And after – what? – a couple of weeks absence one person says, why you no write no blog? and I suppose that leads me to write some blog. What I been up to? Well, I been organising a squash tournament. I been refereeing. I been playing squash. And I been embroiled in awesome eighties computer game ‘Head Over Heels’ to perhaps a fiendish degree. Sure, I wanted to complete it again – and that I did, and thought I was done with it. But then I got it in my head I needed to record a perfect game, speed-running straight to the finish line and share it with the waiting world and, wow, that becomes some sort of obsession, right? Like losing a life or fucking up in some room and you gotta do the whole thing all over again – and then it’s like two hours of the morning done and time to drag one’s arse out of bed and make it to the squash just in time – and by the time the squash gets done the day is over and, hohum, it’s another day, another dollar. Another day nearer to death. Another day of youthful prime spent maybe not so wisely.
Also I been hanging perhaps a little too much with my young student squash chums. Well they’re full of beans and piss and vinegar and crisps and so much more interesting than people my own age. And they like boardgames too. Articulate, Balderdash – I’m down with that. We went the other night to watch the world’s number one squash player play an exhibition match at the Met and, wow, he was crazy good. He did a q&a afterwards but all I could think to ask was what his favourite sandwich was.
And I watch my libido trickle away to nothing. I don’t even get hard-ons anymore. Masturbate like twice a year. It’s been a steady downward progression really the last five or ten years: you could chart it on a graph. It’s sort of nice and liberating and peaceful, not feeling desire in that area of life. Osho says you should be done by about 42 anyways so I guess I’m right on schedule. It makes me wonder about these old guys who ramp themselves up on pills or go see doctors bemoaning their impotence and the like. Why not just let it go? Sex ain’t all that, ain’t that big a provider of pleasure. But – ah – that’s not what we’ve been taught: it’s supposed to be like one of the best, right? And maybe it is, if your life has been base. But, for me, it won’t be no great loss. Freedom! Freedom from all desires. And especially those that just leave you sticky and wishing you’d never bothered.
And then…and then there’s the degree, which is rapidly baffling my brain. Can’t think of a thing to write. Can’t think of any reason to write it. I wrap my head around theories of beats and writing in general – and the more I get into it, the more it unravels. I think I have it cracked – this idea of one seamless movement from mid-nineteenth century transcendentalists and bohemians right up to the beats and the hippies – an American movement, this is – and then it all gets blown apart when I read in a 1968 Rolling Stone article that the whole beat thing was barely remembered even then. They didn’t know who they were. They didn’t even relate it to the hippy thing at the time. It’s only later when we look back through history and want to pluck some fish out the pond and say that represents the whole sea that these movements become crystallised and made sense of. Oh yes, this flowed to this flowed to this flowed to this and everything’s ordered and understood. But it’s not! It’s a lie! And the more I see – of Ginsberg, of Dylan, of drunken lame-ass Kerouac – the more I think, but wow, they really were a massive bunch of losers, gnarled nicotine fingers and egos and sex hunger. Fuck! I wouldn’t last ten minutes in a room with weird bald-headed Ginsberg – imagine his speccy Jewish lips trying to slurp all spittle beard down on your clean young man’s armoury and sucking on cigarette butts and spouting mad ‘poetry’. Fuckin’ lunatics. Nutters. The written word is –
Is bobbins!
Yes, Frank Sidebottom said it best. And we’re all just losers and weirdoes and I don’t know why we do half the things we do. I can’t wait for this to be over – and then I can go proper mad.
What to grasp? What to pretend make sense of? Oh, if only to be one of those egghead academics who think everything can be explained in this infinitely complex and ungraspable world of ours – as though twenty people out of two hundred million define what was happening at some given time and forget the rest. Ah, it must be nice to live in make-believe – but my head rings.
And, of course, this is all melodrama ‘cos I enjoy the typing when really what I’m thinking about is my pot of tea and my game of funny little cat-head and dog-head and this lovely bed and the ongoing question of the girlfriend and everything else besides.
An ex emails me and tells me she had Tantric sex for 64-hours and I’m not sure I really believe it, or at least can’t imagine it – or when I do try to imagine it just imagine getting bored or sleepy or wanting some other stimulation – and then another part of me when I look at my life thinks, hm, that’s the kind of thing I should be doing, perhaps there really is a universe within that’d be pretty cool and awesome to explore (like I always used to say) – but then I don’t suppose I could be bothered with that. Man! It’d take some mindblowing shit to get me back on that weird old track given my life as a run-around ball-chasing referee type fellow and how normal and happy that feels and maybe this really is all there is.
Yeah, sure, I’ll write something normal soon. I’ll write about investigating ‘Breaking into America
That’s all.
But – PS – this is me: yup, I started this. I don’t know if it makes any sense. I feel very much the lone voice maybe not even crying in the wilderness – maybe just sitting mad in man-diapers and eating his own shit – but the lone voice nonetheless.
Anything else? Sharing my Towels script at script club down at the Playhouse and even making old people laugh. Dreaming once more and really must send it to someone ‘cos unlikely it’ll get bought if I keep it in a drawer. Thinking once more about writing [TITLE WITHHELD] and just to hell and damnation with everything else, the chips fall where they may and, sure, you can sue my ass if you want, take it all, I don’t care – but will I ever do it? And, yes, if my face wasn’t so handsome and my wit and intellect more-than-functional and…all the rest of it, where would I be? Me and my brother got more in common than I like to admit. Hope I don’t regret spending so much time in bed when I finally wake from this dream and find my knees all full of troubles and even small stone walls an obstacle insurmountable. All grow old and bent, eh?
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