Dirty Mind is Prince Nelson Rogers third album. It begins with the title track Dirty Mind, a playful tune with a sinister electronic riff, packed with futile attempts to mute his rumbling desires. He’s a typical late teen loaning his dad’s car, and driving his girl somewhere where he can make whatever is rattling about in his post-pubescent dirty mind, cum true. If she allows. But Prince ain’t rapey, he’d rather dress in all her clothes than take her virginity. Which, one could argue is worse than rape. But it feels harmless and playful cause our little pervert is just so wee, he couldn’t hurt a flea. Although Our Sinead O’Connor claims he beat her up, well beat the bipolar out of her anyway.

I mean the quality of the tracks on Dirty Mind is unsurpassed as far as I’m concerned. The album cover has Prince pushing the boat out in terms of aesthetic, an outrageous leap up and out from his first two albums. His first album For You has a young black man on the front, his second album has him bare-chested and innocent looking and by Dirty Mind we have a circus ringleader meets trans girl first time in public. He looks cheap and dangerous, and the synth sounds he cracks out are also cheap and dangerous but on the ears they are fucking delicious. I adore this album. God, a DJ dropped it in a gay club once and I turned my skinny body inside out, think I met my friend Pony this night, he loves Prince so much he literally got a boner watching the Gold Experience Tour on VHS. The sound was muffled and the footage blurry but Pony got a boner at the mere thought of it. The Gold Experience is one of my favourite albums because it kicks off with P. Control. This Prince number works as a misogynist and feminist anthem all at once. You either interpret it as letting someone else have control over your pussy or that you have full control over your pussy. I knew this song had legs when my mate Az who liked his bottoms to exercise full control over their holes would play them P. Control as a sort of musical S&M rule book.

Prince transcends sexuality, gender and musical genre. He knew this too, Prince set out to free himself and us of the shackles that stifle pure creative flow. Only by defying category can true creativity flourish. This was his mantra. If he didn’t think like this we would have never had Kiss, the perfect pop song. Very simple, very catchy, very flirty. The man flirted in his sleep. He loved to make you squirm and shudder with just a riff or a turn of phrase. He flirted with me when he sang Raspberry Beret and acted like he was going to say and ‘she wasn’t too bright but when she kissed me, she knew how to give a kiss RIGHT’ but he didn’t, he just said she knew how to give a kiss and stopped there. This tease used to make me scream. Why didn’t he say RIGHT? It rhymes! Geezus.

In the film clip Raspberry Beret he wears a blue suit covered in clouds playing his guitar on a podium in a psychedelic dream. This is one of the most ethereal and joyous pop moments, ever. The introduction is a demented mix of finger cymbals, synth pop beats and coughing (yes Prince coughing) and then the song cleans itself up and explodes into the most orgasmic strings. The psychedelic army of kids begin to dance and clap in unison and Prince does his thing. At 13 sitting in front of MTV in my y-fronts I knew this man would change lives and underwear. I never felt so alive when I listened to Raspberry Beret. I even bought a red beret from a Charity store in Brisbane and wore it round for a while until I realised I looked like a dickhead. Anyway back to Dirty Mind.

Even through the track Sister is about incest and I never once thought about either of my sisters in that way, I still sang it loud at family gatherings to relieve the heteronormativity. Most of all Dirty Mind made me want to be a deviant on the dancefloor and dance like a monkey. I got into Parliament after listening to Dirty Mind. I wanted to listen to the music that inspired this sound…this sexy arse guitar slappin funk. How does one sound like this, I propositioned? I then heard Mothership Connection and Give Up The Funk and added the growl and squeak of a horny teenager on vocals and got Prince, not to diminish his greatness.

Love Sexy came out in 1988 and surpassed Dirty Mind for me. I couldn’t believe this album was one long 45 minute track, jam packed with more sex sounds than a whore house on pay day. This little fucker made a sexier album than Dirty Mind! He dropped in some squishiness with When 2 R In Love and I Wish U Heaven to make the 45 minutes not just about fluids and holes but I still felt wholly ravished by his sweaty little Svengali hands. For a homosexual with peak pubescent noodle brain the final song on Love Sexy, Positivity is thrilling with “Gregory Looks Just Like a Ghost And Then A Beautiful Girl The Most’ affirming my place in the world desiring boys who look like girls. And finishes with “Wets His Lips To Say” triggering a boner ala Pony gooning out to the Gold Experience.

