Comrades –

I think it’s fair to say I was a rather sensitive child. I recall the spiteful Mister Adams, the then-deputy head of my secondary school (vile selective grammar in the heart of the Cotswolds with aspirations to the culture of an Etonesque boarding school for toffs combined, unhappily, with the bitter self-loathing of a non-fee-paying  institution that never quite sent enough people to Oxford nor the other place) remarking to another colleague as I was having a panic attack in the gym one day — “he’s a rather sensitive child” — the words spat out rather too loudly in order that I not only heard but also felt them and their implications of weakness, lily-livery and general divorce from masculinity, but also that the rest of the class would be clearly apprised of my position on the sensitivity scale (top right) and the corresponding position on the pecking order for the remainder of the educational experience (bottom left). Without fuss or noticeable effort charts were plotted and graphs extruded, and the mimeographed results passed around the year, detailing one’s position on the Physical Violence Index (A reasonable but improvable 3rd). Due to my increasingly undisguised contempt for the institution and its inmates this position steadily climbed over the years until I hit the heady heights of Number One — while my head was being highly hit — and let me tell you from painful but character-building experience that it is a true test of one’s ability to adopt an air of withering disdain when being dragged by one’s feet down four flights of concrete stairs by thirty braying schoolboys (although those of you that know me well will be unsurprised to hear I believe I succeeded). What smarted more than the tone and the volume was that this spiteful and malicious remark, like all honestly hurtful and malicious remarks, was actually the cast-iron truth. I was a rather sensitive child. Continue reading Concerning Constitutional Eruptions (#1)

Comrades -

I’m currently sitting in a rather average hotel room in Los Angeles after spending the day sauntering (yes, Jeremy saunters, very good) around the architectural-hodge-podge-cum-racetrack that is West Hollywood. Sadly despite the radio station’s proclamation on my journey into the megalopolis from the dusty oppression of Palm Springs, that this was ‘the cultural capital of the world’ – a statement which inspired incredulous guffawing for whole minutes from a man who is frankly a stranger to guffawing, wouldn’t recognise guffawing if it (laughing heartily, naturally) punched me about the nuts and took my picture – culture, other than atrociously photoshopped billboards plastered with the upcoming delights of the New Shows for the Fall Season, has been thinner on the ground than the gold that once led people here in their thousands… Or maybe it was oranges that led people here…? Was scurvy a major issue for the weary travellers on the Oregon Trail? If it was, then that metaphor slips from ‘weak’ to ‘terminal’, and in the interests of sparing us all another dreary family-huddled-around-the-hospital-bed-scene let’s pretend it was gold and history be damned. To be honest, if you’re looking for historical accuracy, then I think even at this early stage it is safe to say that your best interests would be better served elsewhere. Likewise, brevity. Off you pop. Continue reading Concerning Gravity and Literature

“Chapter one. He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion. Uh, no. Make that, “He romanticised it all out of proportion. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.”

Uh… no. Let me start this over.

Woody Allen, Manhattan

Comrades –

New York is my kind of town. I know, I know, this is in all likelihood not the first time you’ve heard that said. I know, I know, it’s your kind of town too. I know, I know, that it’s safe to say that if you have any kind of town at all, if the oxygen carried through your blood doesn’t feel quite right without a certain sooty residue, if the sound of silence at night less soothes you and more creeps you the fuck out, if the placid grandeur of nature at its most fundamentally natural leaves you feeling even the tiniest bit guilty as you wonder where the hell you’re going to get wi-fi access from, if in fact towns are your thing on any level at all, then it’s probably true that New York is your kind of town. Sure, there are prettier places, there are crazier places, there are busier places and god knows there are friendlier places, but none of those places are New York, and without wanting to get overly tautological about it, only New York has the New Yorkness, the New Yorkitude, the New Yorkacity, that makes it New York.  It is, I trust I’ve made clear without in any way labouring the point, New York, and that is my kind of town. Continue reading Concerning Orientation and Proportion