrey:
My wife and the moon. She a gaze up to the moon a night after night and say her wishes and prayer to it. I say to her, Jeannie, Jeannie, the moon is not God. And she look back at me, all eyes a tear, and she say: Georgie, that face on the moon is the face of God, you see? Look. So I look and I see the face but I don’t see no resemblance to God. How you know what God look like? she ask, my wife, and I concede she have a point. He could, that face, be the face of God. So I say my prayers to the moon and send up my wishes too. Ah, you cannot beat the moon, no.

My wife rises to her elbow, leans back, sardonically throws her hair across her left shoulder, smirks that smirk, grunts that grunt and says, what the fucking hell are you pricking about at now? Pricking about? I ask you, is that any way for a wife to speak to her husband? Apparently so, because she says it again: always pricking about, like the big prick you truly are. Shh, I say, you’ll wake the fucking liars. We’re already awake, they whisper out loud, in unison. They’re already awake, confirms my wife, probably because of all your pricking about.

No, but really, that pricking about thing was a new one on me. She must just lie there, thinking them up.

So she, my wife, abuses me some more. The fucking liars interject. I haplessly protest. And so it goes on, killing time for the next half hour by which time the fireflies have literally burnt themselves out, their empty carcasses having plummeted to the pavement below where they will be trodden in by children’s feet in the morning. Although one firefly, Freddie, will somehow stay alive. And he will also somehow be rescued by one of the kids who takes him home and nurses him back to health. And what happens is that they develop this perfect friendship which is marred only by the jealousies of the kid’s older brother – but even that gets, you know, resolved. So this friendship goes on and they have a few adventures. But something’s not quite right. The firefly doesn’t burn as brightly as he used to. So they top him up – by filling his abdomen or whatever – with luminous stuff. To no avail. And, of course, the reason he’s not shining as brightly as he once did is because he’s missing his friends and his family. His own kind. He has to go back to the firefly culture in order to survive. It’s all very well him trying to assimilate and carry on like a species traitor – not to mention sponging off the kid and taking advantage of his good nature – but there comes a time when every bear, I mean firefly, has to heed the call of nature and the bonds of family and do the right thing. Of course, if it was me, I’d have the kid saying something like: Fuck you then, what do I care – I’ve got my real mates too. Go on, get lost nobhead. But in this version – the real version – they kiss and hug and promise to see each other again. The ending, a sentimental tour de force, has the firefly providing light to the doctor who, while trying to remove an enormous tumour from the kid’s brain, suddenly finds himself plunged into darkness as a result of the power cuts generated (if you will) by the greed of those low paid motherfuckers who man the hospitals. So yes, the firefly lights up the room so the doctor can see to successfully remove the tumour that was literally seconds away from killing the kid. The last page, the two of them reunited, the kid in his pyjamas, a huge bandage round his head, the firefly perched on the end of his nose. Not a dry eye in the house.

Of course, while I’m imagining this scenario, tears rolling down the contoured valleys of my mottled cheeks, my wife wonders what the fuck she’s doing wasting her time talking to such a useless twat of a husband who, even as he’s being told off for pricking around, is still pricking around, albeit in his own mind. So she throws a shoe at me which bounces off my forehead. Clonk. What? I ask. Never mind, she says. Just never mind, okay, dickhead. Sigh. Just once I’d like to fall out with her without her calling me a name.

So I’m standing there, in front of the curtains, my wife quickly back to sleep, the fucking liars flagging, and I ask myself why I crawled out of bed in the first place. All this trouble prevented, maybe, had I simply stayed in bed. That’s right, says one of the fucking liars, you’d have been better off staying in bed. How did you know what I was thinking? I asked. We liars – or rather, fucking liars, as you now like to call us – know everything. The ins, outs and upside downs of everything. You see, many moons ago we

Cun Tombrey:
And the moon I say, Jeannie come see, look the moon! And we two stand there, the window, the clouds parting like two hands, the moon in all its glory. There, she say, ah, it is His face. Oh blessed moon, blessed moon! But this time I cannot take it so far. I say, Jeannie, I cannot do this. There is no God’s face in the moon. They are the footprints of astronauts. Americans. Yes, Jeannie? Yes, yes! she cries. You happy now? I know there’s no God in the moon. I know that. You think your wife is stupid, a simpleton. But I know. I see what I want to see. And God sees me seeing. He knows too. He knows better than you Georgie, better than you.

The fucking liars are fagged out and fast asleep. The talkative one, the one who told me how it came to pass that they could read minds, is particularly fast asleep. I prod him with my big right toe, dig it right into his eye socket. He remains asleep.

The thing is, at least I now know why the fucking liars are always asleep on my bedroom floor. My knowledge of that, of course, won’t prevent me from slinging them out. But at least I’ll do it with some small degree of remorse.

Too Late, She's Gone

What choice do you have but to gaze upon her? What choice do you have but to gaze upon her lovingly? What choice do you have but to gaze upon her comely frame and fashionable hat?

Look how death stains her windows. Look how she strives there to cut through the stains. The more she cleans, the more death stains.

What, viewers, can she do?

She can do nothing. So she sits there, in the window, an empty portrait. Passing before her, the carnival of street. Ratchet-faced girls on rollerskates, flashing their knickers. Full scrubbed boys of football taunts and broken bicycles. Of nothing much to interest her there.

Draw the curtains then, you silly old witch.

No, magic flower of heart and passion, fight to keep them open!