But as I grew older Love Sexy lost it’s place as my favourite album and Dirty Mind was (eeeer) back on top. Mainly because funk is timeless compared to all the sample sounds and big production of Love Sexy confined to 1980s. Dirty Mind skids into the 80s just (October 1980) but carries with it the effortless paired back sounds of 70s disco, funk, rock and dashes of the emerging new wave. Prince is the epitome of post modern vehicle, in sound and style. The focus was always keep the orifices as wide as they can go to see what comes out. He showed us and encouraged us to mix it up and side step definition, not to be a smart ass lil punk (although he was) but to keep the possibilities of art realising all it’s possibilities. A shame for Prince would be an office worker dying at her desk with a great song in her head, never heard. He could tease the creativity out of anyone, if only she’d drank “the waters of Lake Minnetonka” and sung it down the phone to him one late night, as he ate cake mix with a spoon. Apollonia drank the waters of Lake Minnetonka in the film Purple Rain and she claims that she co-wrote Manic Monday with him. I believe her. Manic Monday has an unprince-like pop melody feel in places that suggests Apollonia added bits, which also made it perfect for the girl group The Bangles. Apollonia replaced Vanity as lead singer for Vanity 6, a band put together by Prince, and they became known as Apollonia 6. I wish they all took this girl group thing more seriously because their 2 hits were so hot, Nasty Girls and Sex Shooter. Prince wanted to call the other 6 (that never made 6 in band members) The Hookers but it was deemed not a very commercial sounding name, I would argue that’s all it had going for it. Prince’s ladies were often demeaned. I suspect Our Sinead called Prince out on this when they hung out. He had a childish approach to women redeemed somewhat with Sign of the Times, when Cat redressed the power imbalance occupying the stage with a command not even equalled by Shelia E going nuts on drums, Prince’s friend and drummer.

My theory is Prince was all about female empowerment up until the moment he fell in love with her. Bob George on his Black Album possibly his darkest song, a jealous man kills his girlfriend, some say is about Prince’s abusive dad, others say it’s about him. It’s distortion puts a patch over a violent monologue. I can worship him and also question his character. And I think Prince was probably wracked with demons. But somehow in 1980 when he pushed out Dirty Mind I have a theory he was a virgin fantasising about sex. He was dating Susan Moonie by the 1981 Dirty Mind tour, who was also in Vanity 6 and Apollonia 6 and only she can testify. One day she might. Dirty Mind the track is definitely the big talking of a virgin boy.

I was naked when I heard the news. I was coming out of a wet sauna at the gym and dropped my towel to pull my undies up and there on the TV in the locker room ‘Prince Found Dead’. I didn’t flinch. I calmly got dressed thinking, ‘if it’s true I’ll need years to deal so I won’t deal now’. I still haven’t. I have a bubble bath every 21 April, the day Prince died, and play Dirty Mind. It’s my favourite Prince album because it was the first time he dedicated an entire album to sex and so unapologetically let us into his dirty mind, something he continued to do right up until his death but not with quite the same slavish devotion as he did with Dirty Mind.

Heaven forbid, don’t be new to London and miss that huge sign that says the left lane on the escalator is for people in a hurry. 

London is a cuntish town, unless you’re filthy rich or living in social housing. I see them laughing in Primrose Hill, head back mouth open, gulping in the pure blended air of Hampstead Heath and Regent’s Park. I see them dancing in Brixton, head back mouth open, gulping in the jerk chicken air. The poor and the rich love London. But don’t be slightly richer than poor or slightly poorer than rich. At some point you will tumble into ​unmanageable debt and have to live off lettuce. Iceberg, not rocket. Because you’re rich enough to qualify for a bank loan but too poor to pay off the monthly installments. You’re a Londoner now. Mind the gap.

The amount of buses that sail right by because your arm is not outstretched to full capacity, I’ve lost count. The tube that guarantees ​an authentic buried alive experience, sprinkled liberally with ​unbearable heat, no air and ​polite reminders the long delays are your fault. Feel free to kick someone down the escalator if they stray into the express lane. When they tumble head first they will soon realise that they deserve it and will never do it again. Heaven forbid, don’t be new to London and miss that huge sign that says the left lane on the escalator is for people in a hurry. 

London, the city of villages is really just a city of village idiots on mobility scooters having a fag outside of Wetherspoons. That’s a pub chain with carpet, where you can still get a beer for under 5 quid.

London is a pigsty. Fly tipping is otherwise known as ‘moving house’ in London. And no one uses a bin when they’re drunk which is most of London most of the time. 

The overpriced dinners ​complete with ​a slice of ​meat and ​a​ broccol​i stalk ​and a waiter one bread roll away from quitting. ​Still or sparkling water for the table, almost the same price as the wine. And the London Sunday Roast, a shambles of food groups with a puff pastry in the middle for no apparent reason.

Oh and the shows, the glittering West End. The most awarded show in the West End is Phantom of the Opera, some drivel about a disfigured obsessive who hides in a basement, much like a London one night stand. The West End was dying until Phantom of the Opera creator Andrew Lloyd Webber used methods like reality TV to cast a musical in order to get suburban bums back on seats. Where are the high kicks here? Sounds terribly pedestrian. And don’t sit outside a bar or a cafe on Old Crompton St in Soho and wait for a parade of colorful gays to make you smile because London gays now look like everyone else, fading into a backdrop of mediocrity and equality.

