Essexmania

I am slowly becoming divorced from Essex. My family dead or increasingly lost to me. No property, no legitimate business to take me there. Each trip I take back only serves to further disentangle me from the county of my birth. Knowing this makes every journey a blackened pilgrimage to the past. The tubes and trains that carry me cut lines ever eastwards till they hit the edge of England, the edge of definition and memory.

I am that rare thing, an Essex boy with all the Essex being taken out of him.

Friday afternoon and I am trying to surf ahead of the commuter wave, battling the curse of Edgware Road. The slow clock of the Circle Line – Farringdon, Barbican, Moorgate – counts down the stations to Tower Hill. Stepping out of the yellow ritual marking, turning my back to the White Mound and Bran’s Head, I feel myself losing all of London’s protective magic. It is no surprise when the pain of pure remembrance crashes into me as the engine drags me backwards through Limehouse.

By the time the train hits escape velocity and is propelled under the M25, out of London’s last magic circle, the sky is apposite for my mood. Sullen grey and wearing bruised clouds, it lends the landscape additional dull menace. The capital ends and Essexmania begins. Forced by the track into repetition of views I know too well, there is no deviation in trajectory. No escape from the hurt of travelling through paces swollen with you own history.

A Rich Background of Distant Sirens and Growling Dogs

I have had a number of requests for more information about a recent podcast I did referred to by some commentators on this blog. For those of you interested in hearing an ill man talking conspiracy theories, struggling to say the word compartmentalised and explaining why I will never forget the death of Alex Litvinenko – all to a rich background of distant sirens and growling dogs – go to: http://www.occultofpersonality.com/2007/08/22/podcast-24-david-southwell/

Thanks so much to Greg for giving me so much time to ramble and rant like the dangerous lunatic I so clearly am. I owe him extra special thanks for ensuring that this is the first interview I have ever done that closes with the amazing sound of Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves. My appearances on News at Ten were never like this.

Thank you

I love this blog. It is all about the writing. It is not about being good for my career, (anyone who knows me knows I have never been able to do careerism), it is just about the need to write.

There is no one here to tell me I am being libellous or striking the wrong tone. I can just get on with communicating, telling the simple stories with my life. I can shade my words with all the passion, humour and resistance spirit I cannot fit into my published work. This is David Southwell writing, not David Southwell as an author with the job of writing the 101 on parapolitics.

I am in control here. Unlike my books, I am totally responsible. The mistakes are all mine. If you have a problem with what is written, you can take it up directly with the boss. This in itself is one of the beautiful things about blogging, the direct feedback relationship it allows between writer and reader.

One of the pleasant elements springing from the nature of that relationship for me recently has been receiving so many messages of goodwill recently. I am very touched and very grateful. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to wish me a quick recovery. I promise I will try to get back to making regular dispatches as soon as possible.

Days Walking Down Sniper Alley

I am sorry there has been a lack of entries recently. There are entries I want to write – among them ‘Geno Washington’s Fight Club’ and ‘This is how Mr. Grasso Kicks Out the JAMS’ – but life has been difficult. I have moved away from ‘slashing my wrists’ in public (seemingly much to the annoyance of some readers), but I am currently experiencing somewhat unravelling circumstances.

I feel like I have spent days walking down Sniper Alley. When bullets strike too close, turning stone to violent storms of dust inches from your face, there is a gradual erosion of the soul. This is one reason for the dearth of new material on English Dreaming, English Rain during August.

Although I have my ‘funny book’ going to Frankfurt, I have also been working on the proposal for a project with the working title Counterfeit Truth. When you pour words professionally, sometimes there are not enough left for personal use. This has also been a factor hitting the blog over the last couple of weeks.

While I have no intention of whinging or dwelling on it, the final factor in the ongoing drought is my health. Trying to write, trying to forge the words and bind them together when pain takes all your strength is one of the ultimate acts of resolve. Imagination and will is the root of all magic. I understand that on days like these.

The Rules of Geno Washington’s Fight Club

Another weekend, another corporate fete in a London park. This time it was Innocent’s ‘Village Fete’ – less generous with the freebies, smaller name bands, earnestness down a notch or four, larger crowds and even more faux Englishness. Not only was there bigger a Helter Skelter, there was a real ale tent, an accoustic ‘bandstand’, Morris dancing, duck herding, dog agility demonstrations … At one point I even heard that common London phrase: “I want to touch the ferrets.”

