'Ask The Dust'

"What's on your mind?" the identity machine called facebook asks. what's on my mind? John Fante, of course, and 'Ask The Dust'... I read it on christmas night between midnight and 6.a.m., coming off the Tramadol. To say it was like finding treasure is a bit clumsy and dumb, but, well..I am. It stopped me going insane, endlessly clenching and unclenching my fists, calf muscles, jaw muscles and taking deep breaths,seeing how long I culd hold them. It stopped me jumping up and hoovering the whole flat, too, which would have been lousy for the sweet sleepers in the gaff. It gave me mental energy, at the same time as absorbing and commuting it. A lightning conductor. It seemed to include a young me in some of its phrases, its ordeals, stupidities and idle fantasising and made me wince and want to go back and rearrange things that can't be rearranged. So it gave me summat to do in the present and future.

Strange in one way that Charles Bukowski adored Fante so, as he (Fante) is not the same sort of bum/bruiser/drinker type. But what they share is time, place, a compromised, deferred and out-of-place identity and a yearning for the words and the escape they can point towards if you cast them just right. Fante is daintily brutal in a way, in 'Ask The Dust', honestly painting himself bravely as prissy, cruel and annoying, like lots of clever young men can be, while Bukowski, his gorilla cousin (growing inexorably from cub to seedy buck before our eyes  in 'Ham on Rye'), is ever-keen to break the branches noisily and beat his chest, flnging dung round the nest. Quite a pair. But 'Ask The Dust'... Jesus, what a book.

Tap, tap, tap...

mc

Glasgow Lasagne

a New Year's freebie to all you jaded metropolitan foodies out there....'glasgow lasagne', eaten once only in 1995, with much delight, cooked by my mate from partick (a great painter/artist called iain thompson) on a 3 day incursion into sassenach territory - to his pleasant surprise, skagen court/school hill area of bolton was a familiar and welcoming milieu. all washed down with simultaneous cans of irn bru and spesh, a maverick two-drink gambit which i thought showed commitment and a certain celtic panache. it's a £7 din-dins for two, and a cultural hyperlink into the bargain.

method:
in a pyrex dish (almost free of gloss paint) place layers of toasted sliced bread (buttered) covered with a layer of cold baked beans, cover with grated cheese (cheddar). then another layer of toast (also buttered), more beans, more grated cheese. repeat one more time for a proper triple decker flat-warmer. Cook in oven till melty and bubbly. apply brown sauce. eat. then oot to 'the borough' for lots of holts and pool/darts discussions of pressing matters of the day with assorted ne'er-do-wells, shirkers and claimants.

posh versions may be available and 'better' in some specific ways but...would not be the same, on a metaphysical level. food memories - only alzheimers can take them away...

HNY and may the road rise to meet you

x

home sweet home and all that...

rivington pike in winter - from great hill/white coppice (west pennines)

i don't normally get home-sick and i didn't take this picture. i was looking on the web to find some pics to show my kids - i used to play out on the moors and in the woods there for hours, with my sister and mates, from being about 7 or 8. long free summers where you made stuff up and explored in little gangs on missions. before everyone got the paranoia. then when i was about 15 or 16, with a couple of mates we'd go and sleep out all night - winter and summer - and get drunk on anything we could get served. from the pike you can see the curve of the irish sea, blackpool tower, snowdonia and the long, long line of the pennines and about four cities and fifteen towns, ragged concrete pools on the plain, as organised as vomit. the ones where the industrial revolution, factories, computers, L.S. Lowry, Les Dawson, Joy Division, A Taste Of Honey, John Cooper Clarke, Hobson's Choice, Happy Mondays, split atoms and Hard Times were born. there's a cheap jewel sea at night, stirred by wind-tears from the westerlies that make you think you're going to fall.

a bum deal at the arse end of art

 

does the camera steal the soul?

do teenage boys steal cars?

is the catwalk sponsored by gestapo?

do models frame the sky like skinny prison bars?

their smiles leak a bitter gas

they wash their hair in bottled tears,

they say they're sick of being followed

but they're the stalkers in the shadows of our fears

beatified by zombies

they soar on vampires' wings,

public enemy, private hell

jerks jerk their strings

- the usual suspects skulk behind the fragrance and the skirt,

investors and their dobermen growling in the dirt

it's a bum deal at the arse end of art, 

nobody cares what's in her,

tough shit for the also-rans and track marks for the winners

they can't keep up with the 12 year olds, 

they can't keep down their dinners

public enemy, private hell, 

sinned against and sinner

"Cut!" used on superqueens album 'cheap shots', 2004

"Cut!"

