Yes! I was at the Pet Shop Boys concert last night. My daughter Grace who hoped to come ran out of puff - well it is her last week at primary school and she has had several late nights already. Maybe a very late night and car journey to and from Liverpool despite her being quite a Pet fan if not quite a Pethead she decided not to accompany your intrepid blogger on a further dive into the mysteries of a live PSB show or as they called it the Pandemonium tour. In this case set in the Echo Arena in the strange Albert Docks.
Now we Petheads are curious beasts. My music teacher Rebbecca refers to the 'dark secret' of being a PSB fan. As a hardcore PSB fan I embrace the epithet Pethead. Where was I? Yes you can't spot PSB fans/Petheads by what they wear, how old they are, their conversation. The audience could have been anyone quite a few old like me but plenty younger too and some family groups etc
We are everywhere! We are the people our children warn one another about - as in 'Dad that dancing is so embarrassing'. Mortified of Manchester!
So when I get there I have to wait while my seat is changed. I have a fantasy that Neil and Chris have recognised my true Pethead nature and that I am about to be taken into the VIP lounge and... well no actually they need the extra space for the show but I am given a much better seat.
Sartorially this audience is rather disappointing. Now I admit that I am not in my full Frankie outfit but I do sport a pale purple shirt (not just as any old shirt but an M and S shirt!), my linen/cotton mix light brown Blue Harbour casual suit and my orange-brown or is it brown-orange 'brothel creeper' suede shoes. My hair is also about at its best for these days which I am afraid is not saying much. (I dreamt last night that I lost even more hair from the front of my head and so I adopted Neil's very short trim!)
The show was stunning visually, musically and of course lyrically. There are plenty of PSB gigs to come in Manchester, London and elsewhere in the States etc. As ever you get an amazingly good sound system for a medium sized arena you also get a re-working reinterpretation of their classic songs - often a change in their drawn out intros but also one song can suddenly change into another. Then there are their usual but amazing dancers - their routine on Jealousy was stunning! Then there was the set which include a pile of large blocks. At times this was in a wall of 25 of them which video clips were projected onto. At one point the dancers burst out of some of the blocks after they had been knocked down after Neil sang about 'building a wall' and then straight after into 'Go West'. This had all of us who were seated (if only I had booked in time to be standing) on our feet for the first time. We were up again a couple more times before we just stayed on our feet. I had enough room to dance in my usual Saintancer way. Chris beat a metal sheet with a large hammer in various of the songs it had an amazing sound and it was a beat I danced to.
The songs had all the elements of the Pets - often poignant lyrics about the human condition - Neil is a true poet, great tunes and great dance music. Much of it uplifting, some of it rather sad in a wistful way. Suits me and has done for 20 years.
Best to all,
Bill on bike.
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Strange Days: morning
[More creative writing stuff. I have decided to label it Strange Days - this might just be the title of my novel if I ever finish it and persuade a publisher to take it. So when the title is Strange Days it is creative writing so that you can avoid or embrace it as you see fit.]
In the morning before I get up the pain starts. It's like a clenching feeling in my guts and then my teeth start to ache - 'Oh fuck.'
'Fuck what?'
'Fuck I'm turning into an old fart!'
'Hold that thought loverboy.'
I smile, lifted out of my morning misery if only for a while.
'Tea?'
'Yeah.'
Next I am downstairs with the kettle and my thoughts. The pain is easing for now. As long as I lose myself in the now the past and the future are gone. It's maybe not much but it will do, it will have to for now.
I am travelling lighter, the car's gone, so have the foreign holidays but she is with me and it's OK for now.
The best thing that happened to me was that I found a niche in the market, my niche. I never made my fortune out of it but for a while I had an audience and my words spoke to their condition and the royalties and the speaking gigs flowed in.
That all seems past now, I do get the odd nostalgic request to appear on a retrospective radio programme but the royalties have all but dried up. I've had my moment.
And now it's a pain in the guts that's worse first thing in the morning.
She sings and I weep just moved by the sound and how it sends a shiver through me.
In the morning before I get up the pain starts. It's like a clenching feeling in my guts and then my teeth start to ache - 'Oh fuck.'
'Fuck what?'
'Fuck I'm turning into an old fart!'
'Hold that thought loverboy.'
I smile, lifted out of my morning misery if only for a while.
'Tea?'
'Yeah.'
