Michael wakes up and stumbles downstairs, Somewhat (but only somewhat) surprised to see The Young Poet and their mutual friend Samantha interlocked - But not, he thinks, intertwined. (Although is that right? The Poet would probably know. And then use some weird similies:
"The two of them looked like a pair of sibling puppies with no concept of incest, cuddling away a Sunday morning. Samantha's sleeping breaths were the sound of a child creating the universe and cooing in surprise when mankind turned out alright."
His eyebrows reach skyward as he catches his reflection on the microwave. He should try this poetry business.)
Michael walks into his kitchen and cannot help but notice the wooden (mountain ash, he had been assured) floor is splattered with a smattering of sick and there are empty or nearly empty glasses on every available surface, All accusing him of something awful. "Well look now" he says to them "You aren't directly my FAULT, just the end product of my IDEA" (He's lying, he stole it)
He hears a stirring from the sitting room As he himself stirs sugar into coffee So he cusses at the kettle. "Goddamnit that motherfucker knows I like Samantha. I'll kill him if the hangover doesn't. Oh god I hope they didn't do it on my sofa" (Priorities come slowly to a man in the state that Michael is in) ((And don't come at all to a man in the state the Poet is in)) "I hope they didn't do it at all"
He hears laughter and he burns his tounge and he hates, and he seethes -
Michael leans forward and opens a window. 10am Winter Morning Air (TM) rushes in and knocks a sigh out of him. He feels not entirely unlike a man who has just realised that his credit card has been stolen and then the theif has gone and ordered that big white Talking Heads boxset that he'd been looking at and lusting after but decided he could not afford this month.
Michael does not think about Samntha's eyes as he drinks his coffee. Nope. Not even a bit. Not even for a second.
Well. Maybe a little. "Fuck"
He turns around to see Samantha looking all lost-lamb-meets-giddy-teenage-girl-meets-too-much-tequila-twelve-hours-ago, standing like a statue to his favourite kind of beauty that someone kindly erected in his kitchen whilst he wasn't looking.
(She doesn't mean to but) she purrs: "Coffee too hot?"
[End. You might want to go back and reread Boxticking before this (espescially as Boxticking has been edited a bit to fit with this one). I'm less sure about these now but I expect I'll come back to it again next time I've nothing real-world to write about. Written whilst listening to: Wilco. Edited whilst listening to: 2007 - The Year Punk Broke (My Heart) by Los Campesinos!]
You asked if I remembered that time you caught salmonella from the eggwhite in those homemade Chicken McNuggets that Polly brought to my Election Results Watching Party in '04
I am pretty sure none of that ever happened so I don't say anything, and continue poking random butons on the broken toy keyboard my older brother got me for my birthday last week, until I happen upon a particularly abrasive series of "notes".
"It sounds like your ex-girlfriend's band" I laugh. "It wasn't a band" you snap "It was a perfomance project" I stick my tounge as far into my left cheek as it'll go and stare you straight in the eyes.
You correct yourself: "Not that I care anymore..." A long pause. "Anyway, I'm bored. What are we doing this evening?" I pass on the information that Michael has invited us to his fictional cocktail party.
"... So it's not a real party?" I explain that all the cocktails sered will be taken from fictional sources. Resultingly some of them are incredibly dangerous and, more importantly, digusting. "Much like some of the people drinking them" you add.
***
Dangeroulsy drunk on the Inverse Terrorism they'd shared, They stumbled home through the snow and had satisfactory-if-slightly-dull sex on the sofa in front of CNN.
"The economy's still fucked then" Cath said. "Did you REALLYget salmonella?" Jeff asked. "Yes. I forgot that you didn't know me then." she replied. "I did. We'd been friends for two years at that point." "Well..."
[End. God knows, just some nonsense. TOMORROW's will be good. Her ex-girlfriend is the girl from The Young Poet Meets a Fan, obvs. (Lookitme, building a universe) Oh, the Terrorism is my favourite fictional cocktail and comes from Pictures for Sad Children. The Inverse Terrorism then is a drop of tequila in a pint of Bailey's. It does not need pointing out that a Fictional-Cocktails party would be a TERRIBLE idea. Written whilst watching Persepolis. Not edited.]
I say I don't believe in it but the drinking games undeniably build up a certain momentum after midnight, when all you know is that you don't want to know who you are anymore (not that you want to lose your identity to be clear, you just want to forget certain parts - forget that you are timid and quiet and afraid of sex. You want to (just for the night) forget about that and accidentally fill the space with something confident)
We wake up on spare matressess, alone. As always. Staring at white ceilings with microscopic black holes all over - this is the night sky in reverse, which makes sense because right now your head feels like it's just been turned the right way around for the first time in twelve hours.
