Five Dials

Number 13 The Festival Issue

Mohsin Hamid 6 Is James Cameron Pakistani? James Murphy 9 On Losing One’s Edge Peggy Shaw 18 Birthing Woodstock mike watt 30 When Iggy Calls, You Answer Dean Wareham 39 Rock ’n’ Roll is Bad for Marriage paul murray 43 Hedonism and Tents Don’t Mix

Plus George Thorogood, Alain de Botton, Hari Kunzru, Sam Lipsyte, David Shields and members of Arcade Fire, The Weakerthans, Guided by Voices and Bloc Party. With artwork by Fiona Banner, Martin Parr and Raymond Pettibon and indeed much more… CONTRIBUTORS

RYAN ADAMS plays with his band The HARI KUNZRU lives in New York City SIMON PROSSER is publishing director Cardinals, and has been a guest on albums and is the author of The Impressionist, of Hamish Hamilton, co-founder of the by Toots and the Maytals, and the Cow- Transmission and My Revolutions. Port Eliot Festival and a co-editor of this boy Junkies. He has also published two issue of Five Dials. books of poetry with Akashic Books. SAM LIPSYTE is the author of The Ask, as well as the short-story collection Venus JOHN K. SAMSON is a member of The FIONA BANNER is an artist who lives and Drive, and two novels, The Subject Steve Weakerthans. Their album Live at the Burton works in London. Her Duveens commis- and Home Land. Cummings Theatre was released in March. sion ’Harrier and Jaguar’, opened at Tate Britain at the end of June. JAMES MURPHY is the co-founder of DFA BILL SANDERSON, whose images accom- Records. His band, lcd soundsystem, pany Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s words, has JAMIE BRISICK is a writer and former recently released the album This Is Happen- been a full-time illustrator for over thirty- pro surfer, and is currently working on a ing. five years and has illustrated many of memoir of his surfing days. He is a con- Felix Dennis’s books of poetry. tributing editor to Five Dials. PAUL MURRAY is the author of two novels, An Evening of Long Goodbyes and PEGGY SHAW founded the theatre compa- SALLY CHAMBERLAiN lives in Marrakech Skippy Dies, published in 2010. He lives in ny Split Britches in 1980. In 1969 she gave with her husband and lifelong travelling Dublin. birth to her daughter while she was trying companion, the artist and film-maker to make her way to Woodstock. Wynn Chamberlain. SARAH NEUFELD plays violin in two bands. Arcade Fire’s new album is entitled DAVID SHIELDS is the author of Reality MATTHEW de ABAITUA is editor-at-large The Suburbs and Belle Orchestre’s most Hunger and The Thing About Life is That of the Idler. His first book,The Art of recent LP is As Seen Through Windows. She One Day You’ll be Dead, both to be pub- Camping: The History and Practice of Sleeping lives in Montreal. lished in paperback in Spring 2011. Under the Stars, will appear in 2011. KELE OKEREKE is a member of the band CRAIG TAYLOR is the editor of Five Dials. ALAIN DE BOTTON is a founder of the Bloc Party. The Boxer, his first solo album, School of Life and the author of numer- was released in June 2010. GEORGE THOROGOOD wrote the song ‘Bad to ous bestselling books, including How the Bone’. His latest album is The Dirty Dozen. Proust Can Change Your Life. MARTIN PARR is one of Britain’s greatest living photographers and a member of DEAN WAREHAM has recorded sixteen albums, JAMES GREER is the former bass player of Magnum Photos. including On Fire (with Galaxie 500) and Pent- Guided by Voices, and the author of sev- house (with Luna). He is the author of the mem- eral books, including, most recently, The RAYMOND PETTIBON is an American artist oir Black Postcards. His latest project, 13 Most Failure. He lives in Los Angeles. whose work can be seen in major galler- Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, ies around the world – as well as on such which he recorded with his partner Britta Phil- MOHSIN HAMID lives in Lahore and is the seminal album covers as Sonic Youth’s Goo lips, will be released in August 2010. author of two novels: Moth Smoke and and Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, an interna- NIGEL WAYMOUTH is a designer and artist. He tional bestseller. JOEL PLASKETT’s most recent solo release was co-founder of legendary boutique Granny is a triple-album entitled Three. Takes a Trip, and is one part of the two-man STUART HAMMOND is the books editor of team Hapshash and the Coloured Cat. Dazed & Confused. He lives in London. IGGY POP is Iggy Pop. MIKE WATT co-founded the bands The Minute- GAVIN HILLS was one of Britain’s most GAVIN PRETOR-PINNEY is the author of men and fIREHOSE. He has played bass for J. influential journalists until his tragically The Cloudspotter’s Guide, The Cloud Col- Mascis and the Fog, and The Stooges. early death in 1997. His work is collected lector’s Handbook and, most recently, The in 2000’s Bliss to be Alive. Wavewatcher’s Companion. SUZY WILLSON is an Artistic Director of the Clod Ensemble. Their website can be found at www.clodensemble.com. Subscribe: hamishhamilton.co.uk Designed by Dean Allen Special thanks to ELLIE SMITH, DEBBIE HATFIELD, JULIETTE MITCHELL, ANNA KELLY, MATT CLACHER, ANNA RIDLEY, jon elek, BEN YARDE-BULLER, JOHANNA INGALLS, NAT DAMM, CATHERINE ST GERMANS, LUKE INGRAM, CAT LEDGER, ELEANOR AND LUCY, JENNI SMITH, AISLINN BELTON, SARA SMITH and akashic books, old street publishing: stacy bengtson and Vanessa cotton A Letter From The Editor so happy when the rain finally hits.’ ‘Which festivals are you going to this year?’ I asked. On Festivals and George Thorogood ‘Glastonbury,’ he said, and then ate the last olive. ‘I go every year. But the differ- ence with me is that I’m not depending hese olives taste canned,’ said we can look back on fondly because all on it for memory.’ ‘Tmy grumpy friend when we were our other memories are so stale and bland ‘It’s just about the music,’ I said. eating together a while ago. ‘You know and useless. We don’t remember each day ‘It’s just about the music.’ what the worst thing is about my new bleeding into the next. For one inflated shampoo?’ he asked. ‘It’s the constant, ticket price,’ he said, ‘you desperately A while ago the Five Dials staff decided low-level itching.’ ‘You know what I hope you’ll get life experience in return. to put together a festival issue. It would think of festivals?’ he asked a little later. ‘I All the while you’re stuck in these brutal be a good way to examine these strange hate them. I hate the idea of them. It’s as little campgrounds ringed by security events, and would allow us to ask our if we’ve tricked ourselves into believing fences. Then you have to stick your tent favourite musicians to contribute to our we’re so busy that we need to set aside up and the ground beneath is treacherous. main stage, as it were, and it would also a couple of weekends of the year when I’m serious. The dirt in those campsites give us a chance to launch the issue at a we’re able, with the help of drugs and basically wants to become mud. It wants festival, preferably under a flawless blue alcohol and music, to construct memories to betray you. It is willing and ready and sky.

Raymond Pettibon · No Title (One of these) · 1998 pen and ink on paper 10 × 12½ inches (25.4 × 31.8 cm

3 Most of the big music festivals these ‘The festival had several stages and we One reproduced Pettibon’s notorious cover days spring up when those blue skies are were scheduled to play at 2:30 p.m. in illustration for the Sonic Youth album, Goo. likely. No longer are festivals tied to the the afternoon on the Saturday, the last It’s a black-and-white illustration of two rhythm of the seasons. They used to be day of the festival. The promoters had impossibly cool teen lovers with the cap- fixed to the solar calendar, to the great gone to another festival where we played tion: ‘I stole my sister’s boyfriend. It was all thaw of spring and the harvest in the on Thursday before Roskilde, and they whirlwind heat, and flash. Within a week autumn. Not too long ago I attended a were so knocked out by the power of we killed my parents and hit the road.’ harvest festival in a small English village, the performance they called me the next Needless to say, the mural was painted over and while the vegetables looked healthy day and asked if we would mind if they a week later with an institutional shade of and plump, the meal was a tame affair, changed our show time to close the fes- brown. No one’s painting over the Pettibon and the dance afterwards burbled on until tival. Of course, I said yes. They closed artwork we’ve got inside.) 10 p.m.. All was quiet and pleasant and down all the other stages and George That’s enough talking for now. I can nothing, the locals said, like the old har- Thorogood and the Destroyers per- hear my voice drifting out over the rest- vest festivals. Some of the explosive spirit formed the last set of the festival in front less crowd who have already been wel- of festivals, particularly the celebration of of a crowd of over 90,000 people. comed and are starting to unfurl banners. rebirth in the spring, still lives on. Later ‘The show was so powerful that the There’s a lot of facepaint out there, a lot in the issue we’ve provided a list of some crowd pulled down the speaker thrusts, of anticipation, I’ll leave the last word of the best examples of local traditions which are speakers placed mid-way to another excellent musician, Mr Joel too weird to disappear from the British out from the stage. They set them on Plaskett, for his favourite festival memory. Isles. But most energy now flows towards fire. They also banged on trash cans and He’s always a class opening act. When the big music festivals, which are spoken anything they could use to drum along asked about festivals he said, ‘I’m not the of as rites of passage, tests of survival, so with the beat of the music as they danced type to camp out at festival. Sleeping in the young finally learn how to handle around the fire chanting. The whole a tent kind of freaks me out. Having said not only mud, lost tent pegs and torren- experience had a magical quality, like that, I do like festivals that feature what tial rain, but also over-priced falafel and watching some sort of Native American my wife calls ‘magic dancers’. They’re the dodgy ketamine. It’s all done with a rev- ritual. They nearly rioted, but everyone hippyish gals with hands in the air letting erence that seems to ignore the fact most went home happy. It was incredible to see loose and swaying to the tunes. A great festivals are run as big businesses owned the way these people in Europe brought festival for this was the Dawson City by even larger entertainment divisions. the festival up to the level of ritual.’ Music Festival in the Yukon, a territory in Though, if you’re not able to attend George is not the only proper rocker to the north of Canada. It was the summer- ‘Bawming the Thorn’ in Appleton, Chesh- appear on the stage of our festival issue. In time and the sun would just dip below ire, you might as well put on your fairy the following pages you’ll find: remem- the horizon for a few hours between 1 wings and dance to Dizzee Rascal. Who brance from Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire, a.m. and 4 a.m.. I was there with my band knows? Even at the biggest festivals, past a short story by Kele Okereke of Bloc The Emergency and we were up pretty the security checkpoints, there must be Party, a memoir of Dean Wareham, former much for four days straight. The whole some residual ritual, right? I needed proof member of Galaxie 500 and Luna, plus experience was incredible. We rocked for this hunch so I got in touch with a LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and an epic show on the Saturday night to Five Dials favourite, George Thorogood, legendary bassist Mike Watt, as well as Paul packed tent and the magic dancers went of George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Murray, Hari Kunzru, Sally Chamberlain, nuts. When we were flying home, we with the hope he might have experienced Sam Lipsyte and many others. What would stopped to change planes in Whitehorse authentic festival mayhem. ‘One that a festival be without art? We’ve somehow and picked up a copy of the local paper. definitely sticks out hands down is the procured contributions from Fiona Banner, There was a huge picture on the front of Roskilde Festival in Denmark in 1995,’ Martin Parr and Raymond Pettibon. I’m us playing the show, with a giant unre- Thorogood told me. ‘This wasn’t just a especially excited about Raymond. (This lated headline above the photo that read, rock festival. It was a ritual where every might be a good time to mention that one ‘GUNMEN ROB LOCAL STORE’. Our gui- year thousands of fans came out to cel- year when I was in high school a forward- tars got lost on the flight and took a week ebrate rock. They were true devotees of thinking art teacher allowed senior students to get back to Halifax. It was a classic.’ the music, and everyone knew our songs. to paint murals on the walls of the school. —Craig Taylor

4 An Introduction to the Artist Strewn haphazardly about his work table are newspapers, tubes of paint, lid- less inkpots, a wooden baseball bat, loose In Pettibon’s Studio CDs, an open bottle of rosé and tortilla chips and salsa, all of which sit precari- By Jamie Brisick ously close to or atop valuable half-fin- ished drawings. n a bright July morning in his surfers, homicidal teenagers and Gumby, Taped to the wall are works-in-progress: OVenice Beach studio, Raymond the green clay stop-motion-animated a large-breasted topless woman with a Pettibon pulls from his pocket a fistful of figure who has the miraculous ability to death mask; a man kissing an outstretched wadded-up pages. walk into a book and enter the story (an hand; a child’s red wagon; an apish arm and ‘I have books lying around,’ he explains, alter ego for the artist, perhaps?). leg; a naked woman, bent over, with ‘This ‘and I take the pages out. It could be Tall, shaggy and bear-like, Pettibon is too forward, Trick,’ scrawled above; and practically anything. I do a lot of read- speaks softly, slowly, with long, ponder- a feathery blue wave, much like the ones ing in transit, whether it’s a car, bus, ous pauses. Much like the words that that crashed on the shores of his hometown, train, whatever. I don’t read for plot. I punctuate his drawings (‘Some pieces I’ll Hermosa Beach. Presiding over the room is don’t care how it ends. I read a lot slower, work on for decades’), he’ll begin a sen- a basketball hoop (Pettibon, I’m told, has a because I’m often trying to analytically tence, retract it and start anew. You can wicked jump shot). But most prevalent are almost break down the writing as it almost see his mental eraser rubbing away, the books, which are stacked floor to ceil- occurs, or as it scans. In a way, it’s rewrit- his furrowed brow searching for the pith. ing in an upstairs loft, and create a cacopho- ing of a sort.’ He is not one for eye contact, and during ny of voices that include Baudelaire, Henry Pettibon’s drawings and paintings are much of our two-hour conversation he James, Proust, Borges, Mickey Spillane, an unlikely, often ironic, melding of stares out across the room. Charles Manson and a thousand others. text and image. Fuelled by omnivorous Pettibon’s studio is a white-walled ‘Where the image stops and the words reading, as well as an early interest in former furniture showroom on traffic- begin is not that clear cut,’ he says. ‘It’s political cartoons, underground comics, heavy Lincoln Boulevard. It exudes a more a give and take, a back and forth, punk rock, noir films and the paintings certain ‘ransacked by the DEA’ appeal. dialectic almost in between the two and/ of Whistler and Goya, his work runs the Dirty socks, weathered LPs, pulp novels, or both. Probably more times than not gamut of twentieth-century pop culture. surf magazines and vintage baseball mitts when I have problems it’s because I tend Recurring motifs include Charles Man- share floor space with his dachshund mutt, to overwrite, so it’s more learning when son, J. Edgar Hoover, baseball players, Barely Noble. to stop.’ ◊

Jamie Brisick 5 Currentish Events low the same news and correspond with the same friends and agents and publish- ers. This pleased me. I’d been able to Is James Cameron Secretly Pakistani? watch a streaming High Definition trailer for Avatar before going to see it that night. Mohsin Hamid watches Avatar in Lahore When we arrived at the cinema, bar- ricades meant that no one could park n the day I went to see Avatar I ‘What do you mean?’ I said. What the outside. We had to leave our car in a Ofinally got a haircut. I don’t have hell was a hot haircut? Or a cold one, for vacant plot down the road. A police jeep much hair, but still I usually have myself that matter? was stationed near the entrance. Security cropped every three weeks. This time six ‘Hot or cold?’ he repeated, a little sur- guards manned a metal detector. Inside, had gone by, and I was looking scraggly. prised. each bathroom had a guard as well. Other It was January 2010 and a month earlier I realized he was offering me tea or a than that, it was like going to a modern I’d moved back to Lahore after several soft drink. ‘Neither,’ I said, shaking my Hollywood-dependent cinema anywhere. years in London, and before that several head. ‘Sorry, I’ve been away a while.’ There was sweet and salty popcorn, there more in New York. The week I arrived a He cut my hair. Then he gave me a were hot dogs and nachos, there were pair of bombs went off in Moon Market, scalp massage. Then he gave me a shoul- M&M’s and Coke. killing forty-two people and injuring one der massage. He was good. I thought of The cinema was not configured for hundred and thirty-five. staying longer. I looked at the big glass 3-D. But the screen was large and the sur- For a few days, people avoided mar- pane of the window and the cars and round sound system was powerful, so the kets and banks and restaurants and other motorcycles parked outside. I paid him 2-D experience was still impressive. The crowded places if they could. Then things and left. audience cheered as a race of exotically- more or less went back to normal. There I’d had a number of missions since named, technologically disadvantaged, were eight million people in Lahore before moving to Lahore. I’d had to get us a religiously-inclined, dark-skinned the bombing. There were eight million new fridge and sort out the strange smell (well, blue) people fought a marauding, people in Lahore after the bombing. coming from one of our bathroom drains resource-hungry, heavily-armed force I held off on going for a haircut. May- and shepherd the cardboard boxes of our of seemingly American marines whose be I was too busy settling in. belongings through customs at the dry leader roared of the need to ‘fight terror My barber wasn’t in Moon Market. He port. But my top priority had been get- with terror.’ was in Main Market. Main Market differs ting broadband. I’d succeeded remarkably A friend leaned over to me when it was by two letters from Moon Market. Main easily. done. ‘Is James Cameron secretly Paki- Market is four kilometres away from Now, when I went online at home, stani?’ he asked. Moon Market. Main Market is also larger thanks to a 1999 rupee (roughly US $23) We stepped outside. Some people and more densely packed than Moon monthly contract, I flowed at 2Mbps smoked cigarettes. Others smoked joints. Market. through a Pakistan Telecommunications Then we drove home. I passed an army The front of my barber’s shop is a big Limited ADSL telephone line, down to checkpoint on my way. At an intersection glass window with some fading posters Karachi, offshore to theSEA -ME-WE-3, a digital billboard was running a news on it. On the narrow street outside are SEA-ME-WE-4 and I-ME-WE, a trio of ticker with the number of deaths from rows of parked motorcycles and cars. optical fibre submarine telecommunication the latest drone attack. Bombs in Pakistan are sometimes left in cables that handle the bulk of data moving The main character in Avatar is a motorcycles and cars. A bomb outside my between South Asia and the Middle East marine who goes online to inhabit a barber’s shop would turn that big glass and Europe, and thence to any server or hybrid body that looks like the dark- window into shrapnel. router I needed to access on the planet. skinned enemy. I wanted to get home to Eventually, my wife pointed out that Out in the cyber universe, my internet go online and explore his fictional uni- my hair really needed attention. So I persona could continue to live pretty verse further. I also wanted to get home went for my haircut. I hadn’t seen my bar- much the same life it had lived when my because the streets were oddly deserted. A ber in years. physical existence was in London or New winter fog had descended, making it dif- ‘Hot or cold?’ he asked me. York. It could visit the same websites, fol- ficult to see ahead. ◊

6 The List The Burry Man (8 July) South Queensferry, West Lothian, Scotland The fantastically-dressed Burry Man, in a Twenty Summer Calendar Customs suit covered with thistle and teezle burrs, walks silently through the streets collect- Simon Prosser surveys the festival landscape ing alms.

As idleness scholar Tom Hodgkinson has often The Beltane Festival (Mid-June) Bawming the Thorn (11 July) pointed out, the medieval citizens of Britain Peebles, Scotland Appleton, Cheshire had a rather better time of it than we do now An ancient Celtic fire festival now cel- An ancient ritual of tree worship in which when it came to holidays and festivals. But ebrated with the crowning of the Beltane garlanded children pay tribute to a haw- while many traditional customs, both medieval Queen and a Riding of the Marches. thorn tree before dancing around it. and more recent, have sadly died out, there remain a heartening number which have sur- Druids’ Ceremony (Midsummer Eve) The Hot Pennies Ceremony (Tues- vived the combined ravages of Puritanism, the Stonehenge, Wiltshire day and Wednesday following 19 July) Reformation, the Protestant Work Ethic and Members of the Church of the Druid Honiton, Devon the Victorians. Universal Bond perform their annual A gilt glove is displayed and hot pennies One of our favourite books at Five Dials rites. are thrown from the windows of the is A Year of Festivals: A Guide to British town’s inns, to ensure fair trading at the Calendar Customs by Geoffrey Palmer and Banishing the Witches (23 June) market. Noel Lloyd, published in 1972, which joyfully St Cleer, near Liskeard, Cornwall records present-day observances and describes A huge bonfire, crowned with a witch’s The Great Wardmote of the their history and practice, from Orange-Rolling hat and broom, is lit on a hill. Woodmen of Arden (First week in on Dunstable Downs to Weighing the Mayor August) at High Wycombe (by way of Swinging the St John’s Eve Midsummer Bon- Meriden, Warwickshire Fireballs at Stonehaven and Swan-Upping on fires (23 June) An archery competition between the the Thames). Cornwall eighty members of this ancient society. A chain of bonfires is lit across the county, Lanimer Day (Thursday of the week from west to east, starting at St Ives. The Feast of St Wilfrid (First Satur- 6–12 June) day in August) Lanark, Scotland Warrington Walking Day (28 June) Ripon, Yorkshire The inspection of the ancient boundary Warrington, Lancashire An annual feast, accompanied by the cus- stones and the crowning of the Lanimer Thousands of children walk in procession tom of Setting the Watch, announced by Queen. through the streets, originally to protest the City Hornblower. against gambling at the horse races. Riding the Marches (Thursday of The Marhamchurch Revel (Mon- the first full week in June) The Braw Lads’ Gathering (30 June) day following 12 August) Hawick and Selkirk, Scotland Galashiels, Selkirkshire, Scotland Marhamchurch, near Bude, Cornwall Horseback processions, reeling and flag- The five wards of the town each elect a The Queen on horseback, led by a brass bearing. Braw (handsome) Lad and Lass, then Ride band, processes to the Revel ground, the Marches. where there are sideshows and Cornish The Beating the Clock Race (First wrestling. week of June) The Baal Fire (4 July) Bideford, Devon Whalton, Northumberland Cleiking the Devil (Third week in A foot-race over the River Torridge Village children dance in a ring around a August) bridge. bonfire on the village green; followed by Onnerleithen, Peebleshire, Scotland adults dancing to a fiddle. The Dux, or headboy, of the local school Electing the Mayor of Ock plays St Ronan, who washes his hands in Street (on or near 20 June) The Tynwald Ceremony (5 July) the spa well and then ‘cleiks’ (cleans) the Abingdon, Berkshire St John’s, Isle of Man Devil, before releasing a flock of pigeons. The election of the Mayor, followed by The Lieutenant-Governor mounts the Morris dancing and carousing. Tynwald Hill to sit on a crimson velvet The Blessing of the Mead (24 August) chair, facing east, with the twenty-four Gulval, St Mount’s Bay, Cornwall members of the House of Keys, the world’s The Almoner of the Worshipful Com- smallest parliament, surrounding him. All pany of Mead Makers leads a celebration present wear a sprig of St John’s Wort. of St Bartholomew, the patron saint of bee-keepers and honey-makers. ◊

7 The Festival Issue A Festival Cloud Primer By Gavin Pretor-Pinney Cirrus Cumulus

The Cirrus cloud enjoys great popularity amongst festival cloudspotters This cloud is a festival favourite – at least, that is, when it’s one of the because it presents negligible obstruction to the sun’s rays, thereby allowing smaller ‘humilis’ or ‘mediocris’ species. Cumulus is a crisp, bright, fair- warmth to shine through while providing an abstract, free-loving fresco weather heap of condensation, carried along in the summer breeze like to gaze up at. This ice-crystal cloud consists of translucent, wavy streaks a wad of candyfloss dispensed from the burger van in the car park. Its that are reminiscent of a flowing dress in one of those flailing-dancer pho- uncharacteristically defined edges make this the best cloud for finding tographs from Woodstock. Expressive and unconstrained, Cirrus seems to shapes in (of great help after two hash cakes.) embody the weightless, festival abandon that revellers seek (and so rarely Being dense, low and shade-giving, Cumulus provides welcome relief achieve) through transcendental drugs, Shiatsu massage and late-night from the sun’s heat as it drifts overhead. Within the parched, stagnant air of poetry readings. your tent on the sweltering morning of the day after, each Cumulus shadow But when Cirrus fallstreaks gradually spread across the high sky, each is a silent ping of the microwave – a few moments’ respite, before the power embracing its neighbour with absentminded, icy caresses, they indicate returns and the glass plate beneath you recommences its desiccating rotation. that a warm front is likely to breach the perimeter fence within a day or so. This may sound like the sort of front you’d welcome to your festival, but it Cumulonimbus often brings with it a prolonged hangover of drizzle. Nimbostratus

The Cumulonimbus storm cloud likes to make its presence felt. Its showers are generally short, sharp and to the point. But when the festival atmos- phere is particularly unstable, one Cumulonimbus can take over from the Such a hangover goes by the name of Nimbostratus. It is a flat, featureless, last. This is not good when you’ve pitched your tent at the bottom of the hill. wet blanket of a cloud: dull, dark and drizzly. This is the cloud equivalent But it needn’t be this way. When its downpours are brief, few and of the headline act refusing to play their old hits and subjecting the crowd interspersed with sunshine, the Cumulonimbus can even be a welcome to ninety minutes of new musical direction. It is blocked loos and bad acid: gatecrasher. The first sudden shower can elicit solidarity amongst festival a Tupperware sky of steady rain that never lets up, dampening the spirits revellers: amused surprise at the deluge shared between strangers beneath through one sodden set after another. the shelter of the Thali stall. The threat of disorder from this cloud can Nimbostratus is the cloud that gives all the others a bad name. Do not send a charge through the crowd. Does it mean lightning? Thunder? wear your Cloud Appreciation Society t-shirt when you are below one. The floods of Glastonbury ’98? Not necessarily. Sometimes, it is just the You will be lynched. trough before the peak, the dissonance before the harmony – the sudden release of humid tension before the clear, fresh inhalation as you head for the healing fields. Illustrations by Bill Sanderson

