I recently became aware of the concept of Literary Taxidermy. The general idea is that you take the opening & closing lines of a poem, story or book & write an entirely new poem, story etc. between them. Instead of following this formula precisely, I have written this poem using a lyrical couplet from one of my favourite songs, Zürich Is Stained by Pavement (see below). The opening couplet here is about self-doubt & the fear that you’re not as strong as you need to be. I took this theme & ran with it. I hope you like it.
“I can’t sing it strong enough.” Well I might be able to, No promises, But I’ll give it a go. Maybe I’ll be able to find new reserves Of deepest, strongest strength to tap Way down deep where I wouldn’t expect. Maybe I’ll absorb that strength from others, By osmosis while holding hands Or shaking hands Or hugs Or fist bumps. Maybe I’ll fall within the range Of an area-of-effect buff From one of my stronger, More confident companions. Maybe the strength I seek Will be found in spirituality, Although I must admit, That is incredibly unlikely; A long shot, to say the least. Maybe I’ll find the strength I need In the unshakeable belief In my fellow man, Solidarity in community & rejection of competition. Solidarity not selfishness, Sacrifice in the face of solipsism. Maybe the strength required Can be found In the wisdom of the dead, Dusty library words, Observances and inventions, Artistic enlightenment That gradually evolves Into feelings of encouragement & spasms of renaissance. The worst-case-scenario, of course, Is that there is no fresh, Untapped well of superhuman strength, External or internal, Waiting for me when I need it the most. No secret inner quality, No unrealised ambitions Or dormant skills. Maybe there is nothing but weakness, Doubt and disillusionment. Maybe, just maybe, “That kind of strength I just don’t have.”
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Today marks the 24th anniversary of the passing of William S Burroughs. The hugely influential Postmodernist and key figure in the Beat Generation is loved and revered to this day, as much for his raw & paranoid prose as for his gruff, antiauthoritarian personality. His crowning achievement in literature is surely his nightmarish sequence of vignettes, Naked Lunch. The novel, which famously had to fight several bannings and an obscenity trial, was a nonlinear torrent of vile images and scenes, many taken from Burroughs own personal experiences as a hard drugs user.
As well as his feverish depictions of drug manias and psychoses, Burroughs is well known for his use of the fabled cutup technique which involved cutting up newspapers, magazine articles etc. and rearranging them to form new, bizarre prose. Burroughs believed that he was tapping into something here & potentially seeing glimpses of the future. This method, & Burroughs more generally, were a huge influence on many cultural icons going forward, most notably David Bowie. Lyrics to several of Bowies tunes were written using the Burroughs-esque cutup technique. A particularly great example of this is his Time of the Assassins, a cutup of a full issue of Time Magazine, in response to their review of Naked Lunch.
I myself became enamoured with the cutup technique and created several pieces of poetry using the style.See the Slow News City Poetry Index for links (Cut up or shut up #1-8). You can find a useful online cutup generator here, if you fancy having a go yourself.
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As I’m sure some of you will have noticed, the regularity of Scruffy Theory has dropped off in recent months as I have found other commitments intruding on my time. Between October & June I was completing the third module of my part-time BA in English Language and Literature, & so that took up an awful lot of my spare time. Sporadic blogposts did appear in those months though, most memorably, perhaps, The Mark E Smith Guide To Writing Guide, of which I am quite proud, and the tail end of the Chaotic Neutral series of my Song of the Day posts. Today I received my results for said module & am pleased to announce that I achieved a Distinction, so the hard work and blog neglect was potentially worth it. The next module begins in October.
In addition to this I have just taken on a freelancing job as a transcriptionist, as well as my manual day job. This takes up a lot of my time.
As a way of dealing with the time constraints faced, I am planning on broadening the scope of this blog to encompass some of my other interests. This broadening of horizons, I hope, will allow me to produce, perhaps fewer, but better, bigger pieces. I may, in the future, write posts about my experiences as a transcriptionist (while careful not to violate the non-disclosure agreement I was required to sign), my new found love of eScooters, & even some poetry & fiction that I am currently writing. I’d love to hear what regular visitors would think about these broadening horizons. Would you be happy to see fiction and poetry here? Or should I keep things like that in my other blog, Slow News City, despite it being a basic account and non-monetised? I simply cannot afford to upgrade a second account to Premium at this time.
