qualities of the mismaze

Someone at the weekend, on having the mismaze described to them, said, what's the point of a maze where you can see where you're going.

In fact when in a mismaze, in my experience, your focus is on the floor. You follow the line with your head down, never quite knowing where it will lead you. When you do lift your head you can see the heart of the maze, yet how you get there seems even less apparent than it did before you entered.

This particular Mismaze has other qualities. For a start it's hard to tell what it's made of. A substance whose density seems to flicker from something light to something heavy in the breath of a sigh.

It is also suspended from a piece of string. When the wind gets up in spins crazily in the breeze. When the wind dies down it's flat as a pancake.

The piece of string is ageing. It probably needs replacing. It's a little frayed. Whenever the storm gets up, microscopic fibres are severed. The mismaze careers around below. No-one knows whether the mismaze is a sentient being or not. Some say it knows what's happening. Others believe it to be impervious to feeling.

ingredients

drinking game #2

names

Someone says a name – eg Orson Welles.
The next person seated clockwise must come up with another name using the first letter of the previous surname as the first letter of a new Christian name – eg Wassily Kandinsky.
If a name is introduced which includes the same first letter for both surname and forename – eg William Wordsworth – then the direction of the game reverses.
Likewise, if a name is introduced which is generally known by just a single name – eg Watteau – the direction of the game also reverses.
In order for a name to be accepted as valid, it must be known by the one who proposes it and one other person in the game.
Whilst trying to come up with a name, the participant must drink ceaselessly until they do so.

drinking game #1

21

A group is seated around a table/ on sofas, somewhere comfortable.
In the first stage of this game someone begins to count, starting at ‘1’.
The next person located clockwise continues the count.
If someone says two numbers – eg, ‘3’,’4’ – then the count switches direction and bounces back anti-clockwise, until that is then reversed again, etc.
If someone says three numbers – eg ‘12’, ‘13’, ‘14’ – then the next person in line is jumped.
The counting stops at 21. The person who says ‘21’ must take a drink or forfeit; they must also rename a number of their choice – eg ‘7’ might become ‘currydog’.
The game recommences at ‘1’.
Every time someone lands on ‘21’ they must change a number into a word or any other chosen symbol.
Every time someone makes a mistake, the culprit must take a drink and the game recommences at ‘1’.

football

[With reference to occasional postings on Yellow Fever Pages]

I know my role when I play football. It seems god given. The stoic defender. The last line. Throwing himself at lost causes. Not a seeker of glory. No running around the pitch with your shirt over your head, awaiting kisses. Diligent, reliable, stoic.

It’s a role I’m comfortable with. It seems to suit. As a consequence the moments I find myself with a scoring chance are rare indeed. Typically, I blow them. With a self deprecating smile. Here it comes… - Blaze over the bar. Smash the ball wide. It matters not. This is not my forte. I shouldn’t even be in this part of the pitch.

The art of the striker. That selfish coolness. Selecting a spot. Calculating angles. Not rushing it. Creating time. These qualities are not endemic to my footballing nature.

Which is why when I discover them within me, I treasure them all the more.

london bridges

method in madness

I was sitting in the white cube yesterday morning, gazing out over Hoxton Square like an art god. They gave us the DVD player to play with and we watched Brontosorous and then every time we tried to watch anything else, Brontosorous came bouncing back, strings and sinews and dick. Finally between the two of us we worked out how to escape and enter the other worlds. Method in Madness came on and we watched it and we laughed because no matter how extreme it is, it's also funny. At the end you have to laugh.

But I laughed knowingly.

never know what these things mean

But they bring the tears back to my eyes, at 12.30 in the morning, just pottering around, doing my chores.

at the national

My friend seems to know everyone in the audience. We've come to see the lens grinder do his stuff on stage. Friend can't stop nodding and waving and greeting and fancy seeing you here. Our seats would have been together but due to social ramifications I now find myself seated on my own, in the upper circle, several planets from the sun of the stage. During the first interval I fight through crowds on the tiny balcony to find my friend surrounded by a conglomeration of strolling players. I barely get a chance to nod before it's back inside for the next leg. At the start of the second interval I stand up and hear my name spoken, like a question. I turn towards the speaker and see a woman I don't recognise sitting next to a man I don't recognise. She says my name again and then she says her name and I still haven't made the connection and then it all comes together.

I last saw her nearly twenty years ago, at university. I know no-one from university now, so we have no small talk catch-up. University is a strange island in the North. My last memory of the woman I'm speaking to was a kind of Summer ball. One of those absurd events where you wear suits or long frocks. I remember leaning towards her, drunkenly, a little desperately, untypically. In a high Summer garden. On some steps. Wearing a suit.