8 A Single Song ‘Oh God, that’s me. I’ve started to feel irrelevant. Should I change to become relevant? Is that gross?’ Losing My Edge If you’re not in your full flush of youth, how do you operate? When you’re James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem on relinquishing cool and ageing gracefully young you think in mono-blocks – if I had a new computer, if I had this girl- t was the first time I was living a life ably. I do try to find a way to find new friend, it would be OK. Your life moves Iin New York that resembled anything ways of saying things. in these mono movements, one at a time. cool. I was DJing and I wasn’t only DJing, When has it ever been interesting to When you’re older it’s different: I really I was playing rock records, and I was hear a song where everything’s going like that, but what does that say about known for playing certain records. It was great, everything’s going great, and then me, will it work, how much will it work, remarkable. It was cool – I was cool – for there’s a list of everything that’s going will it make me feel better, will it really about one whole minute. One night I great? I’m interested in the way the cyni- make me feel better? What will I lose in went out and there was a kid DJing at cal can be turned optimistic and the opti- the process? Happiness is complicated and a punk show. He was playing the same mistic cynical, and what’s most interesting you become more complicated as you age. records, the same rock records as me, and to me is a song that contains some sort of Your reactions become more complicated. I got upset. Then I got embarrassed about argument with loss. If you don’t become more complicated the fact that I was upset. And then I felt ‘Losing My Edge’ is about age. Perhaps you’re just an asshole. George W. Bush is even worse because of that embarrass- a twenty-two-year-old could have writ- not complicated. ment. It didn’t stop. The cycle went on. It ten it but it would have been an even big- I think it’s in the human condition. was like self-annihilation. ger lie. If you put a million twenty-two- There’s always an element that you’re year-olds behind typewriters they’d come missing out. People who work in jobs Yeah, I’m losing my edge, up with it eventually, or perhaps they’d that suck might say, ‘I wish I was like a I’m losing my edge, just come up with Twilight. real writer.’ They don’t realize that real The kids are coming up from behind. Everything I write is the end result of a writers are just as hapless. They just know I’m losing my edge, boiling down of influences, and the same that feeling: they’re doing it and I’m not. I’m losing my edge to the kids from France goes for lyrics. My literary influences are I was thirty-two when the first record and from London. equal to my musical influences – postwar came out. I guess I’m comfortable with But I was there. American fiction, like Sam Lipsyte. Sam aging. It would be sweet if my back didn’t was my favourite singer when he was in a hurt. I’d like to take some time back. I ‘Losing My Edge’ was not written. It just band called Dung Beetle. Like there is in don’t have kids and I’d like to, and then came out. I was playing drums and sing- his books, there was a mixture of menace there’s all the rest of the mortality shit. ing, which is why the rhythm gets funny. I and humour in his stage presence. He was My dad died at sixty-nine years old when turned on the beatbox, sang, and made the self-effacing but with a healthy amount I was thirty-one. I’m not banking on song. The only part of the song that had of ego, aggressive and uncompromising, much past seventy. been written before was the list of bands I not a cartoon drawing of cartoon punk. call out at the end, and that was recorded He was a very serious model for me. We didn’t play the song on our Sound separately. I had a lot in my head. The sub- His writing reminded me that senti- of Silver tour. We’re playing it now. The ject matter was all there. It was fertile. It ments should co-exist. If there’s humour song came back to us. It feels good. Why was really fertile. I got almost all the lyrics it should be present without sacrificing did it return? Who knows? Why does down in one take because I was so invested anything else, without pulling back. anything return? Maybe for that strange, in it. It was everything my life was about. Funny-sad is way more sad. There’s more unstable, psychotic reason people are resonance, and any good writing needs happy and satisfied and feel cool, even for I’m losing my edge, resonance whether it’s a song or a book. a moment. I’m losing my edge to the kids whose footsteps I’m interested in how cool works. I hear when they get on the decks. It’s a funny thing but I think about it a I used to work in the record store. I’m losing my edge to the internet seekers lot – the weird social currency of cool. I had everything before anyone. who can tell me every member of every good I’ve thought about it ever since I was a I was there in the Paradise Garage DJ booth group from 1962 to 1978. tiny thing, and those thoughts ended up with Larry Levan. I’m losing my edge. in ‘Losing My Edge’. When I first gave I was there in Jamaica during the great sound the song to people I knew, most of them clashes. I wasn’t trying to make a song. I wasn’t said it was horrible. They thought I was I woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in worrying about what the next song kidding. Phil Mossman, the original LCD 1988 would be about, what it would sound like, Soundsystem guitarist, liked it. Others if there would be an album. It was just thought it was a horror. Then the song But I’m losing my edge to better-looking what needed to be said. Do I talk about went out and got a positive reaction, people with better ideas and more talent the same subject again and again? Prob- mostly amongst people who thought, And they’re actually really, really nice. ◊

9 Festival Issue Fiction Llewellyn, seemed born to this job, keen for any chance to tickle the rectal bristles of the rich with his Tidewater tongue. He The Ask was almost never in the office, instead seal- ing the deal on a Gulfstream IV to Bucha- By Sam Lipsyte rest, or lying topside on a Corfu yacht, slathered in bronzer. One ‘Did you send off those emails about the Llewellyn delivered endowed chairs, America, said Horace, the office temp, Belgian art exchange?’ editing suites, sculpture gardens. My was a run-down and demented pimp. Our Horace swivelled back to his monitor record was not so impressive. My last big republic’s whoremaster days were through. with the mock panic of a sitcom serf. Var- ask, for example, had failed to yield a few Whither that frost-nerved, diamond- gina took scant notice of our talk, toler- plasma TVs from the father of a recent fanged hustler who’d stormed Normandy, ated foul banter for purposes of morale. film graduate. dick-smacked the Soviets, turned out But the fact remained, we had forgotten Mr Ramadathan had mortgaged his such firm emerging market flesh? Now the afternoon’s assignment. The gods of electronics store so his son could craft our nation slumped in the corner of the task flow did not easily forgive. affecting screenplays about an emotionally pool hall, some gummy coot with a pint Where we worked was in the develop- distant, workaholic immigrant’s quest for of Mad Dog and soggy yellow eyes, just ment office of a mediocre university in the American dream. But the father’s gid- another mark for the juvenile wolves. New York City. It was an expensive and diness had begun to wear off. The boy was ‘We’re the bitches of the First World,’ strangely obscure institution, named for unemployable. Now Mr Ramadathan was said Horace, his own eyes braziers of its syphilitic Whig founder, but we often maybe not so eager to relinquish his show- delight. called it, with what we considered a cer- room models. We all loved Horace, his clownish pro- tain panache, the Mediocre University at I’d made the hot, khaki-moistening nouncements. He was a white kid from New York City. By we, I mean Horace hike past all the car dealerships and muffler Armonk who had learned to speak and feel and I. By often, I mean once. shops on Northern Boulevard in Queens, from half a dozen VHS tapes in his father’s Our group raised funds and materials stood in the sleek, dingy cool of the store. garage. Besides, here at our desks with our for the university’s arts programmes. Peo- Mr Ramadathan sat near the register in turkey wraps, I did not disagree. ple paid vast sums so their spawn could a wicker chair. The plasmas were not on But I let him have it. It was my duty. take hard drugs in suitable company, draw display. Sold or hidden, I had no idea. Mr We were in what they call a university from life on their laptops, do radical things Ramadathan stared at me, at the sweat setting. A bastion of, et cetera. Little did I with video cameras and caulk. Still, the patches on my crotch. He pointed toward know this was my last normal day at said sums didn’t quite do the trick. Not in the some old video game consoles, a used floor bastion, that my old friend Purdy was cutthroat world of arts education. Our job fan, dregs of the dream. about to butt back into my world, mangle was to grovel for more money. We could ‘Please,’ he said, ‘take those. So that oth- it. I just figured this was what my worst always use more video cameras, more ers may learn.’ teachers used to call a teachable moment. caulk, or a dance studio, or a gala for more Unlike the time Llewellyn secured a ‘Horace,’ I said. ‘That’s a pretty sexist grovelling. The asks liked galas, openings, Foley stage for the film department, there way to frame a discussion of America’s recitals, shows. They liked dinner with a was no celebration on the Mediocre patio. decline, don’t you think? Not to mention famous filmmaker for them to fawn over No sour chardonnay got guzzled in my racist.’ or else dismiss as frivolous. honour, nor did any lithe director of com- ‘I didn’t mention anybody’s race,’ said An ask could be a person, or what we munications flick her tongue in my ear, Horace. wanted from that person. If they gave it vow to put me on the splash page of Excel- ‘You didn’t have to.’ to us, that was a give. The asks knew little lence, the university’s public relations blog. ‘P.C. robot.’ about the student work they funded. Who If not so ecstatic in her position as ‘Fascist dupe.’ could blame them? Some of the art these Llewellyn, Vargina seemed happy enough, ‘Did you get avocado on yours?’ brats produced wouldn’t stand up to the or at least adopted a mode of wise, unruf- ‘Fattening,’ I said. dreck my three-year-old demanded we fled decency in the office. She’d been a ‘Don’t worry, baby,’ said Horace. ‘I like tack to the kitchen wall. But I was biased, crack baby, apparently due to her mother big women.’ and not just because I often loved my son. being a crackhead, one of the early ones, ‘What about hairy ones?’ I said, parted Thing was, I’d been just like these wretches the baking soda vanguard. Vargina was a my shirt to air my nipple fuzz. Horace once. Now they stared through me, as miracle, and that’s maybe the only time I let me be a cretin with him. You could though I were merely some drone in their have used the word sincerely. Her mother call him my infantilism provider, though sight line, a pathetic object momentarily had named her the word her name resem- you’d sound like an idiot. Otherwise, I was obstructing their fabulous horizon. They bled. A sympathetic nurse added the ‘r.’ ostensibly upstanding, a bald husband, a were right. That’s exactly what I was. ‘Milo,’ she said now. ‘How is the Teitel- slab-bellied father. A solitudinous roil, my bitterness. baum ask going?’ ‘Gentlemen,’ said our supervisor, Vargi- Horace, after all, was their age. He had no Vargina had enormous breasts I liked to na, coming out from her command nook. health insurance, just hope. Our rainmaker, picture flopping out of a sheer burgundy

10 bra. Sometimes they just burst out in slow all out. I mean, if I told my father –’ poised like a hairless and tiny yet impres- motion. Sometimes she scooped them out ‘Hold on.’ sively predatory animal above the arrow with her slender hands, asked me to join ‘Hold on?’ button, Maura herself bent on peeking her reading group. ‘I made no such promise. We have noth- into every corner of the national halluci- ‘Making progress,’ I said. ‘Chipping ing to do with academic decisions, with nation before bedtime. away.’ curriculum or enrolment.’ She liked reality shows the best, and ‘Maybe you need a larger tool,’ said Var- ‘Okay, maybe it was that guy,’ said then the shows that purported to be about gina, appeared to shudder slightly, perhaps McKenzie, pointing. reality. worried her innocent metaphor would be ‘Horace?’ I said. So, yes, I should have just surrendered, misconstrued as sexual. Her words, how- ‘Yeah, Whore-Ass,’ said McKenzie. cinched the entitled scion her little pouch ever, were not misconstrued at all. I had Horace wore a pained grin at his termi- of entitlements, put in my calls to the already begun to picture my cock in high nal. name shufflers, done my duty. quiver, sliding up the lubed swell of her ‘Horace hasn’t been well,’ I told McKen- I thought about that moment later on. chest. We were in a library of lacquered zie. ‘Now, as I mentioned, we have no Maybe I got extratuned to the concept wood. Viola tones rose from a carved jurisdiction over any of these issues, but of bitchhood once I became Purdy’s, alcove. Baby oil beaded on rare folios. maybe we can all get together with paint- though I must confess I’ve always found ‘Well,’ said Vargina, tapped the plastic ing and figure this out.’ such usage of the term for female dogs parapet of my cube wall. ‘Just stick with it.’ ‘Meaning what?’ distasteful. My mother was a second-wave ‘Will do.’ ‘Meaning we can figure this out.’ feminist. I wasn’t comfortable saying ‘cunt’ Truth was, the Teitelbaum ask was McKenzie stared. How could she know until I was twenty-three, at which point, going nowhere. I was barely hanging on I myself had once been a fraud, chocka- admittedly, I couldn’t hold back for a time. here in development. I wasn’t developing. block with self-regard, at an overpriced Or maybe it’s just that I’ve always I’d done some good work at a non-profit a institution just like this one, still had the despised phrases like ‘that fateful day,’ but few years ago, but the South Bronx Res- debt to prove it? How could she know as time went on I found it hard to deny toration Comedy Project never really took she stared down at the wispy pate of a that the afternoon Horace launched his E off. The university snapped me up at a man who once believed he was painting’s Pluribus Pimpus oratory and McKenzie bargain rate. I’d become one of those mis- saviour, back in a decade that truly needed tried to reify my servility and I pictured takes you sometimes find in an office, a not one? titboning Vargina in a rare books room unpleasant but mostly unproductive pres- She spoke quietly now: ‘Listen, I don’t was pretty damn fateful. Or was it, in fact, ence bobbing along on the energy tides of mean to be rude, but you really are here just another random day, and it was I who others, a walking reminder of somebody’s to serve my needs. My father taught me did the fool thing, forced my hand? error in judgment. that the consumer is always right. I am the What I said to McKenzie, there is no But today some karmic adjustment consumer. You are actually the bitch of point repeating. It’s enough to report my seemed due. Just as Vargina slipped back this particular exchange. But don’t think I words contained nothing an arrogant, tal- behind the particleboard walls of her com- don’t respect that you are just a guy, like, entless, daddy-damaged waif wants to hear mand nook, a painting major we knew doing your shitty job.’ about herself. When I was finished she did a bit too well around here charged up ‘Thank you,’ I said. not speak. A thickish vein in her pale head to my desk, planted her bony fist on my ‘But maybe you aren’t cut out to work fluttered. The blue thing seemed to veer Vorticist mouse pad. McKenzie was one of with artists.’ and switch direction. Then she took a few those girls who didn’t eat enough, so that I guess what set me off was her effort steps back and, still staring at me, phoned all one really noticed about her were the to be polite. I should have just leaned on her damager. What was done to me was mole-specked rods of her arms, the lurid the painting department to make room done in hours. My outburst was deemed jut of her skull. Students had no reason to on the roster for her, ruin the semester for hate speech, which called for immediate visit our office, but her father had paid for some pimple-seared hump who shared his dismissal. I could hardly argue with them. our crappy observatory upstate. She was name with no stargazing facility. Nobody I think it probably was hate speech. I really in here a lot, to preen, complain. I guess it cared. I would be doing my shitty job. It fucking hated that girl. beat making her putrid art. was a good shitty job. I’d done it for a few ‘Hello, McKenzie,’ I said. years and it paid pretty well, enough to let Two ‘Hi, yeah, sorry, I can’t remember your Maura go part-time since the baby. There You could say I had experienced some name.’ was a quality family plan, plus a quality technical difficulties. There had been bad ‘Milo.’ theft plan, the paints and brushes I smug- times, years trickled off at jobs that pur- ‘Sure, okay. Milo. Listen, Milo, we gled home for those weekends I tried to ported to yield what superiors called, with talked last week and you promised I’d be put something on canvas again, until the true sadism, opportunities. These yielded able to take the Impressionism to Regres- old agony would whelm me and I’d stop nothing, unless you considered bong slav- sionism seminar even though it was full.’ and briefly weep and then begin to drink ery, a few bogus spiritual awakenings, and ‘Excuse me?’ and watch Maura cruise up and down the the unswerving belief I could run a small ‘Yeah, you know, you promised you’d cable dial all night, never alighting on any- business from my home, opportune. Still, talk to the painting department and sort it thing for more than a moment, her thumb before my outburst at the bastion, I had

11 made great strides. No more did I pine fool who let the starveling have it, who and pour of flamethrower flame over pep aloud for that time in the past when I had couldn’t find another job, though I came rally bleachers. Typical teen shooter fluff, a future. Yes, I still painted on occasion, close at a few places. The interviewers though I worried I’d inherited my grand- or at least stood at the easel and watched could maybe tell I had the old brain. Jobs mother’s nutcake gene. I was fairly popu- my brush hand twitch. It made for an weren’t about experience anymore, just lar. Why did I slaver for slaughter? odd, jerky style I hoped would get noticed wiring. Also, my salary demands might The visions had stopped in college. someday. have been high. I lost out to kids who Some huge and dainty hand peeled them I never confessed this last part to Maura. lived on hummus and a misapprehen- off my skull walls. Our intimacy was largely civic. We spoke sion of history, the bright newbies bosses I became a painter, at least at parties. I at length about our shared revulsion for exploit without compunction because was happy for a time. the almost briny-scented, poop-flecked these youngsters are, in fact, undercover But now, riding the trains, or else home plunger under the bathroom sink, and also aristocrats mingling with the peasantry, sitting with the bills, the old terrible feel- of a mutual desire to cut down on paper each stint entered on their résumés another ing returned. Whenever I checked my towels, but we never broached topics like line in the long poem of their riskless bank balance the terrible feeling welled up hopes, or dreams. Hopes were stupid. youth. in me. The goddamn asks, I’d sweep them Dreams required quarantine. Not that I resented them. with a Maxim gun or some other wipeout Still, Maura was a devoted mother, Besides, there really wasn’t work for device whose history I learned of late at which, even if that often amounted to anyone. The whole work thing was over. night on the war channels, a glass of Old being helplessly present for the ongoing I’d even called up my last employers, but Overholt rye on my knee. I was not bad thwarting of a child’s heart, meant some- there were no further plans for powdered off compared to most of the world. Why thing. Bernie was a beautiful boy. Good wigs and brass-buckle shoes in the Bronx. didn’t anybody do anything? We could get thing, too, as he’d become an expensive I’d grown morose, detached, faintly pal- a few billion of us together, rush the bas- hobby. Preschool, preclothing for the pre- sied. I stopped reading the job listings, just tards. Sure, a good many of us would die, school. Then there were the hidden costs, rode the trains each day, simmering, until but unless the asks popped off some nukes, like food. Funny, isn’t it, how much you dinnertime. eventually they’d get overrun. can detest the very being you’d die for in Back in high school, I remembered, a What was the holdup? an instant? I guess that’s just families. Or soothing way to fall asleep after pictur- The terrible feeling tended to hover for human nature. Or capitalism, or some- ing tremendous breasts in burgundy bras a day or so, fade. Then I’d fantasize about thing. (yes, the image pre-dated Vargina) had winning the lottery, or inheriting vast But the price of Bernie wasn’t Bernie’s been to conjure the crimson blossom of fortunes. Sometimes I was a flamboyant fault. It wasn’t Maura’s, either. I was the bullet-ripped concert tees, the hot suck libertine with plush orgy rooms, personal

Raymond Pettibon · No Title (While He Lives)

12 zoos. Sometimes I jetted around the world you worry your behaviour will reduce words whispered under the thrum of ven- building hospitals, or making documenta- me to generalizations about why your tilators, EKG machines. ries about the poor. lands are historically fucked? Or does my My father had been that lucky. It all depended on my mood. nation’s decline make my myopia moot? Some natty loon sat alone at the next Days I didn’t ride the trains, I’d take They should produce a reality show about table. He wore a pilled herringbone blazer, long walks in the neighbourhood. We how much this line sucks, I thought. Call crusty at the cuffs, guarded a shopping lived in Astoria, Queens, as close to our it On the Line. Or In the Line. Half an hour bag packed with neatly folded shopping jobs in Manhattan as we could afford. later I reached the teller. I was about to bags. A notebook lay open on his table. It One afternoon I made a mission for ask for stamps when I realized I already looked full of sketches, apothegms. His myself: stamps for the latest bills (I’d ask had a book of them in my wallet. I did pen still had the wire on it from where for American flags, stick them on upside not need stamps. I needed a job. I needed he’d maybe snipped it at the bank. The down in protest against our nation’s for- to cool it with those pills from Maura’s loon muttered, picked white scabs on his eign and domestic policies), paper towels, root canal. head. and – as a special treat to celebrate the Home beckoned, but so did a coconut I could picture my colleagues back at acceleration of my fatal spiral – a small flake. I was due back an hour ago, felt the Mediocre development suite, Horace sack of overpriced cashews from the the admonishing telephonic pulses in at his desk, unwrapping the outer, non- Greek market. my jeans, but instead crossed the avenue edible wrapping of his turkey wrap, Var- I’d cure my solipsistic hysteria with a to the doughnut shop. There was a high gina holed up in her command nook, por- noonday jaunt. Sights and smells. School- school boy behind the counter, maybe ing over ask dossiers and budget spreads, kids in parochial plaids. Grizzled men saving up for the video game where you Llewellyn patched in from Zanzibar with grilling meat. The deaf woman handing gut and flay everybody in the doughnut the skinny on a give. out flyers for the nail salon, or the other shop and gain doughnut life points. He But I was at my new office now, my deaf woman with swollen hands and a wielded his tongs with affecting delicacy. Formica workstation smeared with jelly headscarf who hawked medical thrillers in I thought again of my brutal visions and Bavarian cream. This scab-picker was front of the drugstore. of yore. My mother had always said I my potential partner. We could make an This was a kind and bountiful neigh- reminded her of her mother, Hilda. Since ace development combo. bourhood: the Korean grocery, the Mexi- therapy, my mother had maintained that And the ask? Maybe the ask was that can taqueria, the Italian butcher shop, the her issues, which prior to treatment had boy over there at the far booth, the one Albanian café, the Arab newsstand, the been known as her demons, stemmed with fluorescent earbuds, a forehead full Czech beer garden, everybody living in from the fact that Hilda ‘withheld.’ I nev- of leaky cysts. There was a horrible glit- provisional harmony, keeping their hate- er knew my grandmother well. She had ter in his eyes that looked like murder, or ful thoughts to themselves, except maybe badly dyed hair and a persecution com- maybe just higher math. a few of the Czechs. plex exacerbated towards the end of her The loon caught me staring at the boy, A man who looked a bit like me, same life when she was fired from the culture winked. eyeware, same order of sneaker, charged beat at her synagogue’s newsletter. ‘What was that for?’ I said. past. They were infiltrating, the freaking ‘That pig rabbi should have died in the The loon winked again. Teen brooder me’s. The me’s were going to wreck eve- camps,’ she said. stood. I felt the glare of the leaky child, rything, hike rents, demand better salads. Most of Hilda’s utterances weren’t so decided to meet the boy’s gaze, try my The me’s were going to drive me away. venomous. Most of her evil she must have best to transmit this thought: I’m not the The Greeks were out of cashews. I withheld. enemy, just an earlier iteration of our kind. bought pistachios, ate them in line at the Now I took a booth near the window, ‘Goddamn fucking faggots!’ the boy post office. Or on line at the post office. I watched the afternoon bridge traffic. shouted, careened out the door. could no longer recall which phrase came Trucks piled up at the off-ramp, trailer Poor kid was a wild child, a homo- naturally. Either way, there was always a sides browned with exhaust. phobe. He might as well have been illit- line at the post office, people with enor- Not long ago Bernie said ‘beep-beep’ erate, guessing at supermarket signage. mous packages bound, I assumed, for every time he heard a car horn. Later his For all my adolescent rage, I had never family in distant, historically fucked lands. favourite word was ‘mine.’ Now he was included the marginalized or oppressed in What were they sending? TVs? TiVos? fluent in the cant of his tiny world. His my dream carnage. I never said gypped, or Hamburgers? Hamburger Helper? The leaps in speech had seemed otherworldly. Indian giver, or paddy wagon, or accused exporting of American culture, did it What else was he mastering behind our anyone of welshing on a bet. If there ever continue at this level, too? It couldn’t for backs? Little Judas. Maura and I had evolved a tradition of locutions such as much longer. Not according to Horace’s worked so hard to dig the family ditch ‘She tried to tranny me on that real estate calculations. The line hardly moved. Peo- for the three of us to rot in and now here deal,’ you would not hear them out of my ple couldn’t fill out the forms. Others did came the rope of language to haul the boy mouth. I never even called myself a yid not comprehend the notion of money out. ‘Beep-beep’ begets ‘Mine,’ which with that tribal swagger I envied in others, orders. Come on, people, I thought- begets ‘I hate you, Dad.’ Then, if you’re though I had a right, or half a right, from beamed. I’m on your side and I’m lucky, there’s a quick ‘I love you, Dad,’ my mother’s side. I nearly spoke this truth annoyed. Doesn’t that concern you? Don’t followed by ‘Let go, Dad,’ these last aloud when the loon cackled.

