The final stanza of his 1821 poem, “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats”:
The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
An idea for a short I had a while back… no idea if it’s finished, or if it goes anywhere from here
I wake up; one eye at a time, and briefly wonder whose ceiling it is I’m staring at. It takes less than a second, and then the silence tells me. No dawn chorus; closed in, the light of the moon pushing through the curtains. The gentle touch of the half-light points out a pile of compact discs and three or four books next to the bed. A half-drunk glass of water. Next to me, a naked shoulder, half-covered by long, thick, jet black hair. The duvet rises and falls… I don’t know if it’s me, her or both. Somehow we always synchronised our breathing when we slept together - I’d noticed it the first night, and nearly every night since, some three months before. I hadn’t mentioned it. The synergy and synchronicity… an implied intimacy far beyond the words that passed between us. Our time together was consistent yet undemanding; regular, but not clockwork. Phone calls, minicabs and nightbuses at three, four o’clock. Together, we were almost invisible, only betrayed by piles of clothing, by bubbles left silent in an empty bathtub… the languid, subtle ghosts of perfumes and cologne, and a few unwashed dishes in her kitchen. Apart from that, there was order. Always quiet; always peace. Each morning she’d prepare for the day silently - a slowly-cooling cup of tea left on the bedside table, with me lying half-asleep and drowsy in last night’s wine, sleep and affections. My arm was invariably still draped across the impression she’d left in the bed, one of my few concessions to affection that remained in the morning. She was tactile once night had fallen, and quickly grew into a mix of vulnerability and aggression; but once we’d slept, I was no part of the day to come, and my arms, my touches and my kisses were simply not required. There were focuses, aims and daily challenges created for her, of her and by her, and I was a grateful relief from that. Never more. Perhaps i was just a distraction, but that seemed to harsh a term. I was never a lunchtime drink, or sat in a booth with her and her friends from work… she had others for that. I was, in the loosest sense of the word, a lover. Someone who shared a sanctuary, accidentally created by the two of us. She told me that London weighed her down if she spent too long outside of someone’s arms, and I was happy to play my part, however small. Truth be told, it was almost wordless. There was no talk of futures, or of plans for anything further than our next engagement - a show, a film, or occasionally a dinner. No requirements had been made of each other in all the time that we’d spent together. I would play my favourite songs for her, and she would breathe in my excitement silently. Loves and passions whispered through the yellow smoke of a Marlboro Light, pushed out through Rioja-stained lips toward a whitewashed ceiling. Exhalations coloured by our shared, favourite toxins. We would lie together, and it felt like more was said during the lovemaking than in any of the hours previous. Quick breaths and shallow panting.. whimpers that managed to squeeze out past her guard, and better judgment - they were the strongest memories I have. Aside of the nails - there was always the nails. Long, black razors which congratulated me with their ferocity, and gave me secret trophies that no-one wcould see, but allowed me, however briefly, the implied ownership i know I craved.
I slipped noiselessly from the bed. My nakedness gave me no concern - she slept heavily, and lived alone. There was no-one. The eighth floor of a block of flats which overlooks St Pancras graveyard on one side, and the hubris of Camden, Holloway and beyond on the other. There was always movement, and always something to watch. I would do this often. Steal a crack of the night through those pale curtains, and whilst being careful not to cast too much of the moon across the bedroom, I would allow myself to breathe in the movements, motions and energies of the city. The yellow glint of a taxi’s headlights; a lethargic rubbish truck… maybe if I was lucky I’d make out a shadow, darting home from a lover’s bedroom. I would keep the windows closed. Even in summer. There was never a need to let the night in. It was always noisy, and it encroached on my wandering. Whether it was the sirens, the engines, or just the birdsong - whichever creatures were being lit in the soft, gentle stagelights of the night… they would join together and sing too loudly. An improvised, tuneless melody crackling with energy, spite and fear.
