Saturday, June 11, 2005
Outing
A long-sort-of-lost London pal had a gig here tonight, in the other bar of a big sprawling pub full of. . .well. . .Staffordshire Bull Terrier owners. The back bar was only accessible through the main room, which was full of people neatly seated listening to a professional karaoke singer. We did wonder if there was such a thing and if this was what we were listening to - apparently this is the case. It was fun to be mildly conspicuous and curious in there, although I was less so than my friend who is nine feet tall with feathery black hair, in black jacket and shirt and white tie like the missing Hive.
The dark back bar was like all the places I spent my life in for about two years solid, smelling of sweaty cotton and fags and beer that had crept away to die, band gear plonked in corners and wires trailing across what would usually be a dinky dancefloor. Why does smoke adhere so easily to skin? I can smell it on my hands now.
The band were very good and I was pleased to see my friend, and they were touchingly chuffed that I had come because they were doing a gig in a strange town and were grateful for a bit of implicit cheerleading. What a great thing it is to be fond of people and know that they are fond of you. It's a much overlooked thing, misinterpreted, seen somehow as tepid or also-ran but it's vitally important to have it somewhere in your life. These are the people who anchor you.
We have some kind of clumsy gangling fond thing. We met at a festival because I thought he was someone else. Then there was some drunken dopery in Camden - he's the only person I know now who still lives in NW1 or anywhere near there, they've all gone east, although everyone I know used to be clustered around that stubbornly lovable dump. Fair Britpop's noble seat. Now it's turning into Covent Garden and choking on itself, but it'll be a few years before it's completely mutated - still time for good times. Yes. We swigged a bottle of champagne in the little fenced park by a crappy bedsit I had, then after it got dark and they came and booted us out and locked it up we went in and read the Sunday papers in silence. Then we fell out for a bit. He sent me a CD with an appallingly inappropriate card. Then we were friends.
He got mugged and beaten up, and I didn't know what to do at all so I took him some mini muffins and some fucking Sainsbury's pasta stuff that he couldn't eat cos he was a vegetarian. This he never forgot. When I was sitting amongst half-packed boxes at 2am getting ready to leave London in a few hours, feeling adrift, he happened to stumble across my number in his phone and phone it in his inebriation - he hadn't known I was going to be leaving in the morning, and when he found out he probably didn't say anything fantastically supportive or helpful, but that was better because I could infer from his burblings that things would not change all that much. People would still be there, wherever I went. Nothing much would be different, nothing important. In fact he probably did say something which made me realise that. This I never forgot.
I said to him tonight that it's great when you see people you haven't seen in a long time and nothing has changed at all, cos it hadn't, and he agreed. "It's some sort of time-travel thing, yes!" he said, waving his hands about.
I had a bit of the usual awkwardness, being the interloper, sitting there with a band and trying not to sound like a loudmouthed fucking idiot. I sound awful to myself sometimes. But fuck all that, frankly. There's a slightly affected mode you slip into amongst slightly affected London people, music people, meeja people. But I like this. I like the ritual of kissing people on the cheek when you meet them - it doesn't devalue kissing itself, as some people seem to feel it does, rather it's a different use of it. It starts you off on a positive note, gives you that bit of actual contact which has some tiny calming effect, and you can use it to show where your line is at the same time as gleaning from the other where theirs is. It sets the temperature of the conversation - you can tell if it's going to be a brief and relatively formal one or a long boozy friendly one.
There's a lot to it. And I miss it when I don't have it. I find the physical reserve of northerners unnerving - no, not actually disquieting at all, I just feel the absence of physical punctuation, I suppose. More than that, it's just sad in a very basic way when you know you can't make actual contact. There's nothing worse than invasion of personal space - I flinch from people putting their hand on my back to get past in a crowd, can't bear the casual imposition - but it isn't hard to develop an instinct for when to touch people and when not to. That London pretention that puts people off - I find it somehow comforting when I know that the people are good people, it's just like a personality joke, a quip putting a thin layer over deep sincerity. Crammed into the pokiest of personal spaces, they have an understanding of social dynamics that people rarely give them credit for. People who define themselves by this knowledge, who consider and proclaim themselves straight-talking, sincere and (sniffle) Honest Folk, often expend so much energy demonstrating all this that they don't realise it's a facade; behind it they're capering about gossiping and sneering for all they're worth, still thinking that everything they do comes from this lofty position of down-to-earth-ness.
