Rear Window

Well, I can't even call this morning. It's lunchtime, and I've been at my computer for almost three hours. I've reached stalemate with the story I'm writing, which always happens around about now. If I'm not careful, I'll be propelled into a round of meaningless www.nonsense, and then it'll be five o clock before I've blinked an eye.

     
And I need to be at least halfway through my story by the time it's dark tonight, and the man with the black hair in the posh flat across the road has closed his laptop lid on the day and left the room.

I'm somewhat annoyed with him right now. From time to time I waft about my flat, eat lunch, sift through papers and not once does he look up and acknowledge me. He's been working at that window for a year now, and nothing stirs him from his work. I figured I'd strip naked in front of my window to see what happens, but I've worked out he's probably gay (he lives with a man who irons a lot... flimsy evidence, I know).

     
I feel comforted when my man across the road is at his laptop working. Sometimes he talks on the phone, but mainly, he perches over it, the screen lighting up his glasses. I'd like to think that perhaps he's writing a novel or a screenplay (hey, we could swap stories!), or is on his way to becoming the next Danny Boyle (he looks a bit like him).

     
But I strongly suspect it's work of a rather more mundane nature he's doing. After all, he doesn't strut and fret his living room, hand to forehead, looking like inspiration's just about to strike. He doesn't toss page after page to the floor, lips quivering with rage. No, he sits and he types and he stares at his screen. He doesn't even drink tea or coffee (I never see a mug beside him).

     
Actually, he probably IS a writer. Because that's what proper writers do nowadays. In olden times, it was okay to spend your life speeded up to the eyeballs, reeling about your flat (if you had a flat), trying to find your way to your cup of coffee through the heaps of papers mounting up on the threadbare carpet, waiting for mystical vision (or the drugs) to kick in. Nowadays, it's work, work, work; tap tap tapping into your Imac, sticking to routines, deadlines, structuring your sentences. No one roll of paper and a line of charlie for my man across the road. He's got it sussed. Hard work and a clear head gets you there.

     
I'm going to make another cuppa. Wait for the hot water to turn to brown syrup in my teapot. That's how I'll get through today. Mine isn't always a healthy life, I have to admit, and I don't think I can even excuse it by calling myself a writer yet without sounding hopelessly pompous.

    
 But are we so different: him with his Habitat lampshade, me in my stupid furry slippers? I bet he's too posh even for Waitrose, and that he never cries at Eastenders. But if my man over the road can do it, then so can I, even if he never lifts his head and look at me. What would I do if he did? Would I really wave? Hold up a piece of A4 with a crayoned thumb upturned on it? Show him my new hula-hooping trick? Maybe. Or perhaps I'd scuttle off to the kitchen, caught out, and throw peas at my bin for a while.

     
It's a funny thing, this writing business, and we all need allies, don't we? Even if they are too preoccupied or shortsighted to acknowledge our genius, or just our fantastic leopard skin dressing gown.

...

I post this brilliant video in recollection of what was one of the only notable thing to ever happen at The Brit Awards (perhaps apart from the KLF machine-gunning the audience)... Thankyou Jarvis Cocker. Click the side bar, top video if this one doesn't work

Play from your Fucking Heart

Why Won't You Release Me?

I'll say one word. Duffy. Now some of you will have heard of her, and some of you won't. If you listen to the charts, watch TV, I'm sure you will have. She's been a scourge in my brain now for some time, and I'd hoped I could make her go away like a bad dream, but I see she's up for nomination at the Brits and no doubt she'll sweep the board there.

     
Duffy. She's Amy Winehouse with the crack sucked out of her. She's Otis Redding with a razor blade taken to his vocal cords. I hate her with a vengeance and yet, whenever she releases another godawful single, feel compelled to listen. It's like picking a scab.

I've nothing against her personally. I reckon she's quite a decent person. And she's talented in her own way. But what I do have something against is the 'creation' of her into some kind of banal icon; and I have a lot against those bloated media suits who made her the latest 'big thing", dragging her caterwauling onto Later With Jools Holland to infect my ears.

     
It's soul music at its lowest - all soul drained from its core. People love her songs because they're catchy, like a bumblebee in the brain. If you've never listened to many of the soul greats, you might even think they're the real thing. But they aren't.

     
I perhaps should have some loyalty because she's Welsh. But I'm afraid it doesn't stretch as far as this tiny singing puppet with a voice like a cheese grater. Am I cruel? Listen to Mercy, her greatest hit, and you'll be begging for it by the end.

     
I've posted a video of hers at the end of this post (click twice). You could easily mistake it for that Halifax advert. She cavorts about without any sexiness whatsoever as suited men hurl themselves about an airless studio. God save us all. What was that bloke out of Suede thinking when he announced her his protege?

     
Maybe none of this makes sense to you. After all, her songs are catchy, they have a habit of making you tap your foot, even if you don't want to, and she is kinda cute, isn't she, in a harmless kind of way, even if her face looks about fifty when she's actually only twenty-two.

     
But it's all that makes me weep about the music business; all that makes me lose faith in people's ability to detect a naff line when they're being fed one. When they decided to make her a star, the whole of the music business shifted in line behind her and opened their wallets. She's perfect fodder - a little hint of depth in her lyrics, a little harking back to the Sixties, all put together in a nice sanitised package. This funny little Welsh girl became a star. And now she's inflicted on me every time I turn on the radio. Once again, banality reigns supreme.

Modern Life Is Rubbish

Two things recently have made me realise I am getting older. When watching the corny What Women Want with Mel Gibson in it (the fact that I was watching it in the first place is somewhat unusual), I saw him and actually thought mmm, you're quite fit.

     
I have also started listening to Annie Lennox. Now she is someone who's always bored me shitless with her 'meaningful' lyrics, her strutting 'strong woman' performances, her stupid bald head. Worse than Sinead O Connor, worse than Skunk Anansie, she led the troops of the skin-headed, mouthy, empowered yet surprisingly bland female, with no trace of irony in her lyrics or persona. She stood for everything I hated about pop music.

     
So it seems, despite my best intentions, I am descending into middle age. Mel Gibson always turned my stomach with his hairy chest, and in the Eighties, his horrible mullet hairdo. Only housewives ever fancied Mel.

     
However in the wake of Iggy Pop gyrating about our billboards and TV screens selling insurance (how could he do that, why would he do that?), I realise that even I must embrace the middle road from time to time. I hit rock bottom a couple of weeks ago when I found myself crying to No More I Love Yous and had to admit - Annie Lennox is a fine songwriter.

     
So if John Lydon sells butter, and Iggy Pop sells insurance, and most other pop stars who haven't had to perch upon the pedestal of 'anarchy' 'rebellion' 'integrity' or 'debauchery' are busy selling their small souls, and further, I am listening to Annie Lennox, what is left of the rock n roll dream? Of poetic excess? Can you imagine Bukowski selling tinned pheasant in Harrods, or Rimbaud down at The Groucho Club spouting off about his latest line in aftershave?

     
I have little hope left for our culture, for myself. But when finally I see Patti Smith endorsing Macdonalds, or Morrissey advertising the latest IPod, then I truly will give up the ghost, and write modern culture off as the mediocre rubbish it so dangerously comes close to being.

ps Someone just pointed out to me that the only reason I fancy Mel Gibson in What Women Want is because he is cross-dressing. Hurray! My old identity is intact. I feel better.