A Year of Sleep
28.12.20
In Anton Newcombe’s Berlin studio there is a stack of white promotional 180g vinyl in a wooden box. Leaning chaotically against one another in plastic sleeves. A vodka bottle is tilted on the same shelf, it’s clear liquid cuts the glass at a precise diagonal intersection. The bottle appears arbitrary, yet the diagonal line has some undisclosed geometric potentiality.
(Boil behind ear reducing)
23.12.20
Walking at the edge of Trinidad on the Spanish side through English hills – lungs deep. A crystalline ship. Mammoth like the edge of Venezuela – rusted oil and salt spray. Red ochre walls – black paint stripes. GB and Mum laughing on board the ship. A long journey ahead, through arctic water and black night sky. Mum invincible bare foot, fooling around with the ship’s bell – a hangman’s scaffold above. The ship’s captain concerned by the lack of a workforce. GB lazy and puffed up on his father’s money – hands in his pockets – head up, laughing. A long voyage in circles – a cat picks at the rug.
28.12.20
My Australian friend George and I meet at a covid dating group. Given a small padlock I was asked to throw the keys at someone I felt interested in. There were two rows of people – and I stood, ignoring the sultry girls and threw my keys towards George. Which he caught in his left hand, then dropped. We walked around, had a beer – but I found him dull, and no sexual connection was formed.
Later that night I am walking home finding myself in front of the neighbour’s house on WG. There’s a man trying to crawl into a window knowing there is a young family inside with two or three adult males. The man is spotted, young males came outside to apprehend him – and notice me. I receive a number of blows to the stomach. George provides the most savage attacks.
Liquid landscape. Contours of droplets in flat monochrome. A child is unlocked from a block of soap like dirt. The shape of their neck becomes distinct as my gaze seems to erode its generality. The curve of a chin reveals itself as I look harder. The child has the distinct appearance of a Victorian doll. Its face weathered by dirt.
07.01.20
Two corpses in the boot of a car. J. from the gallery opens the boot with a click of his keys. We slam the boot shut again and take the keys from the keyring – noticing a tracking device. Eating and drinking in a vast hall, holding a child up like a celebrity gong. The hosts have taken the device, pretending that it’s disappeared. General Harrocks stares over my shoulder, his thin lips turning to a rubbery slime.
18.02.21
Grey steel, reflective. Underground. Corridors that run in perpendicular lines from a central wall, perhaps. Bridging bodies – flesh clammy and elongated. Tired frames carry saggy flesh – taught bodies glide by, laughing. Waking to alarm clocks. Thinking this is it – the meaning. Waking, standing, dressing, eating – work.
15.03.21
B.comes over to remove all the books from my book shelf that I haven’t read. His mouth terse. I must ring A. to collect me from the some Spanish, or Italian, or Trinidadian ramble that went wrong as I got lost and/or scared.
23.03.21
Thailand P. working two jobs plus overtime in the 90s to keep up with his mortgage payments that had tripled overnight as recession hit. Breaking crates under the hydraulic crusher together. Scooping them up with the fangs of the forklift to drop them into the skip. I would twist the stop button out and the switch the green button to the right and the crusher would chew the sheet timber. The sound of splintering wood sounded good under a burgeoning sun, until he said the local council incinerate it. They don’t even bother attempting to recycle it. The Company should be fined for gross dereliction of their environmental responsibilities etc, etc.
29.03.21
Red haired vamp injecting a highly potent aphrodisiac into her neck with a mechanical ampule. Me watching calmly. Again, in the back seat of a car being driven at night.
09.04.21
E.D in a backstage foyer. Her Mother shook hands knowing it was odd to be in another realm together. Sitting on those nasty plastic chairs that hurt your back. The lighting was grey – as the room. The threat of her rapist stepfather in shot.
I walked into an elevator and disappeared down into a barge. Walking the canal, I realised it was beached – it’s hull suddenly caught on a concrete bank. No one around apart from the crumbling ceilings of Hackney Wick warehouses.
