‘Pretty good,’ I said. ‘Bit of a sausage fest.’
‘Sister, and how.’
‘Also, did you know the Nazis were bad?’s
‘I had an inkling,’ said Laika, ‘although I had no idea they’d done something as heinous as putting fluoride in the water in the camps.’ She lit a cigarette and shook her head bitterly. ‘Except they fucking didn’t. If it wasn’t totally against my principles to heckle even the most face-chewingly ghastly of performers, I’d have told that twat to do some fact-checking before spewing bullshit fallacies to unsuspecting hippies. They eat that shit right up.’ She blew out smoke in her remixed Lauren Bacall way, and shook her head again. ‘God, they’re all so fucking earnest. And so spiritual. I’m like so totes fine with people being spiritual, so long as they do it in their own homes and don’t bother anyone else . . . but all the preaching. It’s so weird, that cognitive dissonance, when someone is saying things that you do basically agree with, but in such a fucking thuddingly cack-handed obvious way that you’re actually praying for some stormtroopers to burst in and start cracking down on their freedom of speech with fucking truncheons.’
‘On the bright side, though,’ I said, ‘I’m definitely going to re-think my entire life in terms of how much I consume, and I’m going to be like totally self-flagellating every time I don’t live up to my utopian potential. Ooh, and I’ll also be sure to remember that my menstrual cycle is actually a metaphor for womanhood.’
‘She didn’t actually say that, did she?’
‘She literally said that.’
‘What a cunt.’
‘Sister, and how.’
TRACK 9) RE: STACKS – BON IVER
Breakup song extraordinaire. This particular album has seen me through a fair bit of heartache. Bereavements, too. A breakup is kind of like a bereavement, reads the message inside an offensive imaginary greeting card. I have several sad playlists, for when one is sitting in an oh God oh Jesus shitting Christ what the fuck kind of mood, when you just want to wallow, and most of this album is spread randomly through them. I think this is the only song that’s in all the playlists. I would like so totally go and lock myself away in some cabin out in the frosted woods somewhere, with only a log fire for company, and scratch out broken-hearted melodies on a guitar, and crack a falsetto over it, I would like so totally do that OMFG it’s like so beautiful #forlaikaforeverago. I don’t know why I’m taking the piss like this, I definitely would do that if I had an ounce of musical talent. Oh, one thing I didn’t say earlier was that once I wanted to have musical talent when I grew up but it never happened. Not sure why that might be.
TRACK 3) SEXY BOY – AIR
We got home from the poetry night, drank wine and listened to Moon Safari on repeat while Laika did long improvised piss-takes of stoner poetry, and it was great.
MORE STUFF
At some unspecified time I took a week off work, which I shouldn’t have done, really, but I managed to make myself sound pretty fucking ill. I think I’d picked up some of Lee’s drama skills. Or Laika’s. Both of them or maybe neither I don’t fucking know or care had studied drama at university, I think. So yes, seeing as how I worked in a café serving food, there was no way they wanted me choking my revolting infectious phlegm blobs into people’s coffees. So I sat at home for a week wrapped in blankets, staring at the wall, through the wall, and into Lee and Laika’s lives.
I wonder if they felt the itch behind their eyes. The slight wobble in the stomach. Or just the vague presence, like a shadow that’s perpetually just over your shoulder, where you’re not looking. I ghosted along with them, watching Laika look down at her hands as she typed, wrote, cooked, smoked, watching Lee’s hands as he lost himself in some hypnotic psychedelic jungle mix, watching them walk from place to place, bouncing along, safe and snug in their invisible rucksacks. And I tried to get in further. Tried to wriggle in even more, to really feel, to have my own beautiful, forbidden shiver as Laika rubbed her hands together, as Lee ran his fingers unconsciously through his hair as he waited for his newly-mixed tune to drop. Once or twice they looked in mirrors, and I jumped, because I was expecting to see myself, or at least see a suggestion of myself hiding in their eyes, but no. I wasn’t there. And I started to wonder if maybe they didn’t feel me there at all.
This was the first time it occurred to me that maybe I was experiencing something that they weren’t.