Perhaps I’m just yearning for the countryside like all white middle-class people over a certain age.

The quality of life in London compared to the Cotswolds’ for instance is like comparing the first world to the third. And yet it’s a mere 5 hour drive away, 4 hours 50 minutes getting out of London…and 10 minutes (roughly) to say Bourton-on-the-Water, aka the “Venice of the Cotswolds”. Everything changes dramatically. Your heart lifts, your spirit elevates. I get it, I’m simply idealising what I can’t have, but it’s worth pointing out that the difference between the city and the country in England is gobsmacking. Not because the country is that beautiful, it’s just that London is that difficult, if you’re average and middlesome. The man who tires of London is of course tired of life, but guess what? That’s ok. Everything that once was taut now slacks. Being tired of life…in the country….sounds ideal. 

London shan’t even blink in my hissy fit wake. The trillions that have blamed you for their failures cancel out the trillions that thank you for their success. Mind the gap.

The British don’t expect to be happy. On this small boot-shaped island miserableness is patriotic. The British are proudly miserable. In the depths of winter misery is a crackling fire in the pit of one’s gut. It’s the only way to survive. I thought digging out the scarves and gloves, plugging gaps under doors, double glazing windows, bleeding the radiators, test running the boiler, was preparing for winter but these remedies are cosmetic. The secret to preparing for winter in Britain is allowing the malaise to gently ebb into misery and letting it burn.

The mistake I made when I arrived in Britain was assuming the British would be slightly more used to Britain than someone who’d just arrived. It was a logical assumption to make that a person born and bred here would find the weather for instance a part of life. But no, the British are just as astonished at how vile the weather can be as someone fresh off the plane. No one gets used to it. The weather is actually moderate comparatively to other countries, never too hot, never too cold. But it’s the blinding sunshine that can come out of nowhere just as you pack away your sunglasses and step out in your thermals. The wind that can turn your brolly into a tangle of wires clinging to the rim of a bin like a massive spider resisting capture. The rain that never really gets going, just drizzle that murmurs in the background of every scene. The grey that pours into every crack. The damp that trickles into your bones and settles like a muddy puddle. Every winter the British are appalled at the dreariness of their surroundings and the degree of their ensuing misery but the thing is they don’t try and fight it.

The British embrace all forms of sickness too. They have a word that means sick but not sick. Poorly. Poorly usually lasts about 24 hours. Very rarely are you asked to elaborate on poorly. If in some strange circumstance you are asked to elaborate, poorly is a dodgy tandoori. It’s your entitlement as a citizen to feel poorly a few times a year. You just have to say the word and everyone files into line brows heavy with sympathy in silent compliance with a contract they must have agreed among themselves centuries ago. The winter is unpredictable and some days the sky feels so low you need to accept its weight and declare yourself poorly. A Londoner said to me one day with his face mushy with misery ‘poorly means blah’ trying to help me understand. I kind of got it. Blah is not an excuse for absence at work but poorly is.

Poorly often means a potential cold but so does coldy. Sore legs, aching bones might indeed be coldy but its best described as poorly, until the nose starts running. Poorly means I’m not quite right in myself. Whatever that quite means. It can mean ‘I want to be alone’ but of course this is too confrontational so poorly is a gentle retreat avoiding offence. It can be mental, physical or spiritual. It can be fatigue. Its power lies in its ability to engender sympathy without having to elaborate. Serious enough to cancel, not serious enough to go to the doctor. Bad enough to stay home, not bad enough to lie in bed all day. Could get worse probably won’t.

Poorly can mean indisposed which can mean anything at all but probably means can’t be bothered. Poorly can mean out of sorts which can mean anything and suggests you are usually in sorts whatever sorts are. Poorly can mean not up to par. Poorly can mean peaky, liverish, queasy, nauseous, off colour, under the weather, not up to snuff and crook. Poorly can mean funny, peculiar, crummy, lousy and rough. It can mean ropy and grotty, vulgar, queer and seedy. It describes every glorious colour in the rainbow of feeling like shit. It’s the perfect British adjective because it justifies a period of introspection impenetrable to outside enquiry. It’s a cave to wait out the thick internal fog of repression and usually, most of the time, nearly always an excuse to do nothing.

Oddly, very poorly is a completely different matter all-together. By placing very before poorly you’ve turned an ambiguous disposition into a life threatening situation. There is no confusion with very poorly. Call an ambulance. It means sick and probably dying.

I saw a TV show about ambulance drivers in Birmingham and when they described one of the many old ladies they found in a heap at the bottom of the stairs as very poorly I knew very poorly was a serious matter indeed. When I saw a man with oxygen strapped to his mouth described as very poorly, shortly after he rated his pain 11 out of 10 I knew the prefix of very took poorly to a red alert. Just by adding very to poorly.