Moving paintings from studio to studio chasing the rent / space ratio. Asking myself if I was happy being free?
12.04.21
RB worked the nightshift in a Waitrose warehouse for only two months before a colleague stole £100 cash from his wallet inside his locker. Confronting the culprit R asked if he’d done it – culprit says “yes, what you going to do about it?” They scuffle – it was 3am and they both get sacked immediately.
The front door is open. It’s night. Blue fog hangs penetrating the air. Cats are inquisitive but decide to stay indoors. Balled body, hunched in sleeping long johns. Delayed time. The succession of minutes like dry soil pilled over a coffin. Air evaporates – and you slide through an unforeseen crack. Water has a genetic memory apparently. It can flow between modes of open communication – where electronic signals can be transmitted between station to station. Apparently the virus shares similarities with the RNA code of the HIV virus – this is an enhancement of the original corona virus strand – an ancient French virologist suggests this is enhancement is man-made. Possibly, because of a laboratory hunt for an HIV vaccine. He hopes that the current virus is mutating in a way that will burn itself out – as nature is always harmonious.
1.6.21
Flicking through a stack of black and white photos. Portrait format. The skin of two large black men coalesces into braided hair and elegant lines. A diagonal stance between interlinked arms forms a pieta. Muscular backs interlocked – a large triangle of sinewy flesh.
A room with two figures. One of them my grandmother. We hug for the first time in years. She’s slim, elegant, and content.
(S
I
X
D
R
O
P
S)
A toad concealed in a napkin. Tracing an outline through pen to paper. Each line moves me further from its immaculate motif. Sitting there, calmly smiling. I rise for the toilet. The seat houses the fangs of a serpent – smiling porcelain teeth. Sense of slow gentle calm.
The elevator down into the Barbican. You must ignore your reflection in the mirror, turn your back, hands in your pockets. The tower block rises, ribbed like the leathery skin of an amphibian. Each window, perfect geometry of cellular skin. I walk in a circle, unafraid to lose contact with my guides, knowing there to be an extra sensory connection. I follow their whistles. The trees, alive and soothing.
The sense we are walking through the bowels of a magnificent alien space craft. A tremendous feeling of calm – despite the leathery motifs. C. had a key to open some iron doors that took us deeper into a subterranean network. A sunken garden with a vast water system. I sat on a wall and felt the ripples through my fingers. Quiet water, caressing skin.
Overwhelming sense of infinite empathy and psychic connection. Back in C’s flat. A. suffering stomach cramps alone on the sofa. Sympathy pangs ignite in my stomach. Rubbing them slowly away – visions simmer down to its familiar surface.
4.6.21
Woke to a paintbrush one-inch thick, wet strokes. Beige. Covering canvas. Joy of methodical calm painting. Deeper, there was something else. Pictures of friends – not quite hugging – something worse – to illicit a hug? Something broke and fell from the sky.
Shards of images covering shadows. The attempt to reform the formless. I just need one fragment to re-ignite the whole. This is what is meant when one says there is no-inconsequence – a single clue will offer the potential for a full memory to descend.
9.6.21
Dead Jim (grandfather) slept with brother-in-law – as in shared the same bed and spooned. The next day Jim laughed about it – like a benevolent old man would. He’s fine where he is, either in my memory or beyond the edges of this page.
30.06.21
Rolling clay sausages into rats to spell a word. The first letter resembles a dead rat – Zeus (cat) comes to pick it up believing it to be an actual rat and places it into a new configuration where the word evaporates.
9.07.21
A.Earle in a castle. He gets stabbed in the throat with a long thin sharpened pin. Choaking on his own blood, running from the castle. My perspective shifts to that of a bird – and I see his assailant drop his dying body from the castle ramparts. I circle his fall to find his body collapse into a mass broken flesh. Later, (back to humanoid form), I see his body, necrotic – discarded like a dead dog in green shrubbery.
