Sinister: das schweigen von marcel duchamp wird uberwertet

[Kieran Devaney]

Outside Virgin Records in Sheffield City Centre seems to be the kids’ new 
meeting place. Shooed from the steps of the City Hall by the police they 
gather there now in loose bunches, all hugs and skateboards and hooded tops 
they clamour and languish - a big middle finger to the uninterested 
shoppers. Often I’ve thought about taking their picture and taking it back 
home to Birmingham to show to the sk8er kids there who hang around the town 
hall steps. I think everywhere has them; hordes of the disenfranchised all 
stuck swearing at the dismal March skies. Often I’ve thought about taking 
their picture, as I say, but never more so than on Monday – I was walking 
past Virgin Records, a troupe of them there draped variously over one of the 
benches, grinning, one of them, more a postcard punk type than nu-metaller, 
replete with tartan trousers and a Mohawk (I’m seeing more and more of those 
at the moment), pulled up the sleeve of his tatty leather jacket. My eyes, 
and the eyes of his friends were immediately drawn to the five or six inch 
or so long cuts running horizontally across his arms, he kept grinning, 
seemed proud even – eyes agog, the girl sitting right next to him on the 
bench looked horrified, the scarred arm directly in front of her she turned 
her gaze up to him but didn’t say anything. What on Earth could you say to 
that anyway? A bit later I walked past them again on the way back from 
wherever it is I had been going (I can’t rightly recall myself) and they 
were laughing away in mock combat, as though nothing out of the ordinary had 
happened at all.

This post, by the way, is dedicated to people who are on the list but have 
never posted, or those who post once after they’ve just gotten out of the 
nursery – something along the lines of “Hi I’m Keith from Stourbridge, I’ve 
just been given a voice, am very nervous, well bye! Oh p.s. I love Belle and 
Sebastian!” and are never heard from again, and to those who post once every 
six months or so saying something like “I only post every six months – so 
I’ll see you again in six months”. This post is for all of you. I don’t mean 
to sound disdainful here at all, though I can see how it could be 
interpreted like that, but that’s not my intention at all.

I’m going to tell you a bit about my day yesterday then, it was quiet for a 
Saturday, you know how it is sometimes. I went out with the intention of 
changing my train tickets for next Wednesday to the following Friday 
instead. The station was pretty empty by the time I arrived, and everyone 
inside mysteriously dry which contrasted pleasantly with my dripping wet – 
you might say that everyone else took umbrellas out with them, or had hoods, 
I can’t help it if my hood doesn’t fit properly. I’m starting to like 
Sheffield station more and more, part of the reason I went out was to mooch 
about there for a bit and sort of try to take in the ebb and flow of people 
– it’s nice to think that they’ve got somewhere to get to, perhaps even 
somewhere important, perhaps even somewhere crucial. The trip wasn’t a 
success though, the station was mostly empty, perhaps the rain had kept 
people in, reigned them in you might say, but luckily that meant I didn’t 
have to queue. Unluckily I couldn’t change the tickets, apparently you have 
to do that seven days in advance of travelling – I protested weakly saying 
that it is seven days – Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 
Thursday, Friday, putting up a finger for each day, but the ticket lady was 
having none of it. I might still stay until Friday though, all the cool kids 
are fleecing British Rail nowadays aren’t they? There’s a poster about it 
and everything. Apparently when Richard Ashcroft left The Verve, or 
disbanded them or whatever it was he took to jumping fares on trains for a 
time because he couldn’t feel grounded anywhere – I read that somewhere. 
It’s a pity his music isn’t up to much really, because that’s a nice thought 
– hard to imagine Ashcroft as a sort of nu-Kerouac though, isn’t it? A new 
psuedo-intellectual horizon with each actual one. Or maybe not so hard, 
there are certain similarities aren’t there? I think so. It’d be good if 
Richard did an album based on the life of Kerouac I think – he could call it 
‘Big Slur’. Ha ha ha. I’ve been unfair to them both as well, haven’t I? Well 
never mind because there’s more – on the way up to the station there was yet 
another anti-war protest sort of doggedly taking place, if you can unite 
everyone under your banner even given the persistent rain then it might give 
even more impetus and solidarity to your protest, but it seemed the 
Sheffield coalition couldn’t quite manage that. There were a few soggy 
hardcorists sticking at it, standing right next to the Big Issue seller with 
his dreary monotone voice, perhaps he deserves a bit more sympathy himself, 
not in a ‘we should be looking after our own’ way, nothing as crass as that 
but given the proliferation of all this gushing support for the anti war 
movement, perhaps it’s time for the ‘proper’ left (imagine those scare 
quotes much, much bigger, I’m not sure how to change the font size mid-flow 
at the moment) to take a step back and wonder quite what its motives are 
now. I’ve almost forgotten myself. Are those brave souls who help up their 
Daily Mirror placards in London a few weeks ago on the same side as the 
people who’ve been on about Iraq and oil and whatever else for years now? 
That’s not meant to be a loaded question, nor one which is derogatory to 
either side really, but this is again maybe where binary breaks down. Only 
10 types of people. Ha. I wanted to get a photo of those bedraggled 
protesters because I thought they looked a bit removed from whatever the 
popular face of this protest has become, so I went off up to Boots and 
bought a film, but by the time I got back they had dissipated, leaving the 
Big Issue seller more or less on his own again, lethargically intoning the 
same laconic phrases over and over and over, like the locked groove at the 
end of Metal Machine Music. It’s probably something of a cliché in certain 
circles, but wouldn’t it be great to have that played at your funeral, side 
four of MMM? Imagine everyone filing out the church as that same loop 
churned on and on, the faint play of the sun through stained-glass windows 
yet further fragmented through black lace. That’d be lovely. Thinking a bit 
more about John Cage too, I wanted to share this poem with you, it’s called 
‘Opening the Cage’:

