Wednesday 21 November 2018

How it feels to come home.

We are not on tour.

What do I wish?

I had been home longer than three and a half minutes when I received a text message. Mr Douglas, do not forget your 10am dentist appointment tomorrow…

This was not the text I was expecting. My manager was due to get back to me about what days I would be working this month. She’d reeled off a few dates last time I was in, but I work there so seldom I hardly listened. As far as I knew, I was due behind a desk for a day or two in the distant future. I had asked her to text me back to remind me of exact dates. I thought she had a good week or so to get back to me.

The message from the dentist didn’t half make pretty shapes; entirely abstract by this point in the evening. It said something about the morning—something a long way away. Further application of whisky will sterilise any wounds for now (I figured), a morning panic-scrub will make all those tidy gnashers gleam like greek arches, and a quick goodnight kiss will improve my mood such that any overnight healing will be hastened by deeper sleep and a flood of health-enhancing chemicals.

Needless to say, on day one of the band’s return, my affairs were not all in order. The internal bliss and renewed intellectual peace following our experience outstripped the unwarranted self-importance of any ‘appointment’ or ‘supplemental employment’.

Later, as my weak and heavy eyes fell closed, my phone buzzed.

It was a text.

You know you’re in tomorrow?

-

We are not on tour.

What do I wish?

I woke up too early to a dark morning and shnarfed down an unhealthy breakfast from a plate nobody had washed. When it came time to leave, my face was too-dry-soapy clean (I could feel my skin crack when I smiled), I had my neat shoes on (with holes in), and my stomach had decided to take me on a 17th century sea voyage. The woman who lives in the same place as me (is she sadist? Masochist? I can’t tell which, but it must be one), who had left the house about twenty minutes before, WhatsApp’d me to say the bus stop at the end of the road would be out of service for the next hour or two, and I’d have to walk the extra distance to the next one that was working.

It’s very cold. She said.

I put one foot out of the door and a sheet of rain fell from the sky.

-

We are not on tour.

What do I wish?

I arrived annoyingly early at the dentist’s, as I’d rushed through the rain straight onto a bus. The run was long and lurching (thanks to the sudden onset of nausea), and the bus was packed and hot and misty, so I’d sweated through my work shirt which I’d have to stay in all day.

The receptionist looked at me over her glasses and offered me a seat.

I had a long time to go until my appointment and the other person waiting was coughing through stories of grim infections she’d had. She laughed, and was good natured, but I tried hard to bury myself in internet ego death. It was no good—my stomach was churning and rolling and I held it with one hand and winced. One of the receptionists (one of them: an old person made young through that parasitical age-transfer that can happen when a lump in time so desires to steal what is not its own, the other: blending so well in to her surroundings I thought there was a strong wind moving papers about) had decided to put The Worst of Smooth Elevator Jazz on the reception stereo. The cackles of the infected woman played along to it. Since the last time I had been here, all the interesting decorations had been taken down. There was, however, a rack selling herbs in metal buckets. The walls and the surfaces and the chairs were gleaming white. Of course they were. The combination of internal biology and external ambience gave birth to the fatal combination of not only needing to fire lunch from the front, but actively wanting to.

I blindly sweated a few cog twirls down the plughole and my name was called. I followed the hygienist down the hallway into the white surgery without looking at her. I smiled at the floor and braced my abdominals. My belly had a knife in it.

‘Feel free to put your things down there and make yourself comfortable on the chair.’

So I got on the chair, and the motors ran and slowly and, like a great cannon shifting its aim, my open mouth was now directed straight at her face.

She smiled.

My stomach lurched and I rolled my eyes.

‘Is there anything in your mouth that’s bothering you?’

‘Not yet,’ I thought.

And another wave of nausea ran from the bottom of my stomach through my chest and into my face, throwing my consciousness off. Something would have to give.

‘Not really,’ I said.

She looked at me. A moment passed. She smiled a soft, motherly smile before donning a face mask and a pair of protective goggles.

-

We are not on tour.

What do I wish?

What is enlightenment?

Is it a state of bliss, or a state of ignorance? Or a state of bliss in ignorance? Or is it knowledge of the bliss of ignorance and the acceptance of bliss as bliss? Enlightenment is nothing more than enlightenment. Is that what it is?

What is the opposite of enlightenment? What of the heaviness of a thought? Is enlightenment the freeing of the mind from the weightiness of thought—a state where you are able to see the valuation of thought as an illusion? What is the value of that illusion?

Of what value is consciousness?

Thus, a quiet day at work passes. Another drop in the bucket. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Fluorescent lights kill.

Nausea passes.

Teeth get cleaned.

As I walked home past the gyms with large windows, I watched the women on the treadmills with their bouncing ponytails. I stood still and watched them run and we both failed to change in size or shape.

I wish we were on tour.

Tim

Thursday 15 November 2018

A breakdown.

