tomato sauce

quintessence

2009-11-02T18:19:00.001Z

dark energy
moves
between bodies
through
sterile atmospheres
and inert barren lands

the supernovae strands
of expanding borders
will you?
can i?
catch on the edges of this map

our universe
is accelerating
past the cartographers reach
one more degree of infinity
breached

and we fumble

step out into air
just past
the centre
of
our gravity

falling

waving
and watching
as we slip

on the best
of our efforts

Soap&Skin

2009-10-20T15:11:00.003+01:00

...live last night at the Royal Northern College of Music. We were a tiny audience, some of whom were reluctant to clap anything more than a golf clap or show any response to her huge sonic and emotional output (possibly b/c that's *not done* among avant arsey circles of obscure music students who ignored her remark after the first song that 'this is not a school play')....

...but some of us were blown away.

Her 18 year old teenage self was evident between songs when she turned away from the audience, occasionally peeking from under her hair to see if we were still there....then her hands hit the keys and she opened her mouth...

...amazing.

Gay Tories, Manchester Loves You

2009-10-06T16:57:00.006+01:00

This week, a big part of Manchester city centre has been cordoned off for the yearly party political conference. Same old.

Last year, it involved having to re-route on foot around a massive exclusion zone that was being guarded by hundreds of yellow jacket hornet cops who periodically broke off in small groups to monitor the rabblerousing band of pensioners and parents with small children who were chanting anti-war slogans and smiling at passersby a mere two blocks away from the conference centre doors. Can't be too careful. Labour have pissed off a lot of its former supporters, and they can be a gobby lot.

This year, though, it's the Conservative party conference that's fucking up my city centre movements. Yes. The Tories. In Manchester.

There's a tangible air of malice in the city right now, of anger, and the relentless rain seems to be in on it.

The Shadow Secretary for Culture plans to visit rehearsals at a local theatre, and the staff ruminate on their options: should we take him hostage? Kick him out? Make him answer all our questions on Tory statements about arts priorities using only hiphop theatre techniques?

The psychogeographic fairy godmother of Manchester, she who talks back to the cctv and keeps and distributes records of new infringements into our free-moving city lives, retreats from the party blue zone, unable to walk with her usual certainty that this is her city and its public spaces are open to her.

I get on a train and am pinned by shuffling men in navy suits as they exit one stop too late, onto Oxford Road, huffing and darting their eyes around under the stares of a carriage-full of unfriendly straight ahead northern faces.

I don't want to be too black and white (or red and blue, or north and south), but I think it's fair to say that Manchester is not the natural environ of the Tory. They really are not welcome here.

The city council have erected street billboards declaring 'Manchester Welcomes the Conservative Party Conference', and I laugh out loud at the first one I see. The second, no laugh, just a moment of eye contact with the copper standing to the left, thumbs in belt.

Tonight they are holding a Tory Pride (yes, really) social event in cooperation with Stonewall* ........in The Gay Village.

Yes, the biggest and most badly dressed after work office do yet is coming to Canal Street to teeter over the cobbles and giggle at the drag queens on the door and feel ever so ever so outre for being able to get pissed in a place where men are known to happily take it up the arse just under that nearby bridge - -ooer daring!

This is the same party that recently lent uncritical support in the form of an abstained vote to the Lithuanian government who are building 'Section 28' style legislation that will make it illegal for teachers to promote services aimed at helping the victims of homophobia and transphobia....so I can't - I Can Not - see this Canal Street outing as anything more than a hollow piece of PR fluff for a party that intends to do nothing tangible about their horrendous record on LGBT issues.

But hey, we're not doing bitter irony tonight - we're at the Tory Party Conference for heck's sake!

A coalition of groups are planning to meet outside Spirit on Canal Street at 9.30 tonight to make it known that despite the fact that our council tax has been spent on those awful welcome signs, and that thousands-strong police escort, you really really AREN'T, toryfolk.

*Stonewall: formerly gay rights activist organisation, now transphobic hand sitters who are happy to state on behalf of 'the lgbt community' that homophobic and transphobic hate crime isn't really much of a big deal any more

Afterparty Listing:
Poptastic hold a Tory Shame dancefest tonight in some dank hellhole of a city centre venue. If I could stomach the idea of four hours of passive popper inhalation and being chatted up/puked on by a 19 year old design student, I might go to bounce around to loud music of my teenage years. But I'm not bouncing so much these days. I'll skip the Tory Shame party and raise a glass of bloody mary (extra tobasco) to those with the robust immune systems.