Next I am downstairs with the kettle and my thoughts. The pain is easing for now. As long as I lose myself in the now the past and the future are gone. It's maybe not much but it will do, it will have to for now.
I am travelling lighter, the car's gone, so have the foreign holidays but she is with me and it's OK for now.
The best thing that happened to me was that I found a niche in the market, my niche. I never made my fortune out of it but for a while I had an audience and my words spoke to their condition and the royalties and the speaking gigs flowed in.
That all seems past now, I do get the odd nostalgic request to appear on a retrospective radio programme but the royalties have all but dried up. I've had my moment.
And now it's a pain in the guts that's worse first thing in the morning.
She sings and I weep just moved by the sound and how it sends a shiver through me.
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Iceberg
Quite a few people I speak to have this fantasy that they should not really be doing the job that they are currently doing and that they will be found out and booted out. I used to think this, then a few years ago I finally accepted that yes I belong here I am doing a good enough job getting the right kind of results otherwise why would they keep promoting me? OK I had to ask them each time which did take the shine off as I want people to know I am doing good work and respond(!) and twice have been knocked back when I asked to be promoted but clearly I was, and am, hitting enough targets.
But no the latest feeling this last month is of re arranging the decks chairs whilst the Titanic hits the iceberg. That whilst I am still going through the motions at work something bigger is going on just outside of my awareness - my death, the credit crunch, forced redundancy whatever that makes all that I do currently under the label 'work' irrelevant (Not its not an elephant! - old Marx Brothers joke).
Hey ho as Kurt Vonniegut would say.
Best,
Bill on bike enjoying the milder weather.
But no the latest feeling this last month is of re arranging the decks chairs whilst the Titanic hits the iceberg. That whilst I am still going through the motions at work something bigger is going on just outside of my awareness - my death, the credit crunch, forced redundancy whatever that makes all that I do currently under the label 'work' irrelevant (Not its not an elephant! - old Marx Brothers joke).
Hey ho as Kurt Vonniegut would say.
Best,
Bill on bike enjoying the milder weather.
On writing
So whenever I think about the novel(s) I come up with what I think are great plots e.g. the man who disappears on his bike - you will have seen some drafts chapters and the odd poem about it posted on this blog previously. But when I do creative writings classes and exercises then a different novel(s) is writing itself through me and the plot comes out of the writing rather than vice versa. So recently I seem to be writing some kind of post modern apocalyptic piece involving disparate groups. It is great fun and much more darker than anything I would consciously choose to write.
But then when I reflect on the weird stuff I have written of late - which also comes out of a rather stressed end of term state I am currently in - it feels as if these fragments which I write are all parts of me. It is just that I have not consciously chosen to reside in that part and write rather that part has written itself through me. So for example some of the cruelty that comes through is not something I would wish consciously to express. When I get overly drunk I can be cruel, I don't like that me that emerges so I (mostly) restrict my drinking, I 'walk the line'. But to express that cruelty in print and give it a another name and character feels useful.
I still would like to write something heroic about a really good guy (probably a Pethead also!) who maybe is the best of me. Maybe it would be too boring or too Boys Own stuff.
When I write academically it is either a paper or book chapter where I have a few things I want to say and elaborate those statements with rhetoric and references or I persuade a canny publisher that I have a book to write and I offer a skeleton of ideas and they say yes but and I say OK but and then I write and it is not quite what I or they first thought about and so they say yes but and I write Yes but and they say nearly but and I write some more and finally we are all exhausted and say OK that'll do. It is a very weird process the first draft is mostly enjoyable or rather the first words captured on paper is the best and then it gets more and more tedious. In my latest and edited book I am having to go round this loop for the final and 4th time.
But its good to be in print and have my stuff read. I don't get mega academic sales, 2,000 is my best - first book 9 years on! I get the odd email from readers who have really benefited or so they say and that's a treat. I get the odd £50 cheque for royalties which is taxed! But I am still pulled towards novels and poems!
May the sun meet you on the road.
Bill on bike
But then when I reflect on the weird stuff I have written of late - which also comes out of a rather stressed end of term state I am currently in - it feels as if these fragments which I write are all parts of me. It is just that I have not consciously chosen to reside in that part and write rather that part has written itself through me. So for example some of the cruelty that comes through is not something I would wish consciously to express. When I get overly drunk I can be cruel, I don't like that me that emerges so I (mostly) restrict my drinking, I 'walk the line'. But to express that cruelty in print and give it a another name and character feels useful.