Later, Lee went on the Internet, using his Speccs. He leaves comments on every
website he goes on, as RaveNewWorld (yep), and as I watched him, I started to really hate everything he was writing. Like hate. I hated the good-natured shit, the yeah love this album too, isn’t it the most awesomest of awesomes, and I hated the preach-y shit, the what we’ve all got to remember is that we’re in this together, no matter how much THEY (my emphasis) want to separate us, we’re one, I hated all of it. So when he replied to someone else, someone called LoneSharkTree, who was apparently a friend (ooh, fucking online friend, FUCKING MESSAGEBOARD FRIEND), I took my chance. I hopped through his eyes, through the Speccs, and in, and I replaced yeah man I know, it’s mental isn’t it, proper uplifting but gnarly too, loves it, peace with what are you on about you cretin, it’s fucking shit, only an absolute retard would like it, you spasticated fucking blob of knob cheese, why don’t you go and fuck a close relative and spare the wider gene pool your unutterable appallingness??!!.
Later on, Laika called me. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
I didn’t reply. ‘Cos why should I?
SIMPLE SONG – THE SHINS
I was going to put this one on Laika’s CD, but I didn’t in the end, because I decided it was too happy for the vibe I was trying to create / I hadn’t ever shared it with Laika so it wouldn’t have hurt at all / I ran out of room / reasons.
Embarrassingly, I had discovered The Shins via Garden State, which Laika had later made me realise I had later realised was quite stupendous in its mega-indie mega-naffness. Fuck quirky Natalie Portman. Fuck JD making a whole film that’s basically a feature-length version of his bollocks inner monologues from the end of particularly emotional episodes of Scrubs. Fuck calculated wistfulness. And so on. Anyway. So I had fallen in love with them and listened to them in big headphones, and Torrented all their albums back when I Torrented stuff (i.e. at Uni when I didn’t have to pay for the Internet all by myself and had made plans to blame my flatmate if ever the piracy police came banging on the door), and I would (now) rank their albums thusly, from best to worst:
Oh, Inverted World
Port Of Morrow
Chutes Too Narrow
Wincing The Night Away
I’m not sure why I’m ranking them, to be honest, I love all four of them for various reasons. But at this point I actually, now I think about it, I think I’d have to rank them this way because of the whole point of this bit that I’m writing:
Port Of Morrow
Oh, Inverted World
Wincing The Night Away
Chutes Too Narrow
Because each was a soundtrack to a little bit of my life, the way music is. The way I always used to listen to Pretty (Ugly Before) by Elliott Smith on the college bus when I was feeling shit about myself. The way I would secretly listen to The Slim Shady LP by Eminem on a copied CD (with STEPS GREATEST HITS scrawled on it in pen to fool my parents) on my CD Walkman when we went on family holidays when I was twelve, and my various siblings were other ages, or possibly not there at all. The way that the first disk of The White Album (or The Beatles if you want to give it its proper name) was my comedown album for just about forever. The way Archangel by Burial always seemed to sum up sex with Dan (remember Dan? No? Me neither). And so on and so on.
So, this is just a simple song. To say what I’ve done. Or what I did. Which was, during my first week of living in Bristol, to walk around as much of it as possible, listening to Port of Morrow on rep
eat, and within that, listening to Simple Song more times than all the others, because its cascade of punchy power-pop guitars, and James Mercer’s lyrical, melancholy yet triumphant singing, just seemed to sum up everything at that particular moment, from the sketchy Special Brew-smelling crusties juggling for coppers in the Bear Pit, to the snooty not-quite-Bath architecture of Clifton, to the lumpy-dumpy sprawl of Bedminster and the line of multicoloured houses that rendered the otherwise unremarkable Totterdown somehow beautiful and poetic, and kind of iconic, like the first shot of a beloved kids TV show. All of it, the beauty of being in a new city, the loveliness, the excitement and apprehension, all of it, was all contained within Simple Song. Every last little bit of it.
