You may say I'm
a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. - Jubkins Lossletops.
[That is, of
course, a rationale that if taken seriously can just as easily be
used to defend the worst kinds of violent fascism.]
We didn't dream at
all, actually, managing to nab about twelve hours of sleep over three
days, despite this being one
of the better organised of our trips across that stretch of tarmac
and furrowed
field so flummoxing to island
minds such as ours: Europe.
The
street and shop signs may well have been in English. We have no idea.
The
way we were it's entirely possible that we just drove to the end of
the road and started
hanging out the doors of the van in fits of jelly-bodied
childishness, imagining entirely our exploits; taking the blue sky
below us inverted
as the sea of the ferry crossing and the pressing faces and queries
as standard side-effects of being over there where
things are upside down.
No,
we went to Zurich.
Fifteen
hours only evented (events must happen on a fifteen hour journey,
lest the minutes and their tiny drills with which they bore into
every imperfection in your powdering skull finally take hold and turn
you into an ant farm; hollow chronological threads extended through
only bad memories and becoming the very mercurial substance of every
grim reflection upon reality that such sojourns in cold and leaky
vans allow) by a couple of stops at which we dealt with some
surprisingly friendly faces of authority. The police stops are always
more fun than the customs stops, which are, of course, customary.
Looks
like I got a wink or two last night, doesn't it?
Oh
yes, I'm refreshed.
'Pop a few more like that in, Tim, and I might start to enjoy myself!'
And
you might think it takes
thought to take a tangential turn such as that
(and this), but the fact is,
as I'm sure you've anticipated, those words have been so aurally
scarred into the upper corners of the room in which I'm flopping this
log
out that their inclusion is
actually a concession to the world's impetuousness in forcing its
collectively unsatisfied will
on my ever frowning frame.
They
look at you different when you say you are a musician, and I am not
sure if it is pity or a kind of orgasmic awestruck effect at the kind
of being they are presented with.
The
officers of the law, I mean.
Despite
the long hair, despite the eyes that looked like engorged flies dead
on top of the poisonous strawberries that inspired their gluttonous
passing into the great family picnic or dog shit in the sky, we made
our preparations, for a great lol.
'Sunglasses off,
lads.'
'Just look
friendly.'
'Be quiet, Tim.'
And they took a
quick check and let us pass, peering into my little porthole at the
rear and judging that everything was alright, as I smiled and waved
along with Seryn.
Me and Seryn waving
at you through a grubby window in a shaky van.
You wave us on,
unwilling to face your fear that the actions of the world upon itself
may be far more broad than you ever dared imagine.
The world must
be knowable, else all is lost.
-
I mean, everything
was quite nice. We had rooms with beds in and a bit of booze here and
there and a couple of friendly faces and smiles and helpful people
and clean streets...
But the main thrust
of the journey, for me at least, was the inducement of a
static-caravan of sanity that parked somewhere on our collective
neural carriageways but was kept at bay from the town centre of our
actual minds.
The road – in
particular the sheer length of
it – transforms you from debonair fellow-about-the-scenes into a
kind of travelling circus animal; locked away until it's time to piss
or go and forage for food. And there is no food, because you have no
money. So it's always the worst of the world's cuisine. Food as an
additive to vehicle fuel; sold alongside it as an afterthought, to
trick you into thinking you're hungry for
cheese behind that wheel.
I
had no idea at any point whether I was hungry
or not, but the 'eat or else maybe die' aspect of being alive kicked
in to full gear. And that's what I'm talking about. That's what
driving on threadbare gets you: a complete change in psyche. The
world mauls at the window like car wash brushes while your world
consists of 32GB of music and another book, and watching that little
real life television bring trees to a kind of psychedelic life while
you, again, look back on every poor decision you made when you were
twenty-three; why you thought you were right then, and why you are
right now in a way you weren't then, and why you will be wrong in the
future, but how you will also be right because of being wrong now,
and how right that is.
But
but
then
you
have
the pleasure of complete arrival
at your destination. When you have arrived at the venue and you have
completed your sound-check and packed and unpacked and been shown
around and shown the fridge and the backstage and given the codes and
told all and wherewithal and whom then then then you
have the pick of the place, and every luxury afforded you. Your
status is entirely reversed from forager to one whom people will forage for in order to attend to. And
suddenly you are brokered a million cigarettes and freshly iced beer
cans and little molten gems of amber whisky in exclusive
surroundings. And friendly smiling faces that stay static, and don't
just brush by with the ferns. And suddenly, after being spun around
in your office chair with your tie wrapped around your head, it is
whipped off, and you make your way to your big birthday cake that
someone balanced on top of the photocopier, next to the gin and
pornography.
But
this happens over the course of days, and
is eked out in slow motion.
And
you spend the last few dulling
moments of it at the hotel breakfast, still dizzy, still sleepless,
shovelling more pig meat and cheese into your now rotten gullet
because you know what's ahead.
And
then from the warm hotel lights and dizzy swim of every party, the
van door slides shut again and SLAM.
The
world by accident becomes a little greyer and
caged again and
you start to smell the seats that smell like seats and
you are locked in tupperware again.
And
in the ride on the way home the weather is bad. So at the back end of
the great white elephant you're travelling in you feel like a rubber
raft on the back of a speedboat; your stomach lurching over every
change in direction to correct for crosswinds, water leaking in
through the roof, brain crunching into an emergency filtered state
and then relaxing again, all through the fog of a hangover quilted
only by a layer of alien-magic Burger King milkshake that had you
laughing four minutes after first drinking it. Full of something not
from here. Full of the thing that holds the air together, I'm sure. A
baffling drink that could only make me think of Milhouse and Bart and
their all syrup Squishy, or the millions of people who currently use
amphetamines recreationally.
And
then its dark.
It
was night.
And
I got sleep.
And
now I'm doing this.
And
now we'll keep doing the album, until the next one.
And
I'll buy a cushion.
Have
fun,
Tim
P.S. It's Trewin's birthday.
 |
| Trewin: setting fire to your computer screen. |