When I wasn't even looking...

2009-10-06T15:55:00.005+01:00

...this creative type by the name of Glenn-emlyn Richards whipped up an animated interpretation of a thing I wrote some time ago.

We've still not met in oxygen-land, as he lives in France...but perhaps will at the upcoming Version Fest of new film in el Manc in November. In the meantime, I'm still all bowled over at this distance collaboration thing.

T'internet is a wonderful thing...

http://www.wodum.co.uk/06etbmov.html

(If blogspot was working properly, a still image of raindrops on a window would be HERE.)

Dear Miss: Tomato has been absent because...

2009-08-25T12:01:00.004+01:00

OK, so here's the thing: prose is, like, really hard, y'know?

I am learning how to be a proper writer. Not one who fluffs through cafes, penning verse on the back of a metaphorical napkin, barely dodging cliches like red wine and angst - no.

After committing to writing a collection of shorts (stories...no bermudas, I can promise that much) I've realised that I need to get me some discipline, some stamina, some routine.

It's happening. The poet in me still has little tantrums occasionally (precious), but I really am getting down to this thing. Books don't write themselves! Oh no, I see that now. Monkeys. Typewriters. What a load of old bollocks.

Of course the implications for my blog could not be more serious. Left to wither on the vine, depriving five, nay, even six people of something to look at during a dull moment at work, and I do humbly apologise. But there ain't enough to go round.

About 4 years ago I read at this gay literary thing (really, gay. Like, oriented towards others of the same gender. Get it?) and was paired up with a Proper Writer from London. She had spare charisma spilling out of her handbag, that one, and as well as that she shared the following taxicab wisdom with me, little writer girl: 'stop using up all your writing energy on a blog and make it into a novel instead'.

I was resistant. It seemed too simple, too blunt. Where's the catch? my inner procrastinator shouted in defence.

But she has a point.

Henceforth I will be even more inconsistant with posts than previous. Or, consistant in my inconsistancy. Pick whichever you like. Nothing changes. Nothing stays the same. Halas.

Comms to be resumed shortly: please stand by

2009-08-03T18:49:00.002+01:00

I can feel a post coming on. Like a satisfying spot, simmering underneath the skin of my chin, oh yes.

It's not quite ready to pick at yet. But soon. Very very soon...

Hulme to-do list

2009-08-03T18:44:00.003+01:00

...spotted around the Redbricks in Hulme, Manchester: favoured locale of the inspiration behind the previous post.

Isn't artistic synchronicity amazing?!

Portrait of the Crusty in Repose

2009-06-14T18:35:00.011+01:00

The dark purple stains of last night's red wine sit in the cracked dried flaps of the skin on his lips.

'Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Boring. Boring. Boring.' Repetition trips out of his mouth, little word crumbs that, if followed, might trace a path through the woods to a clearing marked 'Brain Damage, Lancashire'.

The sun beats down a steady 4/4 time. No bass.

He won't make eye contact. Instead, he retracts behind a wall of crumpled clothes and trying that little bit too hard not to care debonaire drunk asshole stare - the kind that fits at 21, looks pathetic at 45.

A few too many nights spent stumbling near the edge of the wide crevasse he let his dreams fall into, and so now he's bitter. He's pissed and sinking, snarling and flinching at the translucent midday shadow of empty bottles and drained desire. Smoking himself down to the filter and then, yellow fingered, flicking two at anyone who dares to not laugh at the strain of the joke he's performing. Goes like this:

Disintegrating Man - a self-aware and ironic statement, a rejection of bourgeois nicety and conformist living, a fuck you to good citizen, an acid gob in the eye of buttoned up Britain. A living protest punk circa 1976...

...but 33 years on in Britain, still pissed, it's a stretch - drum skin thin - to spin self-abuse and substance slavery as anti-establishment, as protest, as punk, when really the tune is passive flaccid mean old drunk.

But God and Shane McGowan bless 'im he'll keep trying.