Broadening horizons aside, one new series of posts I have been thinking about is one which explores the songs from the genres I love, & love writing about, which could be considered part of the genre’s canon. I’m planning to begin with Indie music, as that has been the main focus of this blog for most of it’s existence, but I am also looking at songs for Hip-Hop and Electronica series too.
Anyway, I’ve rattled on long enough for this post, & like I said I’d love to hear from you in the near future with any suggestions or ideas regarding the future of this blog & perhaps even ways of efficiently managing my time too.
Watch this space.
Tom
P.S. I’d like to take this opportunity to shout out to three of my friends who have sadly passed away this year.
Firstly, the excellent poet & storyteller, Adrian Spendlow (whose great blog can still be found here). A warm, loving human being who my partner & I greatly enjoyed spending time with. I will always remember how he loved to order the Pint of Prawns meal from one of our favourite food pubs, The Masons Arms. Sadly, I didn’t see him in his final year as he’d moved to America around a year before he passed away.
Second, there is my colleague from my day job, Julian Debenham. He was talkative & loved being the centre of attention. He was generous to a fault. You couldn’t enter a pub with him without him buying your drinks. Someone once gifted him My bloody Valentine’s three studio albums on vinyl & he didn’t like them. Knowing that I was a fan, he passed them straight on to me without a second thought. A lover of music, particularly folk & Nick Cave, he is missed greatly at my workplace.
Thirdly, there is Derek Rawnsley. I didn’t know Derek as well as the other two but I liked him a lot, nonetheless. He was married to a friend of mine & his loss is keenly felt. He was an Owl enthusiast & his wife gifted my partner & I one of his Owl statues to remember him by.
Rest in peace all.
Stay safe everyone.
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Thanks to Redditor u/XtalHedphelym for uploading this excellent image.
I initially found this fantastic image on a Facebook group dedicated to the excellent Spookypasta known as The Backrooms. For me, this image doesn’t really get at the core characteristics of The Backrooms but it’s still a wonderful example of Radiohead’s satirical take on Capitalist Realism. The original post on Facebook incorrectly gave the date as 1997, potentially due to the font used for the bands name, though careful examination of the image after finding this better version of it on Reddit, confirmed the date to be 2000-2001. Hope you like it.
Here’s (probably) Radiohead’s most Backrooms energy track:
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Day 30. I’ve become kind of caught up in the excitement & humour of the Twitter account-cum-Political Party, the Northern Independence Party (or NIP) & the prospect of it achieving a small amount of success in the form of some councillors & maybe an MP or two. They’re already standing former Labour MP Thelma Walker in the upcoming Hartlepool by election, a seat which Labour has held since 1945 & which Sir Keir “Keith” Starmer (aka – The Abstainer) is likely to lose to the most corrupt & murderous UK government in living memory. Sadly, the electoral commission is saying that NIP failed to register on time (as a legit political party, that is). They are however pressing on with their campaign, only standing their candidates as independents for the time being.
On another of the fledgling party’s social media posts, they asked their followers what song should become a free North’s anthem. I could think of no finer a song to fill this position than this rowdy & romantic New Wave classic by Mancunian Post Punk heroes, The Fall. I hope you’ll agree.
Hit the North Hit the North (Hit the North) my Cat says eeeee-ack Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North
Ninety-five percent of hayseeds (Hit the North) are corn-pones, guaranteed Hit the North Computers and fashion hotels Cops can’t catch criminals But what the heck, they’re not too bad, they talk to God Religious
Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North
Manacled to the city Manacled to the city (hit the North)
All estate, all es, all estate agents alive Yell down nights in hysterical breath Those Northern Lights, so pretty Those big big big wide streets Those useless MPs Savages
Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North (Manacled to the system) Hit the North
From the back third eye psyche The reflected mirror of delirium Eastender and Victoria’s lager The induced call, mysterious Comes forth
Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North
Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North
Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North Hit the North
Looking for some great music? Check the Song of the Day (Chaotic Neutral) Spotify playlist.
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What follows is a short spoken segment which Mark E Smith, reluctant Working Class Autodidact & erratic frontman of The Fall, recorded for Greenwich Sound Radio in 1983. Smith was already becoming respected for the poetic & eccentric content of his band’s lyrics (see The N.W.R.A below), which he whittled down from huge blocks of prose written with a similar methodology to Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose technique.
Here we hear Smith not only giving an insight into his writing process (about 50/50 chance of being serious) but also some poetry. Please enjoy the audio & the transcript I have provided below. The section which describes the process was taken from here, while the poetry & prose which follows was transcribed by myself.
