THE SADNESS OF CHRISTOPHER MALONEY

In an age of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act- George Orwell

Gravity’s my enemy- M.I.A

Eminem began life as a nickname. Scrawny, weak, underfed Marshall Mathers III was bullied and abused as a child. Possibly not to the extent he extolled in his wrathful, self-loathing, vicious and messianic music, but psychologically he began as M n M, a little, round, chocolate sweetie.

The game has changed. In fact, it’s not that the game has changed, it’s that a new level of transparency has burst free into the everyday language of the post-digital age. Opinions are commodity, your followers are your bank balance and a RT is worth ten points. A favourite means that you have tweeted something of (at that instance) serious value to your audience. However, there is no way of knowing whether or not they are using that favourite (yes, I know it’s spelt favorite but I’m English) to use your information as commodity either against you or to create a matrice of tweets to promote some other scheme. Get it? Good.

I missed therapy today. Overslept by five hours. Last night I was so doped up on Promethazine (an over the counter Valium derivative) that I was tripping out nicely and enjoying my mild hallucinations of the fairy lights on my wall twinkling and undulating like silkworms. I tweeted, I wrote some notes, I watched YouTube and put on my very own concert of videos on my feed. Adele’s Skyfall should, by rights, win the Oscar for Best Song. Her critical and street credit could not be higher, and whilst I don’t particular listen to 21 often (it’s a little bland) I do respect that she is a great pop musician and I like her. And that’s enough. Skyfall is her masterpiece, and I don’t think she’ll ever write a better song about the devastating break-up that influences her art. All pain is subjective.

I’m not sure too many people are following this blog (and for those who have purchased this as a book, it began in October 2012 as a way of making sense of an ex-girlfriend’s suicide, and was continued until I found an ending) and frankly, that doesn’t matter too much. I will tweet this link once, and only once, and whilst nobody ever reacts to my writing directly, I hope that if you are reading this you are not too put off by the navel gazing. I’m currently high on Promethazine, so I think this is totally awesome and trippy.

On Saturday I went for a walk in the woods with Raf and tried to explain Bisociation to him. I like walking in the woods. It gives inspiration for the huge haunted house novel I am outlining.

“Okay,” I said. “Bisociation is the interlinking of two previously incompatible frames of reference. Like uh,” I avoided a puddle, handed my tobacco to him so he could roll me a cigarette, “insects and military intelligence.”

“English, bruv.”

“That is English.”

He grinned. “Please continue.”

“Okay,” I said, pulling up my hood, “What do you call a paranoid wasp?”

“What?”

“KGB.”

Raf smiled, “Hey, that’s pretty good!”

“And that,” I said, taking the cigarette and lighting it, “feeling of mild euphoria, of epiphany, of revelation, that feeling is Bisociation.”

Raf considered this. “Sometimes you chat so much shit, but that was pretty good.”

“Both my parents were teachers,” I smile, exhaling.

I booked another ticket for The Shining: US Extended Edition at the BFI since I auto-suggestively passed out the last time. All the hip, fashionable “scene” makers were laughing the whole way through which was too much for my fragile constitution to take. This time round I had to wait two hours and borrow a smart phone off a couple of bouncy gay fashionati (the type who think simulating oral sex on each other in public is just too hip and spend their time writing letters to Europe and hanging in the coolest bars in Soho) so I could call the fifty year old manic depressive I was randomly going with. He had had a serious coke habit for years, and consoled his failures to become a cross between Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick by reading Aleister Crowley’s poetry and transcribing old mix tapes onto CD. He turned up eventually, wearing a leather jacket with the word REAL painted onto it, some scarves and a cowboy hat. We went outside and picked fag butts off the floor, and I accidentally hit up a joint somebody had tossed. The screening was in NFT1 as opposed to NFT3. NFT3 is better. It’s the one they use for the premieres since the front row is far enough back from the screen to see it clearly. We had front row seats in NFT1, but nicked the seats from two intellectualti before the lights went down, making it impossible for them to kick us out. I didn’t auto-suggestively pass out this time. I had watched a documentary about Kubrick which showed footage of him playing chess against Shelley Duvall and anticipating her first eight moves. I actually like the Extended Edition more. It will be a cold day in hell before it comes onto BluRay, so I’ll keep seeing it every time it reappears after its decade absences. It’s a treat, and I’ve been dreaming about it every night since, including last night. Marilyn Manson once said that he believed dreams were “time travel”. I like that idea.

A.W.M 05/12/2012

LOST IN THE EMPIRE

It is when Nana and Joan of Arc exist in the same flesh, or Boris Karloff and Bing Crosby, that the abysses of insanity are under the fog at every turn…

…Anyone else, man or woman, who contained such opposite personalities within his body would be ferociously mad. It is her transcendence of these opposites into a movie star that is her triumph (even as the work she does will eventually be our pleasure), but how transcendent must be her need for a man ready to offer devotion and services to both the angel and the computer.

-Marilyn, Norman Mailer

I really like Matthew Modine. Kubrick saw his brilliance and tenderness and his performance as Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket is the most human in any of the master’s masterpieces. After I threw up the morning Magic FM told me that there had been a shooting in a cinema in Colorado showing The Dark Knight Rises (in which Modine co-stars), I tweeted him to tell him of my horror and grief. He tweeted back a photo of a victory sign and the words:

It’s all good Andrew #TweetPeace

My Dad was a member of a video club in the early 90’s for a while. It was half-hearted, but we had a few good ones. Hamburger Hill, Mississippi Burning, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket. They tended toward big budget intellectual exercises, and he instilled in me a love for Hollywood in a time of industry grunge chic. I started watching the Oscars the year Pulp Fiction was released, even though I was surprised that Jim Carrey wasn’t nominated for The Mask. I genuinely was. I bet fifty pee to a mate of mine, back when fifty pee was a lot of dough. It was inexplicable. How could Jim Carrey not get nominated? It was amazing, his performance. Secretly it turned me on.