13 ‘Don’t mind the boy,’ he said. ‘I’ve laptop. ‘All I’m saying,’ said Maura, ‘is you known him since he was a child. A marvel- She had been raised in one of those don’t have to play it their way. That’s all lous little specimen.’ happy, naked families from Vermont. I you’ve ever done.’ The man’s voice had odd nasal author- looked at her body now, remembered ‘Excuse me?’ I said. ity. He sounded like some mandarin of Bernie’s weaning, that era of inconsolable ‘Give me some juice!’ Bernie called vintage radio, and hearing him I suddenly sobs and farewell fondles. Maura’s breasts, again. ‘I want it!’ recalled certain items from my childhood, large and milk white when they’d been ‘Ask nicely.’ a particular carton of laundry detergent, full of milk, had darkened, pancaked a bit, ‘Please.’ the mouthfeel of a discontinued cola. The but they were still beautiful, and I was not ‘But it’s not for kids, Bernie.’ man dove back into his notebooks, his boy just saying that, or thinking of saying that, ‘Don’t confuse him like that,’ said doodles and prurient runes. Even from to be kind. Maura. ‘Daddy’s going to give Bernie here his sketches looked quite accom- ‘Wait,’ said Maura, ‘what?’ some pink coffee juice that’s not really plished and insane. It was her I’m-downloading-a-crucial- coffee. Would Bernie like Daddy to give Maybe someday he’d be heralded, a folk file-from-the-office tone. Bernie some pink coffee juice that’s not museum folk hero. ‘A call from work on my voice mail,’ really coffee? Daddy, would you please Maybe someday Bernie, still getting I said. ‘From old work. Vargina and give Bernie some pink coffee juice that’s over his father’s untimely but somehow Llewellyn. They want me to come in.’ not really coffee?’ not surprising death, would take his new ‘Why would they want that?’ ‘Fine!’ I said. girlfriend to see the disturbed but bril- ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Fine!’ said Bernie. liant drawings by the kiddie-diddler who ‘Wasn’t firing you enough? Is this a legal He flicked his guy and a cold gob of spent most of his adult life guarding a thing? Do you need a lawyer?’ oatmeal slapped my cheek. I could see shopping bag full of shopping bags in a ‘I said I don’t know.’ this was the beginning of something. doughnut shop not far from where he, I leaned out from my trash niche. Like sudden sympathy for Goliath. What Bernie, grew up, but who also, unbe- Bernie pointed at the bottle in my hand. was the phrase? Tell it not in Gath? How knownst to the world, inhabited a fabu- ‘Daddy, what are you drinking?’ about we start telling it? lous and secret universe of the mind. ‘Coffee, Bern. Why, do you think I need ‘What?’ said Maura. My phone pulsed again. There were a lawyer?’ ‘Was I mumbling again?’ two messages, one from a number I rec- ‘Do lawyers have foreskins?’ said Bernie. ‘Who’s Goliath?’ said Bernie. ‘A super- ognized: the Mediocre development suite. ‘I’m talking to Mommy,’ I said. hero? Is he a bad guy? A masher?’ The other was a text from Maura: How’s ‘I have a foreskin.’ ‘He’s a masher, for sure,’ I said. the donut, Fat Heart? Find a job yet? Buy milk ‘I know, Bernie.’ ‘Whether he’s a bad guy depends on your for Bern. Also p. towels. ‘You don’t.’ politics.’ The bile was a good sign. ‘True,’ I said, opened the refrigerator ‘What’s politics?’ It’s when they stop trying to destroy door, sneaked the bottle back into the ‘Well, let me see. It’s –’ you, my mother once said, that you should door rack. ‘Does Goliath have a foreskin?’ really start to worry. ‘How come I have a foreskin, Daddy?’ ‘Not for long. Not when David’s done ‘We’ve talked about this, don’t you with him.’ Three remember? Your mother and I decided ‘Who’s David?’ Home, hidden by the refrigerator, I hov- that –’ ‘A foreskin collector.’ ered over the garbage bin, gulped down a ‘Hey, that’s juice. I want some, Daddy! ‘What are you telling him!’ said Maura. bottle of Vitamin Drink. We still dreaded I want some juice!’ ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He should know the day that little Bernie, asquat now on ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Bernie, it’s not about the Bible. He lives in a fucking the kitchen floor spooning oatmeal into juice. It’s for grown-ups. It’s like coffee.’ theocracy.’ the body cavity of a decapitated superhero, ‘You said it was coffee.’ ‘Jesus, language, Milo.’ might spot this iridescent liquid, demand ‘That’s right.’ ‘Daddy! Juice!’ a sip. Vitamin Drink may or may not have ‘But it’s pink!’ ‘Okay, Bern, but first, how about some contained vitamins, but it was too polluted ‘It’s pink coffee, Bernie. It’s what I water?’ for the tykes. They needed wholesome drink. It’s what grownups drink.’ I filled a cup from the tap. Bernie bat- nectars humped back from the wholesome ‘Do superheroes have foreskins? Like ted it away, lunged toward the refrigera- food empires in Manhattan. This sugary my guy?’ tor. shit was for the dying. I was dying, surely, He held up his headless hero. ‘Give me pink coffee juice, Daddy!’ sugary-ly. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Probably. So, ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’ I made to speak before I did. who would I call, Maura? They want me I dumped out the tap water, took the ‘A call. A message. From work.’ tomorrow.’ Vitamin Drink from the refrigerator. ‘What?’ said Maura. ‘Work? What ‘Do they, Daddy?’ Back turned, I mimed a long pour, added work?’ ‘I don’t know, Bernie. It’s possible.’ a drop for colour, refilled the cup from Maura sat on a stool, fresh from the ‘Do foreskins help you fly?’ the tap. shower and still unclothed, pecked at her ‘Maybe,’ I said. Bernie stared up at me.

14 ‘Let go, Dad,’ the boy seemed to be ‘Horace? He’s a temp.’ ‘Gentlemen,’ said Vargina. saying, but his beautiful mouth wasn’t ‘No longer,’ said Llewellyn. ‘He’s look- ‘Why am I here?’ I said. ‘I thought I moving. ing like a little earner.’ was fired.’ ‘Very exciting possibility, Horace’s ask,’ ‘You were,’ said Vargina. Later, in bed, Maura and I cuddled in the said Vargina. ‘Very worthy. The lady is a ‘You are,’ said Llewellyn. way of a couple about to not have sex. It major admirer of our dance program.’ ‘Then what’s going on?’ never appeared to bother us much, unless ‘Where’s the money from?’ ‘We have special circumstances,’ said we watched one of those cable dramas ‘Her husband’s company. Private secu- Vargina. about a sexless marriage. Then we’d curse rity. Military ‘You have the inanity of the show, its implausibil- catering.’ special circum- ity, switch over to something where the ‘Blood stances,’ I said. human wreckage was too crass and tan to sausage, any- ‘Yes.’ touch us. one?’ I said. ‘I have not- ‘I still don’t understand why they want ‘Oh, so-special to meet with you,’ said Maura. please,’ said circumstances,’ ‘I don’t, either. Maybe they realized Llewellyn. I said. they forgot to take the shirt off my back.’ ‘We can’t ‘If you help ‘It’s not funny. That girl’s father. I don’t wash the bad us with our know.’ off anybody’s circumstances,’ ‘What more can they do to me?’ money, now, said Vargina, ‘Oh, I’m sure there are all sorts of can we? But ‘we might be things we’d never even think of.’ we can make able to assist ‘That’s very calming. Thank you.’ something you with ‘I’m just saying. You never learned to good out of yours.’ protect yourself. You always rail against all the misery. The door the evil and exploitation in the world That’s what opened and in but you still act as though everybody has you never walked a large your best interests at heart. I never got understood.’ man with a it. You’re like an idiot savant without the ‘I under- moist pom- savant part.’ stood it. I’m padour and ‘I still have faith in the basic goodness just not sure I a tight beige of humanity. Shoot me.’ believed it.’ moustache. Raymond Pettibon · No Title (I’ve Still Got) ‘Don’t be so sure that’s not the plan.’ ‘Oh, some Dean Cooley kind of martyr was not a dean. Vargina had reserved the conference room. now, are you?’ He was Mediocre’s chief development A tray of turkey wraps sat near the edge ‘A martyr has to give a shit.’ officer. Several groups worked under of the table. They looked like university ‘Get over yourself, Milo. You’re a sad him, and he spent most of his energy on wraps, from the cafeteria downstairs, not man. A born wanker. You were born into the more lucrative ones, like business, the deli across the street. They had no the House of Wanker. You’re a berk, and law, or medicine. His art appreciation avocado. you probably think I’m just saying your did not reach much past the impres- Llewellyn and Vargina sat across the last name.’ sionistic prints from the Montreal table. We took turns popping the tops of Llewellyn’s Cambridge year was the Olympics he’d mounted on his office our sodas, listened to the sounds reverber- stuff of office legend, thanks to Llewellyn, wall. He’d been a marine, and then some ate in the wood-panelled room. The word but I’d always suspected he lifted most kind of salesman, had started with cars ‘reverberate’ reverberated in my mind, of his lingo from the British editions of and ended up in microchips and early which I could now picture as a wood- American men’s magazines. internet hustles. Here in the cozy halls panelled room. ‘Wanker,’ I said. ‘Don’t know that of academe, as he had put it during our ‘It’s nice to see you again,’ said Vargina. word. Is that a Southern thing? What is first team talk, he meant to reassess his ‘Hear, hear,’ said Llewellyn. ‘So, hoss, that, Richmond? Newport News? Is that priorities. Meanwhile he would train us what have you been doing to yourself?’ like peanuts in your Coke?’ maggots how to ask asks and get gives. ‘Excuse me?’ ‘You have a provincial mind, huckle- Cooley was a hard-charger who often ‘Just shitting you,’ said Llewellyn. ‘Seri- buck.’ began his reply to basic office queries ously, how’s it going?’ ‘Pardon?’ by invoking ‘the lessons of Borodino.’ ‘I didn’t see Horace when I walked in,’ I ‘It’s a global globe now,’ said Llewellyn. He was the kind of man you could said to Vargina. ‘We sink or swim together.’ picture barking into a field phone, send- ‘He’s at a lunch.’ ‘It’s a global globe?’ ing thousands to slaughter, or perhaps ‘A lunch?’ ‘That’s right.’ ordering the mass dozing of homes. ‘He’s working on an ask.’ ‘Moron.’ People often called him War Crimes. By

15 people, I mean Horace and I. By often, I where you come in, Mr Burke.’ Each time I’d chuckle with stagey mean twice. ‘Pardon?’ amusement, say: ‘Well, kid, if he didn’t ‘Dean,’ said Vargina. ‘This is the man ‘It’s an ask,’ said Vargina. open the door, we wouldn’t have a we were telling you about. Milo Burke.’ ‘A big one,’ said Llewellyn. ‘Not story, would we?’ ‘Nice to meet you.’ quite Rayfield range, but big.’ Odds were good I was, in the final We’d met a dozen times before, ‘Why me?’ I said. analysis, nothing but a scat gobbler at lunches, cocktail receptions. He ‘Good question,’ said Vargina. from the House of Wanker. had stood beside me while his wife ‘Yes,’ said Cooley. ‘That is the ques- ‘I mean,’ I said now, ‘I used to know explained a project she’d embarked tion, as the Bard might say.’ him.’ upon in her student days, something ‘The Bard?’ ‘Well, that’s just swell,’ said Cooley, to do with Balinese puppets and social ‘What’s so funny?’ said Cooley. rose, petted his moustache with a kind allegory. ‘Nothing, sir,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t of cunnidigital ardour. ‘I assume you are wondering why, know people still used that term.’ ‘I’m late for another meeting,’ he said. after being terminated for cause two ‘Well, I’m a people, Burke. Am I not?’ ‘Tell our contestant what he’s won.’ months ago, we’ve asked you to come ‘Of course.’ The door clicked shut behind him. It in,’ Cooley began. ‘If you prick me, do I not bleed, you did not reverberate. ‘A fair assumption,’ I said. scat-gobbling, motherrimming prick?’ ‘What have I won?’ I said. ‘What you need to understand is that Occasionally Dean Cooley reverted ‘Your old job back,’ said Vargina. ‘If the incident with Mr Rayfield’s daugh- to a vocabulary more suited to his you make this work.’ ter was very serious. Mr Rayfield is still marine years, but some maintained it ‘And if I don’t?’ angry. You made his daughter doubt was only when he felt threatened, or ‘You’ll be finished,’ said Llewellyn. herself, artistically. He had to buy her stretched for time. ‘For ever. Do we have clarity?’ an apartment in Copenhagen so she ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Obscene amounts.’ could heal.’ ‘Trust me, Milo,’ said Llewellyn. Llewellyn stood, stalked off. It ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ ‘Nobody wants it to be you. You were would not be the last I saw of him, ‘The whole debacle nearly cost us a nothing but dead weight since the day I knew. The ogres, they just lurk new, working telescope for our observ- you arrived. Nobody respects you and behind those gnarled oak doors so atory.’ your leering got on people’s nerves.’ ubiquitous in fairy-tale carpentry, ‘I do understand that.’ ‘My leering?’ wait for gentle lads to knock. Trolls, ‘But what you also need to under- Vargina shrugged, tapped her pen on the other hand, they must have a stand is that we are not simply some against her legal pad. paging device. Either way, the odious heartless, money-mad, commercial ‘Listen,’ said Cooley. ‘I don’t give a is ever ready. enterprise. We are partly that, of course, slutty snow monkey’s prolapsed uterus Vargina and I sat there for a while, a but we are also a compassionate and, for your office politics. The point is new, electric awkwardness in the room. yes, money-mad place of learning. And that Burke needs to come back and ‘Can you make it happen?’ said Var- while we’re on the topic of learning, we complete this mission.’ gina. think people can learn from their mis- ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why me?’ ‘When have I ever disappointed you?’ takes. We believe in redemption.’ ‘It’s the ask,’ said Vargina. ‘The ask ‘Nearly every day that we have ‘As long,’ said Llewellyn, ‘as it is not demands it.’ worked together.’ tied to a particular ideology or religious ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I just want to apolo- tradition and promotes inclusiveness.’ ‘He says he knows you. His wife is gize.’ ‘Is that from the handbook, Lew?’ an alumnus of our extension program ‘For what?’ said Dean Cooley. ‘Anyway, the point and they want to be donors, but when ‘For the leering.’ is, we are a family.’ he found out you were in our office, he ‘The leering?’ ‘A family dedicated to furthering sci- requested your presence. He wants to ‘You know. That stuff Llewellyn ence and the humanities in an increas- work with somebody he trusts.’ said.’ ingly meaning-starved culture,’ said ‘Who is this person?’ I said. ‘Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Vargina. ‘His name is Stuart. Purdy Stuart. Horace.’ ‘Well put,’ said Dean Cooley. You do know him, don’t you?’ ‘Horace?’ ‘But may I remind us all,’ said ‘Yes. I know him.’ ‘He’s the one who reported you. But Llewellyn, ‘that here in development I said nothing more, felt now like the don’t worry. He wasn’t vindictive. He our task is to raise money for said fur- boy in the fairy-tale book I often read just said he didn’t understand why some- thering. We can’t hug all day. We’ve got to Bernie, the polite farmer’s son who body would need to be in the closet in to get out there and work.’ stands before the cruel ogre’s castle. this day and age. At least around here.’ ‘Also well put. Especially these days. Each time Bernie would ask: ‘Daddy, ‘In the closet,’ I said. We need every drop of philanthropy we why does the boy have to knock on the ‘But he’s a kid. He doesn’t know how can get. We must fasten our lips to the door? Why can’t he just turn around complicated these things can get.’ spigot and suck, so to speak. Which is and go home?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I guess he doesn’t.’ ◊

16 The Festival Issue: Woodstock action. In no time, we strung up a tarpau- lin between the trees. Again they offered The Sex, Drugs & Rock ’n’ Roll Were Incidental us wine and smouldering reefers, as if it was their panacea to cure all ills. Their friends returned with stories of other By Matthew De Abaitua goings-on across the campsite. The music, I ascertained, was far out. But the mood ‘Just a very unpleasant camping experience’ forth abroad: and thou shalt have a paddle was labile, jackknifing from bliss to grind- Joseph Coakley, quoted in Woodstock: The upon thy weapon, and it shall be, when ing fear. The barbed wire fences enclosing Oral History by Joel Makower thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt the site had been breached, spilling more dig therewith, and shalt turn back and ardent campers into our midst, and the We arrived at White Lake farm in the cover that which cometh from thee.’ mud in the hollow cow field had been late afternoon after a dusty hike along I took up my paddle and went out churned into a quagmire. back lanes. There were no allotted pitches, into the woods. The ground cursed at ‘We must help the people down there nor was the campsite owner there to meet me. There were lovers under my boots, too,’ said Sylvia. I agreed. We packed a us. Sylvia went to check on the facilities lovers wrapped in plastic sheeting. Under light rucksack with provisions for the day while I hunted out a promising spot to moonlight I saw bodies – bodies every- and a change of dry clothes, and then we pitch the tent. Summer showers had left where, in fitful, cold and painful sleep. set off over the ridge and down towards the ground soft. The cow field curved My dream of exodus had come true. As the orange haze. The camp kitchens had down from a ridge into a deep bowl. I slept, a mass of people had arrived at been torched overnight, in an act of self- Further rainfall would turn that lowland the campsite. These child-like half-naked sabotaging delirium. Everywhere the into a muddy bog, so I resolved to pitch people had done nothing to ease their spirit was poised between creation and high on the ridge on the edge of a wood. hardship, not even hollowed out a curve destruction. My first intimation that something was in the ground for their hipbone to rest in. ‘It’s like a war zone,’ Sylvia gasped. wrong came from Sylvia. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked Overhead, a helicopter kept a watchful Her expression was grave with fore- them. distance, the violence of its rotor blades boding. ‘The facilities are rudimentary, ‘We have come for the music,’ was their matched by flinching and twitching the site is filling up, but many of the groggy reply. expressions upon the faces of stupefied campers seem ill-equipped.’ ‘But there is no music,’ I said. campers. A trio of nuns passed ahead of A muggy afternoon deepened into a A bearded naked man disagreed with us; they too had come to minister to this sultry twilight. I gained the ridge and me. He took me up on to the ridge and tragic assembly. I asked the nuns if any gazed down. A great crowd was massing pointed to the distant orange glow. ‘That campers had died and one of them held around a distant orange haze. I asked Syl- is where the music is,’ he said. ‘Yesterday, up two fingers. via if she knew what it was. She did not. some of my friends went to listen to it. I The crowd loitered bovine in the mud. The night grew cold. I set a campfire and haven’t seen them since.’ It took hours of apologies to pick our lit it with a single match. All that existed I picked my way through the sleepers way through them. At last, we reached in the world for me then was illuminated and into the woods. I dug a hollow and the orange haze – a rig of lights and a by the flickering light of the campfire: crouched over it. The treetops thrashed stage, bookended by two towers, tall Sylvia’s strong cheekbones, her chestnut overhead, broken guy ropes and shreds of assemblies of scaffolding with a tarpaulin hair tied back, her green singlet dusty flysheet snagged in the branches. stretched between them. Here, I reasoned, from the trail. Dawn rose upon what I can only was the source of the music that everyone All night, I dreamed of a great exo- describe as the most disastrous camping spoke of. Yet the stage was empty. dus, of weary feet tramping. The Indian trip in human experience. As I breakfast- The long-brewing storm broke with followed the herds of mastodon and ed, frying a little ham fat over the fire, our terrifying vigour: the towers listed giant buffalo across the ice of the Baring fellow campers hung around in muddy and shook, and the tarp – for want of a Straits to Newfoundland, and then down and sodden blankets, as mangy as jackals. guy rope – twisted and billowed. The through the continent upon a ceaseless Sylvia shared her bread and dripping with rain raked over the crowd. Sylvia and I, ancient quest; the Great Campers who them, and they in turn offered her a reefer secure in our ponchos and boots, erected walked the land before us and whose and a jug of wine. All good campers are makeshift shelters out of plastic sheeting footsteps echoed under the soil. abstinent; the discipline required at camp and splintered planks, the trash that was I woke from this dream and felt the quickly falls apart with excessive libation. strewn upon the earth. No sooner had need to use the facilities. It is a scientific She cheerfully refused their offer, but we heaved another improvised bivouac fact that the body expends warmth heat- found them friendly and implored me to into position than it bulged with cold ing up a full bowel and bladder. As I put help them. and weary youngsters. One man refused on my boots, I was minded of the wis- The clouds were low and swift. Spi- my offer of shelter. He lifted his dirty dom of Deuteronomy concerning camp ders strengthened their webs. Portents face to the downpour and accepted it as latrines: ‘Thou shalt have a place also of a storm. A camp needs a captain. The his due. without the camp, whither thou shalt go young men responded to my call to A toothless clown clambered up

17 onstage. He warned the crowd away from to sympathetic magic. Under foot, the ing for rapture teetered on the verge of the towers. At last, I thought, someone to mud liquefied and turned to a foul slick. desperation. From the stage, the toothless take charge of the rabble. I pleaded with Camp hygiene was the first to suffer. The clown persisted with his announcements, my fellow campers to return to their tents site was rank with body odour and it was even as the wind tried to blow him off and seek shelter. No, they would wait for apparent, downwind of them, that the the stage. A messenger crouched beside the music. facilities had been overwhelmed. the clown and handed up a piece of paper ‘There is no music,’ I shouted against I tried my best to enter into the spirit containing further messages, and from the gale. of the thing. Against the silence flow- the clown’s serious expression, I reasoned ‘You are wrong,’ they muttered. ing from the stage, spontaneous bands there was bad news to come. Behind the The clown took leave of his senses and of music-makers sprung up; a beautiful stage, at the centre of its own tempest, a lead the mob into a chant to ward off the woman played the flute accompanied by helicopter reared over flattened grass, the rain. Any good camper comes prepared a shirtless, long-haired gentleman on the side doors open, preparing to evacuate for rain and should have no need to resort bongos. A small crowd danced; the yearn- the first of the musicians. ◊

The Festival Issue: Woodstock An Extract from Must: The Inside Story Peggy Shaw in collaboration with Clod Ensemble. By Peggy Shaw and Suzy Willson.

15 August 1969. New York City. I had tickets to Woodstock but never made it out of town. When I went into labour they placed my feet up, head back. The nurse said, ‘Lay down and I’ll shave your pubic hair and give you an enema.’ I told her I’d rather be in the mud and the rain listening to Jimi Hendrix. My hips were growing wider and wider, like a doublewide trailer. Room enough for a whole family. My hips were keeping the door from shutting. When the doctor came in, he said there wasn’t enough room for both of us. I was a giant among men. They pinned me to the table like Gulliver, thousands of ropes keeping me still, shooting little arrows into me. I told the doctor to think of my body as magic. ‘Just relax,’ he said, smoking his pipe. My daughter was ready to touch down on the planet, but she had to climb up and out of my womb, ‘cause they had me tipping backwards, my feet in cold stirrups. (That was thirty- eight years ago, before they discovered the law of gravity applied to women.) I was wearing a cosmic suit, with stars and moons and planets. They forced me to disrobe. ‘I will kill you and your whole family if you don’t get me out of this pain.’

