abetted me. if its crap, blame the french. if its good, credit the english)
i have days when i want to hug the world. i want to run up to each person i see, clamp them between my thighs, and plant a huge smacker on their rosy-red lips. i want to sing, dance, and shout. i want to raise the world in a great big, happy, revolution.
thankfully, these are few and far between. and i am able to resist such urges. the masses do not want to be woken in a happy revolution, they find their joy in separation and disdain. such behaviour would earn me nothing but opprobrium and a bruised face. and there's nothing special about that. i can get that simply by visiting coventry.
there are other days when simply leaving the house seems like madness. why would i want to interact with the world? the world frightens me. it has knives, it has guns, it has oasis. it will never understand the person i want to be. the house is the sensible place. hiding, with a record and the rain hitting the patio doors.
today was such a day. the highlight was visiting sainsbury's. i watched the couples arguing, cursing one another, thinking 'at least i'm not alone' and bickering about french bread. i walked around, using 'being with you' by smokey robinson as a shield. if people see you singing in a supermarket, they don't approach you. they think you are a dangerous reprobate who is going to steal their 'taste the difference' ciabatta.
the day started when i received the following note through the letterbox. this was odd in itself. ever since the vibrator incident, the postman has merely thrown his wares at my house from a respectable distance. but this was hand-delivered:
'dear ian,
you can try, and try, but you will never be as good as archel playforth
love and kisses archel playforth'
an odd start to the day. i don't like such messages. they remind me that i am inferior. at this point, i have no idea who sent me the note, but when i DO find out, be assured that that person will suffer.
the day continued. which is never a good thing. when the day continues, without an end in sight, i try and find something to comfort me.
a note, as i try and tell you about this, my little lexicons of love, the computer keeps turning itself off. it is as if the technological world has decided against me. why not? me and the technological world have never really gelled. it lets me in reluctantly, and i dip my toe in its waters, careful to cling onto a systems analyst to avoid the shock.
i feel as if something is trying to quiet me. there must be a reason for this.
i wanted to tell you about how i listened to a magnetic fields lyric, how it made me think about us living our lives in bubbles. how those bubbles collide from time to time and form beautiful, deformed shapes. i wanted to tell you about music, and dimitra daisy's comment about it making you feel happy inside. i wanted to talk about music being a hand to hold, a comforter in the darkness, a comforter in the far-more-terrifying light. i wanted to talk about stuart murdoch holding my hand as i walked up the street, singing 'judy and the dream of horses' at the top of my voice, revelling in being a freak, because, lets face it, a freak is the only
saturday night: this message was not written solo. my old friend mr chenin blanc aided and thing
worth being. i wanted to make you see how important it is that music unites us, a legion of freaks, stumbling towards a dangerously undefined goal, but finding joy in that stumble.
sunday morning: god, ian, you were heavy on the metaphors last night. wine should have a warning on it: ' excessive consumption will lead to over-reliance on spurious linguistic devices'. or perhaps just 'too much of this crap, and you'll end up talking shit ' saturday night continued, for some time, in the same vein. but it is best that, for you lot, it finishes there. the morning comes, The Boy is here, and his company tempers those melancholic tendencies. today i don't need a friend to hold me, i need a friend to lift me. one that can get me off my arse and maybe even make me dance. there are the obvious friends who can do so - the isley brothers, the b52s, elastica. and then there are the friends who manage to lift me, and hold me, and show me something special in them, in myself, between us, that i never knew existed before. belle and sebastian, at their best, can do that. the piano of 'the boy with the arab strap', the shuffly part of 'judy and the dream of horses', the swirly beginning of 'sleep the clock around' - they don't even need words sometimes. moments that burst my bubble - change the shape of my mind, make the stumble a little prettier. this is how they manage to infiltrate so deeply. how music is capable of uniting a group of people in a way that very few individual human beings can. stuart murdoch shouldn't be suprised that people over-analyse every word he comes out with. when you have a friend that special you want to share with them completely, want the security of knowing what they are thinking, and want to introduce them to others, who will (hopefully) be suprised at your good taste. i think i've lost track of the point i was trying to make. that would mean that now was a good point to stop this mail. ian, you'll never be as good as archel playforth xx ----------------------------------------- Tomorrow will bring happiness Or at least, another day Phil Ochs ----------------------------------------- +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+