Writer-insighter – Page 42 – Maybe it doesn't matter if it's true. So long as you believe it is.

Songs Without Music

I started using my iPhone as a voice recorder. The quality isn’t that great, but it’s good enough to get things down as you think of them and there are times when you just can’t find a pen and paper.

Doing stand-up poetry has shifted my brain into overdrive in some respects; it’s made me think about words a lot more. It’s also made me think about what poetry is and despite Google, I still don’t really know.

I always had problems with rhymes. When I first came to London I bought strange books. One of my first pay-packets got me Betjeman’s Summoned By Bells, which wasn’t his greatest stuff . Anything qualifying as that would have to include Invasion Exercises On A Chicken Farm. There’s a brilliant original recording on Spotify.

I used to hang around Motor Books, a small shop still down an alley off Haymarket, full of odd titles like Sniping Towards the Rhine and The Improvised Munitions Handbook, which they refused to sell me unless I could prove I was in the police or the Army, on Home Office orders, they claimed. I wasn’t, so I left empty-handed. And I still don’t know what poetry is.

Maybe it’s a song without music. I think it is.

Songs Without Music

Some people think that poetry

Should rhyme

But there’s more

To words than that.

Sometimes rhyming

Just produces doggerel

Or worse; very often

You could hardly call it verse.

Poetry was something inaccessible

At school when your least

Favourite English teacher

Used to play the fool

And do his funny voice

For recitation, which bored

Almost an entire generation

At my school.

Poetry my dear,

Poetry simply wasn’t cool.

So I don’t call this poetry;

I call this music without songs

Or songs without music

And just hope it may amuse

If you’re in the right mood for it.

You see what I mean about rhymes?

Let’s get on. It’s getting late.

Besides, we’ve all got other things to do

Like drinking wine and reading poetry to you.

Slightly Foxed

I like Sundays. This one is going to be busy. I’ve got a job interview tomorrow as well as the Lifeboat Party radio show, and I need to make sure all of my stuff, the ironed shirt, the three forms of identity, the polished shoes, are all ready for that.

And today after I get some sleep there’s a music thing at the local pub a mile away, then at four nine miles in the other direction a party and then another open-mic gig at The Anchor in Woodbridge. The big question is cab or car? I don’t drink until after I’m not performing, or only one drink, but I might want a drink afterwards.

I talked to a friend yesterday, someone I’ve known since school. “Do something about living in Tony Blair’s Isington,” she said. “I used to read your email rants and laugh out loud.” She still has them from 15 years ago. Maybe we need to talk but we’ve never quite got around to it somehow.

Her advice was don’t be one-dimensional. Despite describing my stand-up stuff as cathartic and affirming and transformational ( I know, I’ve got to look all that up in a minute as well….) she told me to write stuff not just about my stream of not-quite gelling relationships. Even Wordsworth wrote about daffodils and Coleridge, my West Country dope-addled literary hero above all others, the man who melted and moulded words to create something more akin to a 1980s Tom Petty video than something people in crinolines might read, he wrote about all kinds of stuff. Gardens. Ships. Albatrosses. Crossbows. Caverns, if you’ll pardon the expression, measureless to man.

For years I’ve been fascinated by old photos. At last I think what I meant to write about them has come out properly. Almost. It’ll probably change a little soon but this draft is almost there. I think I’m going to do this one tonight and see how it goes.

Slightly Foxed

Box Brownies, Linda Eastman,

Cartier-Bresson, Fox-Talbot;

Just the names talk of pictures.

Photo-gravures and glass plates,

Fox-Talbot patented film and wrote a paper

For the Edinburgh Journal of Science

In 1826 bewitching “Some Experiments

On Coloured Flame”; To the Quarterly Journal of Science

In 1827 a paper on “Monochromatic Light”;

And to the Philosophical Magazine

“Chemical Changes of Colour.”

What did it mean?

Long exposures, pained expressions

And the blur of a small boy moving,

Too bored and too young to be so still.

It was the only way they could take pictures

Back when cameras were on tripods

And photographers wore a thick black veil.

