Teddypicker

Hello. I'm in an internet centre for an hour or three. If I had internet access at home I'd spend too long on the machine but without access I play guitars and make music so that's cool.

Yesterday, first day of Glasto, I worked at a one-day music festival up at Newhaven Fort. That was pretty cool. Nice to be around people in bands, some of them behaving like pop stars and some behaving like down-to-earth people. This young girl was being bullied by some older lad at the gig and she got upset but by the end her and her mates were all excited, talking about forming a band. The kind of buzz I get from that beats the stardom aspect of pop music for me.

Last weekend was hairy as fuck. Brighton. Brighton is my birthplace but it is also one manic and troubled city. The trash glam of a Saturday night. It was scary. So this weekend it's a joy to have a free diary and a peaceful weekend with some red wine and Glastonbury on the telly.

I don't begrudge Glastonbury like I used to. It's good that it happens. It shows people that it is out there and very possible, the idea of living a very relaxed and accepted/accepting existence on earth, living within nature wiith nothing more important to do than make music at a day's end. I'm glad people get the chance... for three days, for £165. And I enjoy watching it on telly.

The shopping thoroughfares of Brighton are rowdy and hot today. People look at me like I'm dangerous. Probably the hat. I like the lyrics to LCD Soundsytem's 'North American Scum'. The guy sings something like...

I don't know why you look at me that way
We are North Americans
You think if you act shy it'll all be okay?
We are North American Scum

I put Bridge Street flats through the mill a bit last night and this morning with the noise. Newhaven is such a beautiful place. A quiet village, really, which at times seems very happy. I've been making many friends. I'm looking forward to getting back there today.

Right, here's a video. It's 'The Legionnaire's Lament' and just looking at it now... I loved that city, Hull, but I had been there so long and I was, in a different way to the narrator of this song, also missing my homeland, I think.



I have scarier videos of me in Hull and in Newhaven too. When I look at myself on film it becomes easy to see why people, not people, young women maybe sidestep me a bit or don't quite treat me as boyfriend material. I can look pretty unhinged as many regular readers would probably acknowledge. In this next video, 'Newhaven Fort', though, I am in a calm and relatively cheerful mood. This was filmed about a month ago.



The digitalisation (?) is set to the wrong parameters on that one. Anyway, I look like I've had a year or four hundred of drinking. The alcohol's not been easy. I have to be watchful with my drinking but I am doing that now and getting more nights off.

So. Let's have a game on the teddypicker, I reckon... Have a fun weekend, everybody.

The Latest on Benjamin

Hello. Popped into an internet cafe on the London Road in Brighton to let you know where I'm at.

'It's the summer, man, come slouching towards Bethlehem' is Conor Oberst, otherwise known as Bright Eyes, riffing on Yeats. You know, the season to be high and worry about the bible, amongst many many other things I can do. But it really seems to be going rather swimmingly, I gotta' write.

Two weeks of very gradual moving into my new flat in Newhaven. Last night was the first time I slept there. It's a very sexy little place, I think... no damp to mention yet, anyway, and it's on the top floor of this old brick building above a Chinese takeaway looking down upon Newhaven Social Club, bang in the centre of the lovable little town.

The best thing about it is my neighbours beneath are two young females who seem to come from the planet Rave, which is a real comfort to know.

While moving, I have been working pretty hard. I really really like working at youth club. We're hoping to get some funding to run some music workshops in time, which will probably be delightful and actually give some of the kids around this way a dream or two to focus upon.

The White Hart pub is wonderful. Arms aloft, dancing on tables, some crazy Abba on a night out with Oasis vibe... yeah!

And I'm getting more technically adept at the guitar all the time. I purchased a new electric model last week and am really enjoying playing at the moment. And my idea is to write the lyrics when I'm off it in the summer and work on the tunes when I get depressed in winter. Something like that.

I have crazy videos I could show you and picturesque tales I could tell but I shall leave them for another time, I think.

Congratulations Hull! I really did enjoy that football match finishing. And the Dean Windass goal and the Sky commentator's (they actually found somebody skilled with literacy for this game, which was an unusual surprise) report on it as 'The fairy godfather with a wave of his right boot' has put Hull up etc etc. A very pretty metaphor, I thought. I like metaphors and stories and dreams.

And, as ever, I'm trying to eat, trying to sleep, trying to self-medicate the Olanzapine carefully, trying to drink less and intending not to crash this time around.

Flushed Chest

I like making films but I don't like Windows Movie Maker. Here's a little something.

Flushed Chest
Uploaded by SixteenMothers

Primal Scream

I have noticed from this latest dose of high-ness just how much of it is ego. I don't feel bad about this.