I stood up straight, and lit a cigarette. Smoking still felt romantic. I stepped forwards, and cracked the curtain. I peered through, into the blue, and was hit by a wave of absolute, utter stillness. If I’d have put a radio on at that point I’d have been surprised to hear either a voice or song, as if all of the world had stopped in appreciation; in silent awe of the glorious sight before me. All of London, as far as the eye could see, was captured by snow. It still fell, lightly and gently. Resting; teetering on the window ledges a foot away, and stretching out - a thick carpet leading my eyes to the beginnings of the faraway, once-glistening motorway. The streetlights were dimmed, and there was nothing in motion. All that I saw was white… it leaned fearlessly and calmly over the edges of drainpipes and gutters, covering rooftops and once-busy roads. Nothing could move; not a car on the road, not a soul in the streets. Whether I was the only man in the world that night seemed of little or no importance. The coming dawn, and behind it the morning - if anyone was sharing my view, my scene, then they too were silent. I didn’t mind. They could look out too… as long as they all kept quiet. Still. Just like her, motionless in that huge, welcoming bed. Still, and always facing away from me. Still, and frozen - just like the two of us. Like the arch of her back, underneath that soft, thick duvet. As long as they kept quiet, I had no objections. They were all allowed, this once. For one night only, they were all allowed to see it too.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
"
Kurt Vonnegut, helping out on the writing front.
I’ve just stepped off the underground, and everything rang out a little louder than normal. The field on the East side of Finsbury Park is utterly untouched by the day, and the snow sits thickly on it. At the back of it is an old cottage, which looks like its survived a few snow storms considerably more dangerous than last night’s, which did little more than make London look like a movie. New York always wins when I think of the cinema of the snow, but this city doesn’t lag quite as far behind as some might think.
Anyway. The only reason that I pain the scene is because it felt more vivid today; the car horns blasted with a little more verve, and the sirens screamed a little louder from the other side of the park. The reason it had taken on a little more resonance was the ending of ‘Let the Great World Spin’, by Colum McCann. What a song of a book. Beautiful rhythms, a heart fractured and proud… such joy, tragedy and regret. I nearly missed my stop reading the last few pages, which pulled at my heart and made me want to go home and immediately write. Much jumped out at me, both in the pages and without - the rattle of the trains, the snow falling from the trees, the trill of my phone… at the risk of sounding pretentious, senses felt heightened for a moment or two.
Go read it. You might not like it the way that I liked it, and at times in the book it meandered a little. But the payoffs were so sublime, and the writing reminded me of Fitzgerald. I read some of it aloud, and it rang out wistfully; I can’t praise the writer enough. Set on the day of Philippe Petit’s walk across Manhattan’s skyline along nothing but a wire and intertwining a dozen different characters whose lives changed that single day; some with the walk itself integral, and others making their lonely way through the blistered city with his eyes looking out across them.
And if he thought Manhattan was bad, he should go up to where the real fires were raging, to American Hanoi itself, at the end of the 4 train, where the very worst of the city played itself out every day.
If you have creative aspirations, then this book may be a godsend for you. I’ll return to it as often as I possibly can - it’s a brave, romantic and lovely vision of what happens when the heavens of ambition meet the hell that fate can deal you. All walks of life; all united in grief, tears, hope and art. What a lovely, inspirational piece of writing. Enjoy it if you get the chance.
She was tired of everyone wanting to go to Heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.
At some point next in the next month or two, I’m heading back to Paris; only for a day or two, but enough to wander, absorb and take some deep, heady breaths. All roads have seemed to lead out of London (in the short-term, I should add), and the city keeps rising in the distance; some hazy, beautiful monolith, trapped happily in the past. A deal of that would be due to Woody Allen’s return to form, and to the twenties he so eagerly sought to bring forth. What a great movie… charming, funny and less self-indulgent than some of his work. Thank goodness, to be fair. But rather than dwelling on writer’s block and fanning his guilt and neuroses outwards, this film simply revels in the city’s magic. In its dead ends and twilights, and in the imagination of every writer who’s ever wandered those streets. But for the inclusion of Miller, it would have been close to perfection; however, you can’t spend too much time with deadbeats, drunks and cheats when the beautiful people are at the heart of the backdrop.
I picked up a collection of Fitzgerald’s in Hampstead today. It took less than a page to cast myself into the Jazz Age, and his prose, as ever, was gentle yet passionate - whirring with intelligence, but cast with a wry smile. What a stunning writer. And it was good to see him delving into the personal, rather than in the stunning, poetic observations of all that he saw around him. The collection is called ‘On Booze’, and I’m but about 20 pages in and smiling from ear to ear. Like everything else I read of his, it makes me want to head back to Gatsby, and to Tender is the Night… but there’s too much to do. These wonderful, vaulting images will still be there when I’ve a few hours at Christmas to kill with the good stuff.