14 variations on 14 words
I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.
John Cage

I have to say poetry and is that nothing and am I saying it
I am and I have poetry to say and is that nothing saying it
I am nothing and I have poetry to say and that is saying it
I that am saying poetry have nothing and it is I and to say
And I say that I am to have poetry and saying it is nothing
I am poetry and nothing and saying it is to say that I have
To have nothing is poetry and I am saying that and I say it
Poetry is saying I have nothing and I am to say that and it
Saying nothing I am poetry and I have to say that and it is
It is and I am and I have poetry saying say that to nothing
It is saying poetry to nothing and I say I have and am that
Poetry is saying I have it and I am nothing and to say that
And that nothing is poetry I am saying and I have to say it
Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it


It’s very apt I think. It makes me wonder though, stuff like that and maybe 
John Barth as well – my old English teacher said more than once that he 
preferred poems that sounded great when spoken aloud, full of bombast I 
suppose – he was referring specifically to Tennyson’s ‘The Revenge’ and WH 
Auden’s ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ as I recall. But which is more 
satisfying, laughing at the lit-crit jokes and digs in John Barth or your 
voice cracking, plein d’emotion, as you soar through a reading of ‘Lines 
Written above Tintern Abbey’? And what of Barth’s love for ‘Don Quixote’ 
‘The Odyssey’ et al, not to mention that the most straight-down-the-line 
bits of his are easily among his best, and what of Cage’s love for the 
didacticism of Thoreau? As Cage himself puts it – “Which is more musical, 
the sound of a truck passing a music school or the sound of a truck passing 
a factory?”

Today was another lovely day though, it’s so nice to be able to get up late 
and still feel like you’ve done a whole days worth of stuff. Talk of spring 
being in the air was a bit deflated after yesterday’s downpour, but it was 
back in style today and with a blustery vengeance. Though as I write this 
there are a few streaks of rain forming against my window. Alas. Better now 
than earlier on though I suppose. I went for another long, aimless walk, 
I’ve worked out the routes that all but ensure I wont meet anyone I know – 
it’s better that way. Today’s one took me down to the park and along the 
river – I wondered vaguely if it’s the same river that Jarvis Cocker talks 
about in that song off’ve ‘We Love Life’ I forget the name now (is it 
‘Wickerman’?), the long one in the middle of the record anyway – I expect it 
isn’t the same river, but you never know do you? I’m sure I’ve been past 
that particular river, the one in the song, just down the road from The 
Leadmill, which he mentions in the song as well, but I don’t know if that’s 
the same one I walked beside today. It’s good to be able to place these 
things, you know? I remember a few years back when I bought Plone’s ‘For 
Beginner Piano’ (from what I gather Plone have taken something of a 
permanent hiatus from making music, a bit like Pulp you might say, which is 
a real shame I think) and put it on my walkman on the bus home – the first 
tune on the record is called ‘On My Bus’ and Plone are from Birmingham you 
see, just like I am. So there I was, on a bus, listening to a tune called 
‘On My Bus’ – and who knows, it might even have been written about the very 
same bus route that I was on. It seemed like an appropriate soundtrack, 
though perhaps I only thought that because of the context, probably a bit of 
both. I like the idea of laptoptronica being a sort of new folk music, I 
forget whose idea it is, probably a lot of people’s, it’s a good idea, and 
Plone are, or were, a bit like that. Maybe it’s hard to imagine them as the 
musical accompaniment to the industrial heartlands of Birmingham, to rows of 
houses with doors that step right out onto the pavement, but they seem 
entirely appropriate as a reaction to those pre-fab units that seem to 
spring up in about five minutes, their flimsiness and brute ugliness. It’s 
such a shame that no one bothers building those lovely factories anymore, 
the sort that would have ‘Kieran Devaney and sons’ or whoever the owner was, 
incorporated somewhere into the brickwork – who wouldn’t want their name 
enshrined like that? So many of those buildings are sitting unused, which is 
a shame. Unsafe I suppose though. Attention to that kind of detail is 
important though I think. Plone understand that, but they also know that 
sometimes it’s ok if the details get overlooked in the great grand gush of 
pop music.

- Kieran















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