I am often a fairly meek and submissive person so all this talk of 'coming alive', it's about flipping over into a dominant personality maybe. I become that little brat of a three year old again. There is anger here and I channel this energy, the primal scream of the universe, into my work. I love it.

trouble east of eastbourne

'and it cheers my heart to always hear you calling
calling for the good old days
because there were no good old days
because these are the good old days'

may we rejoice for pete is free and clean of drugs, so i'm told

all the lyrics oh yes the bank holidays that come six times a year no less coolio's comment about england being a strange country everybody is miserable then the sun comes out and it feels like you are on drugs that seems insightful to me. here is a story like the good old days of when the sun shines and when the sun goes down.

i'm up about seven, hoovering the house and raving to my walkman. still a real rush to catch the train at twelve and me and some friends are on our way to the green man festival in hastings while lads in the beautiful blue and white stripes visit crawley to see if the albion can pick up a trophy this season (we win 1-0). sometimes iLoatHetRains.

we arrive in hastings, get a smoothie for breakfast and head through a crowded town centre to one of the scariest scenes i have witnessed in a long time.

on the beach. my mate andy likes being on camera. i think he looks quite super hans, him of the 'this crack is really moreish' line.

getting up the castle for the festival is a laugh. all these horrible motorbikes flying by, kids with butterfly wings singing fatboy slim songs. and lots of green people. i get to the entrance and realise i have no cash in my pocket but, to be fair, i'm nervous of... I don't know... 3pm and the 'slaying of the jack'... a bit like with penalty competitions in the world cup say. this is called anxiety. i'm happier looking for an off licence.

next i become lost in a snooker club in my search for alcohol. few off licences in town centres, no bad thing, just a little frustrating on occasion. in the toilets these lads are talking about how they should take up smoking weed again: 'it's like the olympic flame, we shouldn't let it go out'. lovely young couple in the street come up and talk about my sunglasses which they like. if they're reading i think those spectacles ended up in the toilet of the hastings arms but i can't be sure. i was well lucky to retain my mobile phone and camera... well lucky.

anyway, i find threshers, climb the hill once more and discover something that looks like a capitalist peace camp if that phrase is not oxymoronic. the views are stunning.

fantastic and colourful figures part of the festivities we really came to see. i also shot six or seven seconds of footage where this girl in a bright yellow dress just jumps into the camera and twirls around. britain's got talent! but you don't get to see that i'm afraid.

of course i'm well oiled by this point. we hang out in the top garden of the jenny lind having deep conversation for a while. moving on, we act out the roles of drunk students.

i'm too drunk and tired to film much after that. some of my friends (there were more of us than just me and andy) go home but i stay on not trying so hard to keep myself from falling back into the bad old ways.

me and my new friend, we hang out in dragon where there's a dj playing a nice set of funk and soul records actually. this is the peaches gig but she isn't around. it gets late and they don't mind us staying around for the lock in. we sit and watch people popping downstairs for the white line. i am blessed to not have a strong desire for this stuff which i try not to take because i have noticed how very addictive it is.

and then a lot of people kind of arrive and then a girl is... i don't know... we give each other flirty looks and then she just kisses me quite a bit. i don't give myself up entirely to the kiss because there's loads of people around. she's sexy, though, and pretty crazy in the usual way also. been a long time since i kissed a girl.

we lose touch and people drift off and the street party winds down. i make a move and head to the beach where i've been told there's a little rave around a fire going on. surprisingly i find it with ease.

i get maybe twenty minutes of dancing there and then the cops arrive and just give us some headlights which seems a signal for the dj to pack all his kit away. i sit around the fire with people i don't know. they're a pleasant crew, pleasant to me, but... you know, it's too late in the evening to be making friends now.

i walk. i'm not going anywhere. i'm looking for a shop to sell me some nicotene but there's nothing open. i'm just walking up the road. a car pulls up near me. there are two nice kids in it, mid twenties, male and gay. we begin to trust each other a bit, as friends. they give me some cigarettes, yes they do, and (somewhat perversely) take me to bexhill railway station where i sleep for an hour or two in a phone box.

so you've read the story. the film may come along sometime soon. it's been hard tussling with windows movie maker and this information clogged router-tooting-computer. i've been working hard and, at last, wednesday evening, i am tired. in the absence of my latest film you could check out some of mike skinner's from the streets. they make me laugh.

People are afraid to merge on the freeway ¹

Recently I have made a considered effort to appear to the public as one of those men who Guardian journalists might quite possibly suggest are a little strange and sad for dressing in the apparel more associated with boys and girls much younger than themselves.