Poorly meant not so good once upon a time. It’s a very old word that experienced resurgence in the late 20th century post WW2 which coincides with social change and an increase in options for British people including the right to be poorly. It coincides with film and television selling aspiration. It coincides with the science of psychiatry pathologising unhappiness and prescribing pills to treat it. The expectation to be happy is now so powerful you are prescribed drugs if you fall anywhere between miserable and happy. Americans love a pill. The British could inject a packet and still feel miserable because in Britain it’s not a condition, it’s human right.

“We want you looking your best, without the rest“

I’m creating a new app that cuts out the bullshit. It will be called LOOK. Look how good looking I am. Look at me being in all the right places at all the right times. Look how happy I am. Look how loved I am. LOOK. It will save a lot time because there will be no need for the pretense that social media is about anything else other than LOOKING. The faker the better. AI makeovers encouraged. If you’re not pretty create a pretty AI version of yourself and start showing and glowing. Sell stuff and create hope for us ugly rich consumers. No more pretense. This is LOOK.

Here’s my favorite faux controversy to justify posting a naked torso.

“Someone at the gym called me fat” angry faced emoji, followed by a picture of yourself looking super slim and gorgeous without an inch of fat and a frenzy of comments saying…

‘OMG you’re not fat!”

and

“If you’re fat then I’m a whale!”

and

“Hey beautiful, ignore the haters”.

Or

“I’m sure nobody cares, but I’ve been sober for 571 days” followed by a picture of a half naked you, with muscles popping out of you’re skin.

Or

“I spilt coffee on my work shirt” below a picture of a very naked oiled up you, with bright white teeth, scrunching a shirt in the camera, showing off your perfect abs. Comments and likes in abundance…

“Oh no what happened, hope you’re ok stud?”

“Looking good hot stuff”

“I’ll wash your shirt for you, Sir”.

Look, on LOOK you don’t need to whip up faux controversy or sympathy to whip up the likes. No more legitimising self obsession with an ethical dilemma. When all your really want to say is LOOK AT ME.

No more obligation likes, sympathy likes, reciprocated likes, drunk likes, boredom likes…etc. Just good old fashion likes for likes sake. Pure likes, if you like.

No more ‘take me back’ yearnings when you want to reshare your summer holiday pictures because you know how super sexy you looked on that beach, at sunset, arm in arm with all those super sexy people you call friends proving that you must be super sexy in real life because you have so many super sexy friends. Comments drooling from the post, like…

“All the feels babe, wish we were there now”

LOOK is for you! A social media platform for Like Whores who are sick to death of creating faux content to excuse their narcissism. Be self-obsessed, go on. Love yourself. No, adore yourself. Ney, worship yourself. LOOK.

No more telling a million strangers that you’ve just lost your husband to cancer just so they will like your new profile pic. On LOOK you just post your new profile pic on it’s own without your dead husband and the likes come flowing in anyway, as they should. You simply get likes for sake of likes. Pure likes, if you like. That’s LOOK. You want everyone to LOOK. And that’s ok. It’s LOOK so we want you looking your best without the rest. You deserve to be beautiful and you deserve to be told over and over and over again. If you’ve got it, flaunt it because we want it. LOOK.

Our online tutorials will make sure every picture you take looks amazing, if you’re not happy with it you won’t need to caption it with ‘might delete later’. We’ll delete it for you, automatically. And don’t worry about it if you don’t get the likes you were hoping for. We’ll thrown in 1000 likes for every LOOK without the pretense or as we like to call it, the boring bit. The bit that makes you look humble, accidently caught out or normally quite shy. Don’t get distracted by content, just look good. We are LOOK. You love yourself. And so do we.

March 2020 I was working in a hospital as Covid-19 took hold of the city. To curb the spread of the virus hospital workers were required to quarantine after work. This meant I couldn’t be within 2 meters of my daughter who was only 6 months old. In the evenings I watched my housemate mummify himself in his bed sheets declaring it was the end of world, not because of the crushing weight of a modern day plague but because the local Tesco had put a two bottle limit on wine.

In the early mornings, I walked the empty streets of Brixton and stood outside houses and took photos, desperate to know what was going on in other people’s lives. What did their nothing look like?

People began working from home, unwanted household items started spilling out on to the streets. Some of it valuable, some of it junk. People started bringing plants into their homes. Gardens were everything. Many were terrified of food shortages so began to bake bread. Communications with the outside world took the form of face montages on electronic screens.

Little did we know lockdown would last for over 12 months with some short breaks in between. Little did we know Covid would go on to kill 8 million people world-wide and lockdowns in various forms would destroy livelihoods and obliterate the mental health of millions. For me there is life before Covid and life after. I never really recovered from the ordeal. It struck at the most intimate place in my psyche – the need to feel close to others.

