Alchemy of spinning crap out of gold
‘Man always be man v. fly. Does that mean anything to you?’
ISEND myself these cryptic notes. Sometimes I text them to myself so I have that weird experience of seeing a text arriving from me as I am sending one to me. It might say, for example, “Midlife. Man always be man v. fly.” Does that mean anything to you? Me neither. But clearly on July 10 at 17.40pm it seemed like a searing insight I had to write down that might be worth putting in here some week. The 17.40pm bothers me. Sometimes the incomprehensibility of these cryptic notes is understandable, if that’s not oxymoronic, because I have clearly had a few when I had the searing insight. And in the cold light of day, back on planet Earth, it’s OK that I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. But at 17.40pm on July 10 I shouldn’t have been that far gone that I decided that “man always be man v. fly” was something I needed to pass on to the world.
The other depressing thing when I go back over all these texts to myself, each written twice — the one I sent and the one I received — is the number of books I note down that I will never read. I could give you lots of book recommendations. If you asked me for a good book to read, I could say, “Have you read Proxopera by Benedict Kiely?” And you might say, “No. Is it any good?” And I might say “Me neither. But I heard it was supposed to be good.”
“Mel Gibson Producer”. That was a good one. That was apparently so important at the time that it was elevated to an email. An important looking email, subject line “Midlife”. And it said “Mel Gibson Producer”. You would like to think there was more to that thought than that Mel Gibson is a movie producer. And you’d hope there was. But I’m damned if I know what I was on about. “Leonard brings you to your knees and makes you laugh,” is presumably something someone said about Leonard Cohen somewhere that seemed insightful at the time.
Another one says “The woman on the flight and judging her”. I actually remember that. It was about a woman I silently judged on a flight. And then later on I was talking to her and she told me her whole story and why she was on the flight, and it explained everything that had gone before, and I felt really bad for judging her, and I realised you should never judge anyone without knowing what was going on. When I spoke to her I was filled with compassion and joy for her. But I wasn’t so in the moment that I didn’t send myself a little email so that I could chew up this little incident and regurgitate it on to the page.
It’s a sick way to live really. A little alarm goes off every time you have any thought or insight or feeling that might give you a few lines without offending anyone. Obviously I could write reams every week about my family and friends, but let’s face it, that wouldn’t last long.
Another one was a link, now expired, to a pair of heelys at Smyths Toys. I’m not sure how this fit in to anything but the subject line was “midlife”, so clearly for some reason I thought I could knock a piece out of shoes that have wheels in the heels.
It’s a weird form of hoarding, of gathering crap because I might need it for later, sparkly objects from day-to-day life that I think I will use some day. But I never do, like with most of the crap we accumulate. And it’s part of this instinct we all have now not to just be. It’s taking photographs of my brain farts for posting afterwards for everyone to see. Instead of just going through it, feeling the feeling, thinking the thought, enjoying the conversation, observing the thing. You wonder does it make you an outsider in your own life. Are you always just observing passively, knowing that it doesn’t matter what happens, it is all just stuff to be passively observed and fashioned into something with a beginning, middle and end.
Now that I think of it, I wonder was the Mel Gibson one meant to be about Mel Brooks and The Producers, and was it a note about seeing Brooks in an old episode of Top of the Pops recently singing his To Be Or Not To Be (The Hitler Rap) which wasn’t even from The Producers.
Believe it or not the song, which featured Brooks dressed up as Hitler, rapping the story of the Third Reich, was one of the first big international hit rap records in 1983. It also featured the phrase ‘Achtung Baby’.
You see now why most of this stuff never makes it into print? Only the best makes it in here.