Top of the World

The wedding academy was in reality a robot academy that met on a four-weekly basis to discuss, under the cover of wedding pretence, their plans for world domination and destruction. Each meeting was scrutinised by the giant Robot Eye which linked the impressive Victorian splendour of Laidlaw Manor with the mechanical bigwigs on Planet Robot, some ten thousand billion light years away.

The mechanical bigwigs, the great Robot Council, all clockwork and spanners, whirred their way through the minutes of the previous week’s meeting. Please, they asked their earth-bound robot chums, tell us all that has happened over these past four weeks - are you any closer to taking over the earth? No your Mightyships, replied Spoony, the leader of the earth robots, we are no closer to taking over the earth. Until next time then, said the Robot Council. Yes sirs! saluted the young and eager Spoony.

Who listens to the Robot Council anymore, those elders of wires and bits, those rusty old crones? Not, for sure, the younger robots, all gleam and polish through gnashing electronic teeth and laser beams for eyes. With their oil-less drums, rotating gigs and streamlined wizards, it’s no wonder they have no respect. The paint jobs too, you can really see your face in them. A bit of spit and polish, a bit of lick and like. The younger robots glide down ramps and float over walkways. Water is no barrier to them, they steam right through it. Melded and welded and a wonder to the eye.

The elder robots within the earth-bound crew are dismayed that many of the younger robots are beginning to assimilate, what with their rock and roll and voodoo and interest in the pleasures of their human opposites. Anyone would think they no longer wanted to be robots. Those elder earth-bound robots are in the business of reporting back to the Planet Robot elders who have decided that enough is enough and that a secret quick invasion is needed to a) overthrow the earth and destroy the wretched earthlings, and b) get a grip on the younger robots and get them back in line. Of this imminent invasion the younger robots are not unaware. Oh, they may look daft and empty-headed, but those younger robots are as clued in and as taut as their elder robot brethren and chums. Wired tighter, and better even, without the drawback of rust and the lost dreams and scars of endless robot scrapes.

Young Robot 1: We’ve been here too long. We’ve come to respect our earthling hosts and, in truth, now regard many of them as friends. But don’t tell the elders – they’re a bit funny about things like that.
Young Robot 2: I like human girl flesh and even human boy flesh. The sexes mean nothing to us because we’re robots. I like the fact that humans are warm and soft, sensuous. You know, you can really feel them. It’s quite something. Something the elders just don’t understand.
Young Robot 3: It’s, you know, not fair. It’s like, you know, we know that the other elders are coming in from Planet Robot but we figure there’s no use getting worried. What are they going to do? They couldn’t fight us, the elder robots, because: WE WOULD CRUSH THEIR METAL EQUIVALENT OF BONES AND ORGANS!

Elder Robot: Damn your wide eyes and laser beams!
Younger Robots: Get fucked granddad!
The Robot Planet Council Elders of Mission of Pickup: That’s enough! Get them! Now!

Attack of the Planet of the Robots!
In true Technicolor Surroundsound and VistaVision Plenty!

See! The clash of the metal titans as the earth quakes beneath their feet!
Hear! The crunch of robot teeth!
Feel! The person next to you!
Die! You earthling scum!

Each Dawn I Die

I am one of the golden opportunities you never took.

How’s that then?

You recall your years as a child?

Yes. Yes I do.

I was that hazy thing in the distance.

Hey, were you the dream I had about the stone cellar steps?

It depends. What happened in the dream?

I was at the top of these steps looking down at the point where the steps curled behind the dusty brick wall at the bottom. I could hear huge booming footsteps rising and could see the flicker of candle light as it came closer. I sat there, in terror, knowing that at any moment something horrible would emerge from behind the wall. In the dream, I imagined – without actually seeing it – that the thing booming up the stairs was some kind of hideous simulacrum of my mother. It was all big teeth with bent crooked arms. But the thing, whatever it was, never actually materialised. It was the threat of it, the noise of it. I used to have that dream night after night.

No, that wasn’t me.

Were you the dream about the psychedelic escalator?

What was that?

It was a vision of the escalator that used to be in the old WH Smith on Wheeler Gate that is now, I believe, a Virgin Megastore. The same street where Sisson and Parker used to be. Ah, I loved Sisson and Parker. Anyway, the dream was that I’d walk into Smith’s, see the escalator and then stand unable to move as the whole scene flashed and pulsated in a wild blaze of psychedelic colours. Yet the escalator stayed the same. It was one of those old black and grey ones. Full of bulk and substance. And it was just one, that went down. Once on the lower floor you had to get back up by the stairs. There was no escalator back up.

No. That wasn’t me.

Were you the dream where I’d walk past Pepper’s, the barber’s, on Trinity Square and swing from the lamppost thing? Round and round I went, like an Olympic champion. At first the dream was a nightmare. It used to terrify me. But then I told myself to embrace it and enjoy the experience. I used to look forward to it after that.

Nope, that wasn’t me either.

What about the giraffes in the floor?

Giraffes?

My mam or dad would come up to my room, say goodnight and then turn my light off. I used to hate them turning my light off because I wanted to stay awake to read. As soon as they’d gone I’d get out of bed and head for the door. But before I could reach the light switch something would pull me down into the floor. Like a whole mess of giraffes and other zoo animals. It was horrible. Every night I’d try to get to my light switch before these things grabbed me. I never succeeded – they got me every time. And every morning I’d wake up in bed. To this day I’m not convinced that something strange didn’t actually, really, happen.

