Chart / November

This year is tearing ragged holes in my routine. I write, I stop for a day, I write again for a few days, I stop again. When I sit at the computer the words emerge as they always have done; when I’m away from the keyboard my mind is blank, devoid of any real-world impulses or energy or cues that I can latch on to and gain motivation from and build in to whatever world it is I’m trying to give a veneer of authenticity. I’m reading more than ever, but it doesn’t have the same effect as overhearing a conversation in a bar, pressing my face up against new situations and cultures or listening to other people spin their own stories.

It’s a lean period for inspiration, in other words. And that barren-looking stretch through till spring doesn’t look too promising.

Book of the month: DISPATCHES by Michael Herr. "Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar." How do you top a sentence like that? It tells a mini story, sets the scene and overall tone and plays with grammar conventions, all within the space of 20 words. Essential post-Ballard, pre-Gibson proto- neo-noir New Journalism.

Cosmic music beamed from Space Radio Luxembourg:

1. Redshift - Redshift

2. AL-90 - Experienced Girl

3. Squarepusher - Midi Sans Frontieres

4. Dark Sky - Othona

5. Auscultation - Promise You’ll Haunt Me

6. Thool - Tepu

the magic bus.

Chart / October

You know, when you take away art, sport, culture and recreation and leave only work to fill the void, you deal lasting damage to the soul. But this is what the German government has decided to do - again. Because we fetishise economies and venerate GDP, we lose sight of the opportunities that a crisis such as this pandemic can bring. Instead of slowing down the wheels of production and loosening the shackles that bind us to desks and production lines, we tighten them - times are hard and people are dying, but we must work, because we have to keep the economy going. We double down on the misery that puts a stain on every waking day of our lives. That means it is acceptable to continue to go to offices and meetings and public forums (yeah, some people are working from home, but many aren’t), and it is acceptable to continue sending children to schools so they can continue their 13-year indoctrination. The real scourge, meanwhile, is the small bar on the corner, run with passion by somebody who barely survived the summer and now has to watch their business die on its feet. They’re the ones responsible for spreading the virus, aren’t they, with their limited seating, strictly enforced spacing and gallons of disinfectant.

What will happen over the next four months is the fulfilment of Orwell's warning that "You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." When we emerge from this next four-month block, there will be far fewer leisure institutions than ever for us to choose between. The playground’s gonna become a wasteland.

Blues for the grey future:

1. Yaeji - My Imagination

2. The Soft Pink Truth - Grace

3. Sewerslvt - Lexapro Delirium

4. Blanck Mass - No Lite

5. Machine Girl - Out by 16, Dead on the Scene

6. Quantic, Denitia - You Used to Love Me

7. AL-90 - Smena Stadiy

obsolescence still life

Pandemic Diary (part II)

It is SO difficult to scratch out even 1,000 words a day. Thus: PANDIARY.

20 Mar

My bald mate brought his Xbox over to me today on a mercy mission. I pretended I was a secret agent in Cold War Berlin as he screeched into the street and jumped out of the car with a mask on. The fantasy lasted until he handed me a big blue IKEA bag. Bonus: Found out I suck at computer games now. Actually said the words “it’s just too fast” while shaking my head. Well done, Granddad.

21 Mar

Amazing how phone calls – the 21st century equivalent of getting a telegram – are a thing again. I didn’t even know what my ringtone sounded like until this started. My oldest friend video-called me for the first time since 2005, and he talked about his biggest fear in all of this: that the Premier League season might still get finished later this year. He’s a Spurs fan, so that’s understandable. “We were in a flat spin before fucking corona saved us” were his exact words.

22 Mar

The lockdown starts at midnight. With that weirdly normal threat in mind, I left the house with my camera and took some photos. Saw two women sitting by the kerb four metres apart with a bottle of prosecco between them. Reminded me of that film where two soldiers parachute into a minefield and can’t move so they shout at each other instead. One species that has done alright from all this is the cyclists. They were loving it, bombing down the middle of the road with no fear of a Karen in an SUV casually killing them as she turns without looking. We’re living in the age of Sick Wheelie, Bro.