The sun will keep 4/4 time, he'll keep the government in daily liquor tax, and flat on his back beneath the childrens' swings he'll spit and he'll snarl and he'll sing through the hole in his head that leads down, stinking, stained with red wine.

I'm ashamed to be half English*

2009-06-08T17:10:00.007+01:00

After spending the morning not quite being able to take in the fact that my region will now be represented at the European level by a man who believes that The Holocaust was actually just a big fat porky pie made up by a bunch of Jew-loving bleeding heart lefties...(fuck. he really did get in.)...I signed into farcebook to discover that the burning issue at hand, according to one Manchester 'radical', is not the election of a right-wing fascist as a Member of European Parliament, but the fact that the anti-BNP Hope Not Hate campaign was set up by the Daily Mirror.

Let's take a look at this point by point:

Anyone capable of setting up and logging onto an online networking site is also capable of using Google...and a simple one page search will reveal that this 'hidden mastermind' of the HnH campaign has in fact been running it openly for three years. Ah - so the conspiracy theory begins to fray. [SFX: faint but persistant sound of a barrel being scraped]
Isn't it so much easier to rail against everything and everyone than to have to deal with differences while trying to keep your eye on the bigger goal? That's a leading question, sure. I'm no big Mirror fan, but even angry knee-jerk I can see that every time people with a common interest (like, um, not living in a fascist state) begin ripping each other apart for simple sport we. are. doomed.
The BNP may be simplistic racists, small minded bigots, and hatemongers, but they aren't stupid. They see an open door (cheers for that New Labour) and they walk through it. Easy. Everytime I hear someone laughing about their 21 year old crew cut councillors, I shudder. The punchline to the joke falls flat when they just keep getting elected.

So why bother writing this at all? Another pointless tirade, directed elsewhere, using up energy.

Well, the energy is there, crawling under my skin. I feel sick. I feel angry.

And I suppose writing here is part of my recent attempts to grow up a little and resist responding directly to inflammatory emails/listserv posts/hysterics posing as politically astute citizens.

For the next five years at least, it's pretty clear that we've got a much bigger problem on our hands than conspiracy theories and the vested interest of the Daily Mirror.

Anyway, dear readers...if tirades aren't your bag, you really should've learned by now to stay away.

____________________________________

Canadian translation section:

BNP = British National Party.............."rights for whites" etc...think Ralph Klein, worse, with an English accent

Daily Mirror = redtop tabloid paper. Sample headline: "Horny rhino falls in love with car"

Who is this guy she's talking about? = Nick Griffin, BNP leader, and now representative of the North West of England.

____________________________________

*quoted from Mancunian poet Mike Garry's poem of the same title. If I could remember or find the whole poem, I'd post it here. He's more eloquent than I with his rage.

Please be advised that your flight has been delayed

2009-06-06T00:47:00.004+01:00

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!

I think this might push my travel time into the 24 hour bracket.

Just wanted to share that.

Oh, and the fact that I've just bought a Gregory Maguire book and crosswords to keep me company/from killing any one of the patrons or staff of Calgary International Airport.

I am calm. I am serene. I am taking lots of codeine.

There. This should be about enough to use up the last of my internet credit.

Happy trails, campers.

xxxxxxxx

Bonanza Jellybean and the BC/Northern Alberta Roadtrip

2009-06-01T04:55:00.032+01:00

I now know that jelly beans actually make me feel ill, Kangol hats are big enough to fit my gargantuan head, and even when a large proportion of a friendship has been carried out via written correspondence, it really is good to sit at the same table sometimes.

- Mister Mott at the best cafe in E-town (have an excellent coffee, learn about the Russian Revolution, etc.)

I've also learned that Great Blue Herons are all of those things, as well as being paparazzi-friendly.

- paddling in English Bay, Vancouver

I've been reminded that some people stay alive in your heart and your mind no matter how long it's been...

(that's me and Gosia's feet in Horseshoe Bay, Vancouver....and YES I am wearing stirrup socks)

...and others just don't.

***

After almost booking ourselves into a hunter's cabin (complete with minimal furnishings and a chopping block of death to the rear), L, S and I threw ourselves at the mercy of google and, mercy me, it landed us west of Hinton in Old Entrance, former CN railway station, sleeping in a teepee on the banks of the Athabasca River.