Even though I’m normally hesitant of adaptations of favourites, I’m led to the adaptation of Gatsby that’ll be arriving next year. I can see why Baz Luhrmann would make that film - I can not think of too many mainstream directors more suited to it, and Leonardo di Caprio won’t be too far away from Gatsby for many. Let’s see, though. I thought the same when I found the version with Robert Redford in, but it wasn’t in the story. Not the action, not the set-pieces and the imaginings, but in that beautiful rhythm that permeates the whole novel. The ebbs and flows of the final page, told beautifully through it all. I long for what so many writers see as a lazy device… in the voice-over. How can you escape that prose?
Apologies for the rambling, if you’ve made it this far. It’s not exactly direct, I can appreciate…
A strained, worried couple of weeks has taken the sting out of creative work and writing recently… the plotlines and characters I’d been working hard on seemed to slip further and further away while certain forces, wild and ridiculous in equal measure, sought to make my life and those around miserable. I won’t go into what, as it looks as this could run and run… but rest assured that there is fight and fire left in all of those involved from this end. That’s enough on that for now, mind. No need to either meander through tedious legal matters that make as little sense on the page as they do in my mind, and so I turn my thoughts to music. It had been some time since I’d stretched myself with writing, and it’s been so purely cathartic that I can’t really write it without descending into cliche. Music as an escape… music as a higher force… whatever it gets rolled out as, it’s genuinely made a sparkling difference. Some work that had been shaped in completely the wrong way was now no longer off limits for remix/rework, and between myself and two friends I’ve thrown myself straight into it. The notes that had sat in folders and files for the best part of a year or two leap out, and the directions that I never thought I could head in are suddenly opened up. I’ve enjoyed, and will still enjoy writing pop music for other vocalists - but to bury myself in love and poison once again is little short of glorious. In short, I found the fire again. Thank fuck for that. I get to read Miller, DeLillo, Blake, Baudelaire and Rimbaud for pleasure shamelessly masquerading as work, and the poets can all come back out for hours at a time. It makes such a difference to be able to pull and tear from all this beauty, and for it to feel worthwhile; responses have been positive in the extreme. And once again, for a little while, it feels a bit like you have a shot again. Important to not let the bullshit pull you down - but just as important to remember that hope springs eternal, and there are certain things that they can not get within a million miles of…
Proud and brave, though she’s dressed in rags She wears that dress like a rebel flag I am proud of every dissident act Had word that some of the music I’d made with my old band is to be used on a Channel 4 show in a few weeks or so, and was pleased/proud. The company involved asked for some more music to listen to, and even though we already have publishing tied up for the near future, I revisited some of the material to see if anything was suitable. It woke up a different side of my writing, which obviously shapes the way that I do things now - but sits in a completely different stable. It was more difficult then, but it felt so much sturdier; so much more intrinsic to what I thought I was doing, and what I wanted to do. The lyrics took longer, and needed more and more rewrites. The melodies were less obvious, and the subject matter was more direct, yet more personal. When the singer’s writing about what he cares about, you can have it all. But when it’s for someone else? It’s a character. No shame in it - a character can say something beautiful, and maybe even something that you as a singer can’t. But it will not be as genuine, nor as pure. You don’t have to stand there and sing it for strangers - you don’t have to look at them, and see what they think looking back at you; there’s someone to hide behind. One more level of separation that you didn’t have before - but it’s only in hindsight that you realise that the lack of a skin or screen was the very reason that you did it. The song that we have had placed is called ‘Bombthreat’. I wrote the lyrics over a week or so, when I was staying on the top floor of a Dalston warehouse with Russ Keffert, who was producing the record. What a bond, and what a producer. I can’t stress how easy it was to work with him - how respectful he was of what I was trying to do, and how much he shared a vision. I’m not pretending the record was mine - far from it. There were many minds in there. But the words had to be mine; of that I was sure, and made no bones about. As I’ve tried to say in the above paragraph - if it’s only me who has to stand there and put them out into the night, then I can be the only one who scribbles them down in the first place. We’d work through the lyrics in the night, after finishing the day’s recordings. Normally we were wrapped up by 7 or 8, but couldn’t get drunk because of how it fucked my throat up the