23 Mar

Whoever invented the burpee was a sadistic bastard. In a hundred years’ time – if human beings are still around and we’ve managed to sidestep the whole death-by-climate thing – people will visit the Museum of Fitness and see a lifelike hologram doing a burpee and they’ll go, “wow, they really hated themselves back then.” And the hologram will look at them coldly and say, “Summer bodies are made in the winter”, and then do some more burpees while holo-muttering motivational phrases to itself.

24 Mar

This is mos def the longest I’ve gone without touching another human being. All I need now is a Nirvana hoodie, skin like the underside of a Ryvita and a shit haircut and I could be 16 again. I’m working on the latter: I chopped a lot of my fringe off with a pair of scissors. Then I had a go at the sides. Kind of look like a Benedictine monk now. Maybe I should start praying. Or making beer. I’m a little worried about the guy across the road from me. He’s moved into his living room and has been lying on his couch in a sleeping bag since Friday. Maybe he’s trying really hard to turn into a butterfly.

the bikes shall inherit the earth

Pandemic Diary (part 1)

Given the current ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ situation, I’m finding it a little difficult to sit down and write anything that seems remotely worthwhile. Steven Pressfield didn’t cover this in The War of Art. Put it in your revised edition, Steven.

Anyway, I’ve decided to keep a diary for the time being. How long is the ‘time being’? That’s the joy of this whole thing: nobody has an answer. Maybe I’ll write my final entry next week. Maybe it’ll run and run for six months. Maybe I’ll get sucked into a YouTube hole well before then and never emerge again.

Here is my Pandiary.

14 Mar

The last waltz before the band all get sick and die of pneumonia. I walked from Alexanderplatz to Kottbusser Tor after being glued to the news for 10 hours. Perked up a little when I saw there were no death squads in gas masks hunting down the weak yet. At a friend’s house we drank Champagne and it felt like that scene in The Road when the boy and his dad share a can of Coke in a ransacked fitness centre. As I recall, it pretty much goes downhill from there.

15 Mar

First full day indoors. Usually I’d love not getting messages saying “yo dude u wanna hang later?” but now, like a hostage with Stockholm Syndrome, I miss them. Finished Moby-Dick. Turns out the whale was Ahab’s dad. Watched Steve Austin’s debut WWF match, discovered Triple H’s ring name used to be Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Sounds like a legal firm you’d hire to make sure you win everything in a divorce settlement.

16 Mar

Like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, I broke out of quarantine in the evening and headed for Switzerland. Got as far as Prenzlauer Berg. Despite the ban, one bar was open. A couple of utter Charlies wearing gilets were sitting outside drinking white wine and staring at anybody who walked by with a kind of white-hot smugness in their eyes. On the way back to prison, a guy on a bike with a beer in hand shouted at groups of people as he pedalled by. “You’re all gonna die! All of you! You’re zombies and you don’t even know it yet.” He brought a smile to my face. I returned home with fresh energy. Then I lay on the couch.

17 Mar

Did this day even exist? Or was it just a thought experiment where I imagined how boring a Tuesday could possibly be and then somehow made it happen? Kind of like when Albert Hoffman accidentally synthesised LSD and smashed his mind to pieces on it, except instead of fractals and ego-death, I got urgent translation requests and coronavirus memes on WhatsApp. I’m cracking.

18 Mar

Met up with my boxing trainer in desperation to see a human face other than the haunted one in the mirror. Went to the park with his dog. Place was like a May bank holiday: kids running around with their grandparents (aww), teenagers grilling and drinking, and super pumped dudes gurning at each other as they shared the only pull-up bar for 5 km. We watched them for 20 minutes from a safe distance and then went home for a cry.

19 Mar

Had my first ever filling. I told my dentist it was my highlight of the week. I think she thought I was joking. The drill burrowing into my decaying tooth reminded me what it means to feel. When she was finished, I wanted to beg her for a root canal, but I wandered home, my face as numb as the idiots in the park.

took this in 2014 on xmas day. weren’t no people out at that time either.