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[riverspatrick]

PROPAGANDA OF LANGUAGE

It is literacy that has shaped our modern world, but have we truly left the olden days when the ruling class benefited from what a certain orange president referred to as "the uneducated" whilst professing his love for what he perceives as gullible fanatics who can easily be manipulated?

It is highlighted by how the educational system still rewards children for parroting rather than encourage their curiosity. "What year did Columbus discover America" versus "what sent Columbus crashing on the shores of Guanahani?"

Not so long ago, literacy was restricted. Control. Can't have more shepherds than sheep! When suddenly governments imposed compulsory schooling, the church naturally intervened and created a curriculum which didn't stray too far off the beaten path that leads back to the church. Written history is as biased as any work of fiction. But we're slowly addressing that. It actually boggles the mind that despite censorship, books that were banned centuries ago are still available today. Did you know Rousseau's encyclopaedia, the blueprint of all encyclopaedias, was once banned and all original copies confiscated by the church? Isn't it amazing that it has survived censorship somehow?

But what shapes our mentality is the language we choose to define the world. Words are contextual, definitions change from an era to the next -- what people often forget is how dictionaries evolve dynamically with usage -- you, the people, are in charge more than ever before in this texting age! This is why pronouns are important. Defining people as he or she seems like a given, but people weren't always classified by gender, let alone by either female or male. You only need looking to Hinduism, a religion which predates most actively practiced religions today, for how to address non-binary deities. Imagine praying to a being with multiple genders! Historians have been very creative with what they observe as reality long lost flew past forthwith abbreviated and doctored... But I digress.

Words are suggestive. If we teach the children that everything defaults to masculine (Adam), and that all lower forms of a word is feminine (Adam's rib), then we teach them to value people accordingly. A bitch is a dog, all bitches are dogs, but not all dogs are bitches. When people observe a creature from far, they'll use the all-encompassing masculine until they can confirm the animal's sex. Names are more divided by gender in Western societies than in indigenous culture for example. A boy named Maria will subject the poor kid to a life of abuse. How about River? How about Eagle? Good? Free? Loved? Professions such as postman, fireman and policeman are slowly fading from people's consciousness in favour of their more inclusive equivalent -- words are not to be taken for granted -- they are letters, sounds, a reflection of our culture, superficial and disposable, whilst what is, how it has been and will be, whatever we call it, shall outlive every definition.

[riverspatrick]

OUR HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET

I’m a good neighbour, most of the time. I give a hoot, rarely a boot, as such, some respond in kind, and gradually we swap larger words, larger sentences, and the next thing you know, we call each other by name! With the fences down, soon, you become privy to people’s highs and lows, stories that too easily die in silence.

Our home/family includes a dog we named Bowie. We live at a spitting distance from a bustling park, the reason we bought the Victorian, terraced home a year and a half ago. The park is Bowie’s second home. I know most local dog walkers, certainly I know all the people from our street who enjoy the park with their furry companions, but to my surprise, few know each other.

Bella, on the last corner before the park’s gates, knows no one below her number. After a long illness, her paraplegic husband passed away from sepsis recently. She knows Barda who lives on the other side of the street. Barda’s husband is deteriorating slowly with alzheimer. I see him most days sitting on the wall like Humpty Dumpty, smoking a fag, looking vacant. He’s stopped washing. He's stopped talking. Until he crashed the car, he wouldn’t stop driving. The cracks are showing. He’s one fumble away from a bad fall.

Neither Bella or Barda knows that the man who lives two doors down above Mr Cyclop, looks out for me when I walk Bowie at 2am. Noah will sometimes catch up with us and talk about his sexual fantasies. Of course he knows I’m gay — I wear Apple’s hi-vis 2020 pride watch band around my wrist every day. He’s into the golden shower stuff, but unfortunately, our house is carpeted wall to wall, and unless we turn the bathroom into a wet room, I wouldn’t even entertain the idea. Noah is bipolar and only comes out on a high, so he doesn’t bother me too often.

Mr Cyclops lives on the ground floor with his wife, and Boss, the terrier / shih tzu cross. It’s hard not to stare at the left socket of his eye. Some days, it looks like chilli udon noodles. The air is thick with pollen these days, fluffy dandelion seeds get all jammed up in there. I’d certainly wear a patch, pretend I'm DC’s Cyborg – LED light and all – would be useful for when I pick up Bowie’s poo in the high grass at night.

On the next block, at the house with the psychedelic sixties wallpaper, the mother of an eight-year-old boy died of a broken heart after her husband passed away a few months ago. At least that’s what we gathered. The child was seen running in the street crying, “She’s dead!” It was the first time either Bella or Barda had seen the boy let alone heard his voice. He was homeschooled like I was at his age. They kept to themselves, and for a recluse family, they were never shy exposing the nightmare-inducing wallpaper to all who walked past their window. That’s all we’ll remember of them: death, the orphan, and the geometric, rainbow-coloured wallpaper. I almost miss seeing the atrocity now that the blinds are permanently shut.

Nearer to us, there’s Tony’s portfolio of properties which will be divided between his two daughters and two nieces. Tony died last week, he would have been 99 had he lived two more days. The rent is cheap but the tradeoff isn’t worth the economy as the properties are in a devolving state of disrepair. A couple of junkies live under a dealer at the corner house. At the end of our block, Tony’s house has been emptied, so the large family next door are taking more liberties with noise pollution. They keep mallards in their kids’ paddling pool. They must have captured the wild birds at the park. I suppose mallards are easier to capture than the more colourful parakeets who keep to the high branches, and more entertaining than a terrapin. The jail-birds are let out in the courtyard for a quack more often since Tony died.

