This is a couple of paragrpahs (the first ones, seoc horror) of something I'm writing that I thought i'd put up to see what people though. see if i'm going in the right direction
Obviously will critique people's pieces back (I hope I have been anyway! )
The dog was named Seoc.
‘Jock!’ I shouted out. My girlfriend Lauren and I were riding in the car on the way back from New Galloway, puppy in the back seat, trying to think of a name for it. Her lips pursed, her eyebrows fell and I knew her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth before she laughed ‘No, don’t be stupid’. I looked at her pointedly and said ‘I was being jocular’. She didn’t laugh, but she did give a slightly condescending smirk, so I was grateful. This drive really had been going on too long: I don’t think her tether could stretch all the way to New Galloway and back again and any respite from the steely, silent anger was welcomed. The metaphorical red mist was literally suffocating me. Well, not literally, but close enough.
9 hours we’d been driving; whilst New Galloway was only around 150 miles from Perth. If the idiot women they’d bought the dog from had told us she’d changed the deal or, rather, that her twat of a husband had, we wouldn’t have had to drive back half the way we came looking for a damn cash machine. Trust her to live out in the middle of nowhere, stupid cow. Her children sounded ****ing retarded as well. I remarked as much to Lauren. She agreed and we both cathartically and explicitly examined their future career options. In the end, cackling, we both agreed that they’d end up as colliers because they thought they’d get to play with dogs. Later I remembered the littlest child wailing as we took the golden creature away and I felt guilty about this cruel, anarchic outburst.
In the end we named the dog Seoc, apparently any link to heritage would do. That said I was also quite fond of it because of the strange shock of white hair that carved a canyon through the beasts back from hind haunch to head. We checked with a friend to make sure it was pronounced 'shawk'. It was. We’d laughed (well, I’d laughed) at the idea of calling him Jock, but upon arriving back at our home we’d were so drained we decided that simply slapping a Gaelic translation on top would do fine. You see, we both suffered from what we’d taken to calling the Scottish malaise:
Scot-tish ma-laise N 1. A condition that causes one to yearn for a culture that has been thrust all around one, but never successfully pinned to the donkey in question. 2. A condition whereby the sufferer reports several symptoms of ‘Scottishness’ and exaggerates said symptoms. Apparently so as to ingratiate one’s self with the local tourist board.
She had it worse than me, but we both still had an alarming propensity for casually reading up on Gaelic or reading poems in Scots (what is Scots anyway?). We laughed at the American tourists who came to buy turf and wear kilts whilst we frantically constructed a different, subtler, identity from the tourist board;s cast-offs. The quirks of history that weren’t quite quirky enough to make it into the tour. The traits that, as a nation, we’d managed to lay claim to. What other nation hoards traits? Dour? Oh yes, we’re all dour here. Everyone! Have you met Callum? Dourest guy I know. Have you met Stacy? Oh what a lass, what a fine, bonnie wee lass. It's despicable.
EDIT: On further review i've decided that this is a big steaming pile of shite, but i'll leave it up for a while.
On the Buses
Trumpets blare in my ears and vibrations shoogle my head. I
look to my left and I’m confronted by angry stares from the other passengers.
My music is too loud. I don’t understand why it bothers them, it’s not like
it’s vastly different from the myriad other sounds that are forced into your
skull when commuting. Ok, I suppose I don’t really know, my ears are dammed by
Tower of Power. I like their name; you can tell they’ve just gone for the
rhyme. The girlfriend’s seen my Cds, she thinks it’s funny: She thinks it’s
‘phallic’ or some pish. She’s a smug cow sometimes.
The music’s like a plug. No, actually, it’s more like a
shield or a barrier. It feels like the music’s thrusting out from my mind,
warding off the grasping banality of the bus journey and its dreary denizen’s
clishmaclaver. I’d wondered why folk think I’m a bit weird, I don’t have that
many friends. Not cause folk disliked me, you see, just cause they never really
gone that extra step to get to know me. And neither have I. The other day I’d
been standing waiting for my fish supper enduring the Chef De Cuisine’s conversation.
“I swear tae god, pal!” the chef exclaimed, staring at me as
if under oath.