I unfollowed 1500 people on the 5^th of December, and then slept for 24 hours. I have lost 200 followers because of my actions, people who were only following me so that I would follow them, the reason I followed them in the first place.

The vast majority of them were indie, self-pubbed writers. Believe me, there is nobody duller on Twitter than an indie, self-pubbed writer.

I was back on the ward today for my injection. I didn’t bother bringing my sunglasses this time, since I understand now that the nurse gets off on the invasion and I didn’t want her thinking that I respected her. One of the care workers had helped me tidy the flat before I went, even going so far as to throw out both my tobacco and my Royal Mail card that I needed in order to pick up the wheelie suitcase my mum had ordered for me. Huh. Straight after the horse faced skank had jabbed me up (I forget her name) I bumped into Dr Ghosh as I awkwardly sauntered to the smoking pod.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.

“You’re looking well, Andrew!”

“Had 402 views of my YouTube video. Me, one take, singing Rockin’ In The Free World.”

“Oh yes,” he smiled, “that’s an easy one to play, isn’t it. Who was it again, who wrote it?”

“Neil Young.”

“Yes, thirty years ago, right? Yes, it’s just three chords.”

“Difficult to sing, though,” I replied, grinning.

“I’m sure it is! Great to see you looking so well.”

“You too,” I replied, and put my earphones in, feeling used and worthless in a totally punk rock way.

A friend of the girl who hung herself was smoking a cigarette just outside the pod, and therefore inside the ward, next to a woman with Alzheimer’s who has a habit of self-inflicted head injuries. Inside the pod was a South African murderer that I met in the Secure Unit. He was wearing the hospital pyjamas, trembling from the medication, his head bowed, moaning about his mother. I lit up and put on Rape Me by Nirvana, ignoring his babbling and working out linguistic motifs I could study for this book. If you ever do get sectioned, then my only word of advice that actually matters? Don’t talk to the ones in pyjamas… 

There seem to be quite a few conspiracy theories revolving around YouTube about James Holmes and The Dark Knight Rises massacre. I tried watching one of them, but they were all so poorly made. The editing was like something out of an Alan Smithee movie and whilst I know for a fact the filmmakers felt their efforts to be transcendentally profound and hip, their utilization of sombre voice over intercut with Hans Zimmer’s score and sinister photos of Barack Obama made me understand the ache inherent in their lack of cinematic talent. As for the movie itself? I bought it today for £15.99 in a BP Garage just by Blue Leaves House, after a dull three hours on Pynchon Ward. I had the dubious honour of getting the Word Conundrum, an anagram puzzle they leave on a white board daily. The answer? CELEBRATE. I thought the movie was pretty good. Wally Pfister’s cinematography was exquisite, a deep cornucopia of blues and browns. The editing was stately and mannered, the direction epic and tender by turns. The script had a few unintentionally gigglesome moments, especially when Morgan Freeman had to explain the hugely complex plot to the audience, which he does better than any actor in cinema history. All in all it was a reverent, rich, wonderful failure, that was as self-adoring as the worst of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and nearly as homoerotic. According to a recent tweet by Bret Easton Ellis (who was at an Official Academy Screening) it won’t win. Too self-indulgent and now too scarred with abnormality and horror for the film to win much of anything. The movie set out to be the most profound and important movie of 2012. It is, but for all the wrong reasons…

A.W.M 07/12/2012 

MICHAEL CROSSAN AND WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEING PRETENTIOUS?

The ride's over, did you enjoy yourself?- Leech, Incubus

If you can imagine that I have a following outside of Twitter, and presuppose that even though all you have done is click on a siren wailing link that invites you to a blog that has so far seen suicide, psychiatric medical injections, crack, dominatrixes, police stop and searches, rapists, murderers and numerous references to former enfant terrible Bret Easton Ellis, imagine now that I very likely have more enemies than friends. (And I apologize for that sentence by the way, it went on for far too long to be rhythmically acceptable.) 

In 2010 a friend of mine told a friend of mine that Bret Easton Ellis was doing a book signing promoting Imperial Bedrooms in London. That friend told me. I had spent the past three years inside a room in a house for psychiatric patients (including a huge, boss eyed, illiterate violent criminal who had been conceived through the forced incest at gunpoint of a brother and sister) living on eighty pounds a week. I was not allowed to drink alcohol, and there were daily spot checks to search my room for contraband. This didn't stop me seguing into a brief spell of heroin addiction with another inmate, but it did result in the police being called (and searching my room for contraband) if I had a friend over past 11pm. Owing to these circumstances, the lack of money, the horrible living conditions, the company of monsters and the nightly supervised medication, eventually I was just left to my isolation. In the four years I spent there, my dad never visited once, and if I traveled to their mansion in Chislehurst I was shouted out if I dared to mention writing. "I don't know any other twenty seven year olds who only talk about their books," my mother would hiss, as if that had won the argument.
Meeting Bret Easton Ellis was suddenly a ray of light in my squalid purgatory. Speaking of which, my window faced out on a wall. I lived four years in that cell. The window didn't open any wider than three inches. My walls were covered in song lyrics and abstract matrices of plots and dialogue for the novel I had been battling with since I was 17 about a school shooting in Orpington in 2001. I had amassed thousands of pages on my computer, and had only written and subsequently self-published my 2009 debut Smoking Is Cool because I had become so obsessive about the other one, I needed perspective. But when Smoking Is Cool suddenly became a literal paperback with an ISBN number and a barcode, I thought I had found a way out of the NHS psychiatric system. I sent review copies to ten magazines (all I could afford), gleefully expecting film rights and thousands upon thousands of pounds for my efforts. Three magazines responded. The New Statesman wished me the best of luck with it. The Literary Review (who are now blocking me on Twitter) wrote that it clearly had a lot going for it. Empire sent it back with a post-it note. And then the NHS forced me to withdraw it from publication. I had used real names of patients, locations and doctors. They wrote me a strange letter which stated that since they controlled my finances, they needed to look out for my best interests by banning the book, since they didn't want me to suffer when they sued me.