____
LB somehow makes the tattoo I have of a suspender clip on my thigh bleed profusely – like rainwater blotting an unstable ink.
____
With a male friend, watching an older man in a blue raincoat trying to offer his estranged teenage son a carrier bag of booze. The son’s mother objects and snatches the bag away. This happens on a gravel path with good looking plants.
My friend and I follow the man wondering if we should say something supportive. We follow along the gravel track – and I tap him on the shoulder. He turns round, I explain it will take time for his son to accept the gift – and to not grow despondent.
Looking into the man’s eyes I realise it’s Burroughs, again. This time around 40 years of age, dressed in a blue rain-jacket.
12.08.21
Boris Johnson and I walking through an outside hallway. We’re the same height. I’m humane and calm as I tell him about the forest fires in Greece and how the world is too warm. He stumbles over his words, looking shocked, eyes downcast as we walk along gravel. It crunches. Boris listens. I sense his concern, despite feeling a gross sense of profound ineptitude. There could still be hope.
23.08.21
Mum moved her room around. The bed narrowed into a single, turned the opposite end to where the TV once was. Her head rests. Boxes face each other at chaotic angles. A new man enters her room. Bald domed head with tufts of black hair. He is moronic in the way that fat middle aged men are. I sense he is sexually curious towards me, so naturally, I am guarded.
____
Enceladus
One of Saturn’s many moons. Embedded into its ice rings house vast reserves of hydro-dynamic water. (Heated). These geysers burst salt water into the atmosphere. It’s possible that in billions of years life could evolve from microbial to something more imaginative.
25.08.21
A man smiling as he sounded me. As his smile grew stronger, so did my ability to receive the metal rods. As his smile continued to grow, I realised he’d inserted his full fist into me.
____
Train.
Shoeless man with filthy feet walking in abject desperation up and down the length of the overground carriage yesterday evening, asking for money. He grew more desperate by everyone’s lack of concern – crying, “I don’t have anything – including family.” Everyone staring blankly into their phones – full frontal, collective-empathetic-digital-lobotomy.
TV (Space)
Both Voyagers at the outer edges of the solar system, gifted interstellar messages in bottles. Two gold discs attached to each probe, our co-ordinates and star system mapped out. Music and greetings from 55 different Earth languages. Photos of our civilisation, sepia 1977. Cars, buildings, aeroplanes, trains and one photo of a man eating a hamburger. Signs that signal our demise? Why not Easter island? It is estimated that it will be 40,000 years until the probe reaches another solar system. Obviously by that time whatever remains here will be unlike anything now – like returning to the caves at Lascaux?
2.9.21
We’re naked and I can feel him behind me. I reach up and curl my hand around his thick neck. (Warm musculature soothes broken bones). I rest my head on his chest (boulder size). T-800 comforts me.
20.9.21
School friend who kept many animals in his garden, including chickens and birds. Wedding day. I walk through his wedding photos oblivious to the idea that it’s his wedding day – to re-join members of my own family (mother’s side), living and dead. We sit together and eat. There is a glass partition between both sets of families. We barely notice each other but he is perturbed that I walked through his wedding photos.
21.9.21
A. and I killed a pastor out in the jungle with a weak retractable Stanley blade. He had photos of my mother as a nun in a red latex hood. We left together. Many years later the police came looking for us – the only clue to the murder was a notebook (blue) which said “Psycho” on the front cover. I was able to conceal the notebook directly against my bare chest for many years.
A. eventually fell from scaffolding she erected carelessly. Never managed to find out if she was permanently harmed.
____
Pastor lived at the end of a truck in deep jungle. My uncle drove an old car without seat belts. Iron chase exposed. The photograph of my mother, wearing a red latex nun’s uniform, showed her as youthful, attractive. This was a polaroid photograph inside a collection of many other unnerving images. All palm sized.