I try to work out how well we knew each other back then. Perhaps we knew each other well, better than memory permits. She tells me as we walk the crowded interval corridors that she's doing some research on Mona Hatoum. I explain why that's a strange kind of co-incidence. She's writing something on the meaning of asylum. The conversation runs out of steam. At the end of the third leg she and her partner or husband go one way, I go another. Towards the bar, to talk to the lens grinder, whilst my friend, who went to the same university, but left the year I arrived, meets another galaxy of people; and I talk to the lens grinder about how things are; and run into more friends myself.

in khartoum

My sister sleeps outside at night, in the wind. She writes:

The last few nights there have been clouds, sometimes stars. It's calm, as the city falls asleep. There are the big lights of advertising hoardings; bats rushing too and fro; swifts in the morning to wake me. Dust and grit in the bed.

Phil: Anyone else having fun out there ?

The Guardian knows the precise location of the camps where the group has been monitored in the Lake District, but cannot disclose it. The group, unaware it has been under surveillance, was not undergoing weapons or explosives training.

However, police believe they have clear evidence the men were preparing a mission of some sort, not enjoying a camping holiday. The surveillance is thought to have been by detectives from Scotland Yard's antiterrorism branch; security sources in London confirmed they were aware of it.

connections

A year ago to the day, I began the Yellow Fever Pages.
A year ago to the day, the Yellow Fever Pages inform me, I visited Stanleys.
As I did today.
A year ago I did not eat a choripan, although I might have done twelve years ago.
A choripan does not have quite the same mystique as a madelaine, yet the taste takes me back. To a square and a stray dog and empty streets at strange hours of the morning.
I walked empty streets tonight. East London pathways peopled by kids with cans.
The choripan takes me back to walking alone down unkown lanes.
As I did tonight.
A year to the day I wrote of a tap running in the garden.
Only the garden had no tap to be left running.
Stanleys has not changed a bit. It is still 'a film editing gubbins kind of place. Raw plasterwork and old time London style bods.'
Today, I saw two people carrying Stanleys bags before I went there.
Today, I saw someone carrying a Stanleys bag and in that moment I knew the phone would ring later.
Today, I revisited the Yellow Fever Pages, and knew that they would have caught up with me by now.
Today is already tomorrow, so all the dates are skewed.
The taste of a choripan takes me back to wide empty streets and a stray dog that lived in a hutch in the plaza.
The dog would walk me home, as I weaved, choripan in hand.
The dog was not called Stanley.
To the best of my knowledge.
That name was saved for the kid in the play.
Some connections are seamless.
Most are not.
It's better that way.

parties

Strange isn't it the way the parties seem to have dried up altogether of late...

who's that in the background?

every moment it is changing

Abdul Muneem Patel’s date of birth is given as 17th April 1989, according to the BBC. Which makes him just seventeen years old. Whether he was one of the supposed death-wishers, scheduled to ignite the US sky next Wednesday, or whether he’s just someone caught up in a mess not of his own making I don’t know, and I don’t suppose many of us will ever know.

At what point does a culture begin to go into a tail spin. Wherein the sophistication of its achievements signals the inevitability of its demise. A hubris, if you like. Forget about nuclear weapons. The latest attacks, if we believe what we read, were to take place using iPods, mobile phones, laptops or even digital watches. The James Bond technology that audiences from the sixties, seventies and eightees paid to gasp at is commonplace now. Like a genie released from the bottle. Any gadget is a potential weapon of mass destruction. This is part of a trend that cannot be reversed. Like the splitting of the atom.

Abdul Muneem Patel has grown up in this techno-world. In his head, it might be a world which has already crossed the tipping point. This decade’s flavour of the month may be Islamic fundamentalism, but come the day when, if, that movement becomes dormant, others will arrive to take it’s place. There will never a shortage of marginal aspirants willing to take a pot-shot at the mainstream. The trouble is that now, these would-be James Bond villains have the capacity to be bona fide James Bond villains. The tools are at our disposal.

We will forget this scare, like we forgot the last one and the one before that. We’ll be allowed to take Coca-Cola up into the blue again, sun-tan lotion, even mobile phones and iPods. Until the assailant gets through. Perhaps a kid of ten now, in another time, at another place. Geeking around on the internet, hanging with the wrong crowd, working out how easy it is to become the baddie on the screen or a hero in a book that will one day be written.

The time will come when flying seems as dangerous as it did to the early pioneers. The technological circle will have coiled in on itself. People will choose to keep their feet grounded. Public transport will be next. One cunning plan later people will inadvertently flick their TV remote to the exploding channel. Keyboards will become infected. Everything will go. They’ll dig up the airports and plant cabbages in their place.

frogs in the rye

It's 10.30 in the evening and there's a knock at the door. I tell my brother I have to eat my takeaway (such is the descent), he answers it. Norma's there. She lives next door. I've never met her before. She's an indeterminate age. There's a frog in her utility room. My brother says that's fine, his brother will sort it out. I go what? We walk out the front door and round to Norma's. Norma's house has newspapers on the floor. From 1978. Possibly. There's things there you don't want to know. Like growth. I'm sent forward to fight the frog. The back door's open. There's a black chair on wooden slats with a magazine sitting on it just outside. There's a washing machine and twelve years worth of unwashed washing. There's no sign of any frog. Norma's sorry to have caused any trouble. She hasn't. I look behind the door and in the sinks, but there might be a million hiding places for an errant frog. We go back next door, frog-free. I finish my MSG rich Chinese (such is the descent).

on aggression

I learnt a lot about aggression from Mr C. He was skilful in his usage of it. At first it worked on me, but then I realised how cynically he manipulated his willingness to lose his temper. The aggressor knows what they’re doing. It is cause and effect. I intimidate you, and you will bend to my will.