Being three prairie girls, we know how to chop wood and start fires.

<-- tough ass L wielding her axe

Also, having grown up in a right-wing breeding ground, we sometimes expect to be met with something marked on the Silently Disapproving through to Outright Hatred scale.

It took me two days of slowly noting the abundance of butch women around the place before the penny finally dropped and I realised we were staying at a lesbian-run ranch...IN ALBERTA. (translation for those not listening: Texas of Canada. Not the greatest place to be gay.)

This information jarred somewhat with the catalogue of knowledge and personal experience I've amassed, but true it was, and it made this queer wannabe cowgirl so so full of joy.

So, here's the real reason I cried all the way through Brokeback Mountain. I miss this land like a lost limb, grappling for it in the night when I'm half awake and remembering. Just three days in these mountains is enough to fill me to the brim.

Postcard from Beef Country

2009-05-28T23:00:00.011+01:00

We are an hour and a half outside Edmonton, heading west on Highway 16, when we pull over to buy ice in a place that's only recently thawed.

RESTAURANT - LIQUOR - GAS shouts in meter high lettering, red, matched perfectly with the two loaded touring bikes parked to the right of the main door. The parking lot is packed with mud-caked trucks and semi cabs without loads, and in our city sedan we stick out like stillettos in snow.

We head inside and pass the door to the diner. Two tables of people pause their toast en route to mouths to note each new arrival while the occupants of table three couldn't be less interested. The smell of all-day coffee fills the air and provides a stewed and bitter backdrop to diesel, dirt and the slow burn of hot fat.

Down the hall, two bathroom stalls are flanked by a wall of hunter fame. Photos of men posing with dead animals (moose, deer, mountain lion) are jammed together in a photo montage of 'I was here, saw this beast, and shot it'. L tells me she doesn't like the pictures but has no problem with hunting, and I trail off with my own mumbled response about sport vs. survival, a point that feels pointless in this province.

Back up front, in the store, a rack of magazines sets its sights on the hunter porn market: Big Buck vies for space with Guns & Ammo monthly, the two top sellers taking up three rows between them. Further down on the bottom shelf, homemaking guidance waits for a willing woman. If I'd ever had the time to forget, I'm reminded: more than most places, there are few ways to be a man or a woman in Alberta, and fewer still for everyone else.

I turn to a wall of dried beef chips and jerky sticks, jumbo bags of cheese snacks, pot noodles, barbecue sauce and candy chews, and realise without suprise that there's nothing here for me. I push on a fluttering for sale sign and find my way outside, swallowed whole by a low cloud of roadside dust, facing the evening, the mountains, and the places that still pull me westward.

One of these things is not like the others...

2009-05-28T02:36:00.003+01:00

Have been playing geek girl all day trying to make a myspace page for shaz and her wares...so now that my face is a shrivelled replica of its former self due to 5 hours of not blinking, I shy away from typing more and offer only one little thing from my camera:

Edmontonian

2009-05-22T19:34:00.004+01:00

Nothing here will show itself until May. Not one leaf, one petal, one stem. After a long winter and the cautious arrival of a stop/start spring, things take their time here, and they dress in layers.

...

Last time I was in Edmonton I found myself ducking behind poster poles and sliding round street corners with crowds of strangers as decoys - avoiding familiar faces in a place that had memories running thick through every gutter and drain.

Last time I was in Edmonton, it was a dry run of previous years in which I'd almost drowned. No ghosts as such - just old smells and the remembrance of waterlogged ears. Faces that distorted as light passed through layers of silt.

That was before. Three months before I took off for the desert and somehow managed to find a way through a place with no paths - my own southern Alberta badlands. That was before - and now, this visiting time, I find myself walking slow, watching the places I spent my time with roll past me as 3D postcards...or fully rendered film that shows the shells and approximate locations of all the comedy, drama and farce of those six years:

the foyer staircase I stood in, wearing an ill-fitting dress from my mum's hippy past, singing way out of my range and calling it experimental (instead of just bad)

the tree at the bus stop where the man with the awful wig would hide, every day, apologising with his eyes, too young and insecure for Patrick Stewart baldness

the grey stretch of concrete and glass through which many of my friendships and reheated rice meals passed

and the kids park where I lost my grip

there's the most uninspiring building for miles, still crouching, its head beneath its shoulders, heavy eyes open just a crack

and further down the way, a cafe tucked into a sidestreet, name changed, food rearranged and its outfit completely refitted...but still talking the same way to my tongue

the studenty bar hanging on every word that falls from the lips of Whyte Avenue and its little shops...