It should have horrible, but with today’s weather and company it was actually rather magnificent. The atmosphere was fab. The largest continous bunting in the world, the myriad of stalls. It was not just trying to evoke simpler, kinder times, it was managing to be them. Not even the village fetes kissed by the sunshine of childhood nostalgia offered the chance to read free copies of Penguin classics, be given Top Table and Alpro goodies or see Geno Washington. Then again, today’s event did not give you the chance to win a lamb like my brother did at the ’81 fete in Ruan Minor.

Towards the end of the day we drifted into the main music tent. I stretched out on my back as Corrine Bailey Rae danced to the side of my rug. Determined not to move, despite the fact I could feel the funkiest 1970s cop film soundtrack never recorded vibrate through my body courtesy of some ballsy brass, everything changed when Geno came on.

Before he had even launched into his second song, we were getting the rules of Geno Washington’s Fight Club. The first rule according to Geno was: “No one leaves the frickin tent or I’ll frickin bust your frickin kneecaps.” The second rule was: “You have to make some noise, you have to move.” The third rule was about “Putting soul into the pot.” I am not really sure what the rest of the rules were because by the time Geno was ready to launch into Hand Clappin’, Foot Stompin’, Funky-Butts his last sentence was: “If you send freak waves we will put more funk in the pound Shakespeare!”
Back when I was a local newspaper hack/features editor, I interviewed Mr. Washington every time he played certain dubious Essex clubs. He was both showman and gentleman, a rare combination. I have seen him shake and work crowds to a frenzy nearly a dozen times, but his energy never ceases to buckle expectation. There can be no funkier 65-year-old on the planet. You only have to see him once to get the lyrics forever: ‘That man took the stage… This man was my bombers, my Dexy’s, my high … Oh Geno …’

A Fragment from the Dreamscape

People often ask writers: ‘Where do you get you ideas from?’ It is a fair question, yet many authors sweat when answering. You can see guilty beads of moisture tracking the lines in their foreheads.

This is because most writers are thieves. We steal ideas. File down the ISBNs and respray or break them up for parts to be shipped out to distant lands. Illicitly obtained Peugeot 505 gearboxes go to Port Harcourt, plot devices go to Arthur Machen’s Baghdad of the mind.

In defence of my profession, it should be noted that poverty plays a part in most crime. According to Denis Johnston, there are only eight basic stories. With millions of writers around, that equates to a real shortage of resource and a breeding ground for criminality.

Some writers claim not to be thieves. They style themselves ‘literary DJs’. Remixing, sampling syntax and characters, pumping up the plot. Others claim to be scavengers, salvage merchants, saviours of stories that would otherwise be scrapped. Even when this narrative is self-consumed, it remains just a distracting lie. Every writer is a thief. Every one of us.

I could try to claim cleaner hands. Point out that I deal in non-fiction. No law against taking facts during empty afternoon raids on Kew. I even pay fair coin to my stranger sources. Vodka and tonic, a curry or provable gossip for sharing buried news. Tell me what is on the missing Diana tapes and I will tell you which of Philip’s bastards is scouting for a ghost writer to dish the dirt. Libertarian memories of the man behind Guido Fawkes for on the level fact about Charles Kennedy. Information brokerage. Legitimate exchange.

However, facts are not the same as ideas. The question remains: ‘Where do you get you ideas David?’ The answer is always the same, always honest. Dreams, talks and walks. There has been a shortage of curry conversations in July, so it has all been walks that drift unknowingly into Baghdad-on-the-Thames and dreams.

I do not know how it works for other writers, but for me the dreams that provide ideas come in two broad forms. In the first, I will find myself possessing the body of an alternate me in a parallel dimension. A place where I am guilty of fiction and published by Gollancz.

I twitch inside this other David Southwell. Make him switch on his computer to see the drafts of his latest project or else force him to pull his published books from the shelves. The Scarlet Faction by Tim Dedopulos and David Southwell; Before The Blood by Matt Adams and David Southwell; The Far Lands by Stephen Grasso and David Southwell; the collected Hellblazer comics. Half a Dozen Doctor Who novels written alongside Sean Twist. The Sherlock XIII series. In these dreams, I attempt to read as much as I can; I do as all authors do and steal. I could try to spin it, but taking my ideas from an alternate me is still literary theft.