Bret Easton Ellis is the most well connected writer in Hollywood. After I met him (I was first in line after waiting five hours, but let two groupies go first after my wild monologue to two bankers in the queue started to piss them off) I went off with my signed copy of Lunar Park to a nearby coffee shop to observe my prize. I had him sign it on the front because I didn't want him to see what I had written on the inside cover, which I will now transcribe:

Dear Dad, as you can tell from its battered, much read appearance, this is my personal copy. The best American novel of the 21st century so far. But don't take my word for it... Lots of love, Merry Xmas, Andrew xxx

I was going to write something about a hotshot middle aged writer who is inexplicably blocking me on Twitter despite having had no contact with me, but he's too busy lost in his schizophrenia and I don't want to upset him. Michael something. I dunno. I'm sure he'll win a Booker Prize one of these days, LOL!

SEX AND THE DARK KNIGHT RISES MASSACRE

Psychiatric Wards are filled with people who dabbled in the Occult...- THE EXORCIST, WILLIAM PETER BLATTY

Ready or not/Here I come- READY OR NOT, THE DELFONICS

---------------------

My mind has been a bit muddled since I auto-suggestively passed out during the US Extended Cut of Kubrick's "The Shining" at the BFI a couple of weeks ago. I'm currently writing this on a battered A5 pad that is covered in words that may have meant something to me when I wrote them, but now seem like the ramblings of a schizoid split personality. I'm on the train to Beckenham Junction to give a tenner to Dr Ian Carstairs, who, like me, sees themselves as a professional psychiatric patient. Like me, he doesn't own a credit card, and since he's already booked his ticket for "The Shining" at the BFI on Sunday he's heading up to Embankment later to score me a seat. If something frightens me, I do it until I no longer feel that fear. I'm letting Kubrick into my head once again. Sitting opposite me, trying to ignore my thoughtful gaze (hey, I'm writing and I could be writing about him, which I am) is a twenty something professional wearing state of the art Dr Dre headphones and reading a copy of The Guardian dressed in a cheap but fashionable suit. Earlier today I was at a mate's house, who used to sell his body for alcohol. He detoxes for a month or two then gets back on it. Last night he interviewed me on camera, and then I passed out, and he made a drunken video of himself asking himself questions he would never dare to do were he in company and/or sober. I've been trying to hype up David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis" to whoever I can, but my mate found it boring. I guess it's that rare beast, the sort of major studio release that can only appeal to people who read for pleasure. Above my seat is an NSPCC advert warning that 75,000 children will be on the streets this Christmas.

-------------------

"Is that your therapist face then?" I asked my therapist, feeling uneasy since she'd just asked me about my father and I had told her that when his mother died of cancer the day before my seventh birthday I still went out for a party at FunWorld and he told mum that he didn't think I cared.
"I was seven," I told my therapist. "I didn't know anything. Seven year olds don't understand anything."
"Are you comfortable talking about this?" That face again.
"Do you have something you want to tell me? A theory?"
She put on her therapist face again. I looked up at the clock. Forty minutes left. I started to imagine what she would look like naked.

----------------

Being totally transparent (Post-Empire is the fashionable phrase) then being on an acute psychiatric ward is like being on acid. They never get any more ordered, and they never, ever make any sense of any kind. You can act as normal, sane and ordered as you want, but you don't matter in there, and the only way out is to blag it to the psychiatrist, who holds all of the cards. Admitting bisexuality is a good one, or admitting some dark sexual abuse in your past, bullying at school, some delicious little trauma that you spin to satiate their innate and vicious optimism. I've just been told I can't fire my care worker. By my care worker. Who has just turned up on my doorstep to drive me to Blue Leaves House to receive my depot injection of Olanzapine, which slows down my thinking and helps me ingratiate easier into the wide and wonderful world.
"So I can't fire you?"
"No."
I'm struggling here. "So, are you a Reichian? Probably not. A Jungian? Or are you a Freud man?"
My care worker smiles. "Freud, Andrew. Freud."
I sigh. "Did you know that the word 'Columbine' is on phone predictive text?"