Hello I’m Mark E. Smith and this is The Mark E. Smith ‘Guide To Writing’ Guide.
Day-by-day breakdown
Day One: Hang around house all day writing bits of useless information on bits of paper.
Day Two: Decide lack of inspiration due to too much isolation and non-fraternisation. Go to pub. Have drinks.
Day Three: Get up and go to pub. Hold on in there a style is on its way. Through sheer boredom and drunkenness, talk to people in pub.
Day Four: By now, people in the pub should be continually getting on your nerves. Write things about them on backs of beer mats.
Day Five: Go to pub. This is where true penmanship stamina comes into its own as by now, guilt, drunkenness, the people in the pub and the fact you’re one of them should combine to enable you to write out of sheer vexation. To write out of sheer vexation.
Day Six: If possible stay home. And write. If not go to pub.
Using this method, this is a poem I wrote called London.
(Mock American Accent) I’d just got over to London, get me a pint of your fine old British ale.
London.
Decadent backbone of former empire.
Spittle chinned Southerner looking forward to next holiday.
Digitale Croydon, fourteen pound per hour.
An immigration backlash type situation here
And there’s an Indian clerk in the backroom with a literature degree,
His boss is a roofed architect over-bathed, intense.
Project Victoriana Punish,
His clothes are flapping United Nations:
Japanese pants, odd boots, Euro shirts.
Is no shirt, his mind is Parisian
Fifties situationist
and ‘neath his designs you have no choice,
Stay where you are.
He is looking down on you from his tech drawing board.
Take the chicken run, run to the bog
You can do it
Do not
Warning! rumours of grey cancer builders greatly exaggerated
Manchester.
Dear TV Times,
Your majesties, I have concocted, through the noble invention and the blarney craft of the humble Northener, a system where by constant annoyance by the telephone can be erased. This entails explosive charges, left to me by a dead sailor from Bury, being wired up under every windowsill, close proximity to my ears. When phones ring and are inconvenient to the ears I just press table lamp-like what next to my bed and they blow up. I got the idea from a book.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Reg Varney.
Please note: all herbs is available from P.O. Box 935 GTV Manchester. Once you get a bit of pain I was splitting myself, them hilly-billies.
When it happened we walked through all the estates, from Manchester right to, er, Newcastle. In Darlington, helped a large man on his own chase off some kids who were chucking bricks and stuff through his flat window. She had a way with people like that. Thanked us and we moved on.
‘Junior Choice’ played one morning. The song was ‘English Scheme.’ Mine. They’d changed it with a grand piano and turned it into a love song. How they did it I don’t know. DJs had worsened since the rising. Elaborating on nothing in praise of the track with words they could hardly pronounce, in telephone voices.
I was mad, and laughed at the same time. The West German government had brought over large yellow trains on Teeside docks. In Edinburgh. I stayed on my own for a few days, wandering about in the, er, pissing rain, before the Queen Mother hit town.
I’m Joe Totale The yet unborn son The North will rise again The North will rise again Not in 10, 000 years Too many people cower to criminals And government crap The estates stick up like stacks The North will rise again X4 Look where you are Look where you are The future death of my father
Shift! Tony was a business friend Of RT XVII And was an opportunist man Come, come hear my story How he set out to corrupt and destroy This future Rising
The business friend came round today With teeth clenched, he grabbed my neck I threw him to the ground His blue shirt stained red The north will rise again. He said you are mistaken, friend I kicked him out of the home
Too many people cower to criminals And that government pap When all it takes is hard slap
But out the window burned the roads There were men with bees on sticks The fall had made them sick A man with butterflies on his face His brother threw acid in his face His tatoos were screwed The streets of Soho did reverberate With drunken Highland men Revenge for Culloden dead The North had rose again But it would turn out wrong The North will rise again
So R. Totale dwells underground Away from sickly grind With ostrich head-dress Face a mess, covered in feathers Orange-red with blue-black lines That draped down to his chest Body are a tentacle mess And light blue plant-heads TV showed Sam Chippendale No conception of what he’d made The Arndale had been razed Shop staff knocked off their ladders Security guards hung from moving escalators
And now that is said Tony seized the control He built his base in Edinburgh Had on his hotel wall A hooded friar on a tractor He took a bluey and he called Totale Who said, “the North has rose again” But it will turn out wrong
When I was in cabaret I vowed to defend All of the English clergy Though they have done wrong And the fall has begun This has got out of hand I will go for foreign aid But he Tony, laughed down the phone Said “Totale go back to bed” The North has rose today And you can stuff your aid! And you can stuff your aid!