18 Festival Issue Main Stage: Guided by Voices act(s). I don’t even remember if I saw them and forgot them, or spent that time working on the aforementioned sousing. The good news is that The Time I Bled All Over The Place from the moment the first set ended and the encores began, the memories are indelible. To By James Greer answer your question: yes, OH YES, I most certainly saw the blood. Everyone in at least t happened in Philadelphia, which padded out with the help of an obliging the first twenty, erm, rows (?) must have seen Iis a city on the northeastern coast of friend who happened to be in the audi- the blood. When I tell the story, I always say America, for those of you who don’t get ence that night. (I really do) that the blood was “pouring down out much. Philadelphia features the Lib- What happened, in short, was this: (your) bass.” I also remember the meteor shower erty Bell, which is famous for (inscruta- between encores, our presence was of beer bottles directed at the stage by an audi- ble) reasons of its own, but is best known requested back onstage both in the ence starving for another encore and reciting the for its cameo appearance in a Guided By usual manner – by cheers and stomps and obvious chant while putting said bottles into Voices song called ‘Echos Myron’, from applause and the ritual chant ‘GBV! GBV!’ flight. One whizzed right past my ear – one the Bee Thousand album. We were playing that Bob inadvertently and artificially of those delirious and dangerous moments that a club in Philly’s Chinatown called the invented at the beginning of the album seem profound when one is young, drunk and at Trocadero, and a curious feature of the Propeller, and only slightly regrets – and a rock show. You know, in a no guts, no glory Trocadero was that it had two levels, on by a shower of mostly-empty beer bottles kind of way. So yes, you ambled back onstage, a both of which you were able to buy beer raining on the stage itself, many of which stage positively strewn with broken glass, and in bottles (this was back when America shattered upon impact, so that by the time Mitch tackled you from behind. You both went was still a lawless and often awesome we shuffled back on for the third encore down, you both came up. You, with some major place, in other words in 1995). The show the stage was covered in shards of broken artery seemingly severed. The rest of the band itself was unremarkable except in the glass. Making it an inopportune time for came out. Bob launched into song. And you sense that we were, of course, insanely guitarist Mitch Mitchell, in an admirable played, as I mentioned, with blood pouring great, as usual, and as a result, were called excess of rock’s natural spirit of excess, down your bass. The other thing I often men- back for three encores. In those days by to awkwardly bear-hug/tackle me from tion when telling the story is that at that point, the time we got to the third encore there behind. We both went down in a heap, it no longer mattered that I never saw a Kiss was often some discussion as to what and I cut open my right wrist on one of show back when they were in their prime.’ we should play, because having released the bottle shards. It started bleeding. A lot. I have no idea who ‘Kiss’ may be, at that point only two or three albums I noticed, but in a detached, third-person, probably some local Philadelphia band, that everybody knew, and not having kind of ‘huh’ way. Pete Jamison, Manager probably not as good as the Strapping learned every single one of the songs on For Life, also noticed and quickly found Fieldhands (few bands were or are) but those albums for the purposes of playing a towel to which he applied a quantity I appreciate John’s confirmation of my live, our repertoire was somewhat more of soap (obtained where? obtained how?) own impressions of that night. Here’s limited than that enjoyed by later itera- and between songs I would go over to what I would add: in my memory, there tions of the band, who were known for him and he would apply the towel to my was girl videotaping the show from just sometimes playing for three days straight wound in an attempt to staunch the bleed- to the side of the stage, and I think she without repeating a song. It doesn’t really ing. It didn’t work, because playing bass may have fainted. Bob didn’t notice that matter: I remember the discussion, but I requires a lot of right-wrist movement, anything was wrong, because when Bob don’t remember what we played. which obviated any ameliatory effects is in rock mode he notices nothing, liter- For whatever reason, my drink of from the soaped-up towel. In my recollec- ally, that does not directly impinge on his choice that evening had been some kind tion, I bled quite a lot, but I’m never sure delivery of the song. I’m not sure what of vodka concoction, consisting of vodka, how far I can trust my memory, which is Toby or Kevin or Mitch noticed, because ice and a glass, and probably another sieve-like at the best of times and through I was too busy trying to stop the bleeding ingredient I’m forgetting. It may or may which entire events have sluiced away and the urge to scream in pain. We made not have been the famous ‘Pink Drink’, under the effect of alcohol. it through the three or four or eleventy- surrounding which there has grown Here’s where audience member John seven songs that constituted the third and over the years some mythomania, mostly Golden came to my rescue during a recent final encore, and when I went backstage due to the song called ‘Pink Drink’ that correspondence, through which it tran- I was surrounded by well-intentioned Robert Pollard wrote and had slated for spired that he had been there, and had people who urged me to go to the ER inclusion on The Power of Suck album we been impressed enough by what he saw and have my wound (which occurred on never made, for reasons which are far that the memory remains clearer for him the soft part of the wrist just below the too complex to explore right here, right than for me. hand, and was deep, but did not sever any now. It’s irrelevant, anyway. The point In John’s words: ‘I was geeked enough arteries, obviously, or I would not still is, I was very drunk, all of us in the band to be right up front, but also clever enough to be alive) stitched. I refused, because there were very drunk, and so as a consequence be sufficiently soused. The bad news is I have was still some alcohol left, and I believed, my memory in this instance has had to be no recollection whatsoever regarding opening back then, that it was bad form to go any-

19 where while there was still alcohol left. ‘I let the thing heal. And like all things even- and dried there, and I was not in the mood must have lost a pint of vodka,’ I remem- tually either do or do not, it did. to open up the guts of my instrument and ber saying, and then tried to replace that I’m left with a scar that will stay with mess with its mysterious mojo. Some- pint as quickly as I could. Bob’s comment, me until I die, and what I guess is a funny, where, today, in the pawnshops or music when he saw the extent of my injury, was if gory, story. As for the bass – that poor stores of Dayton, Ohio, or possibly in the that ‘Guided By Voices don’t get stitches.’ early sixties Thunderbird, I believe it suf- hands of a new owner – who if he or she Back at the hotel later that night, I began fered the worst. Try as I might, I could not knew its sanguine history would freak to regret my decision to leave the wound get all the blood cleaned out of that thing. out at its indelible but essential grossness untreated, as I had trouble sleeping because I took the strings off, and the pickguard. I – you can find that bass and, in it, some of the throbbing pain in my wrist. And at used rubbing alcohol and Q-tips, but the residue of my blood. I am between happy the next show, in Washington D.C. (either blood had poured down into the pick-ups and sad about that idea. ◊ at the Black Cat or the new 9:30 Club), I regretted it even more, because no mat- ter how I bandaged the thing, the wound kept opening up, and Pete had to stand by the side of the stage and apply soaped-up towel after soaped-up towel to my wrist in a fruitless attempt to get the damn thing to stop bleeding. Luckily, that was the last show of the tour, and except for a taping of a few songs we had to do for a D.C. radio station, I then had two weeks or so to

Raymond Pettibon · No Title (In some of) · 2000 pen and ink on paper 22¼ × 16¼ inches (56.5 × 41.3 cm)

The Festival Issue: Isle of Wight Miles Davis Canoodles!

Granny Takes a Trip founder Nigel Waymouth was there he last two big pop festivals I Twent to were the 1969 and 1970 Isle of Wight Festivals. If I can recover enough memory from the clouds of pot I’d say I remember more of the ‘69 event. The 1970 festival was spent sitting in Donovan’s caravan backstage, listening to him and John Sebastian swapping songs. As a result I failed to see Jimi Hendrix and The Who onstage. I did go a bit weak at the knees when I spotted Miles Davis, lying on the grass, dressed in black, shades and all, canoodling with a beautiful blonde wom- see the re-emergence of the man him- and confident two-and-a-half-hour-long an. It seemed to me the ultimate picture self. He was backed by The Band, who shows. Still, it was a thrill to see him again of cool. The year before we had witnessed were already a legend in their own right. and no one was really disappointed. Peo- the first return of Bob Dylan to perform- Dylan seemed nervous and reluctant, but ple forget that that year’s Isle of Wight ing live after his motorcycle accident. We it wasn’t the kind of cool reluctance of a festival was only a couple of weeks after had heard the Basement Tapes, John Wesley Miles Davis performance: Dylan seemed Woodstock and had a much larger attend- Harding and Nashville Skyline and listened a bit unsteady and his performance was ance. It was Glastonbury before Glaston- to all the rumours but now we would short, unlike his present day very generous bury, but without the £7,000 yurts. ◊

20 Festival Issue Main Stage: Bloc Party but she did not let herself express it. Now her social life was baptisms, holy commun- ions, weddings and funerals. Or Circle 21, The Kick a weekly meeting for all the Nigerians in the parish, where they would gossip and Fiction by Kele Okereke talk about who was doing what back home. She did not want a life like her mother, she e is sitting patiently in the out- She reaches the top of the stairs. Their eyes would never let a man’s shadow have such Hdoor section of the McDonalds at meet. After an awkward moment he offers an impact over her own life, and for the the entrance to Liverpool Street train sta- a feeble wave. She smiles weakly then most part she had kept that promise. But tion. It is ten o’clock on Monday morning, looks down at the ground. Hey, she says. Marcus had been different, he was the first the rush hour is subsiding. He watches the Hey, he replies. I’m sorry I’m late. Don’t man that she had truly fallen for, he wasn’t strangers pass each other below, darting in be, its all right. She sits at the table outside. like all the boys in her year who talked and out of each other like grey-coloured He is not sure if he should hug her or not. about computer games and lied about what fish at the bottom of the sea, being care- He decides not to. And for a moment they they had done with girls. Marcus was a ful not to touch each other. He is waiting sit just looking at each other. He thinks man, five years her senior. At first it had for her, and though she is late, he does not that she might cry. Hey, he interrupts her, just been fun; they had met at a party. She care. He is remembering being in second- I bought you a McMuffin, I think it might had thought he was handsome, mysteri- ary school, and running through this sta- be cold. Thanks, she says, without look- ous; she liked the way he smiled at her tion every morning. It all comes back to ing at it. He pushes it towards her and she across the room. He was self-assured, aloof him: the robot voice over the tannoy, the says nothing, just looks at the wrapper and almost. When he leaned to kiss her she felt dull sound of a thousand feet marching, starts to play with it. She is still angry with that this was what it was like to be desired his quickness of breath as he weaved in him, she is still hurt: but there is nothing properly by a man. And that was how between the suited businessmen. This train that he can do about the past. She is look- it started, something fun, meeting after station was one of the few places that he ing into the concourse at a toddler playing school to go and sit in the park, fucking in felt he could look people in the eye. It did while his parents eat, walking backwards his flat in the daytime, watchingD VDs on not matter if you held the gaze of a passing through the tables and chairs of the res- his sofa with the smell of marijuana in the stranger; they would be gone in seconds, taurant. She is staring at the child intently air. He made her laugh. He always asked intimacy without any consequences. Every and then she looks away, resting her head about her day, always walked her back to face on its way to work told a different on her hands. Michelle, he says, and then the end of her road. And although at times story: stress, fatigue – even back then, as again in a softer voice, Chelley. He knows he appeared distant, caught up in his own a child, he had hoped that he would never exactly what she is thinking and, even problems, she liked that, found it intrigu- look like these grown-ups. He wonders though he knows that they are going to ing. She wanted to know more about him, what his face says about his problems today. miss the 10.12 train, he puts his hand on to win him over – it had only been six She is always late and today is no differ- top of hers and lets it lie there. weeks but she caught herself fantasizing ent. He sips the coffee he bought for her. It She gets her toughness from her mother. about cooking for him, even having babies is lukewarm and she will not drink it now. She is relying on it now as they descend the together one day. She had fallen in the way She never drank coffee anyway; she said escalator together. She is telling herself not that first love always falls, completely and she didn’t like the taste. But she will need to cry. She thinks about what her mother resolutely his. So when the call came that something to get her through today. He would do. Her mother, who survived the Thursday afternoon, she did not know stops his thoughts mid flow; this day will move from Lagos to the UK in the seven- that there was something wrong. He had only be possible if he does not allow him- ties, who survived an alcoholic, woman- said that he wanted to meet her that night. self to think about what he is doing. He izing husband, who raised two children on They met at Fortune House, the cafe at the pulls his denim jacket tighter around his her own when he ran off back to Nigeria. end of his road. He told her that she was a shoulders and sighs, focusing again on the Who, no matter what, kept her head held great girl, but that this had come to an end swarming mass of people below him and high. Recently she had come to realize that for him. He did not feel that it was going that’s when he sees her, on the floor below, she is like her mother in more ways than anywhere. She did not cry, though she wearing the black corduroy jacket that she she had thought, and although it was main- wanted to. She just felt deflated, as if some- thinks makes her look older, clutching her ly a good thing, there were times when it one had let the air out of her. She sat in purse to her chest; not making eye contact worried her. There was a hardness appear- silence, and nodded her head. He walked with anyone. He wants to comfort her. ing inside her, a barrier that was stopping her to the end of the road, kissed her on Like this, she looks like her mother, but her emotions from flowing. She did not her cheek, and walked the other way. he will not tell her because he knows how cry when Marcus left her, she buried her There is no preparation, no prevention for angry she would get. She starts to climb feelings. She learnt this technique from her the first heartbreak. She felt stupid and she the stairs. He wants to run, run as fast as he mother; it was how she had dealt with her made a promise to herself that she would can away from here. Their eyes have not sadness at being forty years old and alone. never let herself feel like this ever again. met; he could do it, he could . . . but she is Her mother was still pretty, still desirable, She would never fall for another man like looking up now, scanning the concourse. she thought, and still must have felt desire, this: she would protect herself. In the fol-

21 lowing weeks she threw away the things what she wanted to do about it. Well, what or Southend and her mother took her that he had bought her, all gone. She never do you want me to do? C’mon Chelle, and her brother every year. She preferred wanted to be reminded of him. It was in what do you want to do? He was starting Southend because of the pleasure dome, these following weeks that she found out to see flashes of a future that he did not the mini theme park at the end of the pier. that she was pregnant. want but he did not say anything. He could Her favourite ride was the waltzers. She not pre-empt or interrupt, it all had to be loved the sensation of spinning so fast that They silently board the next train, the her decision. Relax, she said, I don’t want she was out of control, the exhilaration of 10.26 to Southend, choosing a deserted to have this baby, maybe I might have if simulated danger. Unconsciously that was middle carriage. She sits next to the win- things had been different, but they aren’t, why she chose the Southend clinic: there dow, and he sits next to her. She is staring are they? His world swung back into focus. were lots of good memories in the town. out of the window at the tracks, not want- But she had left it very late, she was in her He looks at his watch: the appointment is ing to meet his eye. He gets the message twenty-second week, the child already for one p.m. They are almost an hour and and is somewhat relieved as he doesn’t have formed inside her . She was going to have a half early. I’m hungry, he says – A little. to make conversation now. He wonders, it done privately. How much does it cost? Let’s stop and get some food. will she hate him for ever for what she is He offered to pay for it. She said that it had They stop at a café at the start of the about to do today? been hard, she could feel it inside her. They promenade, hit by the smell of fried food She is thinking about her father. She can- had sent her leaflets about what the proc- as they enter. The tablemats are lime green not remember much about him personally, ess would entail, about general anaesthetic, and sticky. They are alone in the café, he left when she was still a child. The only about forceps and the physical and mental apart from two builders with dust-stained way she pictures him now is how she saw pain she would feel afterwards. About overalls. They look at the menu and the him in a photograph her mother keeps by the chances that the procedure would fail. old lady behind the till eyes them suspi- her bed, a picture of him and her mother She had found all of this overwhelming, ciously. He orders a bacon sandwich and in Lagos on a motorcycle in the seventies. frightening, with no one to talk to, but she a cup of tea and some toast. They’ve told He looks handsome with his beard and had decided that it was best. He listened her not to eat. They sit by the window and kinky wild hair, orange shirt open at the attentively, she had made the appoint- watch the clouds move quickly over the chest. And she looks pretty in the thin pink ment for next week, Monday, at a clinic in sea. He starts to tell her a story about his dress she wore, her hair plaited up in a bun. Southend, and she knew that it was short best friend Barry falling off his bicycle and So different to how she sees her mother notice, but would he come with her? They having to walk on crutches for the next six now. She hadn’t told her mother about the arranged to meet the following Monday at months. She liked Barry; he was always so abortion; she never could. Her mother had Liverpool Street station at ten a.m. Both of hapless, always getting into scrapes. The hated Marcus from the start, distrustful of them wondering how it would feel to be thought of him in a plaster cast makes her his intentions. This older white man, what reunited under such circumstances. smile. And even though she covers her was he doing with her teenage Nigerian Her leg brushes his leg as the train is mouth, this is the first time that he has seen daughter? Although she never confronted pulling out of Rochford, and she pulls her smile honestly today. him herself, she moaned constantly when- away discreetly, hoping that he doesn’t This scene reminds her of their first ever Michelle got ready to meet him in the notice, but he does. She watches the rows date, when they sat in PizzaExpress on evenings. Have you finished your home- of houses with big sprawling gardens, dif- Bishopsgate, and he had made her laugh work? What time will you be home? End- ferent shades of brown and greens. She sees with his impressions; it was rare to see him less questions to try and delay her. Do you a man in his back garden burning things on in an entertaining mood, usually he was think I was born yesterday, Chelle, do you a bonfire, the smoke rising in a grey col- so serious. He points out of the window: think that Nigeria is such a far away place? umn; she cannot work it out exactly but it did you see that? What? Look at the shore, You are a smart girl, don’t be a fool for this looks like a rocking horse, burning in the those seagulls fighting over the remnants one, don’t make the same mistakes that I sunlight. of some food, mine, mine, mine, and before did. Mummy, enough, she would say, exas- she can stop herself she starts to laugh. She perated. I have to go, or I will be late. She As they get out of the station at South- remembers watching Finding Nemo with kissed her on the cheek before she left the end he pulls out a map that he has drawn him that afternoon when she bunked off flat. Now it was dawning on her that her for directions to the clinic. He is saddened geography. For weeks after that, whenever mother had been right all along. to be getting off the train. She had fallen there was some food left over he would He is thinking about the day when she asleep and he had let her head lie on his mimic those seagulls in that film,mine, told him. She called him in the afternoon shoulder. It felt like old times. Now, out mine, mine. The wicked look in his eye as at work. They had not spoken since they in the salty sea-air of Southend, the real- he laughed. She was remembering all the had split up and there was something in the ity of what they are about to do hits him. things about him that she had fallen in love tone of her voice, it was curt, clipped. She It’s this way, I think, he leads her away with. wasn’t giving anything away. He called her from the motorway to the seafront. She But this wasn’t a date, he was accompa- back in his lunch break and that was when can smell the sea as soon as she steps off nying her to kill their child. She finishes she told him. He was careful not to let his the train. She hadn’t been to Southend her tea and sits in silence, the sound of the feelings show. Though he was shaking, he since she was a child. Every year there builders’ conversation floats around their asked her, in his most matter-of-fact voice, was a church coach trip to either Margate heads. He can tell that something is wrong.

22 He wonders what he has said. What’s up behind her, a parade of primary school can breathe. He goes to grab her, holding wrong? Nothing, nothing’s wrong. Are children being led by an exasperated her tightly. Please, let go of me, I feel like you sure? What time is it? 12.35 , we have middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed an idiot. Hey, hey, he says, like a father to get going. He goes to the counter and glasses. The children are wearing matching trying to silence a crying baby. Hey, what’s pays the old woman, whose look has now maroon jumpers and grey shorts and skirts, wrong? What did I say? It’s not what you softened into a more quizzical look. He all different colours of brown skin and said or what you didn’t say, you are not wonders how many sad young couples in white skin. Curly, straight, blond, black mine anymore. He does not say anything a similar predicament she sees in her café and brown hair. They are talking to one then, he just looks at her, his silence tell- every week. another, laughing, singing, screaming, but ing her everything she needs to know. He He takes the map out of his jacket all holding hands. He puts his hand out in goes to hold her again. Don’t touch me: pocket. This way, he says, with his hand front of her so that the children can pass. she stands away from him on the beach on her shoulder. But she does not move, Thank you, says the schoolmistress. No with her hands out, protecting herself. No, she is watching the waves, she could hear problem. As soon as the last children have she kept repeating to herself, no. In the them roaring around as they walked to passed, he turns to look at her but she is distance she could see the gaudy, bright the seafront but watching them up close is still facing away. He goes to grab her tight- lights of the pleasure dome, the yellows making her feel emotional. She remembers ly but it’s too late. She runs away from and the reds of the carousels. He speaks something a friend had told her about our him down the steps towards the sea, tears but she isn’t listening to him anymore. She bodies being more than eighty per cent streaming down her face. He calls out to is thinking about her mother, about how water, so coming to the sea was a spiritual her but she will not stop running towards alike they are. act for us. She had laughed him off when the shoreline. As she gets there she stops That’s when she feels it, the kick in her he had said it but it started to make sense and turns to face him. womb. The first sign of a new life. ◊ now. That’s when she hears them, running Her words coming out faster than she

Raymond Pettibon · No Title (He whistled, too.) · 2005 pen and ink on paper 18 × 24 inches (45.7 × 61.0 cm)

23 The Festival Issue: Berlin Love Parade circa ’94 in a frock holding a large blow-up duck without seeing life’s more mirthful side. I almost found myself becoming uncynical: Of Love and Lycra dancing away a weekend has its purposes. As a result, I got to know the German By Gavin Hills people particularly close up by crawling around their gardens and fish ponds at can now confirm that, No, no, no, no, 10 a.m. and eco-warriors think dawn raids seven o’clock on Sunday morning. (Fair I no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, there’s are a good idea – trust clubbers to get play to the fräulein who fished me out, no limit. None at all, bar overdose. The things right. So I made my way to the incidentally. One at a time in the future.) acid/house/rave/techno scene has spanned Wittenburg Platz in the centre of what The parade was a kind of Poll Tax riot the globe and snatched the souls of the was – and I suppose still is – West Berlin. in reverse. After the last sound system world’s reckless. It reaches every corner At first I couldn’t really work out what drove off into the sunset, everyone was of what we call the West and happily was meant to happen. All down the main left buzzed with excitement and heading entertains those in the developing world high street and right into the Platz, eve- off east to the city’s numerous clubs, most who are at economic liberty to indulge rywhere was jam-packed with clubbers. of which were initially squatted when the in such follies. Apolitical, agnostic and They were cheering, whistling, pinching Wall came down. Berlin has a plethora asexual, this particular brand of hedonism arses and indulging in manic water-pistol of dandy night-spots. E-works, the Bun- has taken modern computers and phar- fights. It was all good fun, but I didn’t ker and the legendary Tresor all provide maceuticals, and plonked them together really get it. Then, from the back of the the headstrong with a far more banging with dancing and beats as old as our spe- Platz, the drums were heard. A faint beat soundtrack than you hear in the UK these cies. And what a great success it’s all been. drifted over the horizon and ignited the days. Clubs all over town were jammed, Now it even has its own festival. The crowds into motion. Over a lake of bob- but Tresor was particularly insane. I’m Berlin Love Parade draws huge crowds bing heads and waving arms I saw the not used to grown men showing me their from all over Europe and beyond. It’s a tip of the first articulated lorry. Smoth- cuddly toys, and I’m not sure if I approve. celebration of house music, of peace, love ered in dancers, sound system blaring, ‘Handbag’ is a not a genre that has and tolerance. It’s a coming together of it entered the crowds and Pied Pipered reached Germany, and to be honest I house music, peace, love and tolerance. the awaiting mass further into the city don’t really think it will catch on in a It’s a coming together of the world’s centre. It was the first of thirty floats country where practically anything with youth in a spirit of, er, togetherness. It’s put together by clubs, record shops and lyrics is considered disco. Gabba and also a damned good excuse to dance and groups from abroad. They banged out the hardcore provide lads’ music in a lot of take lots of drugs. tracks and set every building thumping. the clubs, and the quest for a bit of piano For years the city of Munich has played The city hadn’t taken such a pounding proved an elusive one. But at the Tresor host to regular beer festivals. People since the war. it’s techno, techno, techno. This sound gather together from this planet’s furthest A jolly mix of trannies, straights and is still the erratic heartbeat of the city corners to celebrate the old god, alcohol. gays then paraded their love around town. that was once the centre of the Cold War Now the city of Berlin has provided a And what an attractive love it was. Tight world. Despite the thaw, Berlin remains rival session for the young. Here, in the Adidas outfits do something for our pas- unique. And for the young, the Love first weekend in July, the Love Parade sions that fishnets provoked in previous Parade gives it the edge on a lot of Euro pays homage to the new idol, ecstasy. At generations. Oh, for a leggy blonde in destinations. For all concerned it is a par- only six years old, it is a pretty young Lycra now that summer’s here! There is ticularly mad, unusual, barmy, bonkers, tradition. But with over 100,000 people no crustie element on the scene in Ger- bender of a weekend. in attendance this year, it’s a calendar date many, and things seem far more united After a weekend of prime Berliner that looks likely to have some longevity. than they could ever be here. Even your abuse, my vorsprung had lost its durch This much fun doesn’t disappear over- average Mr and Mrs Schmidt seemed hap- technik. I crawled into my hotel bed and night. py enough to sit at one of the many pave- took notes, trying to make sense of what The Love Parade was one of those ment cafés, drink a beer and clap along had gone on. This unique event, this six-in-the-morning ideas, an abstract to the throngs of dancing jugend. What weird music, these happy-go-lucky peo- concept set up by the city’s camp club police there were confined themselves to ple – this strange nothingness. In a bizarre crowd. They thought it would be a laugh a few traffic duties. attempt at drugged-up self analysis, I to nut around town proclaiming their After strutting down the strasse with took out a pen and preposterously started love for fellow human beings. Originally the sun in my hair and sweat on my to look for meanings and concepts to an odd mix of Notting Hill Carnival and forehead, a strange thought occurred explain what’s happening to us all on Gay Pride, it’s developed rapidly into the to me. Germany is actually a really nice planet party. It was tempting to write march of the rave generation. This year’s country. Actually, knock me down with that we live in a world so remote, so event started at 4 p.m. on Saturday 1 July. a bockwurst, the Germans even have a fucked up, that pure hedonism is our This was a very reasonable time. Left- sense of humour. You can’t drop two Es only escape route. Or perhaps attempt to wing activists tend to do things at about and march down your main street dressed justify it all, not as submission, but as a

24 strong force for empowerment, a push for ‘I don’t get it,’ says Larry, understand- the world, or is it complete nonsense? a liberal agenda of equality, tolerance and ably. ‘All he says is “Blobby, Blobby, All I know is that it leads our lives out freedom. Blobby”. How do you know what he’s of the mundane. The vacuous feeling of Trouble is, I’m not so sure of anything, going on about?’ Monday mourn has little to do with what certainty being what it is these days. I ‘It’s obvious’, replies Noel. ‘Mr Blobby has gone before, and more to do with the threw the pad to the floor, raided the is on a mission to save the world!’ future we face. With our souls on slide mini-bar, skinned up and put on the TV. Bingo! Inspiration. Follow me, if and our hopes dashed, maybe things can CNN is the only channel in English, so I sit you will, away from Berlin and into only get better, maybe there is no limit. and stare. It’s Larry King Live. And guess our vaguely collective psyche. Blobby, Where will the Love Parade lead us? who’s on? Noel Edmonds is pushing Mr Blobby, Blobby: techno, techno, techno. Blobby to the Yanks. Read what you like into it. Can it save First published in The Face, August 1994