We're heading into London while the UK government falls apart. Civil society might not be far behind, but that's OK.

We had a day off yesterday after our breakneck, whistle-stop tour of Germany and Switzerland. Nothing much to be said but thanks. Nothing more to be done yesterday but sleep.

Oh look, the van's broken down right this second. Trewin's currently trying to mold some connection or other out of copper. Ed's on the floor, rifling through my suitcase for my toolkit (ain't I a pro?) and the van is being rocked by the air pressure from lorries passing at top speed. We're on the hard shoulder somewhere outside London. There's nothing to be done but try. The van smells like burning. Who knows what's next?

We've got time, so we'll be fine for Oslo (not the city - a London venue) tonight...it just depends how we get there.

Our hazard lights have just stopped working. Ed's just popped back to put a triangle out.

Here he is again. He looks back at where he's just been.

"The triangle's just fallen over."

Time to sing a song.

Trewin's working on it, and I have no idea on what level of expertise he's working.

"Bloody triangle's fallen over again."

The road, the boundaries, and the trucks are dirty and grey. Everything moans and hisses as it passes. The van shakes with an unseen force. I'm getting out of the van. There's an element of fear.

Not for the first time in this band, I feel like I'm in some spiritual netherworld.

We'll see you later.

Tim.

Friday 9 November 2018

Live and Direct From the Rear Corner of a Van Full of Men.

We're in the inbetween.

There is no health, here. The things you say and the things you do have no meaning. All actions are fleeting, all conversations are hypothetical, all memories are temporary. Leave them as lines on the map. All possible things converge to one: the destination

You can develop strange habits on these seven hour journeys. Right now I'm about to add the fourteenth piece of gum to the amorphous clay of nastiness I've been pushing around my molars for the past half hour. That's about the size of things in the inbetween. Nothing is food. Everything is chewed. Every boxed stretch of highway ends with us spitting everything out, forgetting the taste, and starting again tomorrow.

We've done Dortmund and Berlin, so far. Lovely times. Too lovely, in fact. I've been doing a lot of hugging. As the two responsible ones take turns guiding this ship down the autobahn, I've been doing a lot of necessary snoozing in the back. Berlin, especially, is an unfair torment to a mere mortal. It parties like Windows 10 updates: it's relentless, it's intrusive, and you have to do it even though you know it's bad for you.

The landscape outside is turning to soaring hills and golden forests. We're closing in on Munich. It's Friday night and we have a day off tomorrow. The very talented Rosie Carney and band, who have been following us round on these dates, have promised us a good time. I'm sure any competitive element will be solely in my head. I'm a fierce competitor, so we'll have to see how that goes.

Something's going to get lost.

Thanks to all who have come to the gigs so far and thanks to all who have seen to our comfort and wellbeing. We appreciate everything people do for us.

The air in here may be stale, but everything else is sweet.

Whatever you're up to, and whenever you're up to it, sprinkle some sugar on it like a mischievous little pixie.

We'll see you at the gigs.

Tim

Monday 5 November 2018

Fwd: Re: 2018 phoria tour & message to all ye who enter here

07/11/18 Freizeitzentrum West (FZW), Dortmund, Germany

08/11/18 Urban Spree, Berlin, Germany

09/11/18 Heppel & Ettlich, Munich, Germany

11/11/18 Kulturbetrieb Royal, Baden, Switzerland

12/11/18 Salzhaus, Winterthur, Switzerland

15/11/18 Oslo, Hackney, UK

16/11/18 Rough Trade, Bristol, UK
 
Ticket links and details on our website.
 

Lets keep this one light and industry friendly.

As passionate go-getters, we are so excited and thrilled that we are going on this exciting and thrilling mini-tour. The music we are going to play will be very exciting, and we are excited to share it with you and with each other, as we excite each other so. We are so excited about it we have yet to recognise the yawning chasm of death that awaits all animals. We are so excited about it that the mysterious forces of the universe no longer have any meaning for us, and instead of contemplating the mysteries of existence we can just float like dead ants on a colourless sea of distraction and wasted potential. We are so excited about presenting literally anything to do with ourselves that this decadencium of 21st century reality no longer contains enough conceptual bread to sustain us, and we have had to construct a new reality – named ‘&&2’ – in which to live (part of persisting in ‘&&2’ is maintaining ones own parallel existence in the world in which you (you) have lived your entire life, or as we call it ‘The Village of Small Potatoes’).

We are very excited to have become gods and can’t wait to withhold the secrets of the universe from you in order to maintain a wholly manufactured sense of intrigue fuelled mainly by your own negative self-perception
 

There we go!

Put that on a t-shirt.
 

Tim


P.S. Great joy and abundance to all ye who enter here.

Achieve.

All milky and lava-lamp-ish the street-lights reflecting on my big red car bonnet as I curl it round at night all sound and echoing engine...