I learnt a lot about aggression from N. In the early days, it was almost a game. N would tear down a poster in a bid to get me to fight back. For many moons, I resisted the temptation. But one day I broke. The minute I broke, I joined the game, I was doomed. My self-respect was trashed. The relationship had nowhere to go but down. I knew I would never allow myself to be like that again. The aggressor retains the power, no matter how much the non-aggressor tries to change their spots.

Aggressors do not listen, because they are fundamentally caught up in their own selfish drives. This does not mean to say they are cruel or unkind people. It means they are slaves to something powerful which works within their souls. Sometimes, they can shake that off. I don’t know how. People do change. I always hoped that in some way, no matter how flawed our relationship, I might have helped N to exorcise or live with her aggression.

on the march

asymmetric warfare (nod to blackbox)

Extract from The Focus Group (1998)

+++

Mick: (TURNS TO CASS) Would you say that we have any kind of - how should I phrase this - inviolable credo, Penny ?

Cass: Not exactly a credo, Kieth. More a general drift. A set of questions. We inhabit a quadrant of our own.

Mick: Precisely. Thankyou. And if you’re going to ask, as you quite possibly are, what is that quadrant ? I’d have to say it isn’t easy to put a finger on it. The redistribution of wealth chestnut comes into play. We’re not what you’d call trickle-downers. Sticking a pin in the multi-national balloon is part and parcel. We’re pushing for new structures of societal consensus. Certain things - arms manufacture, excessive car usage, contrived democracy - will be put against the wall and despatched. And we’d aim to reappropriate some of the good things in life. Like thought. Any of this making any sense ?

David: (NODDING) Sort of -

Mick: Good. Now, the point at which you’re being brought in is this. We’re not stupid. We know that all of the above hardly represents a cakewalk. You have to send out a few smoke signals to let the others know that you’re out there on the wings. That their days are being, no matter how slowly, counted down. And to do this - to send out these signals - you do have to be prepared to break some eggs. It’s Hegelian: the group exists, it’s evolved as a phenomenon, therefore society needs us. (BEAT) Let me put it another way - it’s common knowledge that a migraine doesn’t have all that much to do with the head. It’s more down to the unacknowledged stress that the rest of the body is suffering. It’s the body’s way of reminding itself - Ow! I’m hurting! Right ?

David: Uh - right.

Mick: Good. Well, we’re aiming to be that migraine. We intend to become a localised expression of a communal pain. Exactly how we’re going to do it will be revealed if and when you sign up and we agree to have you. But if you do sign up, I think it’s only fair to warn you that, as far as we’re concerned, you’re cannon fodder. We’re going to be sending you over the top in your plimsolls. We need more bodies, and that’s exactly what you’ll be.

Cass: We’re all bodies, David. I think you should make that clear, Keith. Only - yours, David, will be a barely charted body. Which makes it no less valuable. Just less well known.

Mick: How does it sound ?

David: It sounds mad.

Mick: Mad ?

Cass: Is that a good thing or a bad thing ?

workshop

Four kids in a hall in Bow, off the Roman Road. One of them born here, one in Somalia, two in Dubai. Three of them brothers. None of them know much about acting. They know about phone jacking. Being on a bus, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. We act it out. The smallest one, l'il Pete, has got a shank he hadn't told anyone about. He needs it to defend himself. When Nasser doesn't give up his phone, Pete shanks him. We talk about it. Mustafa feels bad about it. Ahmed feels good. Pete feels paranoid. Nasser feels like he might as well be dead. I ask them how many kids they know who carry a knife. L'il Pete lies on his back and stares at the cieling. Loads, he says. I know loads. When I leave they come and shake my hand. They say they never knew acting could be so much fun.

tear

Like the desperate fool que soy I strafe the internet for a translation it refutes me. Lloras. Si. Evidamente. Correct my spelling. Busco the noun. Maybe it does not and never exists. Capaz capaz capaz My new jacket strolls some perfect corner of a non existent night. I fall asleep on one of the million buses that does not belong to the non me that I am. Somewhere in Peckham is the key to the forgetfullness of where I shall shut these eyes of mine. Hey. Todo bien. Que bien. Que enorme este tristeza in which somos yabba yabba yabba Stand in a corner and resonate. Hasta manana. Hoy. Siempre.