My theatrical friends were out of work and going stir crazy in west London. One of them used his contacts in the Russian mafia to get me a very early Covid test prototype. The instructions were translated from Mandarin to English so I WhatsApp’d west London for some tips deciphering the garble. “No idea luv, use your common sense”. This was ironic considering there was nothing common sense about a small cassette that somehow detected fragments of viral proteins using nasopharyngeal swabs. I used a blood sample instead of a nasal sample, looking back, I’m pretty sure this was incorrect.

My former landlady was now in residence at nearby Peckham. She’d moved from Brighton to London to start a new job just as lockdown descended. Still on a trial period and not covered by the any government support scheme, her new employer sacked her, cutting their losses. With time and isolation on her hands she threw herself into helping the NHS which meant preparing me food packs everyday. Shepard’s Pie, lasagna, roast chicken and mash, apple and rhubarb pie. She took social distancing very seriously and would meet me half way between mine and hers, she on one side of the road, me on the other. She would place the food parcels in the middle of the road and I would retrieve them back to my side of the road. We would bellow back and forth until hoarse and then I would bow gratefully and withdraw into the shadows with her assuring me of tomorrow’s supplies “Toad in the Hole with maple syrup gravy!” Only 3 weeks ago she was tucking me into her spare bed and giving me a hot cup of cocoa. Now more than ever I needed this kind of comfort and its absence was harrowing. My most motherly friend was cold and suspicious and on the other side of the road.

When I finally did get to hug my daughter I was so excited I leapt over a merry-go-round in the playground and landed on my side, fracturing my ankle. Not being able to get into A&E I dressed it myself and reinforced it with packing tape. This was the spirit of the time. Just get on with it because there are people much worse off.

Christmas 2020 I checked into a Premier Inn in Brixton and quarantined for 7 days, after my housemates tested positive for Covid, one of them in ICU. My Clapham mates Michael and Jarrod met me at Windrush Square in Brixton to convince me to side-step lockdown regulations and join them for Christmas dinner. I was desperate for turkey and a cuddle but I hobbled away mumbling about owing it to the dead.

It wasn’t until June 2022 I tested positive myself after 5 days of a blistering sore throat and thunderous fever. This coincided with my daughter’s 3rd birthday and I couldn’t attend her weekend celebrations. Already feeling cheated by the virus, I lay in bed overwhelmed by the injustice of my situation. Until now I’d calmed myself by placing my pandemic-related “bad luck” in the context of loved ones not being able to say goodbye to their dying parents in hospital due to Covid restrictions (as was the case across the country and world) but during the peak of Covid fever the bigger picture was hard to see. With sweat pouring out of me, I texted a work colleague “I hope everyone in the world gets this thing and dies a horrible death”. The fever talking. Sorry 8 million people.

The slow opening of society was difficult to embrace because everything was a bit shit. All the places you once loved were not quite right, like butter left open in a fridge over night.

Within a year, a cost of living crisis would be upon us, pouring salt into our wounds and digging it out with a rusty spoon. The perfect excuse for Capitalism to do less and charge more. Even though starving to death would be good for my figure, I wished it was 2019 again.

The knock-on effect of a global pandemic no matter how painful, pales in comparison to saying goodbye over the phone to your mother as she lies dying in a hospital bed. Quite frankly unless this was your experience of Covid-19, you haven’t got my sympathy, not for long anyway.

Morrissey was and still is a self-obsessed jerk but I’d still give him my big toe if he ran out of vegetables.

It’s a brave man who has The Smiths in his top ten albums of all time. People get precious about the authenticity of one’s Smith’s love. “Sniveling pomposity” is my usual response to any accusation of class tourism. You don’t have to be born in a shithole like Hulme to love the Smiths. David Browne reviewed “Strangeways, Here We Come” in Rolling Stone magazine in 1987 and he says the album “stands as one of their (The Smiths) best and most varied records….despite the problematic artsiness of its lead singer” Artsiness is a new word for me in 2020 and there it was in 1987 describing Morrissey’s self-obsession and explaining why Johnny Marr had left the band soon after the album was made. Problematic artsiness, no less. Browne then says “If you’ve ever considered Morrissey a self-obsessed jerk, Strangeways, Here We Come isn’t likely to change your mind”. Morrissey was and still is a self-obsessed jerk but I’d still give him my big toe if he ran out of vegetables.

The Smiths gave hope to kids who grew up in buttfuck nowhere and had a choice between writing poetry and certain death and certain death for writing poetry and writing poetry about certain death.

In his review, David Browne fails to mention “Death of a Disco Dancer” the soaring gem of the album. This is dextrous song-smithing. Johnny Marr commented to Q Magazine that one of the best things about the song “is that keyboard drone. It’s like Goldfinger on bad acid. Which is kind of The Smiths in a nutshell.”