People assume personal integrity is some kind of birthright, that it comes from the ground they've always lived on. I have greater respect for London people who have quietly rejected where they are from, have discarded the notion that where you are from is what you are and to turn your back on it is shameful and cowardly, and have made their own self. Not to say there are not many, many cunts forged in that particular foundry - shining, sharpened cunts, everywhere you look. It's just that I feel more inclined to trust those who have made more choices for themselves, struck out a bit, rather than inheriting and absorbing some false notion of what a person should be.
I came back and sat in the garden, the air so clear that I could hear the students in the college grounds doubling entendres about bushes. There's something poignant about their drunken caterwauling. Everything's going to be fucking poignant this summer. I don't want to go. But then I don't want to miss what is going to be the next bit of my life - I can glimpse it already and it looks great, although I've done that before and it hasn't materialised properly, just some frustratingly fuzzy approximation. Possibly I expect too much. (Gosh, there's a thought!)
Another grown-up thing - you have to surrender yourself to forward motion, somehow. Decisions are no longer easy. Lists of pros and cons balance out into meaninglessness and you might as well consult your shopping list. You want the mutually exclusive. In the end you have to pick whatever is new because. . .you have to. At least while you are young and resilient. Or maybe after that. When you are older and toughened. So I have to wait a bit until momentum gathers, like it did before I came here - some eerie natural push from somewhere. When it comes to getting onto the motorway it won't be such a big deal. All big overwhelming stuff is still subject to Tuesdays and Wednesdays and lunchtimes and cups of tea and ordinariness, and that's how you break it down and deal with it. Rather, that's how it is dealt with for you. When you're in the middle of it it isn't at all overwhelming, it's just Wednesday. If I write that down now, hopefully I'll remember it.
They gave me an orange vinyl 7". I should get something to play it on, and then start collecting terrible albums from charity shops. More crap to lug from one rented place to another.
The dark back bar was like all the places I spent my life in for about two years solid, smelling of sweaty cotton and fags and beer that had crept away to die, band gear plonked in corners and wires trailing across what would usually be a dinky dancefloor. Why does smoke adhere so easily to skin? I can smell it on my hands now.
The band were very good and I was pleased to see my friend, and they were touchingly chuffed that I had come because they were doing a gig in a strange town and were grateful for a bit of implicit cheerleading. What a great thing it is to be fond of people and know that they are fond of you. It's a much overlooked thing, misinterpreted, seen somehow as tepid or also-ran but it's vitally important to have it somewhere in your life. These are the people who anchor you.
We have some kind of clumsy gangling fond thing. We met at a festival because I thought he was someone else. Then there was some drunken dopery in Camden - he's the only person I know now who still lives in NW1 or anywhere near there, they've all gone east, although everyone I know used to be clustered around that stubbornly lovable dump. Fair Britpop's noble seat. Now it's turning into Covent Garden and choking on itself, but it'll be a few years before it's completely mutated - still time for good times. Yes. We swigged a bottle of champagne in the little fenced park by a crappy bedsit I had, then after it got dark and they came and booted us out and locked it up we went in and read the Sunday papers in silence. Then we fell out for a bit. He sent me a CD with an appallingly inappropriate card. Then we were friends.
He got mugged and beaten up, and I didn't know what to do at all so I took him some mini muffins and some fucking Sainsbury's pasta stuff that he couldn't eat cos he was a vegetarian. This he never forgot. When I was sitting amongst half-packed boxes at 2am getting ready to leave London in a few hours, feeling adrift, he happened to stumble across my number in his phone and phone it in his inebriation - he hadn't known I was going to be leaving in the morning, and when he found out he probably didn't say anything fantastically supportive or helpful, but that was better because I could infer from his burblings that things would not change all that much. People would still be there, wherever I went. Nothing much would be different, nothing important. In fact he probably did say something which made me realise that. This I never forgot.
