The Energetic Kiss of London

The last two days have been stolen by swapping Wars of Dissolution stories with hard-drinking Anglo-Serbs and bonding over a shared love of cooking with a charming American multi-millionaire who was proud to have voted Bush. While it is great fun to swap recipes and discover my Serbian swearing is still up to scratch, I need to be home. My heart needs to be resting canalside.

I might be a southerner who loves the north, but right now I want to be inside the energetic kiss of London. Sitting at the station, all I want is speed. I want the landscape to blur. Synchronicity seems to offer hope of that. At the exact moment I pull out of Leeds, the iPod offers Gone Dead Train. Randy Newman singing: ‘Burning down the rail…’

However, instead of a jump edit between Yorkshire and King's Cross, there is an hour of static landscape. Starring at the same rough curtain of trees as the fields catch slow motion rain. The area outside Newark Northgate offers little to eyes waiting on signalling failures to be sorted.

We eventually push through Grantham – the town that spawned a monster – and I begin to detect the faint gravitational pull of the capital. The 14:40 feels it as well. The attraction accelerates us and we turn non-stop. There is enough speed to make station signs unreadable and render Stevenage a dirty smear.

We do not slow till just outside of Highbury. My heart somersaults with childlike joy when we pass the Emirates Stadium. Even after the last few games, a glimpse of 30-feet of Arsenal iconography adorning the curved wall of dreams still guarantees a smile.

Graffiti blooms in dense abundance. Green disappears from the palette and building after building bears the tired scars of pollution. I am responding to the beauty of familiarity, the beauty of recognition. The end of every small exile is made sweet by the love of home.

Living a Lifetime in a Few Minutes of REM

Sometimes my nights are haunted by the fall of Vukovar. Other nights the distress is due to my dreaming brain remixing memories of Anne-Marie Forker. Yet my last sleep saw me crying out not from events in my history, but due to the tragedy of an imagined life that was not my own.

In my sleep I sometimes become other people. Living a lifetime in a few minutes of REM. Dreams so detailed I wake unsure of who I am until I can shake of this dreamself's memories of families I have never had, schools I never attended and jobs I never worked. Once I dreamed I was dying a lonely death in Harlem. Lying in cold room, it walls swollen with damp, my skin as thin as paper and tight across my crumbling bones. I remembered everything. The pneumatic sound of a binding machine in the cardboard factory I had spent 20 years toiling in, the claustrophobia of sitting in a ticket booth, the heat of the 1973 summer, a childhood fight with bullies on West 118th Street and the shame of not being able to read. When I checked on maps later, I was shocked to see that I really could have navigated around South Harlem on the basis of what I brought back into the waking world from this dreamed life.

Last night I became Tom, became all his small joys, victories and losses. His flaws and his strengths. Even his addiction to the pleasure of vinyl in a digital age. The moment this other life lurched into nightmare was when Tom's employer and best friend – who just happened to be his brother – had a total psychotic mental breakdown. At this point I lived Tom's shock and loss as the person he had known for 19 years disappeared from view. Lived his anger at the ridiculous stigma visited on those suffering from mental health issues. Lived his guilt at not spotting the signs earlier, lived the way his chest tightened every time he visited his brother in hospital. I lived Tom’s relief when his brother was allowed home and most of all, I lived in his devastated emotional landscape after his brother committed suicide.

I woke with tears. They stopped only when Tom began to recede, the coherence of, his memories evaporating as I struggled back to full consciousness. Where ever he is, returned to dreamland or hiding out in the synaptic shadows of my mind, I hope Tom is doing better.

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.

Slovenian Meejah Hor

I have agreed to do some more publicity for the Freemasons On Trial documentary, but only because it is publicity for Slovenia. The countries that emerged from the Yugoslav Wars of Dissolution have a special place in my personal history. I get a certain kick out of being translated into Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosniak, Montenegrin, Macedonian and Albanian, (that list alone should tell you an awful lot about the Dissolution Wars).

This means that when I get an interview request for ‘the most read Slovenian print medium’ and it ends ‘I send you best regards from Slovenia’ I feel like being incredibly helpful. I am not sure whether I can be classed as a Slovenian Meejah hor as there is no money or other discernible benefit to myself involved in giving an interview*. Still, I am sure it will give my Slovenian acquaintances something to chuckle about.

*Dosjeji Zarot is still in print in Slovenia, but neither Kid Dork nor I are getting any royalties.