I fear turning into one of those public drunks who stagger around with a bottle of whatever, desperate for conversation. These men can scare me but they delight me too with their joyful bursts of enthusiasm and hilarity. I guess they have re-learned how to laugh but have not re-learned how to cry.

I have recently been reading the selected writings of Peter Doherty. I find them not dissimilar to some of my notebook writings from the late 1990's. A preoccupation with very similar themes, I suppose. Doherty is more literate and more poetic and... er... works harder, folk; he seems more focused than me.

There are some wonderfully insightful lines in this book. I heart the following:

"Self-analysis is a tricky area. Under this dandyish, frivolous, artistic exterior sits a pensive, ordered fellow - under whom lies an even dandier, camper chap. And so on."

I feel like I am recovering. I have been enjoying many tunes and lyrics just lately, particularly the sublimely named Suburban Kids with Biblical Names. They "want the trumpets and violins to play". They "want revolvers and adrenaline today," which sounds rather macho in print. Anyway, this is how I feel around the middle of a sunny spring day.

Perhaps not so differently from the troubled boys of my patch firing air pistols on the grounds of little frequented public service buildings, nor from the youthfully agile cops who swoop out in their squad cars - with 'POLICE' spelt backwards on the bonnets - to quell such disturbance. The Fahrenheit 451-stylised paranoia of this little touch may be more detrimental to society than the benefit that is gained from drivers being able to read in their rear view mirrors. I don't know and am making no political point here (if you are interested in politics... or the earth... see final paragraph).

Mens' needs dotted about that last paragraph. What is this man's need? Somebody to talk to. Somebody to talk to.

The above passages were written in the Prince Albert pub in Brighton (very near the train station). For me, that pub is the Southern equivalent of the Linnet and Lark on Princes Avenue in a more musical city, that of Hull, and just lacks the upbeat spark of DJ Mark. No, what do I mean by this? It has the same sort of tension and sense of drugs and popstardom being not altogether that far away from its doors. An alright place; nice, like the Linnet, but sometimes, you know, like the Linnet, you just don't want to be there. Today was fine.

But then, on the train out of Brighton my mood... it did not plummet... my mood for the purposes of writing/blogging... I let that drop... and I wrote the following:

I've written so many, many words. Words that then went and got read. I look out the window at this sensational panorama of a small city's terraced white-brick streets and I want to scream, 'These words aren't changing anything.' I always seem to be either too high or too low for other people. It's half-term so I get some youth work tomorrow. I love that 'cause them kids... they fix on the higher frequencies of my wavelength.

Oh yes, anyway, something political:

'The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world's environment. So why on earth is the Government forcing us to use more of it?' Friends and other readers, I am hard pushed for a suitably catchy response to this question so I leave it open. You tell me. The Independent newspaper asked it; it wasn't, to take an imaginary example, somebody on a train who asked me. They are, generally speaking, quiet.

Photos:
1. Sexy old Seaford
2. The ghost of George Best
3. 'But the eyes, find the eyes' ²





¹ This is a lyric from a song by Bloc Party (last album, not sure which track)
² This is a lyric from a song by Franz Ferdinand (Matineé)

the fallen

suppose I've been around the bloghouses of blogfriends as dire as that phrase sounds but... yeah, I have been away and... hmm, got quite lost in trying to make money selling porcelain figurines on eBay for a time...

that one was pretty strange... knew it wasn't a calling... felt no less or more criminal or depraved than betting on racehorses...

it's not like i wake up one morning and feel different... more like the chemical patterns of my head sway very jauntily under the influence of tedious household luxury drugs (caffeine, alcohol, sugar, etc...)...

spring very different this year... very cold and i'm significantly further south than i have been this time around...

considering jobs (nursing homes and shops like tesco, argos)... i feel, i guess, that i have no political or spiritual agenda to lose in getting a job... no, no, no...

don't know where i'm going with this... at all, really... i've had a good glass of wine or two tonight and... well, today was milling about, up early, with (i don't know) coffee shop sitters (part of it the beautiful thread of a real, gentle, sedentary lifestyle and part of it the facile, flaunted and debauched frankly drug addicted aspect)... watching all that...

i thought 'emerging into this space... which isn't transparently at war... is quite...

er... it's... god, it's always nice to come back to sense, really... coming back to... some kind of emotional presence, almost' ...always a little strange.

i go away so much. sorta funny. i still find it bizarre, the shift in my state of being...

so, that's me... today. something artistic there too, lurking around the edges, way it does when i'm alive... five years of war in iraq... no text messages... and i can still remember the old me and that's why i hold morrissey in high regard because i had such little idea...

that will do then... maybe i'll slot a photograph in here... this memorial stands at the top of Lewes High Street and is dedicated to the fallen of the First World War...