I said to him tonight that it's great when you see people you haven't seen in a long time and nothing has changed at all, cos it hadn't, and he agreed. "It's some sort of time-travel thing, yes!" he said, waving his hands about.
I had a bit of the usual awkwardness, being the interloper, sitting there with a band and trying not to sound like a loudmouthed fucking idiot. I sound awful to myself sometimes. But fuck all that, frankly. There's a slightly affected mode you slip into amongst slightly affected London people, music people, meeja people. But I like this. I like the ritual of kissing people on the cheek when you meet them - it doesn't devalue kissing itself, as some people seem to feel it does, rather it's a different use of it. It starts you off on a positive note, gives you that bit of actual contact which has some tiny calming effect, and you can use it to show where your line is at the same time as gleaning from the other where theirs is. It sets the temperature of the conversation - you can tell if it's going to be a brief and relatively formal one or a long boozy friendly one.
There's a lot to it. And I miss it when I don't have it. I find the physical reserve of northerners unnerving - no, not actually disquieting at all, I just feel the absence of physical punctuation, I suppose. More than that, it's just sad in a very basic way when you know you can't make actual contact. There's nothing worse than invasion of personal space - I flinch from people putting their hand on my back to get past in a crowd, can't bear the casual imposition - but it isn't hard to develop an instinct for when to touch people and when not to. That London pretention that puts people off - I find it somehow comforting when I know that the people are good people, it's just like a personality joke, a quip putting a thin layer over deep sincerity. Crammed into the pokiest of personal spaces, they have an understanding of social dynamics that people rarely give them credit for. People who define themselves by this knowledge, who consider and proclaim themselves straight-talking, sincere and (sniffle) Honest Folk, often expend so much energy demonstrating all this that they don't realise it's a facade; behind it they're capering about gossiping and sneering for all they're worth, still thinking that everything they do comes from this lofty position of down-to-earth-ness.
People assume personal integrity is some kind of birthright, that it comes from the ground they've always lived on. I have greater respect for London people who have quietly rejected where they are from, have discarded the notion that where you are from is what you are and to turn your back on it is shameful and cowardly, and have made their own self. Not to say there are not many, many cunts forged in that particular foundry - shining, sharpened cunts, everywhere you look. It's just that I feel more inclined to trust those who have made more choices for themselves, struck out a bit, rather than inheriting and absorbing some false notion of what a person should be.
I came back and sat in the garden, the air so clear that I could hear the students in the college grounds doubling entendres about bushes. There's something poignant about their drunken caterwauling. Everything's going to be fucking poignant this summer. I don't want to go. But then I don't want to miss what is going to be the next bit of my life - I can glimpse it already and it looks great, although I've done that before and it hasn't materialised properly, just some frustratingly fuzzy approximation. Possibly I expect too much. (Gosh, there's a thought!)
Another grown-up thing - you have to surrender yourself to forward motion, somehow. Decisions are no longer easy. Lists of pros and cons balance out into meaninglessness and you might as well consult your shopping list. You want the mutually exclusive. In the end you have to pick whatever is new because. . .you have to. At least while you are young and resilient. Or maybe after that. When you are older and toughened. So I have to wait a bit until momentum gathers, like it did before I came here - some eerie natural push from somewhere. When it comes to getting onto the motorway it won't be such a big deal. All big overwhelming stuff is still subject to Tuesdays and Wednesdays and lunchtimes and cups of tea and ordinariness, and that's how you break it down and deal with it. Rather, that's how it is dealt with for you. When you're in the middle of it it isn't at all overwhelming, it's just Wednesday. If I write that down now, hopefully I'll remember it.
They gave me an orange vinyl 7". I should get something to play it on, and then start collecting terrible albums from charity shops. More crap to lug from one rented place to another.