What do you mean?

Have you seen Rosemary’s Baby?

What’s that?

It’s a film. Roman Polanski.

No, I haven’t seen it.

What I mean is, I’m not convinced that I wasn’t, you know, somehow being interfered with. In reality. And that it was all so horrible I put it down to nightmares. You know, blocked it out. Like one of those repressed memories.

What? Sexually interfered with?

Maybe. I was, uh, quite sexually aware at a very young age. Not aware, more interested. I was quite sexually motivated. Very interested. I began to fantasise about sex when I was like five or six. Very young.

So who was fiddling with you? Your parents?

I don’t know.

It could have been something supernatural.

What?

You know, ghosts, demons. Satanic stuff.

Are you sure you haven’t seen Rosemary’s Baby?

Yes. Why?

Nothing.

Or maybe it was, like you say, your parents.

I didn’t say it was my parents. I said I didn’t know.

Why don’t you ask them?

How can I ask them?

Just, you know, tell them about the strange dreams you had and see if you get any reaction. If you do, ask them. Ask them why they fiddled with you.

I wouldn’t call it fiddled. It was a bit more than that. There were giraffes and everything. It was like a big, full production. Fiddled is just, well, a hand down the pyjamas isn’t it?

I wouldn’t know.

Neither would I.

Yes you would. You’ve just been telling me how you were messed about with all those years by your parents.

No I didn’t. It was just, just a dream. That’s all it was.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Sure?

Yes! Yes, I’m sure. Just a dream. A nightmare.

You’re right to believe that.

What?

That it was just a nightmare.

Why?

Because it was a nightmare.

How do you know?

You remember how I told you I was one of those golden opportunities you never took?

Yes.

That was me. I was your light switch.

What?

I was your light switch. I’d sit on the wall, night after night, willing you to turn me on. Willing you to flood your life with the light that only I could provide. And every night you failed.

Because of the giraffes?

There weren’t any giraffes. It was just you. You’d get out of bed, tip toe across the floor and then spaz out. You’d be rolling all over the floor, whining, groaning and carrying on. And then you’d crawl back to bed.

Really?

Yes.

Wow. So it was all just a nightmare then?

Sort of. Although let’s not forget the spazzing out bit. That wasn’t a nightmare. That was you being mad.

With Wings

The calling bell peals out across the dales, fens and marshes. The morning workers, fruitlessly toiling their lives away in orchards, valleys and hedge rows, sing out against the arrival of the morning’s first wind. Its direction?

Over the graves, leaves. Over the graves, windmills and teddy bears. Over the graves, dead flowers. Over the graves, warm recumbent bodies. Over the graves, God’s great beneficence. Over the graves, more sorrow than you’ve ever felt.

Hallelujah the church bells, also pealing. The flock, responding in rhyme and song. A walk up the paths, two either side, to the church doors, two either side. In the vast skies above, tickled by the playful touch of spire, more beneficence. Those of upward looking bent spy this beneficence and drop to their knees. As well they fucking should. Worms, if they had knees, would also do this.

Hannah Pan of graceful eyes and lilt is a mist this morning. Avoiding the throck and throng, she is all eyes a-smiling which lift her above the Godlessness below to heights those fools can only dream of. And yes, they might shield their pinhole eyes in disgusted terror. And yes, Hannah Pan floats somewhere above them, they’re sure, treading the undulations of gentle winds of colour and cool. She is all and more.

The wind this morning is a simultaneous appearance at both ends of the street. The street is dry and still. Above, the chime of the village clock. In the distance, a gathering storm of obfuscation. Soon, the heavy fall of allegory. No wind.

Come Fill The Cup

Gunningham’s large - (as in both terms of the sense: i) As defined by the Scold-Pool Scale in terms of scale, and ii) Taking into account the influential variances of a) chance, b) supermarket slips and c) rushwalls) - impressive canvases are first of all fashioned and beaten from designated layers of gappy pigment and gesso and punctuated by chance-would-be-a-fine-thing occurrences in the westerned surface as the rocky canvas splits like a wash and cracks open like a nutshell muse during the painful, though impishly prescient, drying process. As the heavily worked and motivated gesso is ever-so-blindly waxed and polished, the artist (or, perhaps more appropriately – [taking into account her age, social status (vis a vis and especially through that husband of hers), coattail hangings and lady-of-leisurely return to study as a result of a) being easily able to afford it, and b) having nothing else to do but indulge, indulge, indulge and give sense of urgency status to all manner of knocking witterings and tweets] - artist-manqué) regains a studied self-important sense of control as the areas of the surface become (amazingly) reflective, inviting a dialogue (dialogue! we ask you!) between scopophilic voyeur types - like you (and yours) and near (un)identified objects. The almost, but not quite, blackness and white, fissured ground suggests resentful resilience and delicacy and the rich, mannered pigment brings extraordinary depth and scaleable solemnity to the by now positively Faustinially ironic canvas. Gunnerton’s work is deeply, thoroughly and wholeheartedly moving (as in, i.e., through its 1. Emotional reach [on levels that neither the audience nor the fee-paying backers and prostitutional patrons could hope to understand] and 2. ‘Moving’ as in through the attempts to move forward – or even backwards – with, at the very least, the certainty of taking part in a flux or fusing with a tangible and palpably resplendent state of shiver and shake) in its attempt to arrest time, turn back the tides, accommodate (once again) flux (or, better still, work with the idealised, and stylised, post-Guillotine notion of ‘change/chang/chan/cha/ch/c’ as filtered through the glassy-eyed stare-system of the Danish School of Tripple-Down) and root itself inside and out by burrowing deep below the surface where, let’s face it, the likes of you (and all the thoughts you have ever held) reside. Moreover, Gunnhilde’s work possesses (before the pre-exorcism nub, at least) the monochromatic and black and whiteian discipline of Pencil Dans-Poosher and the disturbingly meticulous abstraction (via nu-metal bashings and sinks) of Locksley Lange. That, in itself - and notwithstanding the puffery obligates - cannot be a bad thing and is where, moreover, the locus lies by way of the tomfoolery and buffoonery that is a consistent, yet somehow always surprising, element of the work on display here – if, indeed, ‘display’ is the correct term for what is closer to a kind of gathering-happening/event-be-in thing.