“Aye, did he now? Well, thas a bit funny if you ask me”
I’d lost all track of the conversation at this point. I had
some vague idea that someone (maybe Davey, the guy who owned the other chippy) had taken 10p off his fish suppers. Or maybe
he’d added 10p. Either way, the price had changed and it was fascinating.
‘So tell us Rur –“
“Eh, aye, the fish’s gonna take a fair while so I’m, eh,
away tae phone the girlfriend, eh, tell her when I’ll be back”
I was walking to the door when I noticed that the whole room
was hushed like I’d dropped the quilt of propriety right on their heads.
Everyone else was waiting patiently for his or her tea and I was stomping
across the rules and kicking open the door, letting the cool wind dull their
quiet rage. I was a rebel and a visionary. Christ, that twat behind the counter
really was fucking dull. I couldn’t believe everyone just sat and took his
shite whilst waiting for their tea. Well, I knew one thing: I wasney gonnae.
Down to the off license for some booze for me.
Back at the flat I knocked on the door, having forgotten my
keys, and Eilidh opened it for me. She greeted me with a kiss and I her with a
lewd remark. Like usual, she didn’t take kindly to this and took our tea off me
quite sharply and went through to the sitting room. I called it the sitting
room and she called it the living room. They bickered happily about this
frequently because neither of them could remember which one was the posh way to
say it and neither wanted to appear posh. I thought this was ironic. She told
me I didn’t know what irony was.
“Have ye found a job yet? She queried sweetly.
“No just yet, deary” I replied just as sweetly.
I knew calling her ‘deary’ infuriated her, but this
conversation was a fateful and nightly business and I thought it prudent to
speed it up so we could at least eat our tea while it was still luke-warm.
“hm” she grunted and was silent.
Evidently she wasn’t going to be drawn on the matter. No,
this is as important for her as it is boring for me.
“Fish’s fine’ she proffered.
“Aye, and aw the tastier fer no hae’in tae listen to that
gobshite behind the counter blether on”
“What did he ever do tae you? He just likes a wee chat wi
his customers”
“He’s the chippy man, he’s no an oracle; I dinnae want tae speak t’ him”
“Aye, aw’body’s got their wee roles in your life don’t
they?” She presented this question like a gauntlet “cannae just get along wi
folk, got tae make em fell wee next to you”
I could feel the hostility rising in her voice. It rubbed
itsself all over my body leaving it tingling, filling my pores and heating me
up.
“It’s no mah fault he’s just my chippy, he’s a borin’ twat
and aw’body knows it” Just as I finished getting these words out I knew she’d
feinted and I’d fallen for it.
“ ‘just’ a chippy!? You’ve no even got a job. You’re an
arrogant wee prick, you can fuck fucking fuck off!” and with that she threw her
fish in my face and stalked into the bedroom (the door of which she slammed
several times).
That night I could hear her crying in bed. I don’t have a
job because I can’t lie how can I get a job if I can’t lie I don’t want to
fit into what other people think I want to change what they think so that
they’d never need to accept me for I am already OK.
I was crying too, when I wasn’t laughing. I hated that she
was crying; I hated that I’d upset her and I hated that there’d be no chance of
sex tonight but she’d thrown her fish at me. Her fish. It cracked me up. Every time I thought about it
sent me wheeling into kinks of laughter that could take minutes to subside. I
hoped she couldn’t hear me and I cried again. Tomorrow he would do what she
wanted. It would be terrible
Down the Job Centre. Interview. Lie.
Inanition. Well done. Potato bagger. Potato factory. Hell. Not so bad. Sex.
Happy. A nod on the bus. No music. Comfortable. OK.
I queued for the bus. I paid my fair. I sat and I thought. I
grimaced at the man in front whose music was playing far too loud and I made to
tap him on the shoulder. I checked my self and lowered my hand, fearful that if
I touched him I would become him. Again.
I continued to frown at the man in front of me, but if you turned
me upside down you’d see that I was smiling. Smiling for what I’d lost and what
I’d gained. I couldn’t wait to give my self to the world and for the world to
embrace me. And then to the world I proclaimed, ’There’s my stop’.