Some people thought the camera

Stole their souls. Chief Skittiwash

In the Pacific Northwest, remembered now

Not for his photo but for his mention

In another text, “Demonstrating a conceptual

Link between Wilderness and” something else

I hadn’t the time or inclination to read.

The image was fading and blurred, foxed

Before my eyes like Mr Talbot and the rest.

Fading monochromes spoke of the same;

An instant etched for all time

As if we could stop the clock hands turning.

As if the picture of the people we loved

Could stop them leaving or ageing.

As if seeing their smile, or the way their lip

Curved, framing the flash of their teeth

In the streetlight could bring back their laughter

And that thing she said in the garden,

The day before the sleet.

The daguerrotypes of steam-haunted

Railway stations, the double-engined

Monster bomber about as big now

As the average car, if a car had wings.

These pictures become the images of death.

Not in the machines or even the guns

But the uniformed men, the unformed lives;

The old, the young, the not with us now

The blank expressions and glassy eyes

Trapped on tables and mantlepieces,

The charity shop or the skip,

Staring stiff and still at the sky

From where their picture fell.

And sometimes you know they’re still there.

You can see them. You’ll be taken unawares

In a junk shop or a museum, in a place you’ve

Never been before and suddenly

You see them in the place

Where you dropped your keys

Staring past you out of their years:

A dog, a cart, an older man and a girl

Holding the back of a chair,

A woman frowning as she stands

For the photographer with better things

To do before she was fixed forever there.

“The popularity of picture postcards showing Indian women weaving baskets or digging clams attests to a growing nostalgia relating to Indians. Historians have demonstrated a conceptual link between the disappearing American wilderness and a changing attitude toward Native Americas by looking at both popular literature and the federal government’s Indian policies. The Indian came to symbolize America’s lost youth, and his image commemorated that unspoiled past.”

Still Life

I was thinking about old photographs, the way you’ll maybe find a picture of a place you know well, but taken years before you were even born. How sometimes you’ll find a photo of people long, long dead, standing with their dog or a basket of washing on your own front doorstep, this place they knew, this place you know.

Boulevard de Temple, Paris, taken at 8 am by Daguerre, either in 1838 or 1839. We know the time of day but not the year.

And this poem just didn’t come out the way I thought it would. The one I meant to write is still waiting to be written.

Still Life

Louis-Jacques Daguerre

First captured souls

When men wore promade

And greased the anti-macassars

On chairbacks with their hair.

The image is projected onto a silvered surface,

Shone on the fakery of Sheffield plate

Exposed to iodine fumes and

Tobromine and chlorine,

Half the firmament of Victorian chemistry

To produce a halide coating,

Carried to the camera

In a light-tight plate holder.

Sensitive in the dark

Like a tender girl.

Then like a magician’s trick.

The light is let in,

An invisible image on the silver plate

A tarnish of light arrested by sodium thiosulphate

Or a hot saturated solution of common salt,

And uncommon liquid gold

Poured onto the ghost’s face

Heated then drained and rinsed and dried.

Underneath the silver will always tarnish.

The picture must be kept under glass.

You can always tell a daguerrotype

Or teep, more properly, as Louis was

Unfortunately French.

A century and more on

The image is still bright,

The mirrored surface mirroring past lives.

Long after their last goodnight.

After last night

Well, the night before, anyway. My very, very first paid-for stand-up poetry gig was at Justine de Meirre’s Tapas & Tales event at the Old Mariner in Woodbridge. Ok, it wasn’t much, just petrol money, but something of a landmark event, the first time anyone’s put their hand in their pocket and said ‘here, that was worth my money.’

Which isn’t why I do it, but it’s nice, despite the monetisation of something I’m not quite sure what it is. There’s a good, edgy feeling before you go on. I kicked it off with All Of Your S**t, the one that started it all, the one that gets the audience wondering if they’re allowed to laugh.