In the second type of dream I take directly from the landscape and inhabitants of what Machen’s Baghdad. Map its streets; make surreptitious word sketches of faces I see dining in its restaurants. I sit alone in its bars, pilfering overheard conversations, recording them with my shorthand scratch.

Every dreamtime experience is mine for the taking. I can steal without fear of repercussion in this ideaspace, knowing that within hours I will be beyond reach of any law operating here. Safely over the Theta state line, safely across the border of sleep. If I ever manage a decent night’s sleep again, the Baghdad security force will nab me and I will be up upon a charge of grand larceny.

There will be those who do believe my answer as to where my ideas come from. They will assume it is my Verbal Klimt improvisation to excuse and justify my crimes, who think: ‘He is a writer, therefore a proven thief and liar’. There is little I can provide to counter such thoughts. I could try calling Alan Moore as an expert witness; cite his work on Machen as a record of case law. Then again, those who do not wish to believe ideas arrive fully formed from dreams are unlikely to be swayed by the testimony of a man who worships Glycon.

In terms of hard evidence, I doubt dream journals are classed as admissible. Regardless, here is a record of last night’s journey through the territory of the Oneiroi.

‘Albion at the margins of the 1348 apocalypse. Empty fields. Abandoned. After the abnormal, constant summer rains, everyone was expecting famine as the grain rotted on the stalk. Worse came when plague robbed the landscape of enough men to work it. Blighted vegetation, mutating under the cover of mist that will not yield to a watered down sun. Skeleton thin livestock left to fend from themselves stagger across the blistered and black earth.

It is a time of crows. Breakdown of social order. All law a hollow memory. Knights Hospitalier colonies fallen to ruin. No one to protect the crossroads. All maps mock the living. England now a country of abandoned ghost villages, the only inhabitants are the unburied dead that once inhabited them. Pilgrims and outbreak refugees alone on green lanes drained of all colour except the black and grey palette of road turned to mire. High death rate for abbeys and monasteries. Two thirds of all England’s clergy dead. Mass burials. Mud pregnant with corpses.

Rumours of infection and Judgment Day as rife as the plague itself. Doomsday cults and heresies infect all belief. Antisemitc riots, the plague seen as a Jewish conspiracy. Mass penitence processions drudging on across several days. There is so much death, even the Pope is forced to abandon any pretence of established doctrine, declares all plague victims saved. Seeking ways to assuage the wrath of God has become political imperative.

Hoodoo Crow Men try to arrange contracts with the old powers to keep their patch free of contagion. Village militias murder outsiders on the roads to keep any possibility of disease from passing through. Plague Doctors tour the country, peddling false hope. They all wear the same uniform of fear: a hat to denote their status as a doctor; a mask with crystal eyes and the spice-stuffed beak to purify the air; a wooden stick to push away victims who get too close; leather gloves; a waxed gown and full-length boots.

On the Border, Scots see the pestilence in England as a punishment of God on their enemies. They gather an army to strike while the English are defenceless. However, before they can march, plague hits their ranks. Pursued by English forces, the Scots flee north, spreading the plague deep into their homeland. First flood, then famine, plague and war. All horsemen free, Albion as a territory of hell.

An inquisitor for the local prince-bishop makes his way across the landscape. Moving towards an abbey suspected of heresy. Moving into the reach of Lord Carfax – the local embodiment of authority who is suspected of diabolism. Moving towards a church where a Doom mural is being painted. It shows people dancing with a crowned bear; a bridge of spikes; St. Michael wielding a flaming sword, leading an army of saints against a legion of living skeletons. The mural intended as both prophecy and protection from the plague.

The mural reflects the sense that the tide of life and light looks like it will be permanently out across all Europe. The sea of civilisation rolled back to reveal primal horrors; deep fears now free to surface and roam. The inquisitor is the protagonist, moving towards his role in a vampire story. All vampire fiction as a fear of plague, infection, contamination and contagion from the outside.’

This is a fragment from the dreamscape. A note scratched into the dreamtime Moleskine. I probably will never transmute it to fiction, never be published by Gollancz. However, I hope it at least helps clear up one third of the ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ question.