Lessons learned: I will always catch up with myself. I can throw my arms around anyone but whiskey never made me something holy and gin never made me someone lustable. (Maybe someone laughable) I love and I love and I love and all I ever get is drunk -
I laugh quietly to nobody in particular (the girls on the stairs?) and say "Well, you can't grope a memory"
I'm sorry but I'm not sad. Turn down the bright lights and we can try again; I am learning (slowly) to feel good, I think it's a wortwhile study.
So, cue the strings - I will swoon at the streams of moonlight that punch through the window and dance in your kitchen (barefoot, of course, because some cliches ... well, they work, don't they?) And be happy and fuzzy and floaty and light and...
Maybe I should save this for another night. The point is: You may think I'm a serial miserablist But I do alright, so - Give me a hug and another shot And I will be well on my way to enjoying this.
I do not regret my straight-edge years But I am glad they are over.
[End Another poem about girls and drinking. The "something holy" line is a reference to the incredible song "Patriot's Heart" by American Music Club. "You can't grope a memory" is an obvious nod to "You can't put your arm around a memory". The rest is all me (though I worry I may have subconciously stolen the "all I ever get is drunk" bit?). Written whilst listening to: The National (Ada, Gospel, Karen and All the Wine) Edited whilst listening to: Explosions in the Sky (The Rescue EP), Death Cab for Cutie (their cover of Superchunk's Kicked In)]
It starts with a simple plan - Meet friends who are back in the city for the winter holidays, go out, get drunk, go home.
It starts with a song that leaps out of a consistently great album and sits in my head for ever and ever.
It starts with a comic book about dancing.
It ends with a minor epiphany, another road-to-Damascus moment, life imitating art imitating life and me being ridiculously happy.
Ready? Go.
My friends are a varied bunch, with very different tastes in music and wildly different degrees of interest in the stuff. So it is that when we are drinking and talking in a student pub in Leicester, me and Adam leave the conversations we are having to high-five when Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem plays and then two minutes later both fume at somebody highjacking the juke box and putting on Queen or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or something like that. Something with guitars that a teenage boy could like without having to think about it or defend it.
We break apart and head to various bars and after a short period in the great-when-it's-empty-shit-when-it's-busy Time (wherein too many shouting bald men and too much bad house music stop me from even attempting to get to the bar and buy one of their genuinely brilliant cocktail milkshakes) we arrive at Mosh, one of Leicester's very few Alternative nightclubs. Metal in the basement, emo on the ground floor, indie upstairs. Which is kind of perfect isn't it?
Firstly I have one of those odd moments where you meet someone in person for the first time that you've previously known mainly online. (In this case we have in fact crossed paths before but not really and we didn't really know each other then and now we do so). Secondly I have one of those odd moments where you are surprised by the appearance of a very close friend you haven't seen in too damn long. Thirdly I have one of those really, really odd moments where someone buys me a drink. C'est bizzare.
All of which puts me in a pretty good mood which is instantly killed when we head up into the indie room and, well...
Indie is a terrible word and if it does mean something to the kids in here, it means boyrock. There are at least two songs by Pete Doherty in some guise played. There's Killers and Kings of Leon. It's grim.
There's a glimmer of hope when a Long Blonde's song is played but it's one of my least favourite songs of theirs and the dancefloor thins out for it and I'm not drunk enough and anyway I'm not planning on dancing because I only have once before ever (You know I really WILL write up the story of Sunday at End of the Road. I'll do it soon. Promise) and I don't think I'm anywhere near drunk enough for such a thing.
So me and my trustworthy partner in indie adventuring, Ashish, find ourselves a corner and sit and talk to friends whenever they appear. You, probably more than I, know how it is with a group of friends and an establishment like this - they go to talk to people you don't know, they go to dance to records you don't like, everyone disappears occasionally to buy drinks.
Just as I'm despairing (full dancefloor for "Sex on Fire" which is one of the worst things ever), something fairly wonderful happens: The DJ plays Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats from Hold On Now, Youngster by Los Campesinos!
Me and Ashish shout along but it's not one of my favourites (don't get me wrong, Los Campesinos! are a band I love more than almost any other band in existence but I definitely love We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed more than HON,Y) and I imagine it'd be a bit akward to dance to.
Now.