I need to put more theatricality into the delivery, I think. I’ve always resisted that ‘this is my stage voice’ thing, the booming Brian Blessed oration and now I’m up on a stage doing it I can see exactly why it’s done. I talk as if it’s late and everyone’s had a couple of drinks and we’re relaxed and sitting on a sofa and I’m not at all sure that totally works as a delivery to a room full of people. Let’s face it, it doesn’t always work on a sofa, depending on your definition of ‘works’, of course. There have been some memorable sofas, it must be said. But it’s not that kind of show.

Songs without music

Back To Ourselves followed up, which is a bit Hugo Williams but I like Hugo Williams anyway. It’s a little bit about the end of the summer holidays, which is to say that of course it really isn’t at all. Then In Silence, and then the one that really does silence, When The Phone Rings.

That poem, if these are poems and I’m not at all sure about the definition, so I call them songs without music as I can’t sing and play a guitar at the same time, doesn’t just silence the entire room every time I do it. People come up to me and touch my arm afterwards. Always my left arm, just above the elbow. Men, women, always the same reaction. This time I recorded it and there are even people saying ‘oh!’ at the end.

I don’t know whether it’s ‘oh that was so moving’ or ‘oh god, poor you,’ or both, but it seems to speak to people. So I really ought not to canter through it because I’ve heard it so many times, and I also really ought to remember that not everybody has and although the more impressionable women might go for that whispered in their ear, the person at the bar can’t actually hear it unless I BrianlyBlessedly boom it out a bit. Which is a performance in itself, because first of all it’s quite a despairing, non-shouty, sensitive piece and also because when I put some volume into my voice it cuts across every conversation in a pub, which was quite useful in places like the Sloaney Pony (oh come on, the White Horse on Parsons Green, you do know, rarely…) in the ’80s, when girls wore a single string of pearls outside the turned-up collar of their borrowed stripey shirt under a tight jumper, and jeans, blazer, a rugby shirt, RayBans and Topsiders were actually cool (what do you mean, they aren’t now?), it does sound a bit as if I practice scaring Labradors across three fields.

So some work on the delivery needed. But a night when other story tellers told me they liked my stuff, when the monetisation didn’t matter, when you get through the pre-stage nerves (there’s a simple cure, just tell yourself ‘ok, if you feel like that just don’t do it, just don’t get up there. You don’t have to. Nobody’s going to make you do it.’ That cures it), when you feel genuinely that we’re all in this together, that like Bronze Age people, we’re huddled here out of the storm in this little pool of light and we’re telling the tales of our tribe, sharing what it is to feel in all the different ways there are.

And I felt ‘this is what I do.’ Just such a pity the person who helped me do it wasn’t there. So all that after last night. At least nobody said ‘we need to talk.’ Even though we all did. I do, anyway.

Tapas & Tales

Tomorrow night sees the event I was practising for. I wanted to get some practice before I stood up and performed my poetry at Tapas Tales at The Old Mariner in Woodbridge tomorrow.

So I got up on my hind legs at The Anchor, Woodbridge (5th January), DPs in Aldeburgh (17th), the Anchor again (19th) and a new venue, the Golden Key at Snape on 25th. I think I’ve had some practice now.

It’s been strange. I never do a poem if anyone in the audience could possibly recognise people or circumstances it could have been about. And almost every time All Of Your S**t gets the laughs it was supposed to, In Silence seems to shock, Back To Ourselves makes women look thoughtful and When The Phone Rings, which I’ve only done twice, silences the entire audience.

Men and women are coming up to me afterwards and touching my arm. Always my left arm, above the elbow. I don’t know why, except obviously it speaks to them. Which it was supposed to.

When The Phone Rings is from the heart. They all are, but that one, I think it’s the best I’ve ever done, from the first line onwards. I’m a bit dubious about the one-line stanza in the middle, but it seems to work.

And yes, obviously it’s about a real person. No, she’s never read it to my knowledge or heard it. Which is a pity, because it’s quite a moving poem.

If it or any of them are poems at all. I’m not sure what a poem should be. I know I’m not a good enough musician to play an instrument and sing at the same time. My guitar playing isn’t that good although my sax playing is a bit better, but I still can’t do that and sing at the same time. So I’m calling these pieces words without music. It makes sense to me. The thing that prompted When The Phone Rings still doesn’t.