...of nouveau rockabilly dresses and tailored trilbys, 200-run CDs and a junk shop that's still so good at marketing that it's been convincing antiques and collectable crap into arty houses for well over a decade now

Scottish Imports sports a suggestive mannequin man in kilt and spread legs, beside can of weather worn warm Irn Bru

and next door the only vegatarian restaurant for a whole province knows that it is small and perfect

...

I can romanticise this place because I left, with no intention of ever coming back.

I knew that then, and so now I take my tourist eyes, my rose-coloured bittersweet eyes that see the bits they want to, and I glide through these old postcards with only a few companions. The ones that stuck. The ones who let me stick. The ones who've seen me at my worst and still make time for me.

Three people in this whole city. Who make me laugh and think and cry and wonder and feel that quiet, wide stretch of calm that opens up in the company of those who know me and love me well - three.

In a place that used to be full of my chaos, three is a perfect number.

Vancouver rains

2009-05-22T19:25:00.003+01:00

It rains and it cries and it grows and it blooms a paintbox of tulip and fuscia colourings. It houses raccoons and blue herons on its gayest street and in its rush and busy pace of no time, it has in it the space and peace for aloneness.

It corners me with mountain and sea. It entices me to the roof with wide blue sky. It welcomes me with 2 hour omlettes, dark velvet coffee and conversations with someone who's chosen to know me this long.

Architectural drawings stand in a jar - red herrings for the Nazi party - and a cluster of ideas sit like lightbulbs do, on their sides on the side. A boat in the harbour shows off the reach of its own voice, plays with its own echo, and sends a message to the land in rumbling tones from the sea.

Something to remember...

2009-05-22T17:27:00.004+01:00

When I stop writing, I stop breathing in and out, stop loving full-bodied, stop cherishing friends and time spent, stop cradling small things in the palm of my hand held up for wonder, stop listening, stop hearing, stop caring and calling the still quiet parts of me out into the open. I stop coaxing slippery wishes, dreams and desire out of clouds and smoke, stop seeing twinkles in cobblestones and conversations in hands.

I stop knowing that here is everything I have.

I stop feeling content and alive, even with pain and flesh-wrenching fatigue, stop making up songs in a language I can't speak, stop looking at eyes, stop feeling my feet. I stop reading the sky, stop savouring kisses, stop taking time to wind slow through the day even when it's arriving at a quick march pace. I stop being the person I am - one speck in a desert - I stop being. When I stop writing, I just. Stop.

A thousand fleeting romances at the STD clinic

2009-05-11T17:29:00.007+01:00

The TV in the corner of the three-sided room is set at a blarey tinny level that’s beyond blocking out. Unsolved Mysteries churns through a continuous loop of out-of-character disappearances and unidentified remains, flashing hotline numbers and reconstructions of seedy scenes to a soundtrack of unresolved chords and three-note melodies.

The chairs are hard.

The guy on the far side shifts and leans, eyes closed, feet crossed, tired and waiting in cowboy boots and a haircut that never was. He’s wearing sheepskin on the first warm day of the year and he seems to have been here longer than his impatience could sustain itself. He won’t look up.

Boy/Girl Couple #1 choose seats near the coffee table, sit side by side, talk in low tones. They wait like vigilant family, easy with uneasiness, till she gets up to follow a nurse.

Girl/Girl Couple sit opposite, talking a freight train of mumble and dropping the occasional too-loud laugh that steps on the toes of waiting room etiquette. Girl A leans into Girl B, convinces herself that she’s prepared for the worst, talks filler, looks stretched, and hopes this won’t take all day. Girl B nods and leans back, eyes dusting the nooks of her bootlaces.

Boy/Girl Couple #2 arrive in stages: her first (definite, ready, gritted), him second (unconvincing, nervousness with dreadlocks) and when they sit they perch and twitch and fidget and above their heads a question hangs – ‘will we survive it?’