By confronting, head-on, her as-yet-undiagnosed tapephobia (through the ironic burrowings and buried-aliveness of the actual, physical reality of her paint - which seems to sit beneath the canvas’s surface, desperately seeking escape) Gunnhoffer’s courage is permanently, and unironically - courageously, in fact - on display (if, indeed, ‘display’ etc…) for all to see. Organised around the central trope of what Stalin-Satin magazine has described as “hidden depths”, this entire exhibition/display/event gains added relevancy from its literal, concrete siting within a unique artspace unit that has heretofore existed as a kind of convergent area for local arts and crafts types operating within their own pre-defined – and determinedly backward-looking - realms. Working as a kind of three-dimensional, if you will, palimpsest, this unique artspace unit – the DoveSwanDove Gallery of St Peter’s Church Hall – affords the visitor the opportunity to experience Gunndaffer’s work within the framework (i.e. the space) of existing work by way of the still visible ‘amateurhour’ artobjects in the form of, e.g. watercolours and etc., by the various dizzies, crones and nutbags who constitute the local designated, and parish council funded, art foundation area/pondscum set-up co-op that has, for many years, been the bridge between the art truths of the urban dynamism of multicultural nous and wicked wisdom, and the more stoneaged fripperies and flitterings that come from the rural, backward, right-wing enclaves that, as we all know, make up the post-colonial, post-war, post-dynamic method of the countryside. In fact, Gunntester subverts the whole countryside relationship thingy by converting the implicit to the explicit through the asking (in the preparatory art notes accompanying the hand-lettered, individually numbered, steam-embossed exhibition catalogue) of what she believes to be one of the most fundamental questions of our time, thus: “Why do you think they call it the country?” And before, of course, the potential viewer/reader has time to ponder this question, or dance around its implied inferences vis a vis the whole business of rural conflations and heady juxtapositions - or even begin to formulate an answer that could reasonably be expected to meet the question on its own terms, from either a high/low moral standpoint or from a near/far position - Gunneysack replies (as if such a question could only be a rhetorical utterance) as quick as a flash: “Because it’s full of cunts.”

Captains of the Clouds

His name is Curly Waters. His story takes us from this point here to that point there. It is, as these things tend to go, a story of growth, of love, of celebration. It is a story that takes in, right at the start, the fact of him becoming an orphan. It also takes in, near the start and along the way, his younger sister, a couple of deadly enemies and the world at large. The world, in fact, at war. What a backdrop. What an occasional central character, intruding here and there. The ineluctable interference of history. I may even throw in a tiger.

Curly Waters on the stoop. His mother and father upstairs in their tenement apartment of brownstone building and rusty plumbing. They are of a particular nationality, newly arrived, struggling with all that is new, especially the language. No, especially the bills. During the course of a few pages this mother and father, sketched quickly and lovingly, are taken through their paces and take possession of a swift, sharp lesson in what happens when you fool around with the wrong people. Their naivety, touching and courageous, is ultimately their downfall. Curly on the stoop, clowning for his friends, hears the noise from above but, because this is a neighbourhood where noises are heard all the time, ignores the noise from above. What would have happened, he asks himself later, if he had responded to that noise? Would his parents have bled to death as they most assuredly did on their own bedroom floor? Would his sister have been caught in the ensuing carnage? That selfish bum kid, clowning around for the benefit of the full kaleidoscopic gang of kids, was too busy living, living, living while his parents lay dying. And him as new as they were. The date, coincidentally: 7 December 1941. The full pull of history. It starts here.

Curly Waters is caught in the blast as his apartment explodes, the building collapsing on top of, among many others, his four-year-old sister, still nestled in the protective arms of her already dead mother. Curly, his leg deep red, in obvious searing pain, scratches his way down through the rubble, ignoring the pleas of Father O’Brien and Officer Shaugnessy, his little sister down there somewhere, down there. The interchange between them as Curly’s horror and fear stands in contrived contrast to his sister’s placid acceptance. On he battles, on, as she resigns herself to the inevitable. Faced with the image of his dead parents, their shattered bodies grotesquely contorted in forms of desperate love, Curly prises open his mother’s tender fingers, releases his sister – who doesn’t want to go! we have to! they’re dead! – and makes the slow climb back up to the air. But quick, Curly, before the final explosion, the gas pipes, the backfiring car, the lit matches, the pilot light! Pulling his sister free into the open as Officer Shillelagh catches her, safe at last, safe at last, shhh now. But wait. Curly drops, passing out. His sister screaming her brother’s name, Officer Shannonie fighting hard to hold her back. Wake up Curly! As something through the fog touches him (maybe his dead parents, who knows?) imploring him to wake, to embrace life, to not give up, to live, to live, to live! The final few yards, through the fug of haze, passing in and out of consciousness, he crawls – clever boy – into an old refrigerator at the moment of boom, at the moment of enormous crash and thunder. At the moment that everything ends. The rain, the full flowering of the night sky, the illuminations, the grand fallout. And then silence. Cold, empty silence. The pause of death. His sister, somehow loose, roaming the rubble in search of her brother, who won’t give up no matter what Father O’Hara and Officer Shinglesham say. There, wait, there he is. There he is! Inside, prise it open, get it open! The wrong refrigerator, the wrong one! But where? And there, over there, balanced on the horizon, silhouetted against the moon, the right refrigerator, scorched black, its door asunder. Empty. No sign of Curly, no sign of – wait! There, by the gas pipe taking the life from him, pull him away, get him away, get that boy out of here!

