Much progress this morning. Many bags removed. I was lucky to have booked Jethro for the morning. He’s got past form in this flat. For a sensible hourly rate he and I work in parallel moving shit around. There are few people I trust in the way I trust him. I’ve known him for thousands of years. He understands not to question the strange attachments. “Oh no, that’s the hand of an ancient doll.” “Those are original and unique photographs of battleships in WW2.” “That’s the cage for a cat carrier I need to return.” He knows I’ll work that shit through myself once he’s asked the question. In the context of the flat I find he works with me through all the madness and the energies and everything here feels better for the work. The room I sleep in has his paint all over the walls, and sewn in.
After today my old bedroom has some floor space. It is beginning to make a tiny bit of sense in here. There’s much to do still and much to be thrown away, but a start is a start and I somehow feel like we made more progress than I thought we would today.
Books and old programmes came down from the attic. Memories, but not too distracting. Old friends in old Playbills. Rehearsal notebooks. Even a book of forgotten angsty poems some even in sonnet form, driven by impossible loves and desperate hope. I remember being that young man again now only through touching those page-explosions. I might publish some of them here, as fuck it I’m already showing you my nipples. I’ll have to build up to it though. I’ve only been able to read a couple myself right now before I find myself simultaneously repelled and emotionally charged by the memories. I was turmoil back then, and I always had a notebook and black pen with me and I filled page after page with scrawling poetry before I slept. Perhaps this odd discipline was borne out of that. I’m glad I’m not as angry as I was back then… But maybe I need to get angry again. Anger is passion though and I’m still passionate. I’m just not carrying it in my throat so much… Poetry though… That was an old outlet. I haven’t done it for a long long time. It’s a useful way of saying the hard things safely. I think that’s how I used it. Vocal spits, sometimes formally ordered but usually with nothing but internal structure – arrangements of sound and angst with no subtlety. Junk drunk hunks of mental spunk. Nothing to see here. And then the occasional sonnet just standing there asking me how I even worked out the structure of it when I was clearly off my tits. Maybe I’ll publish it. I’ll call it “Angry Drunk Forgotten Bastard: The Internal War Poems V”.
Meanwhile, bedtime after a glorious press night… I had so much fun and I honestly think the reviewers did as well. Hurrah!
Jethro found a Cupid in my bedroom and I’ve been looking for a means of hooking the cord for the lovely blind Lou made. This is a rather lovely solution. I am torn though. Should I take it off and polish it, or does the patina make it better? Thoughts on a postcard.
AlBarclay 