Irene

I acquired this quaint little mandolin-banjo from a folk festival in August 2005, it hails from the thirties, was owned by a witchy-fingered crone called Irene who apparently had bread where her hair should have been...anyway, I purchased it from Irene's nephew (himself comfortably septugenarian), the action is a little gaping, and the strings quite abrasive, making it a tricky player, still, the determined fretter can yield some truly lovely little sounds if he so cares, and if he cares so little about his fingertips.

Correspondence

Dear Dennis,

Many thanks for your letter of 20th Feb, and apologies for the tardiness in my response. It’s been a chaotic and turbulent period in every conceivable sense, both positively and negatively, as such, I’ve countered your need of an Egyptologist by taking the liberty of responding via new-fangled computer technology, which I hope saves any misinterpretation on your part. Yes, thank you indeed for your gracious and eloquent letter. I very much enjoyed the poem, to which I’ll refer in greater specificity later.

Your thoughts on censorial Britain are reasoned, illuminating and poignantly expressed – yes, it’s appalling, especially given the rare capacity for insight afforded by the publication of your biographical volumes (should this ever occur) – I would’ve thought they might be invaluable research documents for ‘criminal psychologists’ and such-like? The seemingly arbitrary decision to prohibit dissemination of ALL material by yourself and fellow detainees is actually quite disturbing. And yet by virtue of his having produced it prior to incarceration, we’re afforded the privilege of Charles Manson’s terrible, terrible music. No consistency to fairness, right? Still, I guess the stance is that all of your material might be released posthumously, by which time you’re unlikely to benefit financially or publicity-wise from its publication… It’s a source of singular bewilderment to me that the autobiographical volumes are being denied release. How many other such texts have ever been produced – a firsthand autobiographical account, an acute deconstruction of an extreme pathology from within the very subjectivity of its blossoming. Jesus.

By extension, and not necessarily apropos your case, yes, it really bugs me how in a Free Speech society we’re still slave to the whims of the morally righteous, determining what we can and cannot read/eat/have sex with/ listen to. A tiny bit patronising. Are you at all familiar with the writings of Michel Foucault? If not, I shall elaborate in my next letter, as some of the sentiments expressed in your own letter recalled to me certain of his theories – especially re: “rehabilitation” or not. The impotization by the declaring of ‘otherness’ – in rejecting society’s ethical codes your right to species-hood is revoked… when in fact those in your situation require a more acute and empathic engagement than the mundane blue-collar suburbanite, and yet he’s the one who’s celebrated for his hetero-normative conformism – oh the rewards available for not getting in the way. Clearly, I’m not excusing or trivialising your past transgressions, but I feel prone to contextualising them within what little I know of your background, rather than damning/demonising you as a cartoonish subhuman entity. Maybe I’m morally corrupt, ‘evil’ even – like so many artists I reject the lazy answer, complacency and the denial of humanity’s broad repertoire of manifestations, I guess - but my interpretation of their censoring of your work is that rehabilitation has caved into an institutionalised, nationwide denial of the aberrant entities we produce – which can only be ultimately more injurious than acknowledging and engaging with your past and your attempts to process it. It saddens me, not necessarily for the specifics of your case – although that’s clearly a factor – more that my already bronchial and club-footed faith in humanity is freshly debilitated by the realization that we don’t even recognise that everyone and everything that disgusts and appals us is the product of the myriad psychosexual tensions permeating this diseased circus we’ve created. I.e., the children whose hair isn’t blonde and whose eyes aren’t blue, we abort, unblinkingly. Haha.

Anyway. Nice weather of late. And you? Alex sends his fond regards – I recently spent a week with Alex in Cork, which involved me playing a set of my songs at a literary conference in honour of Dennis Cooper, whom I’m becoming great friends with. Do you know his work? I figure it may be thematically pertinent to your ideas, perhaps you could place a request to translate his work into Braille. I doubt the authorities would concede – he has been branded variously, ‘the most dangerous writer in America’ (only bad books are truly dangerous, right?) and ‘America’s last literary outlaw’…so somewhat removed from Ricky Tomlinson.

On a whimsical note, my close friend Paul now lives in Muswell Hill – is your former dwelling still standing, as I’d like to photograph it if so.

Re: your poem, yes, you have in innate musicality to your language, it’s wry, sardonic, playful, but underpinned by a desperate pathos, it operates on multiple levels, and ultimately, I like it very much – the last stanza particularly gleams with an almost…pleading optimism… What starts as a parody of a religious text subtly seems to morph into something approaching the truly religious (in the sublime rather than institutional sense)? As such, with your permission, I’d very much like to incorporate fragments of the text into a piece of music I’m preparing for Alex’s record label. I would only proceed with this given your absolute approval. I’m pre-visualising a harmonium/bell backdrop, and a doleful, lugubrious drone-based shuffle… We’ll see. Times are exciting creatively – are you a prolific poet? I’ve recently completed my sixth album of seven in this current cycle, as well as a purge of short fiction, poetry, visual work. Alex and I have many collaborations in mind, I shall keep you informed, and wish you the very best in your own endeavours. I should probably curtail this right about now, as sleep beckons as irresistibly as a siren from God’s own harem.

Again, I apologise for the late response, and wish to assure you that I’ll endeavour to be more punctual in future. I hope this finds you well and in spirits as radiant as your circumstances allow,

Nick.


Trash Nation

Time will show the reason for your rhyme.
Minister or minstrel?
Joke or Jihad?

Take a torch to the ones who cling to flagpoles.
As the nation sinks,
We will not go down with this shit.

Each of you is a parrot on the shoulder
Of the pimp pulling strings,
You dance in a uniform.

Dance in circles. Raise your arms in rapture
As the puppet emperor burns
You spit on his ashes.

Train the crosshair on the arbiters of average.
Pack a pellet of truth
Right between their festered eyes.

Scream "I love you" even if you hate them.
Embrace their tepid flesh,
Squeeze the life back into them.

I vote life over order and castration.
Build cathedrals from
The ashes of the trash nation.

The Second Coming

Friends and I constructed this literalised transubstantiation...the Messiah's body is composed of bread and wine, a crown of staples, bearded and pubed, crucified on a (not so) sanitary towel, and mounted in the shadow of a toilet bowl.

Bronchitis

Bought from a clueless horder of pretty wooden things in 2001, this 1873 harmonium cost me £50. Prior to my intervention it was destined to be cannibalised into a bookcase by aforesaid hacking hack. An octave coupler to die for/pumping. Ideal for 'Janitor of Lunacy' and other such Teutonic baying-chanteuse standards. This hissing, whirring little bastard enjoyed its recording debut on my fourth album, Breathing Dead Air into Dead Kids, wheezing a bedrock to the piano on the final track The Disappeared, and on the overture. It's bellows threaten to implode if not attended to soon. Fuck.

How Careless

Dieppe, 2003, opposite a fountain, a 2nd hand book stall armed me with stacks of cheapo French trash noir, whose covers I shred for collageing, and this. The cover is a still from the 1953 film, where the lost boy was played by Christian Fourcarde (b. 1942).

Mail Art, May 06, Cork

Arresting boy-siren blossoms in navel of leopard-pocked orange flower...biblical condemnation of the love that dare not speak God's name looms over oiled torso attached to blinded head...the glasses may help...for they open up the entire world to the lonely clone...they complete him...the glasses give him fore(skin)sight, the feather/leather makes him soar/sore...the guidebook on which it all rests... if a mind could be unfolded...such origami we could mould...