Festival Issue Main Stage: Arcade Fire The Crazy Maker Sarah Neufeld shares the view from onstage

hat is the craziest song to play stage, it’s every man for his wellies. The blonde Norwegian babes making heart- Wat a festival? I think different crowds themselves are unique. A crowd shaped waffles with delicious goat cheese songs can take on that role depending on will reflect the culture of its people. Eng- just for you. So yes, sometimes it’s just the situation. From the perspective of the lish Canadians are shy and polite. French about food. audience, our song ‘Wake Up’ is the crazy Canadians are jubilant. Europeans? Well, maker, but that doesn’t need to happen at it’s quite a quilt isn’t it? Let’s just say a Really, when you have a bad time at a a festival. Spanish crowd is a lot more visibly excit- festival it’s probably not the festival’s fault. And then there’s any song near the end ed than a crowd in Germany. I do, however, now have some very grim of the set. You push a lot harder and use Backstage you can hide or you can memories in the bank – apocalyptic dust more energy for a festival crowd. There are mingle. Our rider police are very on the clouds, oceans of plastic cups, garbage more people. They’re stuck standing fur- ball. I get my almond butter no matter fires, torrential downpours and floating ther away, so you push. Anything near the the venue. I find space to do yoga at a tents, muddy people pissing on fences end of the set starts to feel like a big hill. festival wherever I feel the least distracted, while drinking, terrible smells, people We wear in-ear monitors so the sound or wherever I don’t feel like an exhibi- falling into puddles while puking. This is supposedly the same no matter where tionist. Sometimes when I tour with could be one festival. This could be any we are or how big the crowd is or how big Belle Orchestre, my other band, there’s festival. the stage is, but I swear there must be in- no choice and I end up wedged in a tiny Some of the sights are incredible. Any ear festival fairies that just screw with the production office in France with people crowd of more than 20,000 starts to look sound. It’s all part of the festivities, I guess. coming in every few minutes and ‘oh- like a big human ocean stretching out. We try to rally ourselves a little more when excuse-moi’-ing me in my somewhat The first time we saw the carpet was at we’re doing a pre-show huddle before compromising physical position. Coachella. It was magic hour and people launching out in front of the masses. Arcade Fire was just at the Hove fes- started pouring across the field towards us. I feel quite regular-sized when I tival in Norway, which is in the south It was impressive. Sometimes we’re able emerge onstage. Or perhaps I’m even on where it’s all tiny inlets and beautiful to look out on beautiful sights. It’s pretty the short side actually. We definitely get a fjords. They have this amazing vintage when they’ve all got lights. In Quebec sense of the elements out there – the sun backstage aesthetic with crazy, colourful City last week the festival passes had tiny or the rain or the fields of mud. For the furniture and flowers and a pink piano red LEDs on them. It was a great twinkling most part we’re protected onstage but off- in a field and a waffle trailer with two mass. ◊

25 Festival Issue Main Stage: The Weakerthans ‘ . . . but that isn’t his fault . . . ’ Singer/lyricist John K. Samson on the uses of poetry

5D: What were the first poems to have an seem like a big waste of time. I like 5D: Which poets have you learned from? effect on you? to read while walking my two fairly undisciplined dogs. It’s a lot easier JKS: I’d say I’ve learned most from con- JKS: The Lutheran liturgy, if it qualifies, than it sounds. I’m really lucky that temporary poets that live or lived here was likely the first big poem for me. I I can read as a passenger in a moving in Canada, my part of the world. Writ- started hearing it from a very early age. vehicle – bus, boat, train, plane – and ers like Catherine Hunter and Patrick It is sort of sung and spoken at the same I enjoy it. I don’t understand how the Friesen and more lately Karen Solie. time, clunky and awkward in parts, motion-sickened travel anywhere. I met She’s becoming justly well known now. but beautiful, and the text often seems a drunken long-haul truck driver at a They all have voices that have been tem- arbitrarily draped over simple melo- party who confessed to me that he often pered somehow by the place I am from. dies. For example, a line like ‘we give read a book a day while driving a truck, My first favourites were the big him thanks,’ is somehow stretched into looking up frequently. He said Elmore twentieth century British and American seven syllables and, to my ear at least, Leonard novels were good to read while anthology poets. Auden, for sure. Adri- sounds perfectly natural. Is this because driving a truck. enne Rich was a revelation. maybe it is translated from German? Guess I should know more about it. 5D: Do you need to read poetry in a different 5D: What lessons have you learned from Like, I think many Canadians of way than you read prose? these poets? his age, my dad knew some sections of ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ by JKS: I think you do need to read poetry JKS: The prairie writers taught me to Robert Service by heart. I remember in a more deliberate way than prose, look at the place I live in, and not to loving the word ‘moil’, getting really maybe a more open way. It is more dif- let it overwhelm me. It is a massive excited about it. The ‘men who moil ficult, but very rewarding. I think good place, the Canadian prairie. It’s easy to for gold.’ poetry makes you feel like reading is a feel unimportant in that much sky and creative act. horizon. 5D: Is it the poem itself or the individual Auden likely encouraged some bad image that lingers longest in your mind? 5D: Is it hard to fit poetry into the constraints writing from me, but that isn’t his fault, of a song? I guess. He did say somewhere that the JKS: Yeah, maybe it is more an image, same rules apply to writing as do to or a feeling, for me. I can’t recite any JKS: I don’t think it is that hard, the confession: be brief, be blunt, be gone. of Phillip Larkin’s ‘Aubade’, but just constraints can be really useful. I’m And that you should write during office thinking of it can make me a bit queasy always so impressed by poets facing a hours. Those are two things I often and morbid. The last image is of the blank page. Songwriters get the struc- keep in mind. postman going reaper-like from door to ture of a melody to build something Adrienne Rich is, for me, an example door, I think. Or maybe it isn’t. That with, sometimes that seems like cheat- of wanting to write like someone, but might be fun, actually, to ask folks to ing, whereas poets have to bring it up being totally unable to do so. That can describe a poem in a couple of images. out of nothing and make it go. be useful, I think. It would have to be people like me who have trouble memorizing them. One of 5D: Who does it well? 5D: Why is geography important to song lyr- my favourite poems is ‘Snow’ by Louis ics and poetry? MacNeice. It would go, like, ‘snow at JKS: So many do it really well, but John the window, the world is surprising, Darnielle of the Mountain Goats might I go from one extreme to the other tangerine orange.’ We could make little be the lyricist I am currently most on location and geography in writ- reference card catalogues for poems we attracted to – he has an almost freakish ing. Either the land needs humans to like. focus on the characters and places he do the work of describing and nam- writes about. And he knows it is labour, ing it so that it exists, or the land just 5D: When is the best time and where is the you can hear that in the songs, that abides, beautifully indifferent to all our best place to read? they aren’t being written to impress attempts at understanding it. Either way or defend, but to actually explore and makes it important. ◊ JKS: I sort of hate doing things that exchange, like good poetry should. don’t involve some reading, they just

26 Raymond Pettibon · No Title (I wish I) · 1998 pen and ink on paper 11 × 8½ inches (27.9 × 21.6 cm)

27 The Festival Issue: Burning Man let, expanding to fill the universe, then creating enormous psychic exit wounds, out of which reality gushes in great dark Heroic Dose red floods. Once you drop, you can’t stop. You’re booked in. And whichever Hari Kunzru loses his mind side of the sheep-mask you find, impish or implacable, it is what it is. That’s more afety Third! says the cheery slogan on a $200 ticket, a mass gathering of dehy- profound than it sounds. You have to deal Sthe pseudo-doctor’s white coat. Get drated globo-boho-wannabe nomads with the cock-rat or the dust that gets me off this fucking table. Not that I’m in with great tits, all game for the ultimate into everything, every fold of skin, every a position to complain. I signed up, or so test of sanity and centredness – taking a crack and follicle, or the dude with the Ratface tells me. That must be why I’m shit in a porta-potty swimming in ter- giant tuba-like megaphone, the one who dressed as Marie Antoinette. We (that’s rifying hippy effluent whilst high on the never looked up passive-aggressive in the me and Skywalker) loaded up half a ton most radical molecules yet devised by the dictionary and really, really wants you to of perishable food that’s gradually turn- minds of Stanford-dropout entheogen broadcast your tripping thoughts through ing to probiotic slime in the heat, bought chemists. It’s an expensive simulation, an the 200-watt speaker duct-taped to his rusty bicycles off a guy at a stall on the experiment in new forms of leisure and back. ‘Shirtcocker!’ he shouts at Sexx Ed, Venice boardwalk, and drove north out of moneyless exchange, a potlatch economy who’s dressed in ‘normal’ clothes that in LA into the Nevada desert, to the most devised by and for (let’s be honest) a rela- this context make him look like a Levit- inhospitable environment we could find, tively privileged crowd of utopians. But town golf dad circa 1958, but who’s got an immense white salt-flat bounded by right now there’s a dude in some kind of pants on – admittedly they are terrible jagged mountains. Nothing lives here. rat make-up, a dick-like prosthetic pink plaid shorts with a huge rip in them out Not a snake, not an insect. It’s earth, sim- snout poking out from under his lepre- of which his cock could potentially poke, plified, a smooth plane (of consistency), chaun hat. He’s got a Mary Poppins Cock- but nevertheless he is not technically a a vast crazy-paved stage-set for the mass ney accent. He’s here, he says, ‘poking shirtcocker, not one of those guys who games. into things’. It’s like something out of the are revelling in their first ever chance to Because we are not alone. It’s not just class-war subtext of Wind in the Willows. be naked in the vicinity of hot women, that there’s intelligent life on other plan- He needs to leave me the fuck alone. but who are prudent enough about desert ets, or ghosts in the machine, or bats in Cut. skincare to cover their lobstery backs the belfry or more things in heaven and Kappy wears black silk martial-arts and shoulders with, preferably, a nice earth than are dreamt of in our philoso- pajamas, a flashing illuminated pendant blue button-down, beneath which their phy. There are 40,000 others here. Actual and a sheep mask. Sometimes the mask members can peep out inquisitively, hop- testably-non-hypothetical people; bodies, is perched at a jaunty angle on the top of ing against hope for a look or touch or which need ice and coffee and sunscreen his head, giving him an impish appear- a little lick or suck or any other action and socks and are going to get their ance; sometimes it covers his face, twin whatsoever. The epithet is hence unfair. needs met, without access to mallspace red LEDs lighting up the eye-sockets. But we’ve no time to argue semantics. or retail of any kind. They call it a city, Two modes: merry prankster and sinister We’re going over there. Where? There. though it’s more like a shanty town or sheep-god. He has the pill in his palm. See that pyramid? Yes, we are going forth a bustee or a boomtown mining camp; Thing is, he says, I’ve had it for a while. to the pulsing pyramid with the eye on Lagos meets Morningstar meets the Not sure it’ll still work. Now there’s a top to deal with them all: old primal hip- Slabs meets Jonestown with fewer light classic opening line. What we’re talking pies with steel wool for pubic hair and refreshments. Rickety architecture: yurts about here are substances only known by mother Ganga trapped in their top-knots; and wickiups and marquees and giant chemical acronyms, whispered about in straight-edge vegan badasses facing down seesaws and Bucky domes; RV’s, space- Humboldt County hot tubs, formulae the flesh-eaters; sweltering goths in fac- age cubes, inflatables and scaffolding jotted down in notebooks and refined by tor 2000 sunscreen; dykes on bikes; lost enclosures, ramadas and sweatlodges and men with beards and advanced degrees surfers; S&M masters in self-oiling chaps miles of parachute silk billowing in the and serious, punishing meditation rou- looking for co-eds to spider-gag; wash- breeze. There’s a rocket and any number tines; phenethylamines we have known board-stomached yoga queens; body-dys- of steampunk derricks and a three storey and loved, members of the mythical morphic glamour models; aromathera- astroturf-covered deathslide that you ‘magic six’. There’s stuff that takes you to pists, ufologists, ontologists, oncologists chuck yourself down on a flour sack, one an alternate pre-existent reality for fifteen and endless nameless lightly alternative of those five a.m. good ideas that breaks minutes, to converse with non-organic folk with hemp waistcoats and unfortu- limbs at the rate of three or four a day. entities who seem only mildly disturbed nate quasi-ethnic tattoos. There will be No money on site, no facilities, bring that you’ve dropped out of the sky to suburban candy-ravers, all cowboy hats, everything you need to survive and thrive watch them unicycling about with their fluffy boots and bikinis; there will be par- and deal with sudden throw-down zero- witty banners. Other stuff takes two ty-boys in wraparound shades throwing visibility dust-storms. A post-holocaust hours to come on, then explodes in your the horns; we already met a flock of Brit- rave fantasy for anyone who can afford mind like a cosmic hollow-point bul- ish furries, who travelled twelve hours in

28 cattle class to yiff with those cute cos-play desert, she’s festooned with glowsticks roadhogs, superheroes, hedge wizards, kitties, small town lads wearing explorer and LED’s and bike lights and reflec- cheesy trance DJs with feathered caps hats and kilts, carrying laminated pictures tors, because that’s the only way you’re and bolero jackets, undercover Holly- of their characters, who have blue manes, not going to get run over by some loon wood directors, handjob gurus, off-duty giant manga eyes and unicorn horns. We piloting a giant steel catfish, powered by stuntmen and Nevada law enforcement, will meet them all. And we will love compost and tofu run-off, a catfish which wandering through the encampment in them. Or at least share water. And listen actually breathes fire and goes nought- full Stormtrooper gear, semi-automatics to them talk about how Szechuan pepper to-twenty in less time than you can get at the ready in case someone gets an erec- makes everything taste like lemon. tion near their arses. In the back And just when you’re at your of a particularly dark tent you run highest and lost in some bad nine- into Quetzalcoatl in full regalia ties Hollywood version of an looking for hearts to cut out, three underground rave, all fire jugglers geologists who want to talk about and plastic punks and low-calorie basin and range formations and a techno-metal music, and a close crew of naked wannabe Hindus encounter with carbon-fibre ant- chanting ‘Hare Krishna, Hare like entities possessing no human Rama’ (here I like to imagine my feelings whatsoever would feel like conservative aunties slipping out a relief, would feel like a nice cup of their saris to sing a few verses of tea and a sit down compared to of ‘To Be A Pilgrim’), and finally, this ridiculous blank are-we-hav- when you’re sacked out somewhere ing-fun-yet temple of the lobot- silky and comfortable (let’s say a omised damned, then you run into yurt) and you’ve got to smugly something properly odd – giant thinking, like the optimistic fool multistoreyed structures composed you are, that your head is in some of ineffable filigreed light, or a small way together, there comes charming old Nevada retiree cou- the wetsuit guy, this guy who ple who look like Evil Knievel and seems very definitely official, who his missus if they’d been wrapped strides up, all beard and waders and in silver foil and pegged out in a grey insulating performance fabric, Golden Valley trailer park since and wishes everyone a gruff good 1977: skin like badly-cured cow- morning, causing the beautiful hide, mullets and matching mous- and damned lolling about on the taches and denim jerkins bristling soft furnishings to straighten their with souvenir pins, the pair of spines momentarily, in case they them handing out trays of toxic have to deal with The Man in some Danishes to the deranged trip- fashion, perhaps a representative pers of early morn in an old from the Port Authority (but wait, fashioned gesture of western Raymond Pettibon · No Title (The first )I · 2008 says a very small voice in your head, hospitality. So you hop on a Pen, ink and gouache on paper aren’t we in . . . kind of a dry place? teapot and listen to this chick 41 × 25½ inches (104.1 × 64.8 cm) Kind of . . . a desert?) and he throws called Moon or June or Spoon a sack down on the couch, which who wants to tell you you’ve a is probably an important official beautiful aura, but doesn’t want to discuss your googly eyes to focus and probably delivery that someone will need to sign her RL non-existence as a dental techni- spends the rest of the year lurking in a for, and starts doing something very tech- cian in Las Cruces, and doesn’t seem to Reno storage unit, ready for its fifteen nical and boring with tape and a hammer understand when you insist that reality’s minutes of fishy fame. And once the poor and bits of wire, which seems to be stress- more interesting than her past lives as dental technician’s no more than a wink- ing him out because he’s cursing under a Renaissance Fair princess or witch or ing point of light on the horizon, you his breath and you wish he’d go deal with Voodoo futuristic seer, and actually gets forward roll into the next scene, which is his dealings elsewhere, until he opens the off the Soul Train or the Dragon or the packed with hula-hooping convoy queens, sack and out spills a mess of tentacles and Fluffy Bus or Magic Carpet or whatever horny skaters, pirates, steampunks, your head melts again, for he is no Port you’re riding on, and runs screaming into lounge lizards, cosmonauts, psychonauts, Authority Straight Guy, but an octopus- the night rather than carry on the con- human computers, riverboat gamblers, man, and he finishes fixing his costume versation, which makes you feel bad, but serious ethnobotanists boiling up MAO- and slips it on, and yes sir, yes indeed he at least it gives you something to look at: inhibitors so they can get back in touch now has eight arms to wiggle with and so, you can see her a long way off because, with their spirit animals, cocktail shakers, most joyfully, he boogies away into the like you, like everybody in this pitch dark shy busking violinists, penny-farthing night. ◊

29 A Single Song 5D: Do you remember anything from the spe- cific moment? What you were wearing? Was it ‘Providence’ by Sonic Youth raining out? MW: Shit. Come on. Bass-playing hero Mike Watt on his famous answerphone messages I don’t remember that. I remember being happy with myself that I could Interview by Jamie Brisick. 5D: The next question I want to ask you about remember, or thought I could remember is ‘Providence’ on Sonic Youth’s Daydream what happened. The mystery of where For the uninitiated, Mike Watt is a bass-play- Nation in 1988. It’s such a great piece of found the shit was. But I can’t remember what it ing Zelig figure who has woven himself into the sound. It’s a song that’s both mournful and was like and in those days I was too stupid fabric of indie music for the past twenty years. mysterious. to do fucking diaries. I do them now. His band, The Minutemen, influenced a gen- eration of DIY musicians, and after the tragic MW: Yeah. This is something from fuck- 5D: The funny thing is, because it’s been death of bandmate D. Boone, Watt went on ing phone machine. I didn’t know it was immortalised in this song you can read so much to form fIREHOSE, which incorporated jazz going to be used on a record. And he into it. It’s a mystery. influences, and from there collaborated with (Thurston Moore) didn’t know either. members of Dinosaur Jr, Jane’s Addiction and Thurston is very artistic. He’ll use MW: It’s cables. RCA jack cables and cas- many others. He now plays bass for The Stooges, found stuff, like Dada or the surrealist settes. the band behind Iggy Pop’s writhing frame. people did. Stuff you just find and then The memory has gone away. It’s kind We here at Five Dials wanted to speak to make work out of. of addled. I can’t remember. I think it was Watt about one of his more unconventional I had come to his town and played and 1988, 1987? cameos. His voice appears on a song that comes he came to the gig. He had just gone to I should’ve done diaries back then. halfway through Sonic Youth’s masterpiece the store and bought a bunch of cables album from 1988, Daydream Nation. The and cassettes. Afterwards he came to 5D: How do you like the song when you hear song, ‘Providence’, is built around messages the van. I asked him to throw out some it now? Watt left on the machine of Sonic Youth guitar- trash and at the end of the night he was ist Thurston Moore. But before ‘Providence’ like, ‘Where’s all the shit I bought?’ And MW: I love all Sonic Youth’s stuff. I we had to first tell Watt about the art we’d col- nobody could remember. remember when I first saw them they lected for the issue. Actually the song is made up of two blew my mind. I thought we were trying phone calls. The first one was in New things, then I saw those guys and thought, 5D: We’ve got art by Raymond Pettibon. York, from the payphone down on the ‘Fuck, we’re Chuck Berry compared to street below his apartment. this.’ MW: I’ve known him a long time. He’s Because of the way he lived in those It changed my whole life. Thurston has probably one of my greatest teachers and days, there was a payphone and you would incredible knowledge of music. Kim Gor- best friends. I love him to death. I met call up and he would put the keys in a sock don has too. Lee Ranaldo as well. Inter- him on the punk scene and he did the and throw them down to you. So first I esting people and they’ve always been so artwork for the first Minutemen record. called so he could throw down the keys. kind to me. Even if I didn’t know them, Raymond learned me about jazz and His pad had a window at each end. It their band is a yardstick when you’re try- stuff. Turned me on to John Coltrane, was like a boat. It even had a list! There ing to find your voice. took me to gigs at Catalina, Memory was one little room for the shitter and the Lane and the lobby of the Hilton to see tub was the table. You’d lift the top off 5D: Are you still on tour with Iggy Pop? Tal Farlow, Tootie Heath, Warren Marsh. and there was the tub. They’d let me stay He turned me onto all these cats. I must there and I’d walk around and explore MW: We’ve got all of July and August have seen Albert Jones fifteen times. I Manhattan. It’s how I learned the place. with the Stooges. We’ve done nine gigs grew up in naval housing in San Pedro The next day was Providence, Rhode this year. Now we’ve got another twenty- and I didn’t know anything about jazz. Island, and I called him back on another five or something. This is why I’ve been When I first heard it I thought they were payphone. busy. It’s just been crazy for me. doing punk but were just older. I didn’t Astonishingly I can recall what hap- The phone rings. know Coltrane was dead. pened. I called him up and said, ‘Look, There’s Ig right now. Raymond opened my mind up so much. when I asked you to throw out that trash He answers and speaks into his phone. Not in a kind of officer-to-enlisted-man you threw away everything you fucking Watt. kind of way. He never talked to me like bought too. That’s where the shit is. Why . . . that. Raymond never talked to anybody don’t you check in that can to see if it’s Hey Ig. Ready to go tomorrow. like that. He has this dry humour that there still?’ Because I’ve done that. . . . people trip on. But he learns you without That’s what it was all about. There OK. Yep. ever scolding you or beating you. wasn’t much symbolism going on, or . . . metaphor or analogy. Yeah. Yeah.

30 ...... MW: This is Ig. He reminds me of Ray- You don’t want me smoking on stage, Ig. Mmhmm. Yeah. mond too, man. These guys are always ...... thinking. He’s talking about a song to Yeah. OK. OK. Sure. Yeah. That’s why I clammed at the gig. do the day after tomorrow in France and . . . But I’ll leave out there. Maybe I’ll go out putting parts in here and out there. He’s Yeah. OK. after four. always thinking. It’s beautiful, his work ...... ethic. He’s very interesting too, a unique Are you talking within the riff, or are Yeah. OK. person. you talking sections? . . . I’ve been a lucky cat. I can’t believe it . . . No, OK. Right. The thing I see about sometimes. Iggy’s been a great teacher in That little lick. Dada dada dada dada. ‘Gimme Some Skin’ is I’ve got to push my life. Actually I’m coming around to Yep. that fast. Yeah. thinking everybody’s got something to ...... teach me. Sure I can, no problem. It might have Yeah. It’s what’s neat about middle age. You more dynamic. . . . finally figure that shit out. It’s great. And . . . OK, Ig. Safe seas. OK. he’s beautiful. I never thought I would See, I could pull out sections then He returns to the phone get a call from Ig, y’know? come back in. Inside the riffs I’m pretty So sorry. That was the boss. simple. But I could drop out. It would 5D: Does he call often? give more dynamic to the tune, keep it 5D: He is the boss. from flatlining. MW: He usually calls me after kayaking. ◊

Raymond Pettibon · No Title (Do you have) · 2000 pen and ink on paper 22 × 30 inches (55.9 × 76.2 cm)

31 An Introduction to the Artist Threadbare Simon Prosser explains Martin Parr’s photographs of Port Eliot

his issue of Five Dials is coming to ings but also the tastes and obsessions Elsewhere, the cosy Red Room or Tyou live from the Port Eliot Festival of its inhabitants. So, for example, the Morning Room at the centre of the house in Cornwall, England, so we thought 13m – diameter, John Soane-designed combines a group of Van Dyck paintings it only apt to include some pictures of Round Drawing Room contains a vin- with an overflowing record collection, a Port Eliot itself, the seat of the Earl of St tage Harley Davidson, resting next to painted surfboard, a constantly lit fire Germans. We decided to start at the top, an antique Aubusson carpet, below a and piles of books and magazines, all with Magnum photographer Martin Parr, giant frieze painted by the late Robert illuminated by a collection of exquisitely who shot a series of images at the house Lenkiewicz, entitled The Conditions dilapidated lamps. in 2006, exhibited at the festival in 2007 of Man, depicting, in the words of the Everywhere you look in the house there under the title ‘Threadbare’, but rarely current Earl, ‘loneliness, corruption, is something arresting and pleasing to seen elsewhere. Happily, he agreed to let insanity, death, destruction and general notice, as Martin Parr has conveyed in this us select our favourites from the series mayhem’ in one half and ‘harmony, pro- series of photographs, which beautifully and reproduce them here. portion, love, truth and beauty’ in the capture the spirit of Port Eliot, from the As you will see, the house has a very other. On the fireplace mantle rests a faded grandeur of its arsenic-laced, green- distinctive character. Occupied by the collection of wooden books, carved by dyed wallpaper to the improvised series of same family, the Eliots, since 1565 (T. S. poet Heathcote Williams when he lived receptacles designed to catch leaks in rainy Eliot was from a far-flung branch), it has at the house for some years, while a glit- months. (As its owner has said, the house a unique personality that reflects not just tery disco ball hangs from the ancient has ‘not once in living memory been com- the architectural heritage of the build- chandelier. pletely watertight’.) ◊