And sometimes, not always, but sometimes, when I listen to it, it all comes exploding back. And like nostalgia always does, it hurts. Cuts right in. And I remember walking a mile to Laika’s house, glowing in the dark, and making a fumbling play for her heart, and striking a spark, except I don’t fucking remember that because it probably never happened, but the song makes me feel like it did, so it might as well have. I might as well have put a charm on a chain that I stole especially for her. Or Lee might as well have done it for me. ‘Cos fuck it.
Other Shins songs I like are: you don’t care do you why would you and who are you anyway Sleeping Lessons (USP: the moment it erupts); Australia (USP: give me your hand and let’s jump out the window); Pink Bullets (USP: since then it’s been a book you read in reverse); Girl on the Wing (USP: good for imagining punching Lee and / or Laika people).
TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE SHINS, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE DICKHEAD
POSSIBLE FUTURE 3
‘So where were you last night?’
For the benefit of the tape, I stare at him.
‘Where were you last Monday? Did you go to your friend Lee’s house?’
I look down at the table.
‘You know what happened to them, don’t you? To him and your friend Laika?’
I look back at him. My face gives nothing away.
‘I’ll tell you, I’m almost impressed. I’ve seen a couple of murder scenes like these. That’s why they brought me up from London. Gory and elaborate. Makes me feel like I’m working in some kind of dark ITV drama. Except I’m not hugely inclined to play an elaborate game of cat and mouse with you.’
I look back down at the table and drum my fingers on it, silently.
‘See, it looks like they had sex, and then she cut him to pieces immediately afterwards, and then wrote WE’RE SORRY on the wall in his blood, and then cut herself until she eventually died from the blood loss. It looks like that’s what happened. The fact that the only other DNA evidence present shows that you haven’t been there for weeks does suggest that you haven’t, in fact, been there for weeks.’
I look up at him.
‘But weirdly? A lot of what was done to them matches up pretty exactly with some fairly eye-popping comments you left – and quickly deleted – on Facebook a little while back.’
I breathe in, deeply, and out again.
‘And then there’s the CD . . . very romantic. Very pathetic. So. What do you know?’
In and out.
‘What do you know, eh?’
In and out.
‘What do you know, Amber?’
Now I look up at him, and I give him my most serial killer-y smile. I’ve been practising it. It has the desired effect; he recoils. And I say: ‘Call me Selena, please.’
The ‘please’ really freaks him out.
IF THIS IS THE FUTURE, ASK LEE AND LAIKA IF THIS IS THE FUTURE, AND LISTEN TO THEM LAUGH. LEAN IN, CLOSER, SO I CAN SPIT THEIR LAUGHTER IN YOUR FACE. NOW WASH YOUR HANDS
LEE
‘What’s the point of this story?’ he asked. ‘Why are you telling it? What are you aiming for, what are you doing, where are you going, what does it mean? Like, are you trying to make a point? Or are you trying not to make a point? Or using a lack of point to make a wider, ambiguous point? What are you trying to do? Is it just the creative urge, are you just rolling with it, letting the waves batter you, wash over you, doing its their bidding? Because that’s legitimate, of course it is, it obviously is, the creative spark is the one, it’s the thing. It’s the dance. But also I feel like you kind of have to know what you’re doing with it. I don’t always know what I’m doing, funnily enough – bet you never knew that. Sometimes I literally have no fucking idea. Remember what you said that one time about how university left you feeling so confused, because everything is debatable, everything is subjective, there are so many different ways of interpreting everything and no concrete answers, so why bother discussing it all, ‘cos there’s no way you’re going to come to any conclusions? That’s not really relevant to what I was going to say but I thought I’d bring it up because it was kind of interesting, or whatever. Um where was I. Yeah, so yeah I don’t always know what I’m doing, what I’m on about. Everything is fucked, all over the place, the corporations have won, the Earth is doomed, we’re all doomed, everything is fucked, I’ve got friends who are having fucking children, babies, for fuck’s sake! In 2014! They’re having babies in 2014! I mean, how the fuck can anyone with half a brain even think that that is a viable option? That it’s an OK thing to do? It’s fucking criminal. For their own narcissistic pleasure, they are creating a new person, bringing them into a world that needs them like my left bollock needs a cancer diagnosis, not only that, not only the impact they’re going to have on the world, but imagine the impact that the world is going to have on them, for fuck’s sake! Their parents are going to die, and leave them behind in a world that is utterly and irretrievably FUCKED. And I . . . I know it’s all fucked and yet I still talk the talk of the revolutionary, I still talk as though I’ve got some kind of plan, I moan and I whinge about all the shit that the government is doing, and I hate it, and at the same time I’ve completely given up, but I won’t really ever admit that I’ve given up, which makes me almost a bigger hypocrite than any of the fucking hypocrites that I constantly berate for being fucking hypocrites, and where the hell does it go, where does it end? And on top of that, actually things are kind of OK, I have that thought sometimes, that shit’s all right, that I personally don’t really have much to complain about . . . but I keep on complaining. I guess that’s . . . I guess that’s where I’m at right now. What is the point? What is the point of any of it? What’s the fucking point, Lucy? Please, tell me.’