my sister’s husband's daughter's man 
is on four kinds of drip
- you could say he's well connected
for the first time in his life
the remote control's the only thing
that's firmly in his grip
and gangrene's got the doctors
sharpening the knife

we're in marlboro country
on the flipside of the billboard
shovelling the horseshit
and the hidden costs

his stetson is a crew cut and a vacant stare
his six-gun changes channels
it's a lightning-tipped repeater
a lassoo of pure catarrh
stops conversation in its tracks
and he rides the satellite sierras
on a beige and black three-seater

"howdya feel, stevie boy?"
-"well, not too fucking clever"
"you giving up the cigs, then?"
-"i'm too young to say never"
"i see you're hooked up to a screen"
-"yeah, it's like a porn film, without the sex"
"guess you'll have to quit the ballet"
-"nah, i'll just teach myself some new steps"

and in the western tradition
he grins at his own jokes
and faces down the man in black
who smiles as he smokes
and he spits a bit of script
at the invisible director
"fuck it, take the battery out of that smoke detector,
i'm lighting up"

and the anaesthetic
fights to keep his thick mouth shut
and the doctors
and my sister's husband's daughter's man
shout "cut!"

'state hotel' (from the album 'cheap shots' by superqueens, 2004)

this is the hotel de la necrophile,
where money and the right skin can make it easier.
you can take it lying down or take it doggystyle
- the management will always try to please you.
you might well call this joint 'the living end',
as death squads tidy up, take out the trash,
in their unmarked cars to the wasteland
where fires turn dirty thinking into ash.
"cash prizes!"  cash prizes shine like steel traps.
gamblers fingers fill the bowls like cigarettes,
in the cocktail lounge which rings with dull handclaps,
as the cabaret reveals its non-exotic pets.
maybe the singers come and go
but the songs stay the same,
maybe hookers die but it's a case of 'vive la game'.
well i'm not saying i am no liar,
but i've got a question mark tattoo
that constantly desires
to know why i'm living in a first world state
in a third world state of mind
the satellite of love beams brightly, pouring out the hardcore:
religion and repeats.
heavy entertainers own the networks,
light entertainment keeps the people off the streets.
hearts break and some of them bleed
on placebo shows selling sensitive creeds,
because the network knows what the hotel needs
- bread and games and holy beads.
it's a circus in here and a jungle out there.
the mc cracks the whip and combs his hair
he's a democrat and debonair,
he charms lions with the lingo of the liar
while tv crews feed snuff movies to the greedy wire.
i'm not saying i am no liar
but i've got a question mark tattoo
that constantly desires
to know why i'm living in a first world state
in a third world state of mind
it's a circus in here and a jungle out there,
and the big cats keep you inside.
the paying guest becomes the passenger
and gets taken for a slow ride.

and outside clouds touch
and the lightning's a bracelet
- it ain't much,
and it gets missed by the graceless.
late summer and the cops are faceless
sharks cruising for a taste of a thought crime,
they roll down the windows
and they breathe out the bad times,
like a nerve-gas, all along the breadline,
like guard dogs, howling in the goldmine

i'm not saying i am no liar
but i've got a question mark tattoo
that constantly desires
to know why i'm living in a first world state
in a third world state of mind

ladies & gentlemen, doctors & nurses

this place is a casualty department

all our mouths moan "nurse!
give me the x-ray of your attention
prescribe the lifting of my curse"
it's any gathering of adults, it's a nightclub, it's a street
dolce and gabana is the rich kids' bandage
the poor ones just overeat
the walking wounded and the basket cases
limp from scene to scene
hunting out some loving surgeon
with a double life-support machine
but they'll settle for a butcher and an aspirin
- they'll get by
bones fuse and nerves dull, you can even fix a smile
she says 'we love each other really
we just walk a crooked mile'
one man's meat is another's meat substitute

yet no-one can stand alone -
this catch 22 makes mincemeat
of all the turkeys waiting by the phone
the foot-soldiers and the sacrificial lambs
get dolled up and they drift
into the arms of the venus de milo
hoping for a fireman's lift
but they just get judo, or fuck all
and yet doctors and nurses, plainclothes, exist

their soft blows heal the breaks

their tongues apply wild lotions

licking deep into the aches
these are the good spin-doctors

when the planet grinds they help it glide

untrained, unpaid and unannounced
they appear at your side
damaged fruit can make champagne

roses blossom through manure

natural medicine floods our veins
venom is venom's cure