Either way, this public catharsis is fun once I’ve got past the stage nerves and get behind the mic again. I had to bowdlerise AOYS for the Golden Key and it wasn’t the place to give Minimum Wage its first outing, given it looked and sounded like Conservative Central Office. Still. Might get paid one day. And it’s all good practice and exposure for something that would be so fabulous if it came off I can’t even write about it, here or anywhere else. Just fingers crossed.

And come and see me tomorrow night at The Old Mariner.

Today’s Lifeboat Party Show

Here you go. Back onair after Christmas. Do what dolphins do and click here.

When the phone rings

I wrote this this week and performed it for its first time out today at The Anchor in Woodbridge. It seemed to go down ok. In fact, it went down pretty well. With women especially. I like that.

When The Phone Rings

I hate it when the phone rings

Just in case it’s you.

I don’t want to remember

A bright crisp day

Not too long ago but

Somehow far too far away

To get back there now

When all we could do was light a fire

And sit holding hands that afternoon

Talking almost in whispers,

Feeding logs into the stove.

You should have been at work.

And I had things to do,

Both forgetting that this spell

Would break, as all spells have to.

That afternoon shone with promises

While the winter sun bleached

Our hearts clear and new.

And then the phone rings.

And maybe it’s you.

Have I thought again about life insurance?

You wanted to insure your car for me

And I wanted to insure my life for you;

It’s who we are. Or more properly

That’s who we were.

Maybe you never knew.

I so much wanted that for you.

That’s how we were,

When if I’d died I’d have wanted you

Quite rich if I couldn’t want you

Any more. It was all I could think

To give you. Apart from me.

So no, actually, I mean I have,

But all things considered

And I don’t really want to go into this

Too much on the phone

With a stranger somehow

But I feel as if all I have left

Is being polite right now,

Being English.

So I don’t really need

My life insured. Thanks.

Or not for you, anyway. Not now.

Make some more tea

And now you’re not here

It seems I don’t really need

To wash the cup clean.

There’s a missed call on my phone

But it’s not your number.

It never is now.

And no-one there anyway.

Especially not you.

It never will be somehow.

I’ll be ok, you know? I’ll be ok.

But just for a while,

Until I can forget the logs

And the stove and the bright sun

And your dog and all

Of the glory we could see

That afternoon so full of crystal light

So cold; you held my hand

And told me over and again:

“It’ll be alright”;

Just until then I hate it

When the phone rings.

Just in case it’s you.

And yes, of course it’s about a real person. And no, she wasn’t there and hasn’t heard it. A pity.

Update:

It’s not quite as in-your-face as this violinist’s reaction to a phone ringing. My stuff was described once as making me ‘the king of passive aggression’ but I think Lukas Kmit must be the emperor. Oh, and she still hasn’t heard it, so far as I know.

Power to the people and other comedy sayings

Roger Lloyd-Pack died of pancreatic cancer today. According to Cancer Research UK, sometimes it’s caused by drinking too much. Or by smoking. Or by gum disease. But as the man who played Trigger in Only Fools and Horses had long been elevated to the status of National Treasure don’t expect that to be discussed in the press any time soon. The Sun’s front page was taken-up not just with the headline Bonjour Trigger but also by the helpful explanation that Bonjour doesn’t mean goodbye except in a TV comedy show that last aired in 1991. That’s how funny the headline was. The sound of barrels being scraped is something everyone’s familiar with now, but this was above average scraping. We can get back to hating immigrants and trying to start a war with whoever shouldn’t be running Syria tomorrow.

Roger Lloyd-Peck, in character as Trigger.

Every paper I saw had the same nonsense in it, amusingly gauche things Trigger said. For years I went to the same pub as someone who worked with Roger Lloyd-Peck and said he was a lovely bloke. I’ve no reason to doubt it. What’s bugging me is the Guardian’s survey of writer’s earnings, which actually does have quite a lot to do with the sad news, or at least, with the way it’s being handled.