The photograph was the catalyst for the pastor’s murder. I had two knives – a fixed surgeons’ scalpel and retractable plastic (orange) Stanley blade. Pastor was crouching upstairs as I went to hug him – the surgeons’ blade in my left hand and the orange Stanley knife in my right. The first blow was made with my left hand – the surgeons blade aimed at the nape of his neck failed. I had to quickly attack with my right. The Stanley blade entered his throat to make an uneven, jagged incision into his larynx – I was forced to repeat the manoeuvre with my right hand until I was satisfied that he was dead. I cannot recall the sound. There were blood stains around my hands and mouth as we left his house and fled into the jungle.
17.10.21
On the doorstep of the flat that my mother and I used to live in. I had to secretly carry a mannequin sex doll through the threshold. The body in parts and difficult to hold. The feet were dressed in stockings, sealed inside white carrier bags. Hair blond and scraggly. Doll damaged and dirty.
Once the door was opened, I was greeted by an upper middle-class family I know. They were laughing, supportive of the endeavour.
17.11.21
Dense foliage of broken crockery shattered in mother’s kitchen sink; tenement flat. Winding stairwell, speed and booze binge. Friends and hangers on collapse into desolate flat as the sun comes up. Mother sitting tiny on a wooden stool in the hallway annex – greeting me (and friends) sober, watching inquisitively. No sense of shame.
1.12.21
Last three weeks in flat. Hung clothes like ghosts on the hanger. Apparitions that signify a past – not an immediate future. Dreams in this bed are distant and buried. My grandfather and I somewhere in a muddy cavern. A smashed car windscreen. Fragments salvaged through daylight. Walking towards L.
11.12.21
Chinese P and I walking to learn the rules of a card game. Greeted by my grandmother who remonstrates me for being cocky. I haven’t dreamt of her in a while – she said if she could come (back), she’d communicate.
____
Black thumb tooth and nail
Skin slice in palm
4mm pig fingers
Robot sport youth,
Health goth with Molotov cock,
Obscene tail resting on window ledge
Iron lion lithe youth gait
Watch the world
From the floor
Or the sewer –
How to spend the rest of Time well?
17.12.21
Brighton. Big hill east towards the hospital. Bikes. A, LB, HJ and I. Café at the top with large windows and sea views. Coffee. Waiter shows us his drawings – computer animations of weapons. Guns with oversized triggers. Ride bike downhill – and get separated.
I find myself in a winding council estate – the roads, small medieval alleys. Luxury homes embedded into shop windows. A high heeled boot discarded in the gutter.
I call HJ, they’re at the cinema. I don’t have a bike lock. They’re unwilling to help. I think I can hear them laughing into the phone.
23.12.21
Two phones. Can’t get back to where I’m staying. A hotel. Italy? I know JC knows where I’m staying but I can’t locate his number on either of the phones. One is a grey 80s early mobile, large with an inverse diamond shape – the other a flip-top 90s. I can’t work either. With effort I ring a number and get through to my grandmother. Her voice disapproving and cold. Somehow, I realise JC’s parents are separating, his father is drinking heavily, and mother can’t take it – however, she’s still in two minds.
Both JC and SFM text today on separate matters.
____
Entry listed on the 17.12.21
“The roads, small medieval alleys. Luxury homes embedded into shop windows. A high heeled boot discarded in the gutter.”.
Earlier, the mirror frame broke in transit to L’s. I’ve had this mirror (a wardrobe door mirror) since 2009. Mirrors are portals. We took it to the shop for repair. The shop is on a narrow medieval street that is difficult to turn a car in. We drove to the end of the road, approximately 3 metres to attempt the turn. Then I saw “luxury homes embedded into shop windows” more precise than déjà vu. Perhaps I would have found the high heeled boot in the gutter if I’d left the car.
26.12.21
Met Anton Newcombe again. We nodded at each other outside at a gig in London. He was wearing blue denim. He looked sheepish (and so did I). Sense of empathy.