Solo woman in tall boots picks through McLeans’ Magazine, reading and forgetting at an even pace. She flicks long hair behind one shoulder, crosses her drainpipe legs, straightens the rails of her arms and flips over the sign in her eyes so it says CLOSED. Nose like a gun sight, she aims at a frayed edge of carpet for practice, and fires.

Boy #1 waits. Shakes his foot like ‘uh uh’ and looks up through pretty boy eyelashes. Girl B is looking too – straight ahead at Boy #1’s flutter flirt and the check shirt he has open on top of a faded blue tee that reads ‘do it with young farmers’. She shifts her purse and her hips and transmits a coded message of delicate information - I’m here with my FRIEND. To be SUPPORTIVE. – and the strange sexual charge that’s feeling up the walls and stroking the floor is straining at the seams of its own stockings, about to say all the wrong things in a husky voice.

So, what brings you here?

It all comes down to a shitting goldfish

2009-04-27T22:42:00.007+01:00

Speaking Car

2009-04-14T14:11:00.013+01:00

Car was a language I didn't learn till late
but like my drunken French
it seemed to come easier
when I didn't overthink it

so I didn't

when I fit myself
slippery limbed and lithe
into its certain steel structure
it felt right

we met somewhere at a common point -
me and Car

we drove B-roads to Scotland
rolling like a fairground ride
with a height restiction
safety on, speed slow
but thrilling none the less

and we got talking -
past the stuttered stress
of Manchester city centre
(sorrywhatdidyousayyournamewas?)
into comfortable silences
that stretched out across the Lakes
and high-energy A-roads that puffed their chests
to motorway dimensions
without managing to sustain the bravado

by the time we hit the the Borders, Dumfries
we were old friends
me and Car
finishing each others' thoughts
giggling at turn signals
and high-pitched nasal horns

when the sun made its excuses and left
making space for dark, night, stars
we fell into quiet humming
moved together with wide eyes
and open mouths
swallowing the still
the sky
and the road ahead
in long appreciative gulps

About two years later
Car went missing
from the parking lot
at night

taken for scrap
no goodbye note

I was choked

and still
three years on
have yet to pass
my test

Sir Fraud Goodwin and Friends

2009-03-30T14:06:00.003+01:00

*little note for non-Brit readers: this poster is altered from that of a national campaign against 'benefit cheats' (nice bit of newlabourspeak there) that's been running for some time over here

Summer Nights in the Hot Place

2009-03-30T14:02:00.002+01:00

Summer nights make elaborate promises they’ll never keep. Summer nights choke. No respect for personal space, they get right up close, fingering your breath with hot hands, pressing down.

Summer nights don’t want to dance, or flirt, or just see how it goes. They want to take immediate possession of your soul and store it in a safe bag strapped to their inner thigh. They want to keep you awake and talking till you give in, delirious, at noon the next day.

Summer nights are insatiable, intoxicating and over-rich, one more helping when you’ve already had too much. Somehow, though, summer nights will still manage to starve you with empty calories.

Summer nights don’t care that you’re tired. They want your complete attention, NOW. Full of bad ideas and ways to fuck up, spectacularly, summer nights want the no-control adrenaline rush of heavy inertia car crash physics. They want tipping point destructive impulse driven by desperation and greed.

Summer nights are needy. Unable to occupy their own time, they look to you, always, wanting more. Summer nights are restless and moody door-slamming drama queens who won’t let anything go, ever, or take ‘no’ for an answer. Summer nights want to draw it all out- fighting, fucking, blood and tears. They yearn for a year-long breakup followed by nostalgic attempts to make another go of it. They want to hit rock bottom and keep digging. They want full disclosure, mind games, and an endless loop of emotional processing that gorges on its own tail. Summer nights are the stale whiskey breath that won’t shift, filling the room with fermented regret that’s still intact come morning.

Summer nights leave, finally, at summers end...only to look you up on facebook six months later to see if you want to go for a beer and talk about old times. Summer nights just won’t take a hint.

Incredible Hulk-on-Trent

2009-03-20T10:41:00.005Z

Painted on the edge of the sidewalk leading up to a building site that stands still in the afternoon rain:

MENTAL HEALTH

in big red capitals, twice.