Curly Waters, his sister and the war. From initial surprise to the end of victory. A few near misses. A brush with this and that. Sharing the war with a room full of cousins. With gangsters and the black market. A hustle here, a bustle there. Selling comic books, bagels, pretzels, shining shoes, riding the trolleys. Those two enemies, his parents’ murderers, are around here somewhere. Who are they? Ordinary thug gangsters? Vicious loan sharks? They are much more ambiguous. And perhaps not gangsters at all. Back there, the approach of the war. Old Europe. Intelligence. Spies. Double dealing. Red herrings. Doorways. Subway rides. Comic book fantasies. His German parents. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

After the war. Post-war Germany. East and West, mostly East. Reds under the bed. Curly in black and white, a young man in horn-rimmed glasses, working for someone, but whom? Big bakelite telephones. Trolley buses. Rows of Trabants. Black boots crimping snow. Cigarettes in phone booths. The endless spatter of rain against greasy windows. Puddles and car headlights. Crumpled writing on crumpled notepaper. Russians. Germans. The British. Silencers. Bodies in armchairs, bodies in baths. Glasses of whisky on the table, cigarettes burning holes in the floor. The deathly quiet of closing doors. Sneaking out in black and white.

Meanwhile, his sister on a farm in Connecticut. Growing up in the sun. A suitor in the form of a young man called Biff. Biff Grimes. Who is this Biff Grimes? asks Curly, as he steps, unexpected, through the farmhouse door. Years later, his sister asks him: What are you telling me about our parents and these men who murdered our parents? Yes, adds Biff, what are you telling us? That’s right, interject his sister’s kids – Louie, Tom and Isaac – what are you telling us about our grandparents and that?

England. 1963. They don’t actually meet, Curly and The Beatles, but a close look reveals a shared hotel, in Nottingham, with a splash of paint there, some chatter there. A flicker of appreciation. What a backdrop. The blossom from monochrome, the Technicolorisation of England’s cobbled streets. Another brush, years later. Toronto, 1969. With Al Capp at the bar, drunk, on Sadie Hawkins’ Day. Shmoo, says Capp. Shmoo!

In the light of that swinging decade, Curly, who is still a relatively young man (let’s see, 13 in 1941, 33 in 1961, 39 in 1967 – that’ll do) lives somewhat freer and a little more irresponsibly than he had previously done. Which means all the usual. And then history kicks him into the harsh reality of the seventies with his failed marriages, kids, drug busts, underground comix, poetry and all the introspection he can handle. A decade of recovery until the boom – there again, boom – of the eighties where something like the arrival of grandchildren or some long lost relative or lover brings with it a new interest, and new news, of that fateful day back in 1941. The way history ebbs, the way it flows. And how quickly too. So there he is, our Curly of the not-so-sparkling Waters, plunged back through time all over again.

Revisiting the past, Curly travels on a journey that is not only a voyage through his own suffering but also through the pain of the wider past. His omniscient eye, viewing from the safety of the present, compartmentalises and locks things down as truths. One, two, three it went. And then four, five, six. That Hitler, we knew he was bad. That Nixon, worse. Rations and hardship, the card sharps, the pool tables. Look at the way Hollywood has gone. Listen to the way the music sounds. Television. New greed. High rises, low rents. The death of everything. Etc.

His sister, in the meantime, dead. Biff watching helplessly – impotently (NB: see the later introduction of Viagra and the effect it has, both in the wider sociological framework and on the individual Biff, bless him) as his young sons make their way to Vietnam and come back from Vietnam pale imitations of their former cherry apple selves. Their added stories of horror and death. His daughter – the very epitome of all that is good in this drama and in the wider drama – somehow fails to make the most of this good. She falls short and, you know, it seems that that’s what’s going on here, a kind of vast falling shortness that nobody can avoid. So for a while they reach for something, discover that it’s out of reach, and then settle – happily – for the lower lying fruit. That’s where the goodness is, the richness, the nutrients, the life-giving thing – in that low lying fruit. Right there, dimwit, right in front of your vast and bulbous nose. Towards the end there is a coming together, a unity of at least the major players, if not the smaller spark.

But full circle, almost – the parallels are there – sixty years later. A new spark and the beginning of a newer journey. A moment to end on, like an ouroboros. But silence this time, for some reason, the only response. Silence as Curly Waters, now seventy-three years old, finds himself again, unbelievably – inevitably – crawling desperately, heroically, through the rubble.