I still would like to write something heroic about a really good guy (probably a Pethead also!) who maybe is the best of me. Maybe it would be too boring or too Boys Own stuff.
When I write academically it is either a paper or book chapter where I have a few things I want to say and elaborate those statements with rhetoric and references or I persuade a canny publisher that I have a book to write and I offer a skeleton of ideas and they say yes but and I say OK but and then I write and it is not quite what I or they first thought about and so they say yes but and I write Yes but and they say nearly but and I write some more and finally we are all exhausted and say OK that'll do. It is a very weird process the first draft is mostly enjoyable or rather the first words captured on paper is the best and then it gets more and more tedious. In my latest and edited book I am having to go round this loop for the final and 4th time.
But its good to be in print and have my stuff read. I don't get mega academic sales, 2,000 is my best - first book 9 years on! I get the odd email from readers who have really benefited or so they say and that's a treat. I get the odd £50 cheque for royalties which is taxed! But I am still pulled towards novels and poems!
May the sun meet you on the road.
Bill on bike
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
More death stuff
Reflecting on the Boss and Q's dialogue from the last post(!) causes me to think about notions of the after life. I don't really hold the Christian Heaven and Hell notion i.e. that at death we go to Heaven or Hell according to our behaviour on earth and our reaction to it in terms of remorse, repentance etc. I am all for us recognising our mistakes - 'sins' if you like and doing something about it (That's a whole other post) but I feel very drawn to Carl Jung idea expressed in his autobiography 'Memories Dreams Reflections' that if there is an after life it is probably rather like this one. And if there isn't there is little we can do about it!
So I don't want to wait for a better life in the after life and I am not convinced that the quality of my afterlife if I have one will be enhanced by how I behave now. How I behave now affects me immediately. So the task becomes how to achieve something closer to heaven on earth right now and not wait for 'Pie in the sky' or the final stage of Communism or for everybody to complete their therapy :)!
I made a connection between this and ethics on the bike but I can't quite recall the link but lets pretend for now the link has been made! (Goodness that's very unphilosophical but still this is a blog not a treatise) I think it was about that it is not about the after life it's about now about living today as good as I can. So my ethical actions are not to store brownie points for the future after life but are for now. I aim to act good because that makes me feel good. Rather like Bertrand Russell talking about the value of 'enlightened self interest' which I guess could equate to pragmatism? (For example if we selfishly wreck the planet we all lose out, if we have huge inequalities then we end up with a broken society, with a high crime rate and none of us feeling safe etc.)
It is more than that for me. I like the US Constitution saying that all men are created equal and that this is a self evident truth. To me that is true even if I and we don't act on it sufficiently. To me it is a spiritual truth also a humanistic truth. So equality for all races, genders, sexual orientation. It's obvious and the better people in our world know this and act on it. So how can any truly spiritually or religiously developed people not agree? Why are not Christians Muslims, Buddhists supporting Gay rights, women and gay bishops etc? More importantly in some ways why isn't the religious leaderships showing such support?
Enough!
Bill on bike
So I don't want to wait for a better life in the after life and I am not convinced that the quality of my afterlife if I have one will be enhanced by how I behave now. How I behave now affects me immediately. So the task becomes how to achieve something closer to heaven on earth right now and not wait for 'Pie in the sky' or the final stage of Communism or for everybody to complete their therapy :)!
I made a connection between this and ethics on the bike but I can't quite recall the link but lets pretend for now the link has been made! (Goodness that's very unphilosophical but still this is a blog not a treatise) I think it was about that it is not about the after life it's about now about living today as good as I can. So my ethical actions are not to store brownie points for the future after life but are for now. I aim to act good because that makes me feel good. Rather like Bertrand Russell talking about the value of 'enlightened self interest' which I guess could equate to pragmatism? (For example if we selfishly wreck the planet we all lose out, if we have huge inequalities then we end up with a broken society, with a high crime rate and none of us feeling safe etc.)
It is more than that for me. I like the US Constitution saying that all men are created equal and that this is a self evident truth. To me that is true even if I and we don't act on it sufficiently. To me it is a spiritual truth also a humanistic truth. So equality for all races, genders, sexual orientation. It's obvious and the better people in our world know this and act on it. So how can any truly spiritually or religiously developed people not agree? Why are not Christians Muslims, Buddhists supporting Gay rights, women and gay bishops etc? More importantly in some ways why isn't the religious leaderships showing such support?