Apparently the average writer in the UK earns just £600 per year. This from the newspaper that pays £85 for an online piece and £285 for something they run in the paper version. As Claude Rains said in Casablanca when he shut Rick’s bar for illegal gambling and just before he was handed his winnings, I’m shocked. Shocked!

Every newspaper I saw continued in the same vein about Roger Lloyd-Peck. Apart from the Soaraway Scum through the Telegraph and the East Anglian Daily Times, the same stuff. “The world according to Trigger – some of his best moments.” Then a little bit of filler regurgitating the hilarious malapropisms and plain wrong phrasing an actor spoke in a show that hasn’t been on for nearly a quarter century.

This is Funny. That’s Official

During a conversation about their schooldays the boys probe Trigger about his time at school when he banged his head on a sign which read ‘Mind Your Head.’ Trig answers with all the eloquence and rationality the viewers came to expect from him.

Uncle Albert: How did you walk into a mind your head sign? Didn’t you see it?

Trigger: Of course I saw it. But in those days I couldn’t read.

Oh my sides. The first time it was on TV it was funny. The script was so good that the fifth time you saw it it was still funny, delivered by good actors at home with the material they were using. But that’s what it was. A script. Delivered by actors. Not written by them, but by a man called John Sullivan, who died in 2011, who wrote the show along with Citizen Smith, a pseudo-Marxist revolutionary whose catchphrase was ‘power to the people.’ Sullivan liked a laugh, obviously.

Citizen Smith, played by Robert Lindsay.

Roger Lloyd-Pack was by all I’ve heard, a nice bloke. I liked his politics too. Roger Lloyd-Peck didn’t come up with these sayings any more than Bogart wrote ‘Play it, Sam.” But the avalanche of Triggerisms an actor’s death er, triggered doesn’t just miss the point. It confuses reality with fantasy, the substance with the delivery. The spin, the acting, with what went before.

Which seems to be the main purpose of media today including the newspaper which pretends to give it to you straight, the Guradina. At £85 a go comment isn’t quite free. But it’s pretty close.

Since I’ve Been Loving You

Not you. Me, maybe.

The stand-up poetry gig went well, but the reason I’ll remember it will be a combination of things. None of them really connected to what I was doing but somehow all of them connected too.

I drove down to Aldeburgh, which is about nine miles from where I live. The moon was up and although it’s been rainy the sky was clear and the road was empty.

Robert Plant was singing on the CD, an old Led Zeppelin number, Since I’ve Been Loving You.

Robert Plant. Still exactly what rock stars should look like. And I'm sorry, if you disagree then you're simply wrong. — Robert Plant. Still exactly what rock stars should look like. And I’m sorry but if you disagree then you’re simply wrong. And actually I’m not really sorry. Just English It’s what we say when we’re being assertive.

I wasn’t playing it about anyone or anything, even if most of my stand-up act is a thinly-disguised catalogue of the emotional train-wrecks which seemed to comprise my relationships. It’s just a nice song.

Actually, it’s more than a nice song. I know it’s probably just my age, but some songs, they’ve just got everything. And that’s one that has.

Proving that parents always know less than nothing at all, that song, like a lot of the songs of that time, had the lot.

Guitar. Slow bits. Pomp. Screaming. Moodiness.

What else do you want in music for teenagers? What else just is there for those years?

Well? I’m waiting. It’s your own time you’re wasting. I get paid to stand here (cont.)

A brilliant night. Like the moon that evening with the road stretching away in front of me, bright and round, with almost no cloud at all.

In Silence

This is a new poem that came to me yesterday morning, checking my email, seeing who’s email that was once there a lot wasn’t there any more. A pity. So this one’s for you.

In Silence

I met you through songs

In a bar full of happy noise.

You got up and sang

And forgot the words

And hearing you

So did my heart.

I heard your silent music

Stranger than the sounds

We played together at night,

Rehearsing our short chorus

To the tune I thought you liked.

We sang together and talked about

The Book of Love and long ago

And touched on God above

And if the Bible told us so.

We sang through our songs.

You left me in silence.