Something to Sing About

There’s a world outside the poor room. A world you don’t understand. The thing to do with your sentimentality, your cheap barrelhouse stories, songs and films is to lock them up inside. Before you step through the door.

I cried the first time I saw The Strawberry Blonde. Even when I think of it now. In fact, now that I really think of it, there’s something about Jimmy Cagney that gets me right here. You could pick him up, Cagney, and put him in your pocket. But you couldn’t beat him.

There was a moment, at the bottom of our stairs, when Jimmy Cagney talked about the Irish cop who walked the streets when he was a kid. This cop who would shift his shoulders, thrust out his chin and quickly pull it back in again. It mattered a great deal, of course, that the cop was Irish.

There was also a moment, many moments, when Jimmy Cagney, his red hair somehow ablaze through the grain of black and white, stood on the steps of the Shakespeare Street registry office with my grandmother who was holding on for her life. As she continued to do until the too soon end, running her hands through his fiery hair in front of the fire, in front of the endless mantelpiece of the polished brass and glow.

A dry eye at the end of The Roaring Twenties? Impossible.

And on the table in the back yard, weathered, green and slimy, its age the first thing you notice, three large ashtrays overbrimming with cigarette butts that the now solo smoker cannot bring him or herself to empty away. If you look closely at those that haven’t burnt down to the brown you will see the exotica of long forgotten names: Player’s No.6, Carlton Long Size, Strand, Gold Leaf, Red Setter, Last Call. Plus two chairs by the table still, ever the hopeful.

As they always say, because it’s the right thing to say, the old songs are the best. Caught beneath the ceiling of cigarette smoke, the catch at the back of the throat, the pub passageway is alive with singers who, for absolutely nothing, will treat you to the songs they call their own. That was mam’s song. That was mam’s favourite. Not art, not quite. But at the very least the beginning of art. Easy to understand, to live through, those songs with their pull at the heartstrings, specifically designed to go with a glass of milk stout, a burning cigarette and the slow run of mascara. It was something to remember that has long been forgotten. Even on the bus ride home. With that old gang of mine.

The dark comedy to be had in puncturing these sentimental contrivances is, of course, the sport of kings. Because it is the elaboration of reality, the best way to cleanly represent the vast mundanities of the real – and to present (from the vantage point of lofty) the little man as some kind of noble hero in his own grandiose narrative – that is the preserve of those who, literally, don’t get it. Don’t let them fool you, however well they say it, however well they dress it up. They will never get it because they never had it. Only true peasants can see through false peasant lies.

Still, how do we tread the golden path back, back, back without veering off course or coming a cropper on a loose nugget?

At the very beginning of art there is a doorway through which you know you can or cannot pass. The door is either open to you or it is closed to you. You’ll either be waved through with words of encouragement or you’ll be sent back from where you came. The only way through, if you’re not allowed through, is to slip in, when no-one is looking. Better still is to look for the hole in the fence.

You cannot impose sentimentality. Nor take it from its source and attempt to send it back, cleverly disguised. The run from sentimentality is a run that is made until you tire. It’s when you’re resting that it catches up, surprising you yet again with its potency. You’ve come this far, all these miles, all these years, and that song, that voice, that photograph, that book, that smile, that film, that wink, that memory still, still has the strength to destroy you.

On the table in the back yard the carved initials of two young lovers from years past who, though no longer lovers, were for a time the most passionate, devout lovers you could ever hope to see. A small time, in the earliest days of their youth. There is, of course, the sheer fact of the passage of time to consider, as well as the automatic response to the elderly. But the truth of that love affair now, looking back from these years, is that it was grand and passionate and new and startling and frightening at exactly the same time that it was banal and silly and ordinary and absolutely doomed. These two young lovers, fleeting with their passion, are the very best that has been thought, said, written and otherwise. They are as good as it gets and much, much better than it gets. Especially from here, now that they have been rendered within new forms. Now that they can so easily be recognised. You can hear them, and see them, out there still.

The way the moon sits sometimes, afraid in the sky. The scorch of the clouds as they stretch by. Through the glass, your own reflection as a face upon the moon. Through the floorboards below, the laughter and the songs you realise are old. Old songs even while they are new. The tales they tell of unrequited loves and mourned deaths, the loss of everything, of youth and family, old pals and loves. The sheer torture of just being alive and how the pain, the pain can only be worn inside. For to reveal the pain would be to betray the smile upon one’s lips, the glint in one’s eye, the pleasures of the day. But through song the optimism of two chairs, two ashtrays, the still deep marks of lovers’ initials intertwined. The sigh of the stars.

The sneer towards sentimentality is the sniff from the back garden of culture. Never mind the screams from the house. You carry your sentimentality through the gate at your own risk. It can never go back. You surrender what you were, your first beginnings of art. You soon become something new. A betrayal of sorts. But what choice did you have?

The Strawberry Blonde no longer plays as a film. It is a still, a collection of stills, underwritten with the autographs of its leading players: James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, Jack Carson, Alan Hale. Its time is not my time nor even its own time. Those stills are brief snapshots of the way things could, and should, have been. You look at Jimmy Cagney and he breaks your fucking heart.

Clogged With The Dead

At night my tongue falls into my throat, spreading across my teeth so that I often, in sleep, bite into it. Swollen, sluggish and slain, it saves me from new adventures in speech. It is possibly nature’s way of telling me to shut up. But living beneath the moon I sometimes forget what I’m trying to forget.