---------------------------

I'm wearing a red and brown striped top with two hundred pound Osiris sunglasses on talking to a psychiatric nurse called Fulden ("pronounced Ful-Dan") who is a pretty young thing from Turkey with a streak of pure malice that she manages to disguise from her family, I'm assuming, since she obviously feels some kind of horror at her status in this world, like they all do.
"So," she says. "What's your name?"
"You haven't heard of me? I'm famous on Pynchon Ward."
"Well," she says, "not that famous, I've never heard of you."
"So is this a problem with your training then?" I smile, adjusting my sunglasses. She can't help but feel exposed, and shoots me an awkward smile straight out of "Misery" that explains her position: You don't understand what pain is, Mister Man...
"Andrew!" I turn, and see Holly smiling at me with a look of sheer delight.
"I was just asking Fulden if she could define irony, Holly," I say, standing up.
"The injection is ready and waiting for you, I'm so glad you're being mature about all this."
I wish I had a gun. Although my debut novel "Smoking Is Cool", which was totally misread by everybody who read it, was written quickly in order that I would never have to murder a psychiatric nurse. I stand up, and Fulden looks orgasmic since she knows they're about to inject me. They live for this, these skanky farm girls who seek male weakness like a shark seeks human blood. The injection is administered into the buttock of your choice. It always hurts, but what's worse is the knowledge that everybody but you finds it utterly hilarious. I'm led into the medical room. Sarah, the head matron of Pynchon Ward has the injection laid out.
"Do you want to watch my YouTube video?" I ask.
"Andrew," Holly says, and I can almost see her salivate. The internet is filled with hidden sites that advertise the needle fetish of these lost souls.
"So, which side, Andrew?" Sarah asks, closing the door. Sarah is tall and plain, with greasy skin and bad dress sense. They would be lesbians if they didn't enjoy dominating men so much. I adjust my sunglasses, feeling the sheer pointlessness of any words.
"You're killing me with kindness," I sigh, "right side." I undo my belt, slide my trousers down.
"Sharp scratch!" The needle catches a nerve and they take longer than usual to withdraw the needle. Anybody can get sectioned. For anything. At any time. 
"Fuckit," I grimace, and Holly pats my arse and says:
"Don't swear, Andrew," she chides, and I turn round, in a brief moment of excruciating pain.
"You don't know why you enjoy this, do you Holly?"
"I'm helping you, Andrew. You're so talented!"
I do up my belt, feeling worn and used.
"It's a sex thing, Holly," I say, taking off my sunglasses. "That's all this is. It's a sex thing for you."

A.W.M 28/11/2012

JAMES DEEN AND THE MYSTICAL, MAGICAL STRUCTURE

I fight the ones that fight me- M.I.A

----------------------

I used to have a recurring dream where I died and went to hell. I went there so many times that I learnt that its geography, whilst consistent, was as abstract and illogical as the Overlook Hotel.

Last Friday me and Raf went up town to see the US Extended Edition of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" at the BFI. By the time we made it to Clockhouse (made semi-famous by Mike Skinner in a photo in his first Streets album) I'd been awake for twenty five hours. Dressed in the height of grunge hoody chic, I didn't spot the policeman who followed us down to the London train. We'd both bought coffees, wandering far down the platform, and I was expounding on the circular narrative of the movie and how it gets scarier the more times you watch it, when the PC smiled and walked over to us.
"Alright fellas," he said, "how's things?"
Raf looked uneasy.
"Yeah, not bad, not bad," I grinned.
"I like to see who's out and about," the PC said. I noted his thick Irish accent. "Y'know, make sure everybody's okay."
"You're Irish," I said.
"Oh yeah, oh yeah, I am." He had a strange smile on his face.
"Have you been to County Wicklow?" I asked. "I have family there. You know Bray Head? The hill with the cross?"
"Oh yeah, beautiful down there. In the south." There was a hint of menace in his emphasis. "Lovely people. In the south. So, I think.... do I know you from somewhere? You seem awfully familiar! You haven't been doing anything you shouldn't? Come on fellas," he sighed, "let's get out of the rain so I can take your details. Just to be on the safe side..."
He took down our names and addresses and told us he'd be in touch. On the train to Waterloo East we were subdued. We both felt a little dirty.

--------------

"I recorded a video," I tell Holly. Holly is the girl who works at Blue Leaves House, she's popped into the outreach centre and I'm passing the ten minutes before therapy with a little bit of shameless self-promotion. Holly is the girl who administers my depot injection. It's difficult outwardly flirting with somebody who asks you to undo your belt, slide down your trousers giggles and says, "sharp scratch!" just before the needle catches a nerve. It always hurts. Afterwards she usually pats my arse before I have to wait three hours on the ward to ensure that I don't have a heart attack. It's romantic in an awkward kinda way.
"It's had 130 hits in six days," I say. There is a nervous looking hoody seated opposite. I clock him for mother issues. It's the old classic. 
"You should be due for your injection soon," she replies, blushing a little. My therapist pops out of the door.
"Thanks for waiting, are you ready Andrew?"
"I'll be down today," I say to Holly, standing up.
"Brilliant," Holly says, adjusting her glasses as I smile and follow my therapist into room 13.
"Back once again for the renegade master," I sigh, taking a seat, assuming the position. Legs open but crossed at the ankle, hands behind my head, eyes open but with no contact.
"I recorded a video," I tell her.
"Wow. Of what?"
"Me singing. One take. Live recording of Rockin' In The Free World. It's up on YouTube. It's had 130 hits."
"Impressive."
"I also seem to wake up earlier nowadays. My sleep pattern is reconfiguring."
"Which is a good thing. We talked last week about...self harm."
I slide up my hoody. The scars are healing.
"Looks sore," she says.
"They're superficial. Cut to bring blood. Ritualistic. They'll fade before Spain."
"So you're going? I thought you were undecided."
"I've sent off for my passport. I do need a holiday."
"Yes, it's been quite a year for you."
I make the briefest of eye contact.
"In the secure unit the rules are different than in prison. I've never been to prison so I have no real frame of reference in literal terms. Only from the prison memoirs I've read and serious films. Like Scum, or Animal Factory, Chopper, Bronson, the good ones. We talked a lot about Chopper and Bronson in the secure unit."
"What were the conclusions?"
I look above her head to the bookshelves of psychiatric textbooks.
"Some kid in there wanted to start a riot after we watched Chopper. Somebody else told me that Bronson was pure evil and should never be released. Yet another thought that Bronson and Chopper brought it on themselves. The head loonie referred to himself as a Jewish Nazi and always wore a top hat and cloak. He used to trick people into drinking his piss."
"No!"
"He tricked me too."
"God," my therapist says.
"I thanked him," I continue, making eye contact. "It was a useful lesson. The day before they discharged him I told him that I did everything with my family in the back of my mind. I couldn't allow myself to lose my battles because I thought it would hurt them. Do you want to know what he said?"
"Go on..."
I smile. "You'll win."