next day. It’s not very often you get to make a record, and so you might as well not drink a bottle of whisky and ruin it all. Even on tour, I never really got that. As difficult as it is to not throw yourself into the night, the rewards and the responsibilities are far greater. Just get on with it, and do your staying up late a little later still. The words were a wrench between what I thought was overwriting, and making a point. I’d read a poem by Nazim Hikmet a few weeks previous, and it had been rattling around in my mind ever since. In fact, so much of his work was inside me at the time that I have no idea how much was simply stolen, or at least lifted from this great, proud writer. Exiled from the land he loved, and writing manuscripts from his solitary cell… this was the stuff that real romance was made of. The greats - the trailblazers. The men who break down the walls, so that we can follow in behind them; caught in slipstreams and basking in the lights they leave for us. Take out the dress i first saw you in look your best, look like spring trees Wear in your hair the carnation i sent you in a letter from prison, raise your kissable, lined, broad white forehead. Today, not broken and sad- no way! today Nazim Hikmet’s woman must be beautiful like a rebel flag… What an image. Beautiful - like a rebel flag. What could be more glorious, and more symptomatic of a place in the fight? The epitome of the struggle. I adore it. There are a thousand more. I learnt so much from this poet, that I feel like heading back to it now. I don’t know anything of form, but I know what stirs me in the lines - and that is where I feel most honest, and happy to draw from. Anyway. I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to say. That a Channel 4 tv show about students is making me revisit one of the finest, most visceral and romantic poets of the 20th century, I suppose. That I’m struggling to get into any new books because some of the beauty is calling me back… I’ve given this book away four times now, and I think it’s probably time to buy it a fifth. Second only to Steppenwolf, and one ahead of Gatsby - these are the works I get drunk and shout about… and when I sang for myself, these are the rhythms, the images, the beat… the fire and the ice, the sorrow and the whisky. I didn’t even hide it, or where it came from. Why would you, when the roots and the genesis meant as much as that? If you get a moment, head over to poemhunter.com and type in Nazim Hikmet. Spend a half-hour and raise a glass to him and his spirit - it never tired, and it never wilted.
For some reason, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ comes back to me often. I read of someone’s thoughts on Leonard Cohen in The Guardian’s ‘favourite albums’ series yesterday, and it took me straight back to this - my favourite of his songs - which is no small praise, as I regard his writing as some of the most profound, human and captivating I’ve ever come across. A weary, cosmic sadness that shoots across the bows… it always leaves me melancholic and reflective. Which, I suppose, is all that this song would profess to being.
And you treated my woman to a flake of your life… and when she came home, she was nobody’s wife…
Thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes. I thought it was there for good… so I never tried.
For me? I think that the song is beautifully personal - but I don’t think that the writer is the man with the pen. I think that the writer is the man who receives the letter, and the man who’s ‘living for nothing now’. Of course it’s wistful, and it’s scathing in aspects - but in others, it’s full of praise, and the way that Cohen may have wanted to be seen. It’s he who has the blue raincoat, and it’s he who had the affair with Jane.
I see you there with a rose in your teeth… one more thin gypsy thief…
He’s the recording artist. The writer of repute; the wandering poet, moving through lives and loves. Out in the desert for months on end, in need of some kind of record. The letter writer has the victory, but it is a hollow one and can never be more. Jane would have gone, but for circumstance. She was only granted a flake of his life, and so that was all that she could take. If more had been on offer, then I think that all three in the triangle know where she would have left for.
If you don’t know this song, then I guess this post is completely meaningless. Just take from it that the pictures it can leave you with are adoring, beaten, beautiful and worthy of both your time and mine. His gift is in his identifying of the diamond in the coal; the purity at the centre. Such crystal writing; such a beautiful depth of metaphor. His humility at the last few shows was a soft, deep breeze, and I hope that I see him again.
At Glastonbury, he would introduce songs with a line or two from that which follows. ‘Anthem’ was perhaps the most poignant; with it came a collective sigh in the late afternoon’s hazy sun. A weekend of indulgences were finding their way out of an audience, and the booze was taking hold… it was a beautiful moment, and one worthy of the sunset which it preceded.
There is a crack. A crack - in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
“Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”