Stationary diggers and rubble breadcrumbs are strewn across a road that leads to a pole of dirt and broken concrete – past burned out low-rise flats and tinned windows, too-nice cars parked up next to peeling council terraces, and in the rain every garden toy, trampoline, shed and dandelion flower bed sags in the middle spot where it slept the heaviest through winter.

Trackside bricks grow graffiti like mould – white, mostly, and simple in rounded bubble shapes. AREST. IZONE. ALONE.

Across the aisle, looking west and heading backwards, big sideburns bob above customised banker jacket (frayed and patched), while behind him, salt with pinch of pepper beard rests one hand on ‘Praying in Exile’, the other against pursed lips – a chaste kiss for a dry knuckle.

Drops of tenacious rain play relay tag on the windows, running back out of reach of the cut of cold wind that’s wiping its hands of a grey washed day. SECURE STORAGE boasts in bright blue from behind a tangled thatch of brambles so thick that their tiny flowers hide the whites of their eyes and hold their breath – undecided on whether to fruit, or just look away.

The Premier Inn peeks a glassy gaze over the fence near the station – dressed in corporate catalogue threads of red brick and silver trim, leaning in, hoping for trade from tired strangers on low-level expense accounts…Rooms to Expire in, only £49.99 a night.

We head north – away from the crowd of utilitarian Black Country buildings to fields with faces less grim, but clean trimmed of their forests, clearcut like the rest of this island, a high-performance three blade shave for the 5 o’clock shadow that’s waiting for evening’s fall.

Here, where brown sheep mow lawns and canals slide idly full and contented in retirement, the little platforms of a former age cultivate extravagant facial hair; encouraged by rainwater and neglect, stationmasters’ houses stand hollow sentinels over village platforms that slowly grow. Lilac bushes push at the seams of mossy concrete slabs and hold the doors open for a takeover – a wildflower coup led by buttercups and camomile. A little blue lantern hangs from wrought iron rod, ‘POLICE’ written in white caps lengthwise, looking earnest and shy, sweet and twee.

The far edges of Stoke are now painted with green fists, huge and held to the sky, secret messages under their knuckles…superhero salutes on either side of a river that’s going nowhere.

A Stormcloud of One's Own

2009-02-18T21:27:00.004Z

One of my story/poem things has finally generated its own weather pattern!

It's the lone cloud up there in the Bolton corner, gathering beneath the multimap navigation thing:

http://www.rainycitystories.com/

2009-02-13T13:20:00.007Z

OK, it began as an email, but now I want to speak more widely (to you other five people!)

...

So I've just come across this article about copyright and it's got me thinking.

It's reminded me of a conversation I had not too long ago with goat, pb and acorn - about performers* who read pieces that've been written by someone other than them, who don't acknowledge the author of the words, but who are nonetheless happy to accept any praise and acclaim that comes from having read the piece and been assumed to be its author.

Seems we all knew of at least one time we'd witnessed that happen. Myself, I'm thinking of the woman I know who is building her career and reputation as a 'fierce' writer/rapper/spoken word performer on the back of one piece she's been performing again and again for over three years now. It's one hell of an incredible piece of writing, really - exceptional, even - but funnily enough, the woman who wrote it never gets a mention (or a magazine cover, or artistic residencies, or the admiration, or any of the many other treats this fierce marketing genius girl has been raking up of late....)

Anyone who steps onto a stage and asks/demands that people watch them has a massive ego. I acknowledged this about myself a long time ago. I guess that for some people, sometimes, the ego needs more and more feeding in order to feel satiated, and all kinds of things get justified in order to make that meal.

This copyright and ownership stuff is really complex. Part of me loves to see copyleft/free for all marks on writing and other things - a challenge to the whole concept of ownership and 'who's got first dibs', done with such generosity........and yet another part of me is angry to see how that is so often abused by people who are happy to profit personally in the name of 'sharing'.

Also, as someone who is trying to make a living from writing (and who is really happy that it seems kind of possible, as long as I don't develop champagne taste!) I fear the idea that something I've spent hours/days/months working on could just be plucked up and adopted by someone else for their gain, without my consent - thus threatening my livelihood.

It's a big tangle of conflicting thoughts....