“Girlfriend in a Coma” is a tidy pop song and remains the entry level tune for new Smith fans. The Smiths gave us a sensibility not just a sound. Manchester is full of it. Kids of poor parents get an education and create art with a wink, to maintain ironic detachment so they don’t betray their working class roots.

David Browne is clearly fed up with Morrissey in his review and is out to champion Marr the overlooked genius because straight men don’t have enough of a voice in indie music.

The Smiths helped us laugh at the moronic human condition and gave us all permission to fail. We must always wear their iconic album covers on our t-shirts and pretend we like them at music festivals.

Strangeways has less of an intersection between Morrissey and Marr found on “Meat Is Murder” or “Hatful of Hollow”, still slightly at odds but creating a bitter sweet purity. In Strangeways they are definitely car pooling. More production helps.

Most days I’m in the mood for The Smiths but some days they make my ears bleed. Like when you’re stroking a cat because you love it so much and you notice you’re actually slapping it. I’m the cat in this scenario by the way. Top Ten!

“Babs saw all the things she loathed in herself also in her son. His loose skin and wide open heart”

David Bowie said in his song Queen Bitch
She’s so swishy in her satin and tat
In her frock coat
and bipperty-bopperty hat

Tat is good bad and sometimes bad good, unnecessary but a statement none the less.

A Londoner will tell you tut describes items with no aesthetic merit or use or monetary value. In England a Northerner may use tat and a Southerner may use tut to describe the same load of old stuff.
A load of old tat is usually a comment on someone else’s stuff rather than a comment on your own stuff. It’s a way of mocking your friend’s unhealthy attachment to a load of old stuff. It’s often resented by the owner but somehow unmovable. Tat is the gossip of the unconscious. It tells you something you need to know about yourself that’s uncomfortable and that you are probably not ready to hear. The reason will reveal itself eventually but in the meantime the tut appears ominously innocuous.

Ian Dury a Londoner said in his song Clever Trevor
Nothing underfoot comes to nothing less to add to a load of old tut and I ain’t half not half glad cos there’s nowhere to put it, even if I had
Ian is trapped in his tut, helpless, it will just appear elsewhere so he makes no attempt to move it. Tut seems to be an immovable beast.

Tat is also piles of stuff that you are planning to sort or read or cut up. Pile makers are always the less pretty sister, the less athletic brother, chastised, the stuck, the people who want to be someone else, the person always 15 minutes late. Pile makers add to the pile more than they chip away at it. Chipping away at it is always hindered by something that has no relationship with reducing the pile.

Christopher says ‘I need to get stuck into that pile but I’m trying to sell that chair first’
Christopher says ‘I will sort all of that soon I just need to move the glass cabinet’
Christopher says these things as if the pile might fall on the top of him as he starts the vigorous task of ignoring the voice that lists all the horrible things that might happen to him if he throws it away. Christopher avoids sorting the pile anyway he can. Over complicating matters and making the job seem bigger prolongs his time with the pile. Found in the pile are unpaid utility bill, important news articles, several brochures on cancer, an empty Valium packet and an autumn leaf. The pile holds significance in Christopher’s mind because at one point something important was in the pile. It gives everything else in the pile a value it never had before. A torn envelope is suddenly punching above its weight in such a pile. The empty Valium packet could be a reminder of something or does it have a repeat prescription on the back of it? He’s not sure what item in the pile makes the pile significant. This will keep the pile from reducing for a long time. Christopher won’t make the connection, the empty Valium packet has something to do with the proliferation of piles around the house. Christopher’s muscles are like jelly so sorting a pile is difficult. He will be waiting on a delivery of a universal remote control that won’t work before attempting to sort the pile. The connection between the two is not obvious. Perhaps there is. But regardless he will float into slumber and wake up still angry but unable to swing a punch.
Christopher says ‘I just need to get that universal remote control before sorting the pile’

A corner often needs tat. A cane basket, an old suitcase, a few logs, maybe some wool, a few books, hats. This gives a corner a story, it’s now more than a single point where two walls meet. As important as that meeting is.

In two up two down house in a small town in the north of Wales lived Babs and John. Babs put a rusty brass kettle that had never poured a single cup of tea in a fireplace that had never seen single flicker of a flame. John sat in the same recliner every night but couldn’t fully extend the footrest because it would tip the magazine rack over which sat beside the recliner in the only place it could sit unhindered by another object. One leg ached all the time because it was just short of fully extended. John longed to stretch out both legs but had given up worrying about it as it felt like the slightest inconvenience not worthy of discussion. A set of brown rugs folded in equal parts of eight and one wool throw scrolled on top sat beside the magazine rack. These rugs were not meant to warm the knees but rather warm the air. Their tempting warm aesthetic was their main purpose.
In the spare bedroom were a collection of dolls in rows, the biggest dolls at the back cascading to the smallest at the front, with an array of wonky and startled eyes sometimes on the same doll’s face. Each had the roughly the same facial expression but the longer you stared at their faces the more they differed from each other. They could look menacing and they could look kind and sometimes blank. Some were in conversation if you tilted their heads slightly. Babs wasn’t particularly fond of dolls nor was she was particularly maternal. The dolls just warmed up a cold back room. A pink rose quilt covered the guest bed and the light shade and the tissue box on the side table. The quilt was tightly tucked under a springy mattress and it took some digging to peel it back and climb in.