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I needed to close some tabs on Safari on my iPad & I realise that I have read these various articles & poems but not closed tabs because I don’t want to lose them. Maybe I’d like to refer back to them or reread them later. I could bookmark them, I know, but I thought it would be nicer to share them with my readers. Hopefully you can find something interesting here. Knowing the way I “collect” open tabs like this, I’m sure this won’t be the only post like this. A couple of times a year (maybe more, maybe less), I’ll share what I’ve been reading.
Day 29. The video for this great tune by Björk is sadly age restricted. I do include it below though you’ll have to be logged into YouTube to watch it. The official audio on YouTube is also included below.
It’s one of my favourite tunes by Björk, a sensual downtempo piece which calls to mind the halftime rhythms of Dubstep as much as the murky electronica of Trip Hop. Great video too.
You’ll be given love You’ll be taken care of You’ll be given love You have to trust it
Maybe not from the sources You have poured yours Maybe not from the directions You are staring at
Twist your head around It’s all around you All is full of love All around you
You just ain’t receiving (All is full of love) Your phone is off the hook (All is full of love) Your doors are all shut (All is full of love) And be the little angel (All is full of love)
All is full of love (All is full of love) All is full of love (All is full of love) All (All is full of love) All is full of love (All is full of love) All (All is full of love)
Looking for some great music? Check the Song of the Day (Chaotic Neutral) Spotify playlist.
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Day 28. Another one influenced by Disco Elysium here. This song doesn’t appear in the game, as such, but appears as one of several easter eggs within the game which reference Manic Street Preachers song titles & lyrics. In the game world, the song was the anthem of a past Communist revolution in the main city, Revachol. An old man who fought during said revolution sings (or speaks, it isn’t voice acted) the opening lines of the song to you. When you ask him how the rest of the song goes, he says: “Something about shooting rabbits? I don’t remember.”
The song was originally written about the Spanish Civil War & became the Manic Street Preachers first number one single in the UK. The song is the longest song title (without using parenthesis) to ever reach the number one spot. It is, as far as I can ascertain, the only UK number one single to address the Spanish Civil War too, although I remember, at the time it was released, journalists saying that The Clash did it better with Spanish Bombs. I’m not sure where I stand on this.
The future teaches you to be alone The present to be afraid and cold So if I can shoot rabbits Then I can shoot fascists
Bullets for your brain today But we’ll forget it all again Monuments put from pen to paper Turns me into a gutless wonder
And if you tolerate this Then your children will be next And if you tolerate this Then your children will be next Will be next Will be next Will be next
Gravity keeps my head down Or is it maybe shame At being so young and being so vain?
Holes in your head today But I’m a pacifist I’ve walked La Ramblas But not with real intent
And if you tolerate this Then your children will be next And if you tolerate this Then your children will be next Will be next Will be next Will be next Will be next
And on the street tonight an old man plays With newspaper cuttings of his glory days
And if you tolerate this Then your children will be next And if you tolerate this Then your children will be next Will be next Will be next Will be next
Day 27. This is actually the second time this particular song has appeared during a Song of the Day series. The first time was during the Cover Versions series, in the form of the excellent cover by Pixies. This original version is a solid piece of dark Post Punk Pop, late ’80s style. The Reid brothers are on top form here. Stylish synthetic bass rhythms & stupendous rhythms are central to the composition, with the distorted swirls of electric guitar adding colour depth.
As soon as I get my head around you I come around catching sparks off you I get an electric shock from you This secondhand living just won’t do And the way I feel tonight I could die and I wouldn’t mind And there’s something going on inside Makes you want to feel Makes you want to try Makes you want to blow the stars from the sky And I can’t stand up I can’t cool down I can’t get my head off the ground As soon as I get my head around you I come around catching sparks off you And all I ever got from you Was all I ever took from you Yeah, the world could die in pain And I wouldn’t feel no shame And there’s nothing holding me to blame Makes you want to feel Makes you want to try Makes you want to blow the stars from the sky And I’m taking myself to a dirty part of town Where all my troubles can’t be found I said yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah And I’m taking myself to a dirty part of town Where all my troubles can’t be found Makes you want to feel Makes you want to try Makes you want to blow the stars from the sky
Looking for some great music? Why not check out the Song of the Day (Chaotic Neutral) Spotify playlist.
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Scruffy Theory 