...anyway, the article that prompted the email (and the post):

http://shahidul.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/copyright-is-for-losers-or-whats-yours-mine-is-ours/

And isn't it cute that Banksy, the richest graffiti artist in the world who's been very savvy in selling his work and profiting from it's proliferation, says copyright is for losers. If I didn't know better, I'd almost assume from that phrase that he was American**.

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*I'm thinking here of performance poets or spoken word performers or rappers - people who, by the way they lable themselves as artists, carry an expectation that the words coming from their mouths were written by them. I know that loads of performers speak words written by others - actors, some pop stars, some singers - and that's a different thing. No one is shocked to discover that a popstrel diva doesn't write her own lyrics (although it must be pretty damn galling for those pop pixies who *do* actually write their own stuff but are met with disbelief and claims that they're lying...). However, if it suddenly emerged that Tom Waits or Ani Difranco (or Benjamin Zephania, or Alix Olson) had been passing off other people's words as their own, I reckon they'd be strung up as thieves and liars, cause their reputations are built on our assumption that what comes out of their mouths has emerged from their own brains/hearts/guts/wherever that stuff comes from. Of course we could get all post-modern about this and talk about how nothing that anyone does or says is truly 'of' them, belonging to them, tainted/complicated as we all are by our environment/culture/facebook account/breakfast cereal/position in this gloablised economy of cultural replication and mutation and and and.....YEAH and then when one of us shouts out 'OK: define 'money'' using those cute air quotes we can rip up the dictionary and stop trying to even communicate because Nothing. Is. Real. (Thanks, postmodernism. Your misuse has destroyed my ability to talk to clever white boys with Masters degrees without getting enraged and walking away in a huff. Life is simpler now.)

**No, that's no anti-American sentiment there...but anti-If You're NotAWinnerYou'reALoser-EachManForHimself sentiment. Subtle difference. And I really do like a lot of what Banksy has plastered on grim concrete. Still, the 'fuck copyright' statement sounds way less bad boy when it's written inside the cover of a book he's made thousands from.

*** that cartoon up there? It's from http://xkcd.com/ ... a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language. Yum.

on creative chaotic days...

2009-02-09T18:49:00.006Z

...the inside of my head is full of bright bits of tat and lovingly crafted circus umbrellas, pyramids of oranges, paper mache pigs and mismatched cutlery.

The case of every film I've intended but failed to catch at the one independent cinema in town is displayed on the wall, and every expensive writing pad I've coveted and caressed sits beautiful and enticing on the shelf near the door, waiting to be fingered.

In the corner, shelves of sweets that look far better than they taste lean up against rag dolls and hot water bottles shaped like t-bone steaks. I'm eating coconut-dusted banana cream cake and not caring that it's Monday...not caring at all.

A cactus taller than a suburban fence leans in to catch the tinkling tin conversation taking place under a pink parasol, and a man with three hoods and curious eyes has his ass cupped by a large firm hand with neat fingernails and blue paint in the crease of its knuckles.

The daughter of an eccentric artist sips tea in a plain grey cardie and simple hair, as electric orange belt makes a surprise appearance from beneath the beige and brown layers of Big Glasses Man (sharing soup and eye contact with Big Glasses Woman, knees touching under a too small school table).

The music is familiar in that way of interior soundtracks - not quite specific enough to be a song I can sing to, but with strings and bells and a voice that sits snug in my ear.

Tulip napkin holders and weeble salt shakers jostle for space on rickety tables topped with formica and glass cups crusted with milky coffee, never quite removed in time.

There's one toilet - asymmetric and huge - and my legs dangle when I sit, cast iron chain swinging above me, making me feel about three years old.

Every member of staff can be identified by their flat tyre plimsolls and Heidie haircuts - an army of hipster geeks with holes in the elbows of their polyester prints and school pleats, soft spoken and sweet, a little dazed but quick with the toasties, and though I don't know how to talk to them they don't seem to mind.

They let me spend way too long leaning against the side, rifling through a basket of enamel buttons that bear images of insects and burlesque girls, and when I lose my wallet next to an unexplored universe at the bottom of my bag, they wait with calm smiles cause no one here's rushing.

On the other side of a window snow starts to fall and drift, me with it, and before I know what's what I've wiled away an afternoon just writing and watching and thinking and listening here, in this little cafe that feels like the inside of my own head on a creative chaotic day.