-------------

After a coffee in our local West End Costa's, me and Raf were walking to the BFI to queue up for standby tickets to "The Shining".
"That was weird," I said. The Christmas lights were up. Smart dressed girls in mink coats and pretty hats.
"The stop and search. Yeah. He did it in a really horrible way. It's how they do it."
"I mean," I said, lighting a cigarette, "I've only been arrested once. But I was strip searched. It wasn't registered on my file."
Suddenly Raf stopped a tall, slightly grungy guy with Dr Dre headphones in.
"Mate, Shipwrecked! I know you!"
The guy removed his earphones, looking nervous.
"Excuse me?"
"You were in Shipwrecked! Wow!"
"Umm," the guy said.
"Nah, what's your name?"
"Laurence Fox?"
"Yeah! I seen you in something! Wicked, yeah, Laurence Fox!"
Laurence Fox shook his hand and walked away quickly.
"Who was that? What's Shipwrecked?"
Raf looked pleased with himself. "Shipwrecked is like T.O.W.I.E for rich people."
"Was he on it?"
"Nah, he's an actor. Downton Abbey I think. Or that one... Minder is it?"
"Starfucker," I sighed, exhaling.

---------------

"I saw The Shining on Friday," I tell my therapist. "At the BFI."
"Ooh, I love The Shining!"
"Yeah but get this," I grin, "it was the US extended version. There was like half an hour extra footage. Freaked the hell out of me. And all the audience were fashionati, people who only do as others do in order to fit into a transgender scene. They were laughing..."
"Oh dear."
"I don't think I've ever been more unsettled in a cinema. And I kept nodding off and hallucinating that Jack Nicholson was wearing glasses. In all the new footage... dunno. It was like Stanley Kubrick had planned this release posthumously just to fuck with me. There's this weird bit at the end with skeletons and cobwebs. And people were laughing... I mean the key theme," I adjust my glasses, "is the loss of a sense of time. They keep hitting you with random TUESDAYS, and THURSDAYS, and MONDAYS, and it's just done to inspire to you the idea that time isn't real. I swear it was auto-suggestive-hypnosis. I've been obsessed with that film for nearly twenty years."

------------

I was standing in the BFI standby ticket queue with M.I.A pumping in my earphones, trying to ignore the clerks making snide comments about me with his boyfriend. The night before I had released my YouTube video, and an Occult Publisher who've been toying with me for years now wanted me to record a music video naked.
I think it would be great for you, Andrew...

-------------

When I was nine (and I remember it vividly, it was a TUESDAY or a THURSDAY I think) I saw a spider fighting with a worm. The spider was lashing out at a trapped worm in the dirt under the climbing frame in my best mate's house. 

------------

"Time's up," my therapist says. "And I'm not sure you should."
"Record a music video naked?" I ask.
"I don't know if it would be a good...idea."
I smile. "It seems to be what people want, nowadays. And there I was thinking I was a serious novelist."
"Can you do Wednesday next week? No, Thursday. Actually no, Tuesday is better."

-------------

On screen two little girls were staring at Danny. 
"Come and play with us, Danny. Forever...and ever... and ever..."
All I could hear was laughter as I drifted into sleep, returning to the recurrent nightmares that take me on occasion... I woke up. Laughter. Applause. We wander out of the cinema, past a bar full of men dressed as women.
"Great party," one of them says.

A.W.M 21/11/2012

www.twitter.com/pynchonward

PLAN B AND THE DECONSTRUCTION OF POST-EMPIRE

"I'm not in love, but I'm gonna fuck you, til somebody better, comes along"- USER FRIENDLY, Marilyn Manson

-------

So I'm in Waterstones in Bromley killing an hour before therapy. I'm dressed how I usually dress, fashionable in a grunge meets hoody chic meets one step up from homeless way. iPod soundtrack? On the bus I was listening to a remix album by Infected Mushroom and now I'm vibing to "Things Done Changed" by Notorious B.I.G lazily browsing the True Crime section for something that leaps out at me. As is my wont I flick through the Charlie Bronson books, reading ten or so pages of a guide to surviving prison, a Michelin Guide for the darkest dungeons in Blighty. I was obsessive about Australian prison writer Mark Brandon Read's "Chopper" books until "Chopper 7: Empire of the Gun" which just seemed like he'd written it drunk in an hour. It disappointed me enough to write him a snarky (and exceptionally elaborate) email. His next book was called "A Fool and His Toes Are Soon Parted". I was paranoid for a while thinking he'd taken my message to heart. Fuckit. At least I'd be famous for something, huh? Anyway. I love Waterstones in Bromley. They've smartened it up, more space for the platter of information, giving credence to the inevitability of the digital age with its Kindle store nestled smartly in a booth of its own. I glide to the Philosophy section, flick through the new Jon Ronson since he investigates in this new epic a school shooting plot in Alaska, and I can only salivate over the awkward questions he'll pose. Nobody died, we can laugh. I hate having no money when I'm in a book shop. I head up the escalator, saunter through The Glades checking out a few girls and buy a Relentless with the change from my cigarettes. The Glades opened in 1990. It made the town. Family trips to Bromley would end with a Rainbow Cookie from the Cookie Jar, a Bon Jovi album on tape and if I was lucky, a trip to Game. I fondly remember the days of narrative computer puzzles, of floppy discs and point and click classics like "Space Quest", "Monkey Island" and "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis". I whacked up my parent's phone bill secretly calling up the helplines at two fifty per minute. These games defined Easters, Birthdays, Christmases, Weekends, My Dreams, defined my sense of narrative and my obsession with artistic immersion. I remember a "Space Quest" guidebook written sometime in the early nineties and taking my battered copy into school, reading aloud in the playground and denoting it a 'bible of the future'. I got some stick for that. A few dead arms. Didn't matter. I knew I was right.
On the 354 to Penge I flick to Magic FM to hear the news. As the newscaster wryly explains that ReThink are calling for an overhaul of psychiatric institutions regarding the savage and deadening treatment of schizophrenics, I feel like some kind of benevolent prophecy has been fulfilled. I put "Things Done Changed" back on, trying to stop myself from giggling.
Bromley segues into Beckenham and cruises down to the dirty, effervescently unhappy streets of Penge. Memories of getting ripped off by bolshy coke dealers, almost beaten senseless by coked up lords of the manor, I switch to Bloc Party's "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)" as I step off at the top of Maple Road (site of a botched shooting on Friday, February 13th 2009, the day "Bronson" launched Tom Hardy to superstardom). This is where I saw her last. She was walking down from the house I lived in for four years with the dregs of the area, sex offenders and sex abuse victims and young offenders and supervised medication and eighty quid a week with no way of getting out except to learn to embrace the patience of isolation. Her weight fluctuated on a loop. She dressed like a boy and wore her hood up. Fresh scars were a constant. She simply ran out of space to cut.