There are dreams in these limpid pools beneath the moon. Occasional frond shadows that paint appropriate pictures for the night. The wind is a cut from the moon, a delicate movement, an ice kiss on the back of my neck. Whenever I look into the moon I somehow look into your face.

The last time we met I was troubled to realise how old I’d grown. That although many years had passed me by they had somehow, in their passing, left cruel, indelible marks. It troubled me to know what I looked like, although I did nothing to hide this. Except, as you will recall, when I took the moon at its promise and arranged to meet you by the soft whisper of its distant light. The moon, sleeping, its face not peeping. I was, as you will recall, the perfect picture of our uncertain past.

But the make-believe of dreams is shortened by the stab in my throat. You’re still gone and I wake knowing that you’re gone. Outside, the rush of the night, the sway of closing doors, the familiar push of passers-by. The moon its own mirror.

This way lies not just madness but also certain death and pain. I have no idea where I am. The eyes are out there, watching, hysterical madness a touch away, a howl upon their lips. The moon in its infancy throws a tantrum across the sky.

No home too fancy can afford to be without the innovative Solaroof skylight that opens up new possibilities of skygazing, including the treasures of the day and the pleasures of the night. That vast panoply! For the same price – and for a limited period only – you get: the sun, the moon, the clouds, the stars, passing jets, passing birds, buzzing flies, falling leaves, balloon rides, parachute jumps, glider rides, helicopter sparks, rainbows, coloured air, fairy dust, superheroes and supervillains. What’s more, and as an added bonus, you’ll receive the complete collection of unidentified floating things - plus all the tawdry jetsam you are more than welcome to. Even better, the reflection of the earth and all those wishes, hopes and dreams as they flash past on their way to the moon. Yours for the keeping.

The moon is the headstone in the graveyard of the night, the blister on the Brown Bomber's fist. The ‘o’ in the middle of alone.

Decanting Claret

The forbidden joys of a certain type of female eroticism are explored through the fire breathing showmanship of Rainmaker Drummond - Master of Flames, Leader of Gangs and Spire of Steeples. And also, especially for the ladies, a quick stab at palmistry:

This line here, the long one, means you will live to be seven hundred and forty two years old and dark strangers will rap at your door – today, yes – and money, I see money, oh, you’ve a beautiful line there, a long line, money will come too, through the door with the dark stranger, a man, a good-looking, kind and wonderful man with his bountiful gifts to you wrapped in – yes, a very long life with many, many children and grandchildren, yes, and travel – gifts and money and silver and gold wrapped in ermine and, and, and you will be happy and very rich and very happy, a blessing, you will be very blessed, very blessed.

In Drummond’s work the intermingling of the classical and the commonplace is often mistaken for _______. Except on those occasions when he forces _____ to meet _____ head on. It is then that Drummond’s ‘artistry’ can be correctly described - as it often has been – as a “metaphorical battle for the senses.”

But wait. Drummond’s theatre of carnival is surely best experienced at weekends in pub and shopping centre car parks? Such as his recent appearance in Lowestoft, where his shamanistic antics attracted the attention of local law enforcement officers.

Master of Flames: Like Johnny Storm, Jim Hammond or Toro? Not a hope. There are no sparks from his flint. No fire from his fire. No orange in his claw.
Leader of Gangs: In a way, yes. Through intimidation and fear. All that Manson, Jim Jones bullshit and all those girlies, falling to him one by one. Absolutely delicious.
Spire of Steeples: Yes. Rolled into one.

Rainmaker Drummond was so named to signify – in the clearest possible terms – what a nauseating hippy he truly was. In many ways his name was a blessing for those faced with the task of having to describe him. It saved time. Because scratching a hippy reveals all manner of terrible, although perfectly obvious, things.

A Crown Court Judge said to Rainmaker: “You are a self-centred, insensitive person and you do not care for other people.” But look how nice I am, Rainmaker replied. Look at the nice things I do and the nice things I say. I am a nice person. Everybody says so. Ergo everything I say and do must be good and true. My niceness, such as it is, should be the cloak that protects me from analysis. The wall of flame that protects me from criticism.

A twirling staff of flame flies around Rainmaker’s body as he staggers violently, lurches forward, into the crowd of screechers making up the crowd of spectators who -

- who are standing there because they want to see a nauseating hippy juggling sticks of fire. Possibly there are a few who are here to see this long-haired berk set fire to himself. But most are there because they’re actually interested in that kind of thing. Who are these people?

But Rainmaker lurches forward into the crowd that screeches and scatters as he swings his staff, threatening his audience with death by fire and death by cancer. I am Shaman! he shouts, flee from me! So they do. Later, having had four of his lighters confiscated by the police, he sets fire to the toilet roll in his cell, using a fifth, and carefully hidden, lighter. Thankfully, the police brutalise him into meek submission.

Outside, earlier, Rainmaker was a ritual of power and dance. He didn’t call himself Rainmaker for nothing. One dance: rain within eight weeks. Guaranteed or your money back. (Hippies and money, yes.) And then, having conquered the heavens, a new concept of wetness as explored through the liberating power of fire. You’ll burn, baby, burn, as he put it, and feel yourself anew. Hold out your hand:

I see a journey and a passionate, oh, a passionate love affair with a man, no, yes, maybe a man, but also maybe a woman. Thrilling and exciting and your life will change, you’ll never – no – you’ll never look back. And you’re doing, I can see, things you never dreamt you’d do, travel, yes, and love but sex, sex also, you’re a very passionate, yes, and you, you, this line says you will find a new you, yes, like being reborn, yes, exactly like being reborn, reborn by love, passion and sex.

