Before I Let You In, There's Just One Thing I Wanna Say
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Before I let you in, There’s just one thing I wanna say. There's no need to pretend, That this will end another way. Tomorrow you’ll wake up and be on your way, Forget all the things you say tonight. That's why I’m caught up in a one night love affair. Hoping true love will find me there. You see, I’m caught up in a one night love affair. In need of love again, that's just the way I am. So make yourself at home. I want to want you for a while. I haven’t got much time, to find the man behind the smile. I’m a fairytale princess, in search of a knight. And I never believe dreams come true. I’m just like you. You see... I’m Caught Up - (In a One Night Love Affair)- Inner Life. (N.B Hover your cursor and zoom out twice. You won’t regret it x ) Don’t put me on hold please. Don’t put me on hold please. Don’t put me on hold please. Fly here and hold me. He doesn’t call me, so put me through Operator. Maybe I’ll leave him, and fall in love with you, Operator. Operator - Lapsley. (incidentally) Every text that I write, should be introduced with the word Incidentally. Maybe italicised? Incidentally… Yeah. Acknowledgements. I haven’t really ever believed in the sincerity of ‘acknowledgements’. Recently, I wrote an Instagram ‘Bio’ in this vein Dedicated to our Mam, Who hates social media, And will never see the value Of this inherently selfish act. I’ve deleted Instagram. I’m trying to be less cynical, So here goes. To my Mam and Dad: Thank you for putting up with me clinging to the nest for far too long And for your perpetual support. To Jack: Thank you for being my soundboard and my ground, & for accepting that our conversations will probably be written up, & not being precious about it & for sending me bands that I ignore and then act like I’ve discovered them months later. I love you. To Rene: Thank you for being literally the best person I’ve ever met. To Mr. Craig: Thank you for sparking, nurturing and encouraging my love of language, & for helping me see that it is more interesting to situate yourself in the ques- tion, than to seek solutions. To My Dads best man ‘uncle’ Paul for telling me I should do something with my memory for song lyrics. And my Grandad Terry (Tel Boy). I always said you should write pet. Buckle up, here we go! Well I don’t like talking to myself, but someones got to say it, Hell That’s just the way that I Feel - Purple Mountains. Is that my Echo? Piano & a Microphone was a demo album recorded by Prince in 1983 and released posthumously in 2018. In the first track, 17 Days, he adressess his audio engineer, with the words: Is that my echo?... Give me the straighter one. In 2016, Kanye West released Ultralight Beam. Three and a half God was dead: to begin with. minutes in, he proclaims: Ali Smith- The Accidentals. This is my part, nobody else speak. Lowering his voice, mimicking the effect of an echo, he repeats the line once more. This is my part, nobody else speak. This little light of mine, Glory be to God, yeah. Read the way in which I write as poetic and lyrical. No. Sorry, that’s crass. (just try to ok??) I use the form (visual structure?) of poetry, Or song lyrics, In the same way that I’d use a semicolon. At once, self-conscious that it’s not right, Anticipating the reader, Sometimes, Laughing at my own desire to be ‘clever’, the realisation Yet equally reluctant to leave it out, that I’m eating In the hope, the flesh of an animal, In the good faith makes me physically That I might have an accommodating reader, gag. Or that this time, I’ve got it right, Sometimes And Oh! How intelligent I’d sound! I’ll devour Or, a whole Maybe, packet of ham, I hope the reader recognises the attempt, without a second And is not quite sure thought. How to use a semicolon either, and, I feel the same way about Art. As such, might see such a use As a valiant attempt... Good on you! They’d shout, As our hands clap together, in a high five, across the ether. You could never know what it's like, Your blood like winter freezes just like ice, And there's a cold lonely light that shines from you. You'll wind up like the wreck you hide behind that mask you use I’m Still Standing - Elton John Preface. I’m aware that my writing is: I could imagine someone, Overdone, Maybe grandchildren, Overcooked, Discovering the tapes in years time. Overstuffed. Instead, My recordings, If I cant settle one word, Were flotsam and jetsam I’ll use two or three. On my soon to be obsolete device. As much as I hate ‘academic’ texts, It might here be observed that, Or more