---------

"Oh, I didn't realize it was so warm in here," my therapist says as we enter the conference room. They say it is spaces and familiar smells, not the places themselves that bring deja vu. I feel like I am in the science block of my secondary school, the new buildings they erected after a grant from the government. That fresh paint and cheap carpet smell. She opens the tiny windows, offers me a seat.
"Arms, no arms, do you care?"
I take an armless seat and smile as an answer. Unlike previous botched attempts at therapy, there is no awkward silence.
"Have you seen "Ill Manors"?" I ask. "The Plan B film?"
She removes her pad. "I almost forgot," I say, "you've been taking notes."
"I haven't seen it. Is he good in it?"
"The young buck wrote and directed it."
"Any good?"
I assume my therapy pose, arms behind my head, no eye contact, legs apart but crossed at the ankle.
"You know those stop motion, is it stop motion? You know, shots of London sped up so it becomes dark and the lights stream within about ten seconds?"
"Yes, they do that a lot, don't they?"
"I think it's the first thing they teach you at film school."
"Was it a good film?"
I clench my fists, unclench. "Nope. The dude watched "Pulp Fiction" and thought he was a Godardian auteur based on hype and hyperbole. He raps throughout, just to let us understand for damn sure this is his movie. That he directed it. And wrote it. And presented it. And did all the songs. Which," I reconsider, "does actually make him an auteur."
She grins.
"Have you seen David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis"?"
"Hmm, he did "Naked Lunch". We talked about Burroughs."
"Insect dreams, yes. Like in "Oldboy". They occur when dissociation has occurred. When you no longer feel a position of any status within society. But I'm a little obsessed with "Cosmopolis". It's made me realize the appeal of R-Pax."
She notes this down, and then stops and says: "Who?"
"Robert Pattinson. You know, English pretty boy, the vampire tabloid fetish of unhappy thirteen year old girls."
"The "Twilight" guy?"
"The bastard mistress of E.L James. Stephanie Myers gave birth to a monster. "Fifty Shades of Grey" has just been nominated for the National Book Award. Fun never stops."
She puts her hand up gently. "Okay, so how are you? Maybe we could backtrack a little. It's a bit of show and tell again, isn't it? Empire? Post-Empire? That was...Empire."
I smile. I like how she tracks my past sessions. All the other therapists just wanted me to tell them how big/small my penis was.
"I self-harmed yesterday."
"Oh dear. How bad?"
"It's a control thing. Ritualized, superficial cuts. To offset suicidal thoughts." I roll up my sleeve. "I like how red they are."
"They look like somebody's scratched you. They're quite...artistic? That might not be the right word."
"That's what happens when you attempt to break the form of language. The study of linguistic semantics. Slicing words. Slicing and breaking structure. The quantum mathematics of poetry. It's...dangerous."
"Empire? Post-Empire?"
"Post-Empire. Which isn't much comfort."
"Okay, let's backtrack again. We were talking about suicidal thoughts. What kind of thoughts?"
My eyes meet hers for the briefest of instants.
"I was going to hang myself on Christmas Day."

----------

If this were a Plan B movie we'd cut to a shot of London all sped up and lights shimmering and then some girl would get shot after whoring herself for crack and he'd be rapping about the problems of all girl gangs beating each other up for their Blackberrys and then shotting weed for guns and wideboy Nazis would be slicing up the faces of the dead girl and then Plan B would pop up and rap, "Oi, dis is real life bra, respect the hoody, I'll chib ya get me rich boy blah blah uh, cunt!" and then I'd be back in my parent's house aged 17 wearing black nail varnish and a Bloodhound Gang Hates You T-shirt and Kate would be looking nubile and hot with sex and my Dad would be ignoring me to offset his sexual angst and then Plan B would cap Kate, jerk off over the body and say "Word up, get off my estate! I'll release the hounds," and it will then be Friday the 13th of April 2001 where I say to Kate "I love you, I just don't like you," and she'd run out crying and Plan B would pop up and say, "who needs actions when you got words, sponsored by Plan B Productions," and I'll be too numb to notice he's patented a line from suicide icon Kurt Cobain. LOL. I love therapy...

--------------

A.W.M 14/11/2012

DOMINATRIX

This is not an exit- AMERICAN PSYCHO, Bret Easton Ellis

---------

Yes. I have had sex with a professional dominatrix. Although, in hindsight, it wasn’t quite how I was expecting it to be. It wasn’t as systematic and well thought out as the scenes on Kink (and yes, if you’ve bought this book, you know exactly what I’m talking about) but it was a good experience. Painful, but good, nonetheless.

I’ll let your minds wander for a while as I exercise a little Post-Empire for my previous readers which include American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis.