So to the forbidden joys of a certain type of female eroticism. Lesbianism, obviously. With vampires, heavy red curtains and a touch of the mystic. The Rasputin effect, the eyes, the beard, the heavy breathing, the comedy accent, the staff, the flames, the sole source of light. The shadows flicker, or dance, on the walls. A music, a pulse, a tip tap as the heat rises. Rainmaker, incandescent, pisses his pants and bursts into flames.

And soon after attacks passing shoppers. Casts spells upon the police. Sets fire to his cell. In court his lawyer explains his terrible childhood – a shocking catalogue of rapes, beatings and psychological humiliation from the age of eight to thirteen. Which is why he became a lawyer. As for Rainmaker, it’s revealed that his childhood was strikingly similar. And all at the hands of nuns. (We’re really saving time here.) But the Judge is having none of it. He says, as previously reported: “You are a self-centred, insensitive person and you do not care for other people.” To which Rainmaker trots out all the crap about him being a nice person etc. As if being a pathetic, ingratiating simp would be enough to excuse him. The very idea.

Twelve months he got. “Eroticise this you twat!” shouted the Judge as Rainmaker was dragged from the court room and tossed into the fire retardant bowels of _____.

Voor Alle Goede Dingen

Some are still surprised by the showers of rain, the elongated vowels, the failing eyesight and the early creep of the dark. Van Nistelrooy, however, is not surprised by any of this. That is, Van Nistelrooy, the overly-sensitive creep (a different kind of creep) of footballing fame and zen.

Not caring anything about football, this creep Van Nistelrooy is free to roam as much as he pleases – his footballness means nothing here. Except for those moments when he will be required to, as they say, put one in the back of the net. Or to help stop one going in the back of his own net. I forget (or rather, I never knew in the first place) his position.

Forward Van Nistelrooy is a lightning zip between legs and a dance over thousands of pairs of what seem like – in the face of his lightning zippiness etc. - boots of iron. The ball, here. Van Nistelrooy, there. Miles between them. But zip. Oh yes, the back of the net my son!

Or Van Nistelrooy in defence, facing down his opponents with all the courage and strength of a - a what? - a kind of, y’know, a kind of a Dutch grizzly bear. Look at him. I wouldn’t want to tackle that. No way.

Do they still say tackle?

I’ve just looked him up. A big-chinned fucker. Good looking in the way that a bit of money and expert grooming can make any droopy-eyed, big-chinned fucker seem good looking. He’s a striker. A goal scorer. I’ve no idea how he, or his team, Manchester United, are doing at the moment. There was a noise, I noticed, about him going to AC Milan at the end of the season. About how he’s definitely (not) going to AC Milan.

Let him go. Who cares?

Van Nistelrooy has got one of those funny little sponsorship cars that he drives around the city, advertising the sights and sounds of Club Patankin, Med DJ nights and something called Pole Dance Sunbathing. The basic principle being: We’ll bathe you in our unique ultra violet solar light while you writhe around exotically – erotically – naked, of course – for the benefit of our male – and no doubt some female – club punters. What you get in return is a free tan – a free all-over tan – while we get happy punters and no money going from our bank account into yours. Winners all.

Van Nistelrooy’s agent has negotiated, with advertising and marketing people, all kinds of superb contracts and deals that will net him something in the region of three million pounds. These deals and things mainly involve him, Van Nistelrooy, hauling his arse around the country to turn up to every tin pot gala, event and opening. Plus adding his name and image to things like Fray Bentos and Spuds ‘R’ Us.

At home and in his spare time, Van Nistelrooy likes to listen to audio recordings of poets reading their own work. He especially likes the recording of TS Eliot booming his way through The Waste Land. While driving, however, he favours only the tones of Robert Frost reading various of his poems, including The Road Not Taken. With adverts for clubs, DJs and pole dancing on the side of his car - along with Robert Frost on the stereo - Van Nistelrooy driving is, as anyone can see, a most preposterous and unlikely figure.

However, apparently, on the football field he is something else entirely. Forbidden from wearing his iPod, and thus deprived of his beloved poets, Van Nistelrooy has no choice but to apply himself to the matter in hand.

Some essential stats:

Games Played: 290.
Games Won: 289.
Games Lost: 1.
Goals Scored: 98,000.
Hair Colour: Dark brown.
Chin: Thick, bulky, shadow casting, obvious.
Club: Manchester of England and Dutch national of Holland international.
Music: Alexander O’Neal, Curly Watts, Nicholas van Hoogstraten.
Films: Luger, Blind Date, In The Interest of the State, Submission.
Cartoons: Anna & Bella, The Water People, Tomfoolery.
Yellow Pages: Amsterdam, 1977-78 & Lisbon, 1989-90.
Chicken: Deep fried, in breadcrumbs, peppered.
Mint Sauce: Sainsbury’s Finest.
Wife: Leontine Van Nistelrooy.
Bath Tub: Victorian, Armitage Shanks.
Fruit-based Dessert: Apple beignets.
Curling Tongs: Russell Hobbs.
Frat Boys: John, Clem, Divvy and Deek.
Mouse Holes: Two in the kitchen, one in the hall.
Eggs: Free range. Half a dozen.
Greek Myth: The Labours of Heracles.
Spider-Man: John Romita.