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Festival Issue Main Stage: Galaxie 500 / Luna Our label was going under, but we still had two more shows with Guster. We drove up to Providence, seven hours in the Co-conspirators pouring rain. I had become acutely aware of where I was sitting in the van. I used What happens when you fall for your bass player? By Dean Wareham to think of it as sitting in the front row or the back row, on the left or on the right. The television host noted that we had made five cated a song to Rosa Luxemburg. But lately I was thinking of it as being in albums, which is a lot in this day and age. ‘This is for Rosa Luxemburg!’ front of Britta, or next to Britta, or, on ‘What advice would you give to young people ‘She’s not Polish – she’s Russian!’ they that drive to Providence, behind Britta. about having career longevity?’ said. There I was, trying to be cool. I felt like I ‘Go to law school,’ I said. ‘Really? That’s news to me.’ I knew a had fallen under a spell, and it had to stop. little about Rosa Luxemburg. I took to chanting silently inside my head he tour for the fifth Luna album, ‘Play the song!’ someone else yelled. on these long rides. No, no, no. No, no, no. TThe Days of Our Nights, included a A fan sent an email to our website the Yes. handful of shows opening for a band called next day, confirming that Rosa Luxem- You can’t just put a beautiful woman in Guster in Columbus, Detroit, Providence burg was indeed born in Poland. Perhaps a van full of men and think that there will and Philadelphia. they really meant, ‘She’s not Polish – she’s be no effect. Any scientist or psychologist We had never heard of them, but appar- a commie and a Jew!’ I don’t know. But will tell you as much. Take three or four ently Guster was very popular, and the there was another email, far more impor- male apes, and put them in a cage – or a label really wanted us to do it. They were tant, from our manager. Our record com- Ford Econoline van, which is a cage on described to us as a jam band. We were pany was filing for bankruptcy. wheels. Observe their behaviour. Now put not really a jam band. What might look a desirable female ape in the cage and con- like improvisation was always pretty well ‘The difference between men and boys,’ tinue to observe. arranged beforehand. business mogul Leonard Stern once said, The Guster tour ended at the Electric I got onstage in Columbus and looked ‘is the size of their toys.’ Stern made his Factory in Philadelphia. We last played out at the crowd. Jesus Christ! Guster money in pet supplies and real estate. His the Electric Factory in 1996, opening for had a lot of fans. And the average age of a ‘toys’ were weekly alternative magazines Lou Reed on his Hooky Wooky tour. He Guster fan was fourteen, a very straight- like the Village Voice and LA Weekly. Our called it the Hooky Wooky tour because looking fourteen – these were preppy, record company was also a toy, owned he had a song called ‘Hooky Wooky’, clean-cut kids. These kids didn’t like Luna by one Rick Adams, a Fortune 400 guy which was his own slang term for sex. At so much. They stared at us, bored, waiting who had founded a company named least I think so. I was backstage with Lou, for their Guster. Since they were bored, I UUNET. UUNET was the biggest internet waiting to use the men’s room, and he said was bored right back. Whatever the audi- service provider on the planet. In 1996, his sarcastically, ‘This is so glamorous, huh?’ ence gives you, that’s what you give them. company was acquired by MCI Worldcom It was glamorous for me – I was backstage Fuck trying to win them over. These kids for $700 million. Rick took some of that talking to Lou Reed. And the Electric Fac- were evil. money and bought a famous recording stu- tory was pretty glamorous compared with When Guster came on, the crowd dio – Ocean Way. He renamed the studio some of the places Luna had played, like screamed like teenage girls watching the Cello Recording. In addition to the studio, the Jewish Mother in Norfolk, Virginia, or Beatles. If the singer from Guster had he created Jericho Records. We never met Sudsy’s in Cincinnati. pooped onstage, they would have squealed Rick Adams, though he did let us know Tonight we were playing to two thou- in delight. One of the teenage fans stopped that our website sucked, and he paid some- sand Guster fans. It was like a dream. We by our dressing room. All sweet-sixteen, one to fix it for us. were up on the big stage performing to a with long perfect hair, dressed in American Mr Adams wasn’t involved in the run- big crowd, but the people could not have Eagle. She looked at the arms of our bass ning of the record company – he hired a cared less about us. They were waiting player, Britta. few experienced record company people for Guster. It was like we were not even ‘You must work out,’ she said. for that, and they were good at their jobs. there. I decided to test this theory. After They had a five-year plan – the company our second song, I made an announcement We moved on to Fletcher’s in Baltimore would lose money at first, but they hoped through my microphone. – our second Baltimore gig in five months. to see profits eventually. ‘I wish I were dead.’ That was crazy. Why were we back in Bal- The tech stock collapse changed every- Silence. Or rather, continued chatter. timore? Just trying to fill a Friday night, I thing. Rick Adams didn’t want his expen- No change. No one heard, or no one cared, suppose. We had some Polish fans in the sive toy anymore. He pulled the plug on except for the guys in Guster, who were crowd that night, a couple of guys in their Jericho. That’s how a company owned by a standing at the side of the stage. They forties. billionaire comes to file for Chapter 11. He thought it was funny. ‘Luna is number one in Poland!’ they wasn’t personally bankrupt. But a company Next, we flew to New Orleans, where shouted. can be bankrupt, even while its owners are the Jazz and Heritage Festival was starting I doubted that very much, but I dedi- rich. Nobody likes to lose money. up. They call it Jazz Fest but they have a

39 loose definition of jazz, loose enough to let there were only fifteen minutes till curfew. have shown in my face. No, I was careful Luna in. We didn’t much care – they still had to pay not to look at Britta onstage. A guy showed up at the Howlin’ Wolf – us. After half an hour at the dorm room riding into the club on an old bicycle with After the show we were invited to a party, we drove the van over to the Cam- big handlebars and a banana seat. He said dorm room party. A Napster party. They pus Center Hotel. The Campus Center he could get us anything we wanted. We weren’t playing records or compact discs. at U. Mass, designed by Marcel Breuer, is ordered eight hits of ecstasy, and all four Instead, they had a high-speed cable con- made of cinder block. But it is Bauhaus of us dropped it after the show. nection, provided free by the university, cinder block. The rooms are elegant and We tried going out on the town, hang- and they had compiled a big long playlist austere. ing out at a cool bar with our friend Wade. on Napster. This was my first exposure I deliberately left my pack of cigarettes But we soon started acting a little strange, to the world of file sharing, to the dorm in the van that night, which gave me an rolling our eyes and taking deep breaths. room jukebox that would shake the music excuse to knock on Britta’s door. I could ‘What are you guys on?’ asked Wade. business to its core. A funny thing hap- have just lied about not having a cigarette. We moved the party back to my spa- pened in 2001. After years of going up and But I was going to play the charade prop- cious hotel room. I was the DJ. First up on up and up, record sales dropped 2.5 per erly. I wasn’t thinking straight. my portable speakers was ‘Girl’, a pretty cent. The following year they dropped 6.8 I knocked on Britta’s door and she gave little waltz by Papas Fritas. It calmed me per cent, and they have continued to drop me a cigarette and a kiss. right down, except that I looked at Britta ever since, in ever-larger increments. By the next day we were co-conspira- and she looked at me and something passed When I was in college I spent my own tors. We rode home in the van that Sunday between us. money on LPs. That’s what the record afternoon with a secret. The morning We stayed up all night. Each of us business was built on – affluent kids, started off well. I was in a semi-pleasant threw up at least once. Our drummer, Lee, spending their weekly allowances on vinyl daze from the night before. But as the van excused himself at around three a.m. Our and compact discs. But change was afoot. rattled down FDR Drive I started to panic. guitarist, Sean, followed at around four. It Now students could find any song they I was shaking as I approached the door of was just Britta and me, listening to music. wanted on the internet. What kind of my building on Bleecker Street, wonder- I wanted to kiss her, but I knew that idiot would go out and buy records now? ing how I could possibly walk into my wouldn’t be appropriate. Come to think of Well, maybe if people knew that vinyl apartment and not have the whole thing it, it wasn’t appropriate for me to be alone records are vastly superior in sound qual- written all over my face. But I opened the with her in my hotel room. ity to those MP3s that they play on their door, was greeted by my wife and son and We flew home the next day, and had computers, they might think about it. But dog, and life went on. Only something a connecting flight in Atlanta. Britta’s college students don’t seem too bothered had changed. boyfriend lived in Atlanta, and he came to about high fidelity. We are all capable of grand deceptions. visit her during the hour we had to change We had been invited to the dorm room Or at least I am. It’s difficult atfi rst, ter- planes. The Atlanta airport had a filthy party by a pretty, blonde film student, rifying even, but you get used to it. Sort little room for smokers. I sat there and who had been dancing wildly in front of of. Britta and I carried on an affair for smoked my cigarette and stared at the oth- me throughout our fifteen-minute set. I months. In Pittsburgh or Nashville – or er smokers through a thick cloud. This was had stopped noticing the girls in the audi- anywhere – we would rush to our hotel to the room from hell. Hell is other smokers ence at Luna shows, consumed by my meet in secret. It was exhilarating. It was and airports. Especially when you are only crush on the beautiful girl onstage, directly also awful. I was lying to everyone around half alive from staying up all night. to my right, a crush that wouldn’t go away. me, to my wife, friends, family and to my I knew I should try to control it. But I booking agent. My life unravelled in the summer of 2001. I couldn’t control it. I thought about Britta Interviewers asked, ‘Has the dynamic no longer lived on Bleecker Street with my all the time. Especially on long van rides. changed with a woman in the band?’ wife Claudia and son Jack. I was splitting Some days I sat behind Britta. Some days I Umm, yes. time between my parents’ loft apartment sat next to her. Some days I drove the van. Sean and Lee called a meeting, osten- on Twenty-first Street – they were away for It didn’t matter. I was riding in a van with sibly to discuss the making of our next the summer – and my own tiny one-hun- Britta. I was singing a song with Britta. I record. Britta wasn’t invited, as she wasn’t dred- square-foot studio at 373 Broadway, was intoxicated. It was all so predictable. a full member of the band she didn’t have where I kept my recording equipment and It didn’t help that we sang ‘Bonnie and a vote. We rarely had band meetings. We spare guitars. I bought a futon so I could Clyde’ together – this long, sexy Serge met at Sean’s apartment on Avenue A, and sleep there, too, if I had to. Gainsbourg song, sung in French, about a Lee spoke first. My affair with Britta began at the Uni- doomed couple. The song ends with Bon- He and Sean were aware that something versity of Massachusetts at Amherst. Like nie and Clyde being mowed down in a hail was going on between Britta and myself. all college shows, this one was poorly of bullets, and then descending into hell. They were concerned. Sean was mostly organized. Bands played in the courtyard ‘You should look at each other when bothered by having to pretend that he all afternoon, each of them running a little you sing that song,’ our manager told me. I didn’t know anything. longer than they should have. By the time knew I couldn’t do that. I would have for- Fair enough. I’m sure that it wasn’t they got to the headlining act – Luna – gotten the words. And my feelings would pleasant for either of them, being lied to,

40 sitting next to me in the van and pretend- and I moved on to Tarbox Road Studios, Claudia and I had an emergency meet- ing not to know about it. outside Fredonia, New York, to mix our ing with our marriage counsellor, Ben Lee was more concerned that all of this album with Dave Fridmann. I had worked Marinucci, and his wife, Kay Marinucci would blow up in our faces. with Dave in 1992, on some very early who was also a therapist – together they What would you do, he asked, if you Luna demos, and on Mercury Rev’s ‘Car ran a weekly group. The two of us sat in had a friend who was engaging in self- Wash Hair.’ the waiting room at eight p.m, waiting for destructive behaviour, like he had a drug Tarbox Road is in the middle of the group session to finish. Once again, I problem? You would intervene. nowhere – the sticks, the boonies, felt like I was about to walk the plank. I was engaged in dangerous and self- Dullsville. Sean, Britta and I took turns Claudia was the one who had been destructive behaviour. More importantly, cooking. The studio was residential, but wronged here, and the therapists were gen- perhaps, it was behaviour that could be there was really only one bedroom upstairs. erally supportive of her. destructive to the band. If word got out, I booked a room at the Days Inn in town, a ‘Claudia needs to tell you that it’s not said Lee, our whole lives as Luna would ten-minute drive away. acceptable for you to have a girlfriend,’ end. It would be over. Britta came with me. I didn’t feel quite said Ben. I was humble and contrite at the meet- comfortable with this arrangement – it Various unpleasant scenarios were dis- ing that afternoon. They were quite right was a whole new level of deception. And cussed. Maybe Claudia could accompany – it is not nice to make other people keep yet I did it anyway. On the final day of the band on the road for our next tour your secrets. It wasn’t nice of me to turn mixing, I checked out of the hotel – we (Luna had shows scheduled in Spain the my bandmates into liars, brothers in decep- were scheduled to fly out that evening. following week). This option did not tion. When I arrived at the studio at noon that appeal to either of us. The only sensible ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s dangerous. It day, there was a phone call waiting for me. options were the ones that Claudia had has to end.’ It was Claudia, who had just called the laid out – either the band had to find a new But later that afternoon I became hotel. The receptionist had put Claudia’s bass player, or I had to find somewhere incensed. How dare they compare me to a call through to my hotel room, where it new to live. This was not unreasonable. drug addict? How dare they tell me who was answered by the maid. How could she live otherwise? Could she to sleep with? I didn’t tell them who to ‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘they just left.’ be expected to sit at home waiting for me sleep with. I’d kept secrets for Sean and With that utterance, I was cooked. while I went on a summer ‘business trip’ to Lee over the years – yes, I had. We had an Claudia ordered me to get my ass on a Barcelona and Majorca, with Sean and Lee official band policy – what happens on the plane home – immediately. and Britta? road is locked in the vault (the idea of the I felt sick to my stomach. It was that I hadn’t seen Bernie, my shrink, since vault was taken from an episode of Seinfeld). terrible feeling you get when you’ve lost 1996. I saw him weekly for six months that That’s how it was supposed to be. The something valuable, or done something year, saying that my marriage had lost its reality was different, because everyone incredibly stupid or bad. I took that Jet- passion and that maybe I needed to get out. likes to share a little secret now and then. Blue plane from Buffalo toJF K, a bundle ‘You have been running away from this The affair continued. I had no inten- of nerves, feeling like I was about to walk problem for a long time,’ said Bernie. tion of leaving Claudia and Jack – the very the plank. Walk the plank I did, through ‘What should I do?’ thought of it struck fear in my heart. And my apartment door into a sea of anger and He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me. He yet I couldn’t stop. I’ve heard preachers say tears – and questions, questions, questions. said I had to figure it out for myself. that once you let the devil into your life, I felt like a criminal. But as my shrink ‘If I knew the answer,’ he said, ‘I would it’s hard to get him out, and I have found pointed out, I was not a criminal. I was tell you. But I don’t.’ this to be true. only a liar and a cheat. ‘But I have to decide by Friday whether It was hard to travel around the coun- Question: How could I be so stupid as to ask Britta to leave the band.’ try with the lovely Britta Phillips, getting to let myself get caught like that? ‘I think maybe you should consult a law- onstage and singing together and drinking Answer: Because I wanted to get caught. yer before you do something like that.’ champagne after the shows, and thinking I had put myself in an impossible situa- He had a point. In any other job this that I was going to just say no. I had all tion. I was miserable. I didn’t know how to would be an obvious case of sexual harass- kinds of real feelings for Britta, feelings extricate myself. ment – you can’t have an affair with an that were beyond my control. Claudia made it easier than it might employee and then fire her when your I promised myself that I would make a have been. She gave me two choices, and wife catches you. But these things happen move, a decision, do something to fix my five days to decide. Either Britta would in rock and roll bands. It had never hap- life. Soon, I said, soon I will fix things. leave Luna, or I would pack my things and pened before in Luna, but it was not to be The decision was made for me by the move out. I was panic-stricken. I honestly the last time. maid at the Days Inn in Fredonia, New didn’t know what to do. I called Britta. York. I called my dad. ‘I’ll leave if you want me to,’ she said. ‘What should I do?’ I called Sean and told him that Claudia We recorded our Romantica album with ‘You should follow your heart.’ wanted me to find a new bass player for the Gene Holder (of the dB’s) at Jolly Roger ‘But I don’t know what my heart wants.’ band. in Hoboken, New Jersey. Sean, Britta ‘You need to figure that out.’ ‘Well, Lee and I don’t want that,’ he said.

41 No surprise there. that word. Strange sounds came out of my throat; I was at a crossroads. I had no idea what At that moment I looked across Second from deep down inside, guttural, primal I would do come Friday. I didn’t want to Avenue and saw our babysitter, Nicoleen, noises that I didn’t know were in me. But leave Claudia and Jack. But neither did I pushing Jack along in his stroller, heading they were there. Worse, perhaps, was want to kick Britta out of Luna, and out west – home for the day. I froze. I wanted the fact that there really was something of my life. so badly to run across the street to Jack. He I could have done about it. I could have was only a couple weeks shy of his second taken the other path, and cancelled the Friday rolled around, and I still hadn’t birthday and was talking now. He didn’t dates in Spain. I could have started looking fired Britta. Which meant that I was leav- know many words yet, but his vocabulary for a new bassist, asking for Lee and Sean’s ing. I pulled my suitcase down from the was increasing each day. I wanted to say forgiveness and understanding in this, and closet shelf, stuffed it with summer clothes, hello, but I couldn’t. He was on his way telling them that this was the only way the grabbed my ’58 Les Paul and walked out of home, and how could I explain to him that band could continue. the door. as of noon that day we no longer shared a I could have embarked on an extensive My feet took over. They walked me to roof? course of therapy and marriage counsel- the street and out of my marriage. I cabbed There I stood, frozen on Second Avenue, ling. Claudia and I could have read books it down to my horrid studio at 373 Broad- watching my son being wheeled away and and attended weekly couples’ seminars to way, where I lay on the floor and cried. feeling as if he no longer belonged to me, help us learn where things went wrong. I went out for a tuna melt and a choco- as if he was being wheeled out of my life, Maybe after a couple of years of this I late shake at a greasy diner on Broadway. unable to do anything about it. would be able to rebuild the trust that I It was a gorgeous summer day. I man- This was the worst moment of my life. had destroyed. I could cast out the bad aged a few bites of my sandwich, and Of course I know that other people live Dean and work on the kind and obedient then walked up Broadway all the way to through much worse. Mine were the prob- Dean. Cast out the liar and the cheat, and Fourteenth Street, then east and south to lems of a spoiled and self-indulgent singer/ become a dutiful husband. Tompkins Square Park. I had no destina- songwriter. Still, this was my moment, I knew other people who had tried this tion that I was aware of, but at four in the and it hurt. Never mind that it was self- route. It worked for some of them. Oth- afternoon I found myself wandering aim- inflicted. ers soon suffered relapses. I also knew, and lessly down Second Avenue, arriving at the I gathered myself and walked down Claudia did, too, that we were beyond that basketball courts at Houston Street. Crosby Street, through SoHo, across Canal point. Claudia could be forgiving. But this I had unconsciously wandered very Street, and back to my studio, where time I had gone too far. ◊ close to home, if I was still allowed to use I rolled on the floor and sobbed again.

Poem The Wind-up By Ryan Adams

are there any volunteers by choice in the ways of the heart who grow up strong like their fathers and sprout dreams to be piano movers or is it just something you inherit for need of replacement not genetics not something in somebody’s bloodstream and is there anyone who moves those things who gets lazy on break and twinkles at the keys who gets strayed from the day’s work and carried away and ten years later is sweating moments before he hits the stage at carnegie hall after being nervous for days, knowing his parents are gonna be there and he feels pressure to play it good, considering it was them that told him he was throwing it all away on a shot in the dark, with a sure thing right in front of his face it’s 5:21 and my plants are in and the phone is ringing and nighttime is coming.

42 The Festival Issue – Port Eliot of British geography. Towns with foot- ball teams I can just about handle, but the counties thing completely throws me. I Fugue State in a Forest know that Gloucestershire and Berkshire exist, but where they exist I have no idea. I Paul Murray’s quest for restrained hedonism know there’s a Surrey, a Sussex, a Som- erset, but have trouble convincing myself ’ve never quite got the hang of fes- wasn’t coming, but several very reputa- they are not the same place. In short, Itivals. There’s nothing like other peo- ble authors were. One act in particular Seraphina’s proposal to drive seemed ple’s idea of fun to make you feel alone; that caught my eye was something called quite reasonable, as in my head Cornwall also, the unbridled hedonism seems to Alain de Botton’s Agony Hour. I wasn’t was just outside Wimbledon,. bring out the Victorian in me. What are sure what it meant, but the unusual We set off into the Friday afternoon all these people doing drunk in a field? admission of the existence of agony, traffic in the high-but-not-overly-so Why aren’t they at home reading their often glossed over at festivals, seemed to spirits we felt appropriate for a literary- books, or curled up in terror in their augur well for the sober tone. The pres- cum-music festival. The first couple beds, melancholically contemplating their ence of Alain de Botton reassured me too. of hours passed happily enough, with deaths? Not to mention the apocalyptic He wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense; there me telling Seraphina about my life as a toilet facilities you get at these things. would be no ‘going mental’ or ‘getting novelist – how I would sometimes use Milan Kundera once defined kitsch as the ur freak on’ on de Botton’s watch. I was a computer, and sometimes a pen – and denial of shit. Your typical festival crowd, almost sold. ‘What about the toilet facili- Seraphina telling me stories about all the dressed up to the nines in their vintage ties?’ I asked. ‘We’ve spent a lot of money Nobel-winners she knew who when you slips and their sparkly wellies, then trot- on those toilets,’ my editor said, ‘a lot of got to know them were just so nice. But ting off to Portaloos that make the Black money.’ as time went on, and the traffic refused Hole of Calcutta look like tea at the Ritz, I made a plan to drive down to Corn- to budge, we grew restive. I remembered embraces kitsch on a monumental scale. wall with my friend Seraphina. Seraphina one of the other reasons I didn’t like fes- In the wake of twentieth-century his- works in publishing, and is a very beauti- tivals, which is that they take place Some- tory, it is actually quite terrifying, and ful woman. There are a lot of beautiful where Else. The willingness of other that’s why you’ll rarely see Milan Kun- women in publishing. This is one of the people to go Somewhere Else – even if dera at Glastonbury, and definitely not at exciting discoveries you make when you it’s a field in the middle of nowhere, even Pukkelpop. first publish a book. It’s almost like you’ve though all their stuff remains Here and As for literary festivals, these seemed gained access to a secret society, though this will cause them endless logistical and to go far in the other direction. The obviously it would be juvenile and sex- hygienic problems – I have always found benefits of bringing thousands of highly ist to actually think of it that way, or to mystifying. The fact that they are also strung book-loving isolates into one place come up with a name for it, such as Fabu- quite happy to sit in a car on a gridlocked seemed dubious. Wasn’t that what hap- lous Ladies Of Publishing, or FLOP. Ini- motorway on the way to Somewhere pened in Jonestown? And anyway, isn’t tially, as I say, it’s very exciting to publish Else for hours on end makes it hard not the entire point of reading that you’re a book and find yourself in the middle of to draw the conclusion that they are so on your own? But then my editor told FLOP. But you quickly learn that it’s very desperate to escape the thought of the me about a new festival he was curating much a giveth-and-taketh-away-type implacable meaningless of life and the in Cornwall. There would be a certain situation. You have indeed breached the ever-nearing prospect of death that any amount of both music and film, art forms, citadel of beautiful bookish women – but, distraction short of actually being roasted he conceded, which can spiral danger- what are you going to impress them with? on a spit is welcome. For the contempla- ously into hedonism. But it wouldn’t be If your plan is to tell them about your tive sort of person, though, who is aware unbridled hedonism, as the main focus novel, think again. These ladies have just how much effort it takes to get one’s would be literature, and the prevailing just had lunch with Dostoyevsky. Last head around something like death, and spirit bookish. week they were skiing with Kafka and how limited a time for thinking about I was intrigued. Could literature and Homer. They look after Yukio Mishima’s death life affords us, wasting hours on end its old enemy, summer, truly be recon- cat when he’s away. Your unique sell- in a pokey death-free rented Nissan Micra ciled? Was restrained hedonism really a ing point is the least unique thing in the is sorely testing. thing? Between the melancholy isolate room. Until you win a Nobel (which By hour five, we were feeling that we lying on his bed contemplating death, members of FLOP call ‘Nobes’, as in, ‘Sea- had grievously overestimated our capacity and a hundred thousand people on drugs mus just clocked the Nobe’) that citadel for hedonism. Also, I was realizing that singing along to Oasis – could there be a will remain closed. Seraphina’s FLOPpy beauty had blinded third way? I digress. Seraphina and I decided to me to the fact that her sense of direction I had a look at the website. The fact drive down to Cornwall from London. I was even worse than mine. that it was taking place on a rolling coun- live in Dublin, which is much closer to By hour ten, however, we finally try estate, as opposed to some random Cornwall than London, but, like most arrived at the rolling country estate. It field, was encouraging. Milan Kundera Irish people, I have only a very vague idea did look magical. Fairy lights decked the