As far as I can recall, I was not sexually abused as a child. I was an altar boy at my local Catholic Church, though. I enjoyed the ritual and mystical aspects of the incense and candles and the parading of the cross. I used to know the structure of the Catholic mass off by heart. I took my first Holy Confession when I was about seven or eight. What did I confess? I wasn’t too sure what to confess. I hadn’t really ever done anything. I told the priest (it was held in the staff room of my Catholic primary school) that I had told my sister to shut up. I think I had to recite a Hail Mary. How did I feel afterwards? A little used. The priest (who I won’t name) wound up having an affair with a married teacher at the school, which gave the local newspapers something to write about. She ended up dying of a brain tumour after giving birth to his child. God got his own back in the end. As funny as this sounds to Atheists (they have quite a heightened sense of irony) sometimes I think about him. He must have felt like it was a divine punishment. How could he not have even entertained that possibility? The carnal pleasures of the flesh that robbed him of his relationship with God ends with a baby and the death of the only woman he’d probably ever touched. It was one of the many secrets that my primary school kept close within its ranks. Reminds me of the time when there had been a prowler on the grounds. My sister (nine years old) was talking about it, and I was happily reaching the final level of Super Mario on the Gameboy.

“Mum, what’s rake?” She asked. “There’s a raker at school.”

Mum cleared her throat. “Rape.”

I paused the game. “What’s a raper then, mummy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” my sister said. “What’s a raper?”

It’s funny thinking back on this, because I’ve actually known quite a few rapists. I recently was released from The Tarn in Woolwich, a secure psychiatric unit. Everybody else in there, all the ‘clients’ as they’re called, were serious sexual and violent offenders. Except me. I was there for self-harm. I sliced up my arms with the smashed mirror in my room in Green Parks House, Farnborough, the acute ward I know better than anybody. The day before six nurses had tried to kill me with a forced overdose of Olanzapine and Lorazepam. They laughed at me as my mouth started to involuntarily close from the medication. When I wouldn’t bow down to their dominance, I was shipped off in a blackened box in the back of a police van to the secure unit. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. I had had a nervous breakdown after the Dark Knight Rises massacre in Colorado. I vomited after I had the horrifying inspiration that maybe James Holmes had read my first novel. I decided to punish myself and forced my mother to drive me to Green Parks. I thought I would get them to kill me if I acted like a violent psychopath. I am not a violent psychopath. But my performance was clearly convincing enough to inspire laughter from their end as I lay on the floor of the doctor’s office and the medication started to kick in, whispering a line from Marilyn Manson’s Born Villain:

“You don’t even want to know what I’m gonna do to you now..”

*

I pop outside for a cigarette. Me and Raf have gone to London to see The Shining at the BFI in Embankment and are killing time in a Costas in the West End. I am listening to Ready to Die by Notorious B.I.G, dressed in the height of non-fashion with cheap Reebok Classics, no-make jeans, a few hoodies and a ten quid beanie. Window shopping rich girls and getting uneasy looks (which of course pleases me) from up-market businessmen and middle class kids suffering the latest fashion craze with floppy hair, ironic T-shirts, oversized fluorescent sneakers and pipe-cleaner trousers. It seems that Generation Wuss (as Bret Easton Ellis has dubbed the new crop of ‘talent’) genuinely believe wearing Dr Dre headphones will actually help them crack the music industry. They’re still unaware that the music industry ceased to exist in the late nineties and is now a fully-fledged, fully operational entertainment industry, and it doesn’t matter how many plays you get on your MySpace/Soundcloud account, it all depends on how many cocks you suck or how easy you are to sell. Saying that though, if you crack YouTube you’re pretty much guaranteed a few thousand record sales. There is nothing genuine. There is nothing real. There is only commercial savvy and an ability to swallow your ego. Nobody is bigger than the competition. It’s an X Factor world. Deal with it. It’s the age of Justin Bieber, not Jeff Buckley. I can’t see that changing any time soon, if ever. We’re so atomised we’re not only a post-digital age, but a post-dating and (tragically) post-literature age as well. Out of the crowd I see a tall, distinguished man with a grey beard, prominent nose, iPod earphones in and a haunted look in his eyes. I realise it’s Stephen Fry. His fashion is impeccable, the sort of fashion that actually is high fashion, tailor made suits, three thousand pound scarf, shoes that cost more than my annual benefit income. I inhale on my cigarette, smiling wryly as he purposefully heads on toward Piccadilly Circus. I once read in an interview with Clint Eastwood that said he never slows down in a crowd, especially if he’s noticed. It’s funny. Stephen Fry is blocking me on Twitter. He looks good though, he’s lost weight, poor lamb. I finish my cigarette and wander back downstairs to Raf who’s fiddling with his Blackberry in the back corner. I pour myself another cup of breakfast tea from my half empty pot.

“Dude,” I say, taking out my earphones. “Guess who I just saw.”

“Avril Lavigne?”

“I wish,” I say wistfully. “Stephen Fry.”

I describe the encounter.

“Yeah, he has lost weight, and it probably was, y’know, he’d be out and about up here.”

“He’s one of the celebrities who are blocking me on Twitter.”

“Celebrities? More than one?”

“Yeah. Ricky Gervais won’t let me retweet him, E.L James is blocking me, Stephen Fry, The Literary Review, and Bret Easton Ellis’s boyfriend.”

Raf grins. “You’re just a little Twitter troll aren’t you.”

I sip my tea. “Dude, I’m the fucking God of Twitter trolls...”