The freezer was packed solid with frozen food. The freezer door was decorated in crayon sketches and magnets with sayings about life’s peculiarities. The door held in garden peas, fish fingers, pizza subs and chocolate muffins. Ice mushroomed around the stiff plastic bags and spiked in furry corners. Babs was ready for any contingency, nuclear war, a long winter. She lived in loose hanging shirts that draped over tight-fitting jumpers, she dressed to cover up her body. Babs hated being fat, the hate was less painful when she ate.
Tat is the accumulation of items that have no functional purpose for the sake of filling a space.
Tat can be a legacy of staying in one place for a long time or it can be a cry for help.

Babs and John’s son ordered something small from a mail order catalogue every week. The arrival of a parcel the next day had nothing to do with the object inside but rather the thrill of the gift. One day the mail didn’t arrive. His cheeks caved in so sharply the universe was sucked into the hole left by his despair. He once bought a miniature clamp. It never left it’s packet. What does a miniature clamp hold, maybe a tea towel. It went on a shelf beside a box of dead matches and an empty bottle of oil covered in glitter and a fluorescent hair band that had lost its elasticity. Sometimes he would clutter his room with so much tat he couldn’t find his bed. He would then re-organise it all neatly and spread it about again. Babs saw all the things she loathed in herself also in her son. His loose skin and wide open heart. His attachment to useless things. He never spent a lot of money, maybe a few dollars. It was about the parcel, the arrival, the unwrapping, the status of receiving. Tat is not worthless to those who accumulate it. All that stuff protects.

Babs watched her son grow larger. She could see he was making the same mistake she did. He smiled excitedly when she put down fish fingers on white fluffy bread lathered in mayonnaise. He helped her clean offices in the city. He sometimes forgot to spray wipe the desks so she would whack him across the head, making his ears pink. She hit him for the small things because she couldn’t hit him for eating the food she put down. That would make no sense. The fat grew around his bones like the tat around his bed. When he was rejected for being too fat to have sex with or too nice to have a relationship with, he’d put all his tat in garbage bags and shove it in a cupboard. As he slowly recovered from feelings of unworthiness the tat returned; new books, long billowy shirts, picture frames and the creep of the contents in the garbage bags from the cupboard back to his room. To free himself of the tat he would need therapy and in his sessions he would need to hate his mother for sending him mixed messages of affection as teenager. Hate his mother for over feeding him. Hate him for slapping his fat leaving a white tattoo on his skin that fades as her hand sways back passed her hip. But he would rather hate himself than hate his mother and let the tat be a small price to pay.

Babs will decorate a bookshelf until she can’t pull out a single book for the tat. She’ll display candles, brass rings, incense sticks, figurines, feathers, tobacco pipes and she will also have a universal remote control that every few years wakes up and changes the channel on the TV next door. She has books on the very top of the book shelf and quite impressively manages to store a small dolls house, a tennis racket cover and Balinese fan collection on top of these books. The book shelf will forever be a cumbersome thing about to topple but she will continue to decorate it with frilly regrets, best intentions and memory catches. And a picture of her son.

Arcade Fire had successfully recruited my body and now they were coming for my soul.

I’m an Arcade Fire superfan, ready to do whatever they tell me. I buy the merch and Google search “where does Régine Chassagne live?” every few days, giving Kate Bush a rest. Founder Régine Chassagne plays accordion, drums, xylophone, hurdy-gurdy, keyboards and organ sometimes at the same time (as do the other band members). She dreams songs backwards in her head. I saw them live at Wembley Arena in 2017 with two other superfans and like most superfans I was a bit judgemental toward the disturbing display of unchecked superfannery going on. The floor was empty and suddenly the whole place was a turgid sea of superfans creating shapes with their writhing bodies seemingly for the band’s exclusive pleasure. Arcade Fire had successfully recruited my body and now they were coming for my soul. Superfan devotion I suspect has been cultivated using subliminal messaging and by the time they get to Everything Now they shamelessly flash slogans that find a permanent home in our subconscious. I need them. Frontman Win Butler played “It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)” to his unborn son during the making of Reflektor and he claims the song still quiets him. Arcade Fire hypnotise their children. I saw a comment below concert footage of Arcade Fire on YouTube. Stevens Smith. 1 year ago. “Once you’ve seen them live your just a full on crack head to their music fact”

Proof that music is in your DNA lvino Rey American jazz guitarist and bandleader is Win’s granddad and Arcade Fire have a big band feel, arrangements are written in strophic form with the same phrase and chord structure repeated several times. Sound familiar, superfans? I win.