43 trees, guiding us towards the marquees probably won’t be able to do certain other cigarette. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What’s where attractively thoughtful-looking things. Women love giving men this look. that music?’ I asked him. ‘That’s the disco people sat and talked and generally I suspect they spend a lot of time practis- tent,’ he said. ‘Are you dancing?’ indulged in acceptable levels of hedonism. ing it in front of a mirror. In terms of It was like asking the Brno death My editor emerged from the throng and actually getting the fire lit, though, or the march if they were dancing. We were welcomed us. We asked if there was any- cards shuffled, the withering look isnot weak with hunger, tired from travelling thing to eat as we had travelled non-stop helpful. It puts a lot of pressure on a man in the wrong direction, traumatized by in the hope of making it down before when he’s trying to light a fire or shuffle the uninflating mattress. It seemed like darkness fell so we could put up our tent. a pack of cards and a woman is standing the best thing to do was cut our losses The kitchen was closed, my editor said, there giving him a withering look. Does and go to bed. Beneath the uninflated but he would ask the chef if there was the woman actually want to get the fire lit, inflatable mattress, the Cornwall ground anything left in the fridge. He came back one begins to wonder, or the tent erected, was obdurately hard and lumpy. My five minutes later with two small and or whatever it is? Or does she want to stomach gurgled with hunger. ‘Tomor- very hard baps. He presented these to us stand there being sardonic and scoring row will be better,’ I told Seraphina, at apologetically. This is all we have, he said. points? which precise moment it started to rain. I was too hungry even to make a double- Anyhow, after about five minutes of Not pittery-pattery, Cath Kidston-type entendre about the small hard baps. ‘Why me moving around the various pieces of rain. Heavy torrential rain. At first we don’t I get you some beers?’ my editor tent with what I hoped was a knowledge- pretended not to hear it. Then the hateful said. able air, Seraphina’s look took a turn for useless mattress began to feel distinctly The beer was ice-cold and the summer the withering. ‘What are you doing?’ she damp. Seraphina sat up. ‘This is awful,’ night and the fairy lights were restoring asked. ‘I think your tent’s broken,’ I said. she said. It was awful. And I felt awful, my hedonism, such that, though I’d given The truth was I wasn’t even sure it was a because I was responsible. I was the one up smoking in April, when my editor tent. Seraphina sighed. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. who’d invited her to come down. At the took out a pack of cigarettes I asked him ‘Why don’t you pump up the inflatable same time, what did she expect me to do? for one. ‘Of course,’ said my editor. I mattress?’ Did women expect men to be able to stop pulled on the cigarette and leaned back in That I could do. I found the pump and the rain now? I suppose Yukio Mishima my seat. This was the life after all, I was set to work, determined to do the best (‘Yukie’) and Dostoyevsky (‘dear, dear thinking. ‘We should put up our tent,’ possible job. After ten minutes, Seraphina Fyodor’) would have just commanded the said Seraphina. Right, I’d forgotten about appeared from the other side of the newly rain to stop. ‘What are you talking about?’ that. Let me just have another of these erected and admirably tent-like tent. Seraphina said, and then, before I had delicious cigarettes – ‘Before all the light ‘What are you doing?’ she asked again. a chance to explain, ‘I’m going to sleep goes,’ said Seraphina, who beneath her ‘I’m pumping up the mattress,’ I said. ‘It’s in the car,’ she added. I wasn’t giving in, FLOPpiness was a bit of a whip-cracker. still totally flat,’ she pointed out. ‘It isn’t,’ though. I had come here to camp hedon- Right, right. I said, ‘It’s just taking a while.’ ‘It’s flat,’ istically and I wasn’t going to let the rain We went to the spot we’d been allotted. she said. ‘It’s gone up a little bit,’ I said, put me off. Seraphina spread the notably un-tent- ‘It’s just slow.’ ‘It hasn’t done anything,’ About ten minutes later, the rain had like constituents of the tent out on the she said, ‘It’s flaccid.’ ‘Well, just give put me off, so I went to sleep in the car. ground, and turned to me expectantly. me a minute, would you?’ I cried. ‘Stop Seraphina, of course, had got to the back There are certain things that women pressuring me, how do you think that’s seat first, so I had to lie in the front, with seem to think men should be able to going to help?’ I turned my back on her my head on one seat and my feet on the do. Lighting a fire is one. Fixing a flat and began to pump even more vigorously other and the gear stick propping up my tyre, being able to shuffle a pack of cards, than before. I pumped for all I was worth. spine. The hours passed slowly. Every uncork wine, strike up conversation with But nothing happened. If you think it’s time I turned around, my knee would hit their friends’ boring husbands. Putting up embarrassing not being able to erect a the horn and wake me out of whatever a tent is another of these abilities. I don’t tent, believe me, that’s nothing compared bad dream of being tortured by garage know where the misconception comes to having a total pump breakdown with mechanics I’d fallen into. The people in from. It’s not like we all go to fire-light- FLOP looking on. ‘Why isn’t it going up?’ the VW van across the way would honk ing school. It’s not like we’re born with she said. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe back merrily. I wished I was at home in innate tent-erecting ability. Yet when there’s something you can do that would bed contemplating death. Sometimes a man reveals that his gifts may lie else- help?’ ‘Like what?’ she asked. ‘I don’t death can feel very far away. where than building a bridge out of vines know, like, if while I’m pumping, you The next morning we got out of the or repairing a stalled engine with a pipe sort of massage it?’ ‘Let’s just try again car to find the rolling estate thoroughly cleaner, what he will get from a woman, tomorrow,’ Seraphina said. Her tone waterlogged, and the festival-goers wan- more often than not, and in spite of all made it clear, however, that there would dering around in varying states of damp- the talk of equality between the genders, be no more trying on this particular ness. By the breakfast stall we found my is a withering look. This look implies that weekend. editor looking disconsolate. This was if he can’t put up a tent or light a fire or We trudged back to the bar, where I the first day of the inaugural festival. It steal a jet fighter like Jack Bauer in24 , he spotted my editor and asked him for a couldn’t afford to be a washout! I shook

44 my head sympathetically and asked him bled one of the ropier orc platoons from my way out I discovered that my hiatus for a cigarette. He offered me the box. I The Lord of the Rings – apart, that is, from from civilisation had shaken away the could see he was running low. ‘Is there a Seraphina and her friends, who looked last of my inhibitions. Crawling from the cigarette machine here anywhere?’ I asked. like they’d just breezed in from a three- undergrowth, I followed the music to the He said there wasn’t. I took a cigarette week stay at a health spa in Switzerland. music tent, where the dancing was now and shook my head sympathetically some It was clear that the art would have to be in full swing. Seraphina and other mem- more. top-drawer for us to have any chance of bers of FLOP were gyrating picturesquely; For the rest of the morning, we redemption. Alain de Botton stood at the margin with watched the rain come down. It was And it was. Christopher Logue’s thun- folded arms, keeping an eye on things. I depressing – not nice-depressing like derous and incredibly violent retelling of hit the floor. ‘You’re covered in leaves,’ lying on your bed weeping while lis- The Iliad I remember to this day. He was Seraphina said. I didn’t care. I was all tening to Schoenberg, just straight-up followed by the genial Tom Payne, who about living in the moment now. The fes- depressing. At a normal festival, I suppose read some translations of Catullus, detail- tival had brought me, via a ten-hour road everyone would just have taken a load ing the poet’s run-ins with what sounded trip, the worst night’s sleep I had ever had more drugs and put on Oasis or burned like an ancient progenitor of FLOP. Then and a strange fugue state in a forest which down a church or something. But this Alain de Botton did his Agony Hour, I had escaped only accidentally by run- was a literary festival, and these were sen- solving the audience’s problems with the ning away from a badger, right back to sitive souls, highly susceptible to pathetic wisdom of the philosophers. I wondered myself; and now . . . I just wanted to be. I fallacy. We could take some solace in the if was anything in Schopenhauer or wanted to express myself, completely and excellent toilet facilities, but excellent toi- Nietzsche or whoever about how to fix an unashamedly, through dance. All around let facilities do not a festival make. inflatable mattress, but he didn’t seem to me people stopped dancing and turned My editor looked at his watch. ‘Poetry,’ see my hand. After that, though, several to watch, awed and perhaps moved by he mumbled, and trudged off. Seraphina stalls selling delicious food had opened, this display of pure being. Then, just as I and I glanced at each other. Was he all and I made good on yesterday’s famine by executed an ambitious double-pirouette, I right? We decided we should follow him. ordering a double-portion of crab salad. felt my stomach lurch. He took us in the direction of a marquee. Then – almost as if nature were admitting I left the tent at speed. Inside it was a poet and a small crowd. defeat in the face of all the bonhomie – the Outside in the velvety sky the stars ‘I’m going to read to you from War Music,’ sun, to cheers, came out! Everything was were arrayed like fairy lights. I took deep said the poet. turning out for the best, and I was glad I breaths, until I saw someone wander Although I spend a lot of my life listen- hadn’t stolen the car while Seraphina was through the darkness towards me. It was ing to music or reading or watching films, in the shower and driven back to London. Seraphina. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. I nevertheless wonder sometimes whether Unfortunately I can only give a partial ‘Too much crab salad,’ I told her. art is really all that important. Isn’t it account of the day’s redemption. After ‘Oh,’ she said, and then, ‘Do you ultimately an indulgence? Couldn’t I get my editor went to ground, I set off to know who makes the most adorable crab by without it? And then, something will find the local pub to buy cigarettes with- salad? Milan Kundera.’ happen that reminds me how crucial it is – out giving sufficient regard to the many ‘Really?’ that the redemptive power of art isn’t just latent pitfalls in the seemingly innocent ‘Oh God, it’s astonishing.’ She fell an empty cliché. phrase ‘there’s a shortcut through that silent; we spent a moment sitting there on No one who saw us that day could forest’, with the result that I spent Anita the bench, listening to the music and the have denied that we needed redemption. I Pallenberg’s talk, Hari Kunzru’s DJ set happy chatter spin themselves out into the looked like I’d crawled out my own grave. and several other events stumbling in darkness, thinking that Milan Kundera, if The other punters were in similar shape. pitch-darkness through a wood. Far from he’d had a good inflatable mattress, would Mud-covered, dehumanized, we resem- denting my spirits, though, once I found surely have liked it here too. ◊

45 Raymond Pettibon · No Title (Having had myself) · 2009 Pen, ink, gouache and acrylic on paper 30 × 22½ inches (76.2 × 57.2 cm)

46 The Festival Issue “You know babe, I have seriously got this super-strong feeling that some bad shit is going to go down here.” Then TT’s like: Death Fest: How It Was For Me “Like, duh it is dude: Coldplay is playing tonight.” LOL (totally not LOL-ing in ret- By Stuart Hammond rospect though, obvs). Even though that afternoon me and o here’s something totally true and chillaxed a bit and she let me get a few TT agreed that we would rather watch Ssuper-weird that will trip you out pics (she was in Ray Bans / D&G playsuit our whole entire families get raped and completely. Two days before the festival / Hermes Birkin / Barbour / Hunters: eaten by a pack of rabid wolves than started I was crying my eyes out in the pretty much yawnsville TBH, but still) and watch Coldplay headline another festival, back of a cab because those evil shits at I had it all beamed onto the blog within come nine o’clock – why God, why?! – the magazine had totally buggered my minutes. After that I was like: good start, we found ourselves somehow adrift in the ticket into thin air and it looked like I much? and was feeling pretty stoked on sea of their people. At least we were both wasn’t even going to be going. Imagine myself. Never Not Working! But still feeling pretty good by this point, because my agony! When The Witches broke it the fact remained that even though this we were (finally!) buzzing off the pills to me in the office I held it together and festival was freakishly teeming with peo- and TT had scored a nice bit of white did a passable job of seeming unfazed but ple, I had been there for nearly an hour off Blackie and we had been hitting that as soon as I got in the taxi I was in floods, already and I’d only found like one actual hard and also we had both got three pairs like Biblical floods, for serious. I literally actual person and then – super bummer – it of Ray Bans each, free, from the Ray had snot all down the front of my Balen- started to rain. It was only a light sort of Ban caravan backstage. Even with all of ciaga cardigan and that just made every- drizzle but I was under it all on my own these definite pros there was still one big thing worse and I was just totally hating and it got quite depressing quite quickly definite con: this crowd was basically like life and dying inside. Somewhat unex- so I took half a pill to try and cheer the most bleaksville scene of all time. I pectedly, the driver was actually quite myself up. don’t much like being in crowds anyway; sweet and sympathetic (gay?) and when Half an hour later I was in VIP with you feel all hemmed-in and trapped and I explained about the hateful betrayal he TT who had mercifully found me there’s no escape routes and everyone said that really I shouldn’t worry, and that through Twitter and even though noth- keeps barging past you and your drink I was better off not going to the festival ing was really happening off the pill I was gets spilled and your shoes get ruined anyway because he’d heard – and I SWEAR beginning to feel a bit better. So far I’d and you look around you at all of these DOWN COMPLETELY that this is exactly blogged two just-about passable celeb people for miles and you start to think, what he said – that there was a rumour looks and four complete fucking train- like; ‘OMG like who actually even am I?!’ going around that terrorists (!!!) were wrecks. Of course, I personally prefer a This crowd though, was next-level lame. planning to crash a hijacked plane right fashion disaster. With disasters; everyone Every direction you turned there was into the thick of the thing. The horreur! wants pics, so for me it’s like; ‘ker-ching!’ some sunburned twat in a straw trilby hat He opined that it all made perfect sense, TT stopped Twittering for about a and some garish cheap plastic sunglasses, because a festival like that is the absolute nanosecond to look up and do this exag- waving a flag and hooting inanities. Peo- epitome of “Western decadence at its gerated hiss at that jumped-up chavvy ple actually wearing face paint. Do they decadentest” (sic). Petulant, I spluttered whore YOU KNOW (if you’re addicted honestly think they look good? Me and through the tears; “I fucking well know to the blog!) WHO at the far end of the TT were like Invaders From Planet Actu- that don’t I? That’s why I want to go.” bar. And out of earshot, thank fuck; ally Stylish. We were seriously both of us Anyway I forgot about all that pretty she’d probably batter us both. I was not like; ‘Seriously?’ quickly and went home to pen my now about to ask her for a picture, that’s for Waiting for Coldplay to come on was infamous ‘UM, FASHION WORLD; HEL- sure. I recall that we briefly discussed her like Waiting for the Bad Thing to Hap- LOOOO? BLOGGERS ARE VIPS TOO NOW’ terminal slagdom and then we were sip- pen, but me and TT found some old update. Mercifully, a right-minded, hugely ping our drinks and scanning the tent for crusty (OMG his outfit: such a holocaust influential and most benevolent editor at some semblance of an actual A-list and I can’t even bring myself to put it in another, far superior magazine read it, loved this incessant handbaggy house music words) selling balloons of laughing gas it, and personally offered me a press pass, was pumping away and I can remember for two quid a pop, so that brought some in exchange for my jumping ship to their thinking – irked, sigh – how I had still welcome relief. We did like four balloons (celebrated!) style pages. Reader, I hopped, not come up off the pill. We split another each in five minutes, so when the band skipped, jumped. Au revoir, witches! one, ordered more drinks, assessed our came on in the end I barely noticed it, So I finally got into the festival and I likelihood of getting K. Brett-amine was great mercies. By that point I had retreat- was walking around in my Diesel short out there somewhere, apparently, but ed so far into myself that I felt like I was shorts trying to find cool people I know neither of us had seen or heard from looking the wrong way down a telescope, when I bumped into Cheryl Cole (yay!) him since the Shoreditch House Gucci only like a telescope that telescopes sound and she called me ‘pet’ like she knew who bukkake party and that was like weeks and vision and touching and totally eve- I was (super-yay!) so her security guys ago. After a while, this is me to TT: rything. My hearing had gone like how

47 it goes when it feels like there’s a massive shot dead or shot and basically dying, and around the side of a portaloo to see what throbbing helicopter hovering right over everyone around – natch – was totally was occurring. What was occurring – it the top of your head, insanely buzzing. I freaking the fuck out. was immediately obvs – was a sort of was really, truly, totally insanely buzzing, I was looking out for dive-bombing open air Columbine-meets-Mumbai- and TBH I think that that rather helped planes when the explosion erupted and style sort of massacre. Bodies were liter- me to deal with what happened next. further confused the whole thing. It hap- ally strewn. Three of the gunmen from What happened next was of course pened in the crowd, about twenty metres the stage invasion were stalking between clouded by how high I was and it took back from where Coldplay were just the picnic tables and picking off anything me a while longer than everyone else to standing and it drowned out the scream- that moved. About ten metres in front of get it untwisted. But on the big screen ing completely with this deafening crack me, U2’s The Edge lay dead. He didn’t Chris Martin was talking I think and and this big fiery flash and this up-rolling even have his little hat on: that was how behind him on another big screen I could cloud of thick dusty smoke that totally dead he was. make out the big white words MAKE obscured the stage. Me and TT were It was at this point that it struck me TRADE FAIR, and the sun was going down, about a hundred metres behind it and that these sick bastards were actually Coldplay were segueing into another both high as fuck and both like ‘WTF?!’ actively seeking out the VIPs. Crashing a slow number and two giant roman can- and confused and thinking ‘Is this just the plane into a festival did make sense, in a dles at each side of the stage exploded in drugs?’ and everyone was suddenly quiet way, sure. But what a nightmare to actu- these fountains of fire that rolled upwards for a couple of seconds, totally stunned, ally organize! Much easier – and oh-dear- and into the gloaming. It was not an the blast settling, and no one seeming to God how much more totally terrifying entirely unpleasant moment I guess, and understand what was happening. I felt – to go straight for the cultural jugular, to I remember giving in a bit and thinking the rain start up again then. I gripped ‘reach for the stars,’ terror-wise, as it were. that when it came down to it this whole TT by the arm and he looked back at me, There would be no bigger news story deal maybe wasn’t even so bad. Then wide-eyed, dumbstruck, petrified, and all year. I was witnessing the birth of a me and TT did a bump of the coke and that’s when I saw it spattering his face whole new way of approaching terror- another balloon and I was pretty much in flecks of red. It was actually raining ism, and it was well, well fucking out of feeling rosy, out of it, hardly even there. blood I shit you not. order. I know that way less people died And then the whole situation went super, I saw some gnarly shit then that I don’t at ‘Death Fest’ and everything, but am super bad. even want to go into. I’d lost TT in the I wrong in thinking that this was actu- On the big video screens there was yet ensuing stampede, I was totes on my own ally kind of worse than 9/11? Is that bad? another close-up of Chris Martin sing- in this absolute harrowing clusterfuck >bites nails!< ing away and then you could hear these and I was suddenly, resolutely, complete- I couldn’t think straight enough to get faint sort of staccato popping sounds ly intent on surviving. The vibe by then any kind of escape plan together, and and then suddenly the top side of his was pretty much look-out-for-number- TBH I couldn’t really tear myself away, so face just burst off the front of his head one so I didn’t feel guilty at all about I lurked by the portaloo and tried to take in this (implausible!) shower of gore and stepping over (and on, TB totally H) all stock. I checked my Iphone and saw that his body fell right out of the frame. Total of these trampled bodies all squished into TT had updated his Facebook status to confusion ensued but the cameras were the dust and the mud while I was trying ‘Terrified,’ so at least I knew he was alive. still rolling, so up on the video screens to double back on these crowds of plebs This happy news reminded me that I was you could clearly see these four guys sud- and make my way back to the track that still holding the wrap of his coke, so I denly bum-rush the stage from the wings lead to VIP. VIP, I had cunningly decided, super-quietly did a little bump off the and they all had rifles and they all had all would be the safest place to be. back of my hand to try and sharpen-up of this ammo strapped onto their bodies Dumb decision. For a start there was the old nerves. like Rambo and it was totally unclear nobody even there at the bit where they All I’m trying to do here is write down what this was but it was happening right check your wristband – so it was like like a totally searingly honest account of there onstage as if it was part of the per- anybody could just waltz in. Then on the my experiences that day, which hope- formance and it had us all kind of like track on the way up there I saw Emma fully might get published somewhere hypnotized. My first thought, obvs, was Watson and her boyf (FYI: still looking and exclusively tell my side of the story. of the kindly cabbie’s Jihadi prophesy, insanely gorgeous) come flying past me in a Thinking about it; maybe I should cut but it was still pretty hard to tell what golf buggy and even though they were out the drugs stuff. What I won’t do is go these guys’ deal was. Like, stylewise; I’d going pretty fast it was clear that her on and on ad nauseam about which celebs say they were about halfway between Al Vuitton basque and his deep-V Apparel got killed and which got maimed and Qaeda and the Trenchcoat Mafia. And T-shirt were totally covered in blood. how many normal people died compared one of them was deffo white so it was Some girl who I think might be a T4 TV to famous people and blah blah blah like; hellooooh?! Were these guys pissed off presenter was draped across the backseat, blah. Suffice to say: celeb-wise, Yes: I got Fundamental Muslims of just pissed off? also bloody, totally limp. Not a good some totally shocking and super-amazing Anyway, by that point it seemed like the look. photos of a shitload of them. I know whole of Coldplay and most of the secu- In the section of VIP that’s basically this sounds kind of grimsville, but it rity guys around the stage area had been like a big sort of picnic area, I peeped turns out that if you take someone who’s

48 an icon already, and then get a picture Hudson, who saw her Muse-frontman reign of the Worst Terror Ever came to of them scared shitless and covered in boyf fully take a bullet in the neck (you’re an end just metres from the Comedy blood, or dead or dying or with their arm gonna pull through, Matt!), got his blood Tent. Because it was in no way remotely recently detached from their actual body, absolutely all over her cute floral-print funny at all, obvs. It was totally gross then you have got an image that’s like summer dress, but never once looked any- and totally upsetting in the gnarliest way iconic to the power of a bazillion. The thing short of AAAA-MAZING. imaginable, and even though (as I’m sure fact that Alexa Chung still looks beautiful You all know how it ended; the SWAT you know) I got suddenly kind of super- and stylish in my aftermath pics, in spite team’s retardedly late arrival, the standoff, rich off the back of it, I honestly wish of her injuries, is a testament to the pow- the hail of bullets, the final suicide bomb. more than anything ever that the whole er of her cool. The same goes for Kate It’s ironic, I guess, that this three-hour thing could just like, unhappen. ◊

The Festival Issue: Memoir way to Ooty. The local bank abruptly closed, our funds ran low and the only place to receive international money ‘Make Interesting Mistakes’ transfers became Madras. There, we finally caught up with Rob- Sally Chamberlain searches for enlightenment – and Robert Fraser – in 1970s India ert – charismatic and handsome as ever, wearing starched white kurta pajamas, his In Five Dials 7 we left Sally Chamberlain Guru, sitting barefoot under a coconut dark hair cut short. But he, who always and her husband, Wynn, escaping New York tree. To our amazement this old man, had been the hippest of the hip, now as the euphoria of the Woodstock Festival faded with his curtain of white hair falling wanted to live for ever in his pink bunga- to the blackness of Altamont. Here she picks from his bald pate and his nut-brown low on the shores of the Bay of Bengal. up the story – and provides the first first-hand body wrapped in a faded tangerine ‘I picked Madras because it’s not on account of the lost years in India of iconic sixties cloth, had studied with Henri Bergson the t-tourist trail, is a c-cultural centre art dealer and Rolling Stones co-conspirator at the Sorbonne in Paris. He was familiar far from the p-political shenanigans of Robert Fraser. with Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Delhi.’ (When excited, Robert’s stutter Whitehead and had actually advised Rob- returned and now he was excited about ert Oppenheimer not to make the atom his new life.) Talking non-stop, he guided ime to get out of America,’ wrote bomb. The old man and Wynn – who us through an enfilade of airy rooms ‘Tour friend Robert Fraser. Wynn had written his Master’s thesis on White- crammed with exquisite bronzes, Tibetan and I had known Robert since the late fif- head – hit it off immediately. For months, scrolls and silk weavings stretching up to ties when he came to New York to work we followed him around South India, but the roof. Shaded by a canopy from the at Knoedler’s, and we stayed in touch never heard a word from Robert. hot sun, we sat on batik-covered cushions after he returned to London and set up listening to Robert talk about watching his avant garde gallery. But after a stint in In late 1971, the old man took us to Ooty bodies burn beside the Ganges in Varanasi prison for drug possession, Robert closed (Ootacamund), his retreat in the Nilgiri and about Tarapith, where holy men the gallery and disappeared. We didn’t Hills. There he talked about the God- sat in meditation on dead bodies. Here know where he was until the letter came: dess, Shakti, the natural life force in the in the South, he was studying classical ‘I’m in India and you should escape New world; about beings who kept the world Indian dance, music and art. ‘India is so York while you can. Nothing creative is going by sleeping on serpents in milk c-complex but everything c-connects. I going to happen while Nixon is President. oceans, who danced on corpses, sat naked am t-trying to put it all together into a I’m learning so much from an old sage in glacial Himalayan caves and even made philosophy to live by.’ who has the answer for changing our lives. mistakes. ‘There is no sin in Hinduism,’ ‘Wow, you’ve covered a lot of ground,’ Why don’t you come? India’s an amazing Nataraja explained, ‘just mistakes. Every Wynn whistled. ‘And your house is full of country and a wonderful place for chil- action is a mistake. If you must take amazing stuff. Are you going to reopen dren. It will change your life – come!’ action, make interesting mistakes . . . and your gallery and sell Indian art in Lon- It was the autumn of 1970 and we make them quickly.’ don?’ wanted to change our lives. The happy, At the time, India had just defeated ‘I c-can’t bear the thought of going hopeful sixties were gone and the party Pakistan in a brief but bloody war and b-back to London,’ Robert said emphati- was over. When Wynn was mugged in East Pakistan had declared independ- cally. ‘D-didn’t anyone tell you? I went broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, we took ence and renamed itself Bangladesh. overboard on d-drugs, was put in prison it as a message to leave. Encouraged by Thousands of miles away, America was and then went through rehab at an Allen Ginsberg and intrigued by Robert’s still bogged down in Vietnam, and after Ayurvedic clinic in Kerala.’ letters we took off for India. Nixon abandoned the Gold Standard ‘We heard something,’ I said, ‘but we There, on an island off the coast of the country was caught in an economic never believe rumours.’ Kerala, we met Robert’s sage, Nataraja crunch whose tentacles stretched all the ‘I don’t either,’ he grinned. ‘Anyway,