I start to ponder on 2012, the worst year of my life. If I told you, you’d never believe me…

A.W.M 11/11/2012

MITT ROMNEY: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

"Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction"- Ken Alstad 

---------------

After the election (more fun than the Oscars) I went to the outreach clinic for my third session of psychotherapy. Last week I had been discussing William Burroughs and the Jungian imagery in the dreams I used to have where I was eaten alive by tarantulas.
"Last week," the therapist said. 
"Yes?"
"You mentioned a lot of things. A lot of topics were covered in... a very short space of time."
I'm tired and strung out on caffeine.
"Like Dennis Hopper in True Romance?"
She smiles. "I haven't seen it."
"You know, show and tell. I was showing you a lot of things, but telling you nothing. You know, Dennis Hopper is trying to hide the fact that he knows where his son is, and Christopher Walken talks to him about Sicilians and the art of lying. He says women have seventeen tells and men have fifteen."
"So women are better liars?" 
"Of course." 
She grins.
"He says Sicilians are the grand masters of deception."
"Oh. So what happens?"
I turn to look out of the window. "Dennis Hopper tells him that Sicilians were spawned by niggers and Christopher Walken shoots him in the head."
"So is that what you're doing now?"
I'm desperate for a cigarette already.
"Empire, Post-Empire. I think it's the most Empire scene about Post-Empire in cinema history."
"Can you translate that?" She asks.
"Empire means everything that predates the end of the Bush administration. It means closed, deceptive, living a lie. Barack Obama is the prophet of Post-Empire. Post-Empire is Lady Gaga, Empire is Michael Jackson."
"So last week was Empire then? I like that."
"I'm trying to be Post-Empire now but as far as I'm concerned I always was."
"And that means you want to tell the truth?"
"I'm not sure I haven't been but Bret Easton Ellis is convinced that I'm lost in the Empire and I'll never return. As for Marilyn Manson, hell. I don't think he likes me very much."
She notes this down. I never like making eye-contact during therapy. I try and sit in a non-confrontational manner, my hands behind my head, my legs apart. Out of the window is the garden where I've performed live music for the outreach clinic. I smile as I remember rapping "Fuck the Police" on a loud PA system and dividing my critics. They had hired two Community Support Officers to watch over the gig. The male PC looked pissed but I think I tickled the WPC a little. They love a bit of rebellion so long as there's a hint of glamour.
"Marilyn Manson, huh," she says after a moment.
"Sounds crazy," I reply. 
"A little bit."
"Are you a fan?"
"Can't say that I am." 
"He's pretty damn Empire."
"I can imagine."
"I think he's read Smoking Is Cool. I think Fred Durst has read it. I think Matt Stone and Trey Parker have read it too. Because most people don't read for pleasure, when I tell them I handed a copy of Smoking Is Cool to Bret Easton Ellis they don't understand what that means."
"What does it mean?"
"That I have a certain reputation in certain circles."
"What reputation?"
"Difficult to say. Part of me thinks I'm being groomed for a top position in the corporation, while the other part thinks that I'm a  serious problem that needs to be solved. So," I sigh, "kind of a bipolar reaction."
"You've talked before about your diagnosis."
"They wanted to classify me as a psychopath at one point."
"Really?"
"You piss off enough psychiatrists you'd be surprised at what they cook up."
"What is your opinion now?"
"I've been misinterpreted. Misrepresented."
"And you've spent...ten years now in the system?"
"Time flies, huh."
I take a look at her to work out a few key descriptive points for my blog. She dresses like my sister. Fashionable hippy chic. Scarves, boots, Osiris glasses, lots of browns and purples.
"And we talked about therapy too," she says.
"Yes. Freud was a child. The idea that you can, in some Hitchcock/Dali way appropriate some childhood trauma that will unlock your true inner self is like something out of Good Will Hunting."
"Yes. It's corny."
"That's what the psychiatrist at the secure unit told me. Told me I was Will Hunting."
She grins.
"Although there's a key scene in that movie that says that it's just as easy to create a Uni bomber as it is to create an Einstein. And anyway," I smile, cracking my knuckles, "I got a Double C in G.C.S.E science."
"So you're no Einstein."
"It's a damn shame."
"So how do you want to approach therapy?"
"Like Woody Allen. Although he lost it in the nineties."
"Oh, I love Woody Allen."
"Me too. But Vicki Cristina Barcelona was at best amateurish."
"Yeah," she replies. "I think he just wanted to make a movie with Scarlett Johansson looking sexy."
I can tell that my therapist finds me immensely entertaining. Me? I just enjoy having intellectual conversations. It's a rare occurrence. I spend most of my week alone thinking about the girl I knew who hung herself. Most of the time I am dropping Promethazine and obsessively tweeting random (but archly devised) satirical barbs.
"I want therapy that focuses on the here and now. I want therapy that will in some way help me work out why I was sectioned in the first place, and why the NHS psychiatric system and its mandate of enforced hospitalization is total bullshit."
"You're not the first person who's told me that."
"I'm overwhelmed with surprise."
"We talked about Burroughs last week."
"Yes, you're a clinical psychotherapist. I imagine you've experimented with automatic writing."
I can see her blush slightly.
"I also don't want to become a chapter in one of your books, Andrew."
"Of course not," I smile.
-----------
After the session I put in my earphones and listen to XXXO by M.I.A which is my current favourite song. Usually after previous attempts at therapy I would have some kind of emotional reaction, a need to get drunk, high, whatever. This time round I don't care. Romney, in hindsight, never really stood a chance. Obama has charmed Hollywood, and they run the show. Maybe not Fred Durst, but he's just a redneck cracker from Jacksonville. I can only see good things happening with a fully across the board healthcare system in the USA. I don't think it's hope he's peddling. Optimistic rationality. I used to say that Americans would never understand irony. I wrote two books about that conceit. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. All I can do is hope.

09/11/2012 A.W.M 

BARACK OBAMA AND THE END OF POST-EMPIRE

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.