Funeral, Neon Bible, The Suburbs were about looking back, fueled by nostalgia, loss and jocundity. Reflektor is colder and is about looking in and seeing what you want to see. Refektor explores the new digital mythology and its impact on our sense of self. Screens that became a mirror rather than a window, from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs. Fact. And yes I used the word ‘jocundity’.

Even if you hate heavily produced music you have to admire Kanye’s willingness to crack open his sloppy noodle brain and let us dig in with chopsticks.

The longest cry in my life was to Runaway on repeat. It felt like my lungs were coming out of my mouth. A distorted electronic symphony clawing out the last bits of my broken heart. The song shouldn’t work but it does. The whole shebang that is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a nervous breakdown in the wake of a massive bender wrapped up in clean 1 hour and 8 minutes. Even if you hate heavily produced music you have to admire Kanye’s willingness to crack open his sloppy noodle brain and let us dig in with chopsticks. Hell of a Life still gets me up in the morning when I’ve embarrassed myself the night before. Addiction, stupidity, fatalism, self pity and hooks, lines and plinkers of pop genius. It’s also a big fat sorry if you’re at home self harming because he only wanted you for sex. Last track Who Will Survive America samples Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken-word “Comment No. 1” says “America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey” and this is 1970! I wonder what he’d think about Trump 50 years on. Music writer Ann Powers interprets the big theme on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to be “the crisis of the jet-lagged cosmopolitan … the exhausted cry of one who’s always new in town, chasing whatever goal or girl is in the room, fueled by consumer culture’s relentless buzz, but finally left unsatisfied” Kinda makes it sound less sexy now ya say like that…still.

“She couldn’t blame God. A God that exists does not take your entire family in one hit, no matter what his divine plan”

Boxing day 2004 and I’m watching the ocean swell and devour the beaches of southern Thailand and Sri Lanka. Much of the TV coverage is aerial footage making the movement of water look slow and calm, until the detritus crunching, crashing, tumbling. Animals are mostly invisible, the 4 legged ones felt vibrations when the ocean floor collapsed and headed for higher ground. The two legged ones perhaps with less feet to feel the rumbling wandered about as if the day was like any other. Soon the trench from which they evolved from several billion years earlier would claim them back. Or not. There is always satisfaction in the mass loss of human life, that is if you are far away and peering down from a great height, succinct in its exchange and balance. Taking back what was once lost.

A woman lost her husband, her two children and her parents in the sudden rise and fall of water across Yala, a national park on the south-eastern coast of Sri Lanka. Again loss like hers is darkly satisfying for those watching from afar. Imagining the terror and confusion crashing about in the furious wave and the random rooted object she must have clung to in order to survive. Imagining the loss as she allowed the brutal fact of her entire family drowning take hold of her consciousness. All of this is a state of empathy the objective observer can opt out of at any time. Again there is a satisfaction in our safety, the fact it wasn’t us. Some people heard her story and secretly envied her release from one life and her birth into another. A freak act of nature wiped her slate clean leaving her with no responsibility for another living soul. Once you’ve lost your entire family in one hit you can choose whatever path you want in life. No one will judge you. Oh for a wave.

The woman who lost her entire family couldn’t express her anger in a coherent way. There is no one, nothing to blame. She couldn’t blame God. A God that exists does not take your entire family in one hit, no matter what his divine plan. She couldn’t blame herself. With all her senses intact her two legs had failed to master the art of feeling distant seismic shifts in the earth. She couldn’t have done a thing. Perhaps hold on to her two sons with a firmer grip. But the wave swept away houses with effortlessly so no human grip could have stopped the turbulence below from chopping her son’s arms from hers. Her parents’ home in Colombo was eventually sold and the new owners moved in. The woman who lost her entire family started calling the new owners and hanging up on them. Unbeknown to them they’d stolen the life of another family just by purchasing a new house. She rang repeatedly and before long was making threatening noises down the phone. When you can’t attack the people closest to you, strangers will do. In the first few months of any breakup there’s phone calls that make sense only to the person making the call. It’s hopeless and there is no resurrecting the thing but you scream down the phone “why? just tell me why?” when you know the answer.

I remember walking behind a woman against the rush of peak hour commuters at Highbury Islington tube and even though we had an express lane to the far right she was veering into every second man and elbowing him in the ribs. When we got to the platform I caught up with her to see what her problem was. I expected to see an angry woman insane even but instead she was smiling.

Pain has to go somewhere, passing it on to anyone who happens to be in your way, is one strategy. But almost always it goes to the person that lies beside you in bed.