1) A week or two ago, the first issue of Phonogram: The Singles Club was published. This is the second Phonogram mini series written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Jamie McKelvie. In the world of Phonogram, music is magic [because music IS magic]. The first series was concerned with Britpop and memory and the Manics and Blur and the Auteurs and stuff like that which I understood. The first issue of The Singles Club is largely about dancing. The music is mostly stuff I know and like (The Pipettes, The Long Blondes, CSS, Blondie) but dancing... I've never understood. And even the one time I have done it was to a live band and was possibly the last time they'd ever do what they were doing and there was a lot of proper fans there and it was Different. Pull Shapes (the book) is concerned with dancing in a club, with people, y'know. Properly. Kieron Gillen once wrote something along the lines of "I don't get people who don't get dancing" (I've Googled but can't find it on his blog so maybe it was in an e-mail, I don't know) to which I said "I don't get people who don't get people who don't get dancing". Anyway. I've been thinking about Pull Shapes (the book) a lot and listening to Pull Shapes (the song) a lot and all of this praying on my mind at the time but I think I won't say any more about it for fear of spoiling the thing. Go and buy it if you can, there's a reprint due this week or so.
2) Salt, Pepa and Spinderella by Johnny Foreigner is possibly my favourite single song of the year.
It's incredible. I hadn't heard it before playing the album, Waited Up Til It Was Light, so I was listening to it in full for the first time and very much enjoying all of it. Every song had at least one memorable bit that refused to move from my memory and it rocked and was fun and great. Hennings Favourite was ending (with a lovely big guitar bit) and this bass line emerges and creeps across stereo channels and keyboard drums bite down on my ears as Alexei's vocals enter and then it turns out to be a duet with Kelly and it's the most melodic thing on the album so far and it sounds incredible and I can't really tell what it's about (I have this problem with JoFo, I always ADORE lots of lines from songs but in many cases I can't tell you what the whole song is about. This shouldn't be a problem, obviously) but it FEELS like an infidelity anthem.
And just when I don't think I could love it any more, Alexei does some spoken word and then it ALL. GOES. MENTAL. LOUDER. BIGGER. INDESTRUCTIBLE.
So. 1+2=
3)
The slow bit at the end of Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats fades out and me and Ashish look up as we hear a very distinctive bass guitar sound and then we look at each other. I can't even recall what words are exchanged but something along the lines of: Him: "Is that JoFo?" Me: "HELL. YES." Him: "That's remarkable" Me: "DANCEFLOOR"
And there I go. It's mostly empty, a few of the "I will dance to anything!" warriors doing their best and then me and Ashish shuffling awkwardly and singing along and then...
I don't know. What I remember is singing louder, closing my eyes, moving faster, knowing that The Loud Bit is coming and then it hits and then ERUPTING and for some reason everything seeming white and then it ends and something I don't care about fades up and I stumble to the bar exhausted and grinning and feeling amazing.
And from that moment on, I am immune. No shitty boyrock, no overheard misogyny, not even being dragged into the METAAAHL basement for 3 minutes can dull my mood. Important lessons learned I: It doesn't MATTER that I can't dance, I can flail with an energy that'd make many a skinny-jeaned I-don't-dance-cause-it-might-mess-up-my-hair type of indieboy decidedly embarrassed. I need to do this more often.
So I do! Later my very good friend Hannah enters the room just as the DJ drops Paris by Friendly Fires which is pretty much perfect because they are the only band I think Hannah has introduced me to that I've ended up loving rather than the other way around. It's a great record, all manner of Rapture-esque funky and sexy (but decidedly platonic and therefore cute). And then just as we think we've made it away safely, my favourite MGMT song (well. Almost. It's the standard version of Kids rather than the AMAZING Soulwax remix but waddayagonnado?) so more flailing.
Lessons Learned II: Indie clubs SHOULD be small and horrible and ARE largely rubbish (I mean The Average Indie Club here, the likes of Offbeat are another plain of existence entirely) but perhaps worth it if we can get two or three songs I really love over the course of one night.
Lessons Learned III: Don't ever question Kieron Gillen? Except, actually, do, it's more fun that way. But, uh...
Anyway. That was a true story about a thing that happened on Friday night. I'm pretty much still feeling good about it. Please do buy the JoFo album if you haven't already, yeah? Yeah.
What have you done this weekend, readers? What was the first record that you danced to in public? What minor epiphanies and road-to-Damascus moments have you had recently? etc. etc.
Paul Southworth's Ugly Hill, which is a bit milder than I normally take my webcomics but good fun. Lovely art too.
The music of Burial. It's pretty good! [I know, I'm so 2005]
The White Russian. Tasty! [Discovered here meaning actually tried, I was of course familiar with the concept of the White Russian having seen The Big Lebowski a few times]
Cop Out Joke Ending: THAT IT IS HARD TO COME UP WITH FIVE THINGS A WEEK. However, I have discovered this weekend that peppermint flavour Smints are DELICIOUS.
I'm sorry, internet, I'll try harder in future. I will write SOMETHING in the week this week. You've been warned.