Next to ours, top floor, there’s Patricia, an alcoholic who loves playing Patsy Cline loud and throwing empty Frosty Jack's bottles at the ducks, cursing. The ground floor has been vacant since Guillaume disappeared after never paying the rent once since moving-in a year ago. He was also a dealer and went by different names depending on who called upon him. His alias had bills in arrears and apparently lived at our address. The debt collectors should finally stop knocking at our door soon.

On the other side of the street, Gertrude’s son has returned from prison and is begging to be let in. It seems it was only last week the cops raided her house and left with the lad in handcuffs. Can’t have been too serious. She swore she wouldn’t let him in again, but there he goes through the door. She’s a mother. That’s all she's ever done. “Soon I’ll run out of things for him to steal, and then he' won’t have a reason to come back,” she'll tell me again tomorrow.

Oh, I skipped Mario, a seventy-something lonely man who once sent me a link to his Chaturbate account so we could chat in private. He's been giving me the cold shoulder for not having taken the offer. Too bad. His dog Lobo and Bowie loved frolicking in the park together.

I can see Mick at work, cleaning the neighbours' windows. He's the first to have welcomed us on the street. Could be that he's a good businessman, or perhaps that it is compulsory, being a proud and jolly JW. He broke his back falling off a ladder and since has been using long hoses instead. That he got away with three fused vertebrae certainly proves that a life praying wasn't for naught.

I'm getting to what prompted me to share my street with you, therefore I stop at the halfway point where Lee used to live with his partner of twenty years. I hadn't realised that he had been kicked out of his house last month until I ran into him this morning. His partner's daughters had wired the house with hidden cameras and are accusing him of assault against their mother who suffers from dementia. The daughters kicked Lee out, placed their mother in a care home and re-homed all four dogs. He's naturally broken. That's also how Mario the lonely septuagenarian said hello for the first time in months. They are good friends and were setting out in Lee's van when I dared ask the poor man how he was doing. Other than Mario and I, no one knew Mike, no one else knows what befallen him.

That's but half of my street, one street amongst thousands in my town which is smaller than the average town in this country, yet the street is the quietest street I've ever lived on. How's your street doing these days?

All names have been changed to preserve anonymity, otherwise all stories are real, I kid you not.

[riverspatrick]

CEXUAL MISHAPS

I rarely buy new. One's junk is my treasure, or so I thought -- sometimes junk is junk -- and my latest adventure taught me many lessons in upCEXing. Let me share the wisdom I inadvertently acquired dealing with CEX and old technology for the modern times.

This is a guide for whoever is looking to buy a used Mac and get the best value for a limited budget. Having done a lot of research during this bumpy adventure, this “essay” will answer the following existential questions:

• Can a Mac Pro shaped like a trashcan do the job today?

• Why dust off an old FireWire iSight camera and how?

• Is third party SSD blade worth the trouble?

• Which budget display comes close to Apple’s retina experience?

• Why choose an Intel Mac over a new M1 or M2 “affordable” and more powerful Mac Mini?

• Is CEX’s 24-month warranty risk-free?

My iMac 5K (late 2014) is dying. It's had three open heart surgeries (logic board replacements) within the first three years of its extended warranty. A few months after the warranty ended, I had to replace the power supply for a third party part which actually fixed several USB/Bluetooth/audio streaming dropout issues I had had from the start, issues that Apple’s geniuses attributed to software. A genius by script is a fool. Now, the iMac's wonderful screen's usable space is shrinking by the month, a beige fog thickening from the edges in, creating a widening trench where ghosts appear and fade away very, very slowly. The screen defects coupled with hardware errors that point to a bad core prompted me to look for a replacement machine. It had to be Intel. Apple's new M1 and M2 computers offer great power but no upgradeable route for the future, and many of my favourite software plugins are Intel only.

Initially I looked for a used Intel Mac Mini, which has just been discontinued by Apple with the introduction of their new M2 Mini. It had to be an i7. Sadly they go for a great lump of dough and they are highly desirable, therefore hard to find -- I love recycling, but hate the chase... During my search, I stumbled across the "trashcan" Mac Pro. To my surprise, people can’t seem to shift them on the second-hand market -- not desirable, therefore cheap and easy to find -- my kind of bargain.

I always wanted a "trashcan" Mac Pro. I once had the Power Mac G4 Cube, and find the late 2013 Pro (not so affectionally dubbed ‘trashcan’) a direct successor to my beloved Cube. It’s more than nostalgia, I assure you.

Power Mac G4 Cube 2000 - 2001

I chose CEX for their 24 month peace-of-mind warranty, and set the sat-nav for the closest Trashcan Pro available. The unit was pristine! I drove back home drooling, almost foaming at the mouth, I even resisted stopping for a toilet break -- I was the owner of the legendary "trashcan" Mac Pro! YES! The same one that went for £5K when new! I paid for it all in trade! BARGAIN!

Except it wasn't a bargain at all.

You saw that coming, of course; why would I write about happy times? The Trashcan Pro was trash. This would be the start of ongoing trials and tribulations which I hope to be done with by the time I finish writing this.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) 2013 - 2019

At first glance, the Mac Pro (late 2013) may appear like a step back from my iMac 5K (late 2014) but it actually supports a newer OS (Monterey vs the iMac's Big Sur). The Mac Pro is also still officially supported by Apple whilst the iMac became obsoletea few years back. Also, the Mac Pro's guts, including the CPU, can be upgraded up to a 12 core CPU, 128 GB RAM vs my iMac which is already maxed out