accurately, overtly ‘academic’ texts, I still wanted to elevate my voice, With the subtext: Beyond the ‘ordinary’. ‘You have to be initiated to understand this’ Was that indeed, I can’t escape from the desire to sound intelligent. So different, From the reason I had stopped writing, And as much as I long to write, In the first place? In a way that could be described as: ‘lean, athletic prose’ In time, I end up over-complicating what should be My voice notes too, simple. Began to feel Contrived. MISSING: the point! As my sense of myself talking to an ‘audience’ For a long while, Was sharpened. For the above reasons The desire to say something: (and a few more) Witty I stopped writing. Intelligent, (with a healthy dose of self-deprecation) I’m better at speaking than writing Slipped in again. I would say. Instead of writing, I would dictate voice notes, Self-deprecation, On my phone. A man at Academic Support told me, And for a time, Was really quite annoying; I coveted an analogue Dictaphone. I should stop. Recording into tape, I felt, You start a conversation you can't even finish it You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything Would be much more romantic, When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed More permanent, Say something once, why say it again? Psycho Killer Talking Heads. 4 sentences. I’m not a sculptor, or a painter, or a film maker. No. It is insufficient to define myself by what I am not. Self- deprecation is annoying. It’s not about finding your way out of the trap, it’s about identifying the trap that you find yourself in (and badly paraphrasing more intelligent peoples words). 4 sentences that describe my practice. I am a writer who largely avoids (avoided) words. My installations are structured similarly to how I would write a text (the same structuring principles... or lack of?!). I work with material languages (weak?). I question how language is transformed by different technologies (vague.) I use found material. That’s five points, six sentences. -I’m. -Shit. -At. -Editing. The mirror stares you in the face And says: "Baby, uh, uh. It don’t work” Boogie Wonderland. Earth Wind and Fire Is that my Echo? In Episode 1, Series 4 of Revisionist History published 27 June 2019, Mal- colm Gladwell sets out to examine the American Law School Admissions Introducing the 2011 publication of Tove Johannsen’s 1987 Travelling Test, ‘Standardised Testing’ and more broadly the idea of a ‘meritocracy’ Light, Ali Smith writes: which is so central to American identity (The American Dream). Prepar- ing for and taking the test with his assistant Camille, he observes that the What this story reveals is that there is no such thing as disconnection; and it Admissions Test (from which selection to the top universities is largely based) favours the ‘hare’: those who can work at speed. When we decide who does this in its very form, not just the funny, sad unfolding of its plot. ‘Believe is smart enough to be a lawyer, we use a stop watch (Gladwell). me, you can’t imagine my giddy sense of freedom’. In the very act of announc- ing how determined he is to go solo, this man is already accompanied - by ‘you’, Gladwell seeks ‘coaching’ for the test. Dan Edmonds, who works for a in other words, us listening to him. Tove Jansson’s slight of hand means that start up called Noodle (Helping Parents Make Better Education Decisions) in his freedom- and our own is already disturbingly and laughingly compromised. New York briefs him: A lot of it is about helping people to understand that they don’t get to do this at a ---- comfortable speed… which means you have to hone your instincts by the test rules, not by your rules….I don’t even aim for a level of what we would normally call ‘compre- hension’… I am out to process the information not understand it. I don’t get any points Ben commented that my installation read like a ‘tableau’, for understanding it… there’s no meander time. In other words ‘flat’. Had I intended that? In Part II of the podcast, The Tortoise and the Hare, Gladwell points out that In truth, no, but I had tried moving things around and it didn’t feel right, if the test was changed, not only would the lovely bell curve (which allows It! Felt! Like! I! Was! Putting! Exclamation! Marks! After! Every! Word! the top universities to distinguish students) be destroyed, but an upturn Yet he was making a really good point cheers Ben I know youre reading I would simply favour ‘Tortoises’ over ‘Hares’ ...and we still need hares; we had wanted everything to sit laterally and be of equal significance like it still need people who can work at speed.