49 that’s all b-behind me. I’m off d-drugs famous Indian musicians gathered in night in 1966. We had rushed to Bayview and d-drink for ever. This is a chance to Madras. Wynn and I still talk about those General Hospital to see him. Arriving in turn my life around. That’s why I sent evenings walking the winding streets of the waiting room, arms full of red roses, you to Nataraja, wanted your reaction . . . ancient Mylapore, following musicians we found Joe LeSueur (Frank’s long time You say he’s the real thing so I’m going to playing compositions by Tyagaraja, who roommate), artist Larry Rivers and poet spend more time with him, soak up his had lived and composed before the birth Kenneth Koch pacing the floor. One look wisdom.’ His voice lost its enthusiasm. of Mozart. (‘It was right here,’ Robert at their faces and we knew Frank’s con- ‘But I c-can’t stand that bunch of b-back- said insouciantly, ‘right where we are dition was serious. The door of Frank’s biting zealots who hang around him. Not standing that St Thomas, after preach- room opened and a weeping Bill de even Eton had such crazies.’ ing the Brotherhood of Man, was stoned Kooning stumbled out. ‘Give him any- The crazies were a mixed bag of Euro- to death by irate Brahmins.’ ‘When?’ I thing he wants,’ he choked to the nurse, peans and Americans – dysfunctional gasped and he grinned, ‘That was in AD ‘I’ll pay for everything.’ He nodded at us types who had taken too many drugs or 72, my dear.’) and vanished down the corridor. had alcoholic and abusive parents. They One day, as we walked on the beach The nurse turned to us. ‘You can only dominated daily life at Nataraja’s various in front of Robert’s bungalow, our chil- stay a few minutes, he’s very weak.’ retreats and put their own twist on the dren running ahead chasing his little dog, Frank’s electric blue eyes were sleepy, old man’s teachings, starting every sen- Chapatti, Robert asked Wynn why he’d his Roman centurion’s face bruised and tence with ‘Guru says’. Their ideas were given up painting. Wynn launched into sunken, but he smiled and whispered, so contradictory I often couldn’t figure an explanation and my mind drifted back ‘How nice of you to come see me. What’s out what the Guru was saying. five years . . . the news?’ ‘Sally and I feel the same way,’ Wynn Driving back to the city, I cried, realiz- told Robert. ‘We want his wisdom-teach- 1967 was the year of the first communes, ing a vital part of living poetry was going. ing but we need to stop travelling and of Allen Ginsberg testifying before a Sen- He died that night, a week before his for- find a sane base for our children.’ ate committee that LSD was not as danger- tieth birthday. ‘This world is so insane and that old ous as alcohol, that if people expanded I remembered him saying, ‘I’m afraid man knows so much. He has the p-power their minds, it would be beneficial for the of old age.’ That was at The Quadran- to give us strength to get through any- United States. It was the Summer of Love gle, our farm in Rhinebeck. Frank had thing, b-bring it all together,’ Robert and of Be-Ins, and the buzz words were come for a February weekend, along sighed. ‘If we could only see him without ‘Flower Power’, ‘Black is Beautiful’ and, with poets Bill Berkson and John Giorno, those idiots. in New York, ‘See you at Max’s!’ underground film star Beverly Grant and Wynn nodded. ‘I keep hearing Bill Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue musician Tony Conrad. There had been a Burroughs’ gravelly drawl: “Don’t hang South looked like an ordinary dive with heavy snowfall the night before and we’d around with stupid people, their stupidity its wooden bar, leather booths and small pelted each other with snowballs and will rub off on you and they’ll get you in tables but no other place had such a cli- whizzed down the hill behind the barn on trouble.”’ entele. On the night I was thinking of, a motley collection of sleds and garbage ‘Poor B-Bill,’ Robert sighed, ‘he’s in Bob Rauschenberg was huddled at the can lids. Later, we sat by the fire drinking London now, trying to get off smack but bar with Senator Jake Javits and his wife hot toddies laced with Frank’s favorite it’s impossible there. If only he’d come to Marian; trendsetters Earl and Camilla Jack Daniels and played ‘Truth’. When India . . .’ McGrath yakked with Scottish artist we got to the question of what was our We waited for the wire transfer to Rory McEwen; Brigid Berlin and Viva greatest fear, Frank tossed down his drink, come. Wynn haunted the State Bank hopped from Andy Warhol’s round table poured another and said, ‘Living beyond of India, only to be told by indifferent in the back to the front room tables of forty . . . I’m afraid of old age . . . of being clerks that our money was held up in models and photographers. an old messy drunk.’ some intricate international spider’s web. We greeted them all, slid into a side Robert offered a generous loan to keep us booth and ordered dinner. Our jumbo The only consolation was that Frank afloat and we lingered in Madras. He was shrimp arrived, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satis- would never be old. a marvellous guide; whizzing us from faction’ blared from the jukebox and it Robert had known and loved Frank classical music concerts to art exhibitions seemed like an ordinary evening until too. Back in the fifties, the two of them to dance performances. He turned every Wynn said, ‘I can’t get no satisfaction had had wild nights together in down- event into a memorable occasion – he either.’ town dancing bars and up in Harlem. knew all the stars, introduced us to the ‘What do you mean?’ I was alarmed. Now, in Madras, Wynn was explaining spellbinding singer Subhalakshmi and the ‘Have I . . . am I . . .?’ what Frank’s death had meant to the Kathakali dance and theatre troupe who ‘No, no . . . it’s not you, darling, it’s me. New York art world: ‘A devastating entranced us with their intricate make up, I’ve decided to stop painting. Everything blow. Frank was so important, the only colourful costumes and brilliant retelling changed when Frank died.’ one who could have blocked the Warhol of ancient stories of the Hindu gods and Frank O’Hara, curator at MOMA, bon gang. Andy’s commercialized and taken goddesses. vivant and poet extraordinaire had been the art out of art; he says the artist’s hand December was the time of year when hit by a jeep on Fire Island on a hot July and brush on the canvas doesn’t mean

50 anything. After a lifetime of painting, I Marlene D Train. In a talent contest, end, an antique Sheraton table. (When I felt artists were doomed to be mechanics Ultra Violet sang beautifully off key and saw him sitting behind it, I laughed. ‘You and all art was going to be like a soup can young Sam Shepard roared and growled. look exactly like your banker father.’ or bar of soap, something to sell to inves- There had been something in Brand X to His face fell. ‘I hadn’t realized . . . hardly tors.’ He lit a cigarette and sighed. ‘It was shock or offend everybody. What would yogic, is it? I’ll throw it away.’ ‘No, no,’ soul-destroying trying to market them this pure old man think if he ever saw it? I said, ‘it’s beautiful – just don’t get too and myself. My paintings didn’t matter, Actually, he wouldn’t be upset, just say, bankerish.’) only who I knew. I told Sally if we had ‘If you’re obsessed about something, do I’ll always miss the Bangalore of 1972. to go to one more Park Avenue collector’s it to excess – throw the bomb down the The azure sky and cows ambling down dinner, I would throw my soup plate at smokestack!’ wide streets lined with jacaranda and the hostess. Idiotically, I thought theatre ‘Great idea, Guru, I’d love to help you,’ other flamboyant trees; vendors coming or filmmaking would be better but they Wynn said enthusiastically, forgetting he by with ripe papayas, bananas and other were just more of the same . . . By the was through with films and actors. fruits every morning; muezzins calling time I was mugged, I wasn’t interested Every afternoon they brainstormed the faithful to prayer, Christian priests in any of it . . . wanted to find something in our hotel room, Nataraja and Wynn intoning Hail Marys in the nearby Cathe- more significant.’ outlining a script based on a hermetic dral and the chanting of Namo Shivaya in ‘Same with me,’ nodded Robert. ‘The eighth-century work celebrating the the Shiva Temple. English are so resistant to anything new Goddess, and Robert eagerly agreeing to As soon as we settled in, Nataraja . . . I got bored trying to get them to see collaborate and raise money for filming. joined us. Wynn and Robert, yawning in a different way – so bored I took too The outline was almost finished when the and rubbing their eyes, would stumble many drugs and got totally lost. I closed Western devotees tracked us down. Script out of bed at dawn and go to his room, my gallery to get away from all that and sessions ended as they belaboured the furnished with just a bed and chair. I’m living a new life in India.’ patient old man with their problems and Sometimes I managed to get there too complained that our children were too and listened as he talked. 1972 opened with a message that Nataraja noisy. One even harangued us for eating ‘Our film is for Western women,’ said had arrived in Madras and wanted to see fish and staying in a hotel with a swim- Nataraja in his come-hither voice. ‘When us. ming pool. I was in the United States I noticed that ‘Ah, I am most happy to see you. We ‘He might enjoy looking like a ghoul,’ I your country abounds in strong-minded must talk.’ His lemur-like eyes stared grouched, ‘but Sara and Sam are growing women, descended from the pioneering at us from behind thick horn-rimmed and need nourishing food. Besides, it’s a days of the Pilgrim Fathers. These wom- spectacles. There was something on his very small pool and what’s wrong with en are strong feminine types with great mind besides a tea party. ‘I have rushed children getting some exercise?’ psychic powers and possibilities. If chan- down to Madras, Elwyn, because I have a ‘Nothing, darling, calm down,’ Wynn nelled and directed to high ends, they proposal for you.’ He talked as if he were soothed me. ‘I agree with you. I love could easily form the nucleus of a world thinking out loud. ‘Do you realize that Nataraja but I can’t take these idiots either. society to bring about great changes . . .’ your President Nixon and his cronies are Our money transfer just came through Wynn and Robert lived and breathed going mad in America? Unless they come and it’s going to get hot and then hotter that screenplay, wondering how to get to their senses, they could destroy the in Madras . . . we’d be smart to find a bet- a spiritual idea into cinematic form, to whole world. It is clear to me your coun- ter year-round climate.’ awaken a world conditioned to an all- try really needs the Goddess. What is the ‘Where?’ I asked, reaching for the India powerful father figure, somewhere up in a best way of teaching in this modern age? guidebook. mythical heaven, to the Goddess. The cinema. I want you to help me make ‘Robert advises we go to Bangalore and Robert was a great housemate, kept us a film about the Goddess. We shall bring find a house there.’ laughing and stirred things up. We had a Her to the West. You have made a film Bangalore, situated in the centre of the lot in common – old friends in New York and have experience with that world.’ Deccan Plateau at 3,500 feet, had one of and London, as well as our search to find I choked back laughter at the thought the finest tropical climates in the world. an anchor, something to believe in besides of the film Wynn wrote and directed in Through Robert’s contacts we found chasing money and fame. He also had a 1969. Brand X was a raunchy parody of a bungalow built in 1799 by Colonel rapport with our children Sara and Sam everyday American television. Under- Arthur Wellesley (before he became the – he teased them out of their squabbles, ground star Taylor Mead starred as the Duke of Wellington) and signed a two- romped around the house or through the host of a funky TV station. Yippie leader year lease at fifty dollars per month rent. park with them, acting as if he was four Abbie Hoffman sat in a bathtub burning The house and its ten bedrooms had been years old too. When they spent mornings American dollar bills; the immensely fat neglected for a long time but a few coats at nursery school, he came shopping with Tally Brown played a nurse making out of whitewash fixed that and for a modest me. with a sexy doctor and a talk show host- sum Wynn bought or rented everything One day we headed toward the fabric ess flirting with muscle builders. A panel necessary in the local bazaar. Robert fur- shops, only to run into a tsunami of lep- show called ‘What’s My Sex’ starred drag nished his room with exotic hangings, silk ers. Down Old Poorhouse Road they queen Candy Darling as mystery guest cushions and patterned carpets and, at one swept, in wheelchairs and in baby car-

51 riages or seated on long boards attached happy, it takes the same amount of energy.’ p-point hanging on here. I’m b-bored. to roller skates, calling to us for alms. I’d T-time to g-get back to my classes in seen lepers before, but never en masse I will always be thankful I had that special Indian dance, they make me feel really and wanted to bolt. Robert put his arm time with Nataraja. After he suffered a g-good. Karma Dev and I are going to around me and hissed, ‘Stay c-cool, they series of strokes in 1973 that time ended. have fun together.’ won’t hurt you.’ As he began tossing He stopped taking food or water and Nothing we said could change his coins and joking with them, they crowd- went into deep meditation. We were mind and, to this day, I regret that we ed around us. One, whose nose had been bereft when we heard he had died. After didn’t kidnap him or bully him into totally eaten away, noticed my stricken we got the news, I went to Robert’s room staying with us. Maybe he would still face and grinned. ‘No problem, Madame, and found him surrounded by open bags, be alive. He had learned a lot during his not to worry,’ he shouted, waving a hide- piles of clothes, musical instruments, Indian years but didn’t know how to put ous stump that had once been a hand, ‘we scrolls and icons. His eyes were morose his knowledge into practice. Without are on our way to our convention. Happy and he emanated misery. Nataraja, he was lost. leper party, happy life . . . ha, ha, ha!’ ‘I’m leaving,’ he said, throwing a pile Dear Robert, I’ll always be grateful to Happy life! I was reminded of the enig- of kurtas into a duffel bag. I sensed he you – you were the catalyst who brought matic signs we’d seen all over South India. was on the verge of a breakdown but us to India and to Nataraja Guru. You HAPPY LIFE, the billboard announced in couldn’t get him to confide in me. Per- helped transform and make our lives bet- huge red letters. We never knew if it was haps it was the presence of his handsome ter. Thank you. an advertisement for soap, cigarettes or a dancer friend Karma Dev, visiting from (Robert Fraser returned to London in the movie. For years that message blinked in Madras and lounging in a cane armchair. early 1980s and opened a second gallery in 1983, my brain, HAPPY LIFE, along with some- ‘No reason to hang around B-Bangalore – but his last years were sadly marred by chronic thing the old sage had once said: ‘You can G-Guru is gone, end of our film p-project drug and alcohol problems. He died in 1986, an make yourself miserable or make yourself and I can’t stand his d-disciples. No early British victim of AIDS.) ◊

Help Pages The Agony Uncle Alain de Botton knows how to help

You said in your last column a few weeks ago pattern of parents or lovers, who may val- responsibility for our failures, and yet if that it was silly to worry about what other peo- ue us whatever we do and however great we nevertheless continue to be hated by ple think about you; and that ‘philosophy’ can our faults. The approval of philosophers our community, we may be tempted to help you not to concern yourself with the nega- remains conditional, only that approval is adopt an approach practised by some of tive views of other people. If that’s what philos- not conditional on the whimsical criteria the greatest philosophers of the Western ophy says, then I don’t like it much! I hate the that the wider world is sometimes in dan- tradition. We may, through an un-para- idea that everyone should just ‘love themselves’ ger of applying when it allocates honour. noid understanding of the warps of the – whatever they are actually like. I lived in Indeed, there may be times when worldly value-system around us, settle for a stance California for a few years, and there people talk opinion will shower praise upon us, but of intelligent misanthropy, free of either all the time about the need to just love yourself. when an intellectual conscience demands defensiveness or pride. Well actually, I sometimes think people should that we be harsher on ourselves than oth- When we begin to scrutinize the opin- love themselves a bit less – and maybe worry a ers have been. Philosophy does not reject ions of other people rationally, philoso- bit more about criticism. Any thoughts? a hierarchy of human worth and achieve- phers have long proposed that we stand to —Maria, Edinburgh ment; it merely moves the judging proc- make a discovery that is both saddening ess inward, creating space for the thought and curiously releasing; that the views I didn’t want to suggest that the con- that the prominent communal value of the majority of the population on the demnation or censure of others is invari- system may be unfairly consigning some majority of subjects are perforated with ably undeserved; that there must always people to ignominy and others to respect- extraordinary confusion and error. Nico- be good reasons to think well of ourselves ability. And in the case of an injustice, it las Chamfort, echoing the misanthropic even when society mocks us or suggests helps us to hold on to the idea that we attitude of generations of philosophers we are mismanaging our job or our fam- may be loveable even outside the halo of before and after him, put the matter sim- ily life. the praise of others. ply: ‘Public opinion is the worst of all Leaving our assessment of our worth That said, if we have listened to well- opinions.’ to an intellectual conscience is not to be founded criticism of our behaviour, paid The reason for this defectiveness of confused with an expectation of uncon- heed to targeted anxieties about our opinion lies in the public’s reluctance ditional love. Reason does not imitate the ambitions and adopted a proper sense of to submit its thoughts to the rigours of

52 rational examination, and its reliance on wound us, we are invited first to examine ourselves? Even if these people did come intuition, emotion and custom instead. the justice of others’ behaviour. Only that to respect one, how much could this ‘One can be certain that every generally- which is both damning and true should respect ever be worth? Or, as Schopen- held idea, every received notion, will be allowed to shatter our esteem. In the hauer put the question: ‘Would a musi- be an idiocy, because it has been able to eyes of philosophers, we should halt the cian feel flattered by the loud applause of appeal to a majority,’ observed Chamfort. masochistic process whereby we seek the his audience if it were known to him that, Though it may be painful to have to approval of people before we have asked with the exception of one or two, it con- acknowledge the poverty of public opin- ourselves whether their views deserve to sisted entirely of deaf people?’ ion (for it is nice to imagine ourselves liv- be listened to; the process whereby we Philosophers’ tendency to pay little ing among thoughtful, self-critical peo- seek the love of those for whom we dis- attention to people’s views shouldn’t ple), the realization may nevertheless have cover, once we examine their minds, that imply a hatred of all humanity nor a helpful implications for our sometimes we have scant respect. We may then start complete disregard for their fellow crea- exhausting, obsessive desire to ensure that without rancour to disdain certain others tures. Misanthropes may feel intense others think well of us – a desire which as much as they disdain us – a stance of attachments to a few people they know can usher in a thin-skinned longing for which the history of philosophy is replete (or imagine they might have liked to signs of love. The approval of others with inspiring examples. know if only they had been born in the could be said to matter to us for two rea- ‘Whoever attaches much value to the right country or century); it is just that sons. Firstly it matters materially, because opinions of others pays them too much their high standards have made them inca- the neglect of the community can bring honour,’ argued Arthur Schopenhauer, pable of adhering too closely to the views with it physical discomfort and danger. a leading model of philosophical misan- of those they have to consort with day to And secondly, and in this context more thropy. In Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), day. A tender-hearted idealism combined significantly, neglect can matter to us psy- the philosopher proposed that nothing with an intellectual rigour is to blame chologically, because it may prove almost could more quickly correct our desire to for their apparent cynicism – and their impossible to retain confidence in our- be liked by others than to focus whole- related acerbic suggestions to us that we selves once others have ceased to accord heartedly on what they were actually not listen to other people. us signs of respect. We will hate ourselves like: for the most part, deeply unpleasant in response to the hatred of others, out and stupid. Schopenhauer quoted with ‘It is sometimes said of a man who lives of an embedded belief that their disdain approval Voltaire’s remark that ‘la terre est alone that he does not like society. must stem from an accurate awareness of couverte de gens qui ne méritent pas qu’on leur This is as if one were to say of a man genuine flaws within us. parle’ [the earth swarms with people who that he does not like going for walks It is chiefly in relation to this second, are not worth talking to]. because he is not fond of walking at psychological consequence of inatten- Could we really take the opinions of night in the forêt de Bondy [a place tion that the benefits of a philosophical such people so seriously? asked Schopen- outside Paris notorious for thieves and approach can be felt. Rather than let- hauer. Could we really continue to let murderers]’ ting every case of opposition or neglect their verdicts govern what we made of —Nicolas Chamfort

A Final Thought ‘I Wanna Do It’ David Shields on Tiger Woods’s transgressive streak

hat has been completely absent ten, ‘Anyone whose goal is “something this: when my daughter Natalie was three, Wfrom all the coverage of Tiger higher” must expect someday to suffer she was friends with two girls, sisters Woods’s self-destruction is even the vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? aged three and four. The older girl, Julia, slightest recognition that for all of us a No, vertigo is something other than fear ran away from her mother, for which she force for good can convert so frighten- of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness was reprimanded. The younger girl, Emi- ingly easily into a force for ill, that our below us which tempts and lures us, it is ly, asked why and was told that running deepest strengths are indivisible from our the desire to fall, against which, terrified, away was bad. ‘I wanna do it,‘ Emily said. most embarrassing weaknesses, that what we defend ourselves.’ Tiger Woods needed to demolish makes us great will inexorably get us into And the more righteous our self- the perfect marble statue he’d made of terrible trouble. Everyone’s ambition is presentation, the more deeply we yearn himself: the image of perfect rectitude. underwritten by a tragic flaw. to transgress, to fall, to fail. Because being We are shocked – shocked – that his furi- We are deeply divided animals, and bad is more interesting, more exciting, ous will to dominate on the golf course we are drawn to the creation of our own more erotic than being good. Even little also expressed itself in an insatiable will demise. As Milan Kundera has writ- children, especially little children, know to humiliate innumerable sexual part-

53 ners. We all contrive different, wonder- ails us. That fine edge gets harder and ous knowledge about the exact ratio in fully idiosyncratic and revealing ways harder to maintain. ourselves of angel to animal. to remain blind to our own blindnesses. When our difficult heroes (and all real In college, when I read Greek tragedies Richard Nixon had to undo himself, heroes are difficult) self-destruct, watch and commentaries upon them, I would because – as hard as he worked to get the us retreat and reassure ourselves that think, rather blithely, ‘Well, that tragic top – he didn’t believe he belonged there. it’s safer here close to shore, where we flaw thing is nicely symmetrical: what- Bill Clinton’s fatal charm was – is – his live. We distance ourselves from the ever makes Oedipus heroic is also –’ What charming fatality. His magnetism is his disaster, but we gawk in glee (I have did I know then? Nothing. I didn’t feel in doom; they’re the same trait. Someone studied Tiger’s sexts to and from Josyln my bones as I do now that what powers recently said to me about Clinton, ‘By all James no less assiduously than anyone our drive assures our downfall, that our accounts he could have been, should have else). We want the good in them, the birth date is our death sentence. You’re been, one of the great presidents of the gift in them, not the nastiness, or so we fated to kill your dad and marry your twentieth century, so it’s such a shame pretend. Publicly, we tsk-tsk, chastising mom, so they send you away. You live that –’ No. No. No. There’s no ‘if only’ them for their transgressions. Secretly, we with your new mom and dad, find out in human nature; it’s all one brutal feed- thrill to their violations, their (psychic or about the curse, run off and kill your real back loop: when W. was a young man, he physical) violence, because through them dad, marry your real mom. It was a setup. said to Poppy, ‘Okay, then, let’s go. Mano we vicariously renew our acquaintance You had to test it. Even though you knew a mano. Right now.’ The war on terror with our own shadow side. By detaching, it would cost you your eyes, you had to was the not-so-indirect result. though, before free fall, we preserve our do it. You had to push ahead. You had to In short, what animates us inevitably distance from death, staving off any seri- prove who you are. ◊

An Introduction to the Artist where she felt she had lost her connection with words and was asking the question: ‘How do you work when you don’t know Full Stopping how to do it?’ The answer came when she ‘found a way of working without the Simon Prosser meets Fiona Banner thing I thought I needed to work – which was words’. ere at Five Dials we are especially on a scale comparable almost to the cin- Fiona’s first full-stop sculpture was Hpartial to artists who do things with ema screen itself. a small blue dot executed in neon (the words – and Fiona Banner has long been This project culminated in 1997’s The smallest neon sign in the world), after one of our very favourites. Fresh from Nam, her thousand-page ‘supermovie in she noticed that neon signs always repro- the opening of her Tate Duveens com- words’ retelling as an unbroken narrative duced the full stop as more of a stunted mission, ‘Harrier and Jaguar’, she took six classic Vietnam movies. Published dash. Then she moved on to scaling up time out to make (delicious) Gazpacho for as a paperback so chunky that it was, as full stops from desktop publishing pro- me at her studio and to show me the lay- she says, ‘as much a sculpture as a book’, grammes and producing them as thou- outs of her project for this issue – a series it was described by one writer friend as sand-point polystyrene, and later bronze, of images of the full-stop sculptures she ‘unreadable’, which Fiona immediately sculptures – each a one-off, crafted with has been making over the last decade. converted into an ironic endorsement on great care. They explore what she calls Sitting on the sunny terrace of her stu- the poster she produced to advertise it: ‘the dumbness of not finding the right dio, surrounded by bits of fighter planes ‘The Nam, it has been described as unread- language’ – and like so much of her work ingeniously transformed into planters, able.’ they are simultaneously comic and seri- she described her evolution as an art- On finishingThe Nam she noticed ous. In situ, they punctuate the space they ist, beginning with her days in Hackney that ‘the last full stop at the end of a book are in – with the people examining them, Wick, watching and rewatching iconic is always more significant than the one or skateboarding off them, standing in for war films likeTop Gun in an attempt to at the end of the first sentence’. And so the missing words. understand and decode their fascination. began her committed and ongoing inter- The sculptures also punctuate Fiona’s Grappling with the ‘impossibility’ of the est in punctuation – ‘the in-between other artistic activities (at this point she is image, she ended up literally writing the spaces of language’. (And if there is one preparing to melt down a Tornado fighter image. And so began her extraordinary thing we at Five Dials love even more jet and to recast it in a foundry as a bell). series of handwritten, stencilled and than an artist who works with words, it And, of course, they now punctuate this printed ‘wordscapes’, transcribing in their is an artist who works with punctuation.) issue of Five Dials, for which we are very totality the action of an individual film This investigation coincided with a period grateful. ◊

54 Fig. 1. Courier. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

Courier. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

55 Fig. 2. Nuptial. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

Nuptial. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

56 Fig. 3. Avant Garde. Full Stop, steel, paint, 2003

Avant Garde. Full Stop, steel, paint, 2003

57 Fig. 4. Momento and Elephant. Full Stops, bronze, paint, 2004

Momento and Elephant. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2004

58 Fig. 5. Slipstream. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

Slipstream. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

59 Fig. 6. Playbill, Broadway and Futura. Full Stops, steel, paint, 2002

Playbill, Broadway and Futura. Full Stop, steel, paint, 2003

60 Fig. 7. Klang. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

Klang. Full Stop, bronze, paint, 2003

61 Fig. 8. Neon Full Stop. Neon, wire, transformer, 1997

Neon Full Stop. Neon, wire, transformer, 1997

62 Summer 2010. Sun burnt paper

Fig. 9. Summer 2010. Sun burnt paper 63