‘I really wish you’d actually just said all that,’ I replied. ‘I really do. Also, the point is there is no point so just enjoy yourself, you knob end. You can even have babies, if you like. It’s OK.’
IF YOU KNOW THE ACTUAL POINT PLEASE LET ME KNOW. ANSWERS ON A POSTCARD. AND IF I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THERE NOT BEING A POINT PLEASE LET ME KNOW THAT ALSO. THANKS
TWEET
London just collapsed but I’ve got more important things to worry about #metime
TRACK 14 AND 15) DAY IS DONE – NICK DRAKE
There’s a funny story behind the picking of this song, and an even funnier one that will tell you why it ended up being on the CD twice. Seriously, both stories are hilarious, so fucking funny, and kind of heart-warming in a way, and they actually paint all three of us in a much better light than I think I have so far, and to be honest you could probably apply them to a reading of the entire slow-motion catastrophe that I have tried to expound upon here, and it would be perfect, like literally spot-on.
SLOW-ROASTED PORKPOCALYPSE
SELENA: I’m sitting at the centre, watching it all decay, from the molecular level upwards (and probably downwards, if I squint), from the micro to the macro, coming apart at the seams. I’m chewing over that word decay. I’m seeing the surface detail flake away like diseased skin cells, ejecting and bursting into flurries of acidic snowdust, which in turn vaporise, become gas, become whatever’s beyond gas that I can’t see, I’m seeing the constituent parts begin to se
parate, the bone structure tumbling into disrepair, mannerisms reverting back to their primal core functions, conceptual strata becoming indistinct and theoretical like flat-packed furniture eating itself in reverse, but psychic, I’m hearing the soft slip-and-slide of a cocoon breaking, chicken egg chicken egg chicken egg, crushed cuckoo-ejected life pod humming through a spitting frenzy of rancid oilslick yolk, I’m crunchy footsteps and that heralds change, I’m heavy breathing and that heralds escape, I’m escape and that heralds too-tall walls screaming away into black like the end of a Fritz Lang film reel, parallel lines twisting, it’s all one great big Möbius Strip, feedback loop, decay decay decay decay that word is all in my gums and my tooth gaps, clogging my throat like mud, I’m not-quite-disposed-of, not-quite-murder-victim irresponsibly dumped in a too-thick river, I’m limbs in binbags (dot Tumblr dot com), I’m dunno, dunno, don’t know, I’m seeing diplomacy come back to eat itself out from behind and it’s not sexy, I’m seeing what happens when civilisation loses patience for the last time and it’s not pretty, I’m seeing how a crack in a convex mirror spreads and bends my reflection back until it’s showing me what I actually think I am rather than who I tried to decide I wanted to be, I’m standing at the top of the cliff watching an army of rutting pigs, and when they’re done they’re going to set upon me and I’ll let them eat me because why wouldn’t I? Like, dude. Seriously.
I wish I’d written that. I did write it, actually.
TRACK 6) EXIT MUSIC (FOR A FILM) – RADIOHEAD
Stuff Page 7