Enough!
Bill on bike
Friday, 3 July 2009
This death business
The Boss meets with Q his spiritual adviser:
'But Q I am still thinking about this death business.'
'I know Boss and I can see you are hurting.'
'You can?'
'Yes.'
There was a pause in which the Boss looked at Q and Q looked at the Boss.
'When people die on me I miss them so much...(with a quieter voice) will I ever see them again?'
'Where are they now?'
'Good question Q... I don't know.'
'Can you feel them near you?'
'I can, sometimes.'
'So they are alive to you?'
'Of course.'
'So what is death?'
'I still don't know but in a way it does not matter as my dead family and friends are still with me.'
'And where they are you will join them one day.'
'Ans where they are I will join them one day.'
Q nodded his work with the Boss done for now.
'But Q I am still thinking about this death business.'
'I know Boss and I can see you are hurting.'
'You can?'
'Yes.'
There was a pause in which the Boss looked at Q and Q looked at the Boss.
'When people die on me I miss them so much...(with a quieter voice) will I ever see them again?'
'Where are they now?'
'Good question Q... I don't know.'
'Can you feel them near you?'
'I can, sometimes.'
'So they are alive to you?'
'Of course.'
'So what is death?'
'I still don't know but in a way it does not matter as my dead family and friends are still with me.'
'And where they are you will join them one day.'
'Ans where they are I will join them one day.'
Q nodded his work with the Boss done for now.
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Saintancers
[More creative stuff]
I dunno when I first noticed it. Perhaps it was when I began attending the all nite rEtro raves and didn't take any drugs and found that I either got dog tired after half an hour of high NRG dancing or I just carried on and on (no not like Margaret Thatcher*) and felt like I could go on for ever - certainly I often did all nite.
Gradually I discovered that there were a few others like me - you could tell us by how rapt up we were in our own inner rhythms. These rhythms was some kind of weird counter point to the actual music - maybe simply twice as fast as the beat or more often half as fast or perhaps we emphasised the backbeat, the off beat or some complicated rhythm that four or fived the melody or bass line.
When we danced we danced from the inside out and at first it seemed uptight and almost spastic but gradually as we danced out our tensions it became more graceful, even ethereal, fluid and endless and effortless.
We sooner or later got noticed, invited back, given a free entrance, free drinks even offered free drugs. Finally we all got invited to join the Liverpool Pandemonia that was established after the legendary Rufus concert in i2019. What a scene that was 500 of us dancing on and on and on and on.
Us dancers soon got a nickname - Saintancers named after the Saint Vitus dancers in the Middle Ages which according to a smart arsed i-guardian journo friend of mine was the name for a Medieval plague cum mass hypnotic group linked to Saint Vitus the patron Saint of the dance.
* believed to be a reference to a pre post modern 'politician' who ruled England (now subsumed of course into Iona) in the pre i 1980s. To find out more about 'politicians' consult Cosmipedia.
I dunno when I first noticed it. Perhaps it was when I began attending the all nite rEtro raves and didn't take any drugs and found that I either got dog tired after half an hour of high NRG dancing or I just carried on and on (no not like Margaret Thatcher*) and felt like I could go on for ever - certainly I often did all nite.
Gradually I discovered that there were a few others like me - you could tell us by how rapt up we were in our own inner rhythms. These rhythms was some kind of weird counter point to the actual music - maybe simply twice as fast as the beat or more often half as fast or perhaps we emphasised the backbeat, the off beat or some complicated rhythm that four or fived the melody or bass line.
When we danced we danced from the inside out and at first it seemed uptight and almost spastic but gradually as we danced out our tensions it became more graceful, even ethereal, fluid and endless and effortless.
We sooner or later got noticed, invited back, given a free entrance, free drinks even offered free drugs. Finally we all got invited to join the Liverpool Pandemonia that was established after the legendary Rufus concert in i2019. What a scene that was 500 of us dancing on and on and on and on.
Us dancers soon got a nickname - Saintancers named after the Saint Vitus dancers in the Middle Ages which according to a smart arsed i-guardian journo friend of mine was the name for a Medieval plague cum mass hypnotic group linked to Saint Vitus the patron Saint of the dance.
* believed to be a reference to a pre post modern 'politician' who ruled England (now subsumed of course into Iona) in the pre i 1980s. To find out more about 'politicians' consult Cosmipedia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