In the past music was viewed (for those who were well-off enough to be part of what 'society' was back then, so this does not include the poor and working class who listened to folk music) as an integral part of what it was to be educated. You had to be educated in music, literature, philosophy in short, all those things you think about when you think of 'the classics' and the upper classes of the past centuries.
This was musics place, it was solidly defined and its worth was easily prescribed.
Nowadays this is not so, the advent of 'popular music' (all that which is not classical) is an interesting one. Now music entertains the masses and receives its worth based on how well it entertains (at least that goes well enough for this blog, obviously the most important consideration is how much money it makes).
Now, there's something important here that i'm having a hard time grasping: We seem to be torn between the modern idea that music is valuable because of those who value it (it sells well, or it entertains well) and that music is valuable as 'an expression of the soul' as it were.
THis idea that music is a wonderful emotional thing seems to be a fairly modern thing as well, at least as far as I can tell.
I suspect that the reason today there is a certain class of people that view music as this, 'expression of the soul' is as a reaction to the loss of solid value and worth attached to music. It has been present ever since music could be studied and was lost when music became less elitist, more democratic and enjoyable for all in the 20th century.
I think people long to have a solid piece of 'worth' attached to the music that they hold so dear not realising that this harks back to a time that would be wholly unpleasant for any music lover.
A lot of unorganised thoughts here, maybe i'll organise it properly later.
I got a one time two day gig as a guitar tech for a big show that's coming up. But hopefully I might be able to get something more permanent/semi-permanent out of it.
Revamped blog on community, fleshed out and expand
I hate this idea that has pervaded Britain ever since Thatcher was in power that there is no such thing as, 'society'. It is not true. We are all part of a community, we give to that community and it nurtures us as we nurture it.
Thatcher thought that there was no society, no ‘community’, or at least that it was not important. What was more important was advancement of the self.
I hold this to be false, that we are indeed part of a community, that it is very important and that we owe a great deal to it.
I think nothing has damaged Britain's society more than the advent of 'self made men' and this idea of 'I'm in it for what I can get out of society, and once i've got it it's mine and I deserve it all - why should I have to give something to anyone else!?'.
I believe that our community has been, possibly irreperably, damaged by this prevailing idea that we should be out for ourselves, that community isn’t important and that we are singluar entities out for ourself in a dog-eat-dog world.
Some people hold the view, I refer specfically to taxes but it can be applied more generally, that ‘What I’ve got is mine, why should anyone else get any? I deserve it all because I earnt it all!’. I think that this is both false and damaging:
False: You did not earn it all by your self. Anyone with a job earnt it because of their; customers, employers, upbringing, education, social values, help from friends, help from family and in short: Their community, however large or small. To what extent did you earn it your self? I think it can be fairly succsesfuly argued that you would not have anything that you have without your community and therefore little justifcations of selfishness simply do not stand up to extreme scrutiny.
Damaging: This is the attitude that destroys any sort of community and unity; why should anyone give anything back to the community if they earnt it all by themselves? It’s not selfish to keep what you earned all by your self, is it? ‘I earnt it, it’s mine, I want to keep it, I shouldn’t have to give any back’ is nothing but a justification for selfishness. And, yes, selfishness is an outdated moral term that is hard to apply to society but I believe that that is the case. It is nothing more than a damaging, greedy outlook on life that comes from this idea that people should just be out on the make because getting ahead is what matters and you did it your self.
Give something back to the entity that made you what you are, gave you what you have. There is no such thing as a 'self-made man'. Everything you built, you built on the backs of everyone before you and around you.
I feel people should give back to the community and ‘nurture it, as it nurtured them’ for the good of them, the good of everyone in the country and for the good of people in this country in the future.
You are not a self-made man and no one is, it’s a blandishment, a justifcation for socially accepted naked selfishness.
The selfishnes that pervades so many people astounds me and it makes me worried about how bad things will get before they improve. Will they improve?
I’m not really astounded, this is just a rhetoric device, I can see full well the selfishness. I am however worried about the way I think the nature of people is changing, in far more complex and broad ways than I talk about here.
All hail the selfish, greedy, grasping, petulant and childish population of Britain.
| My Profile
meh!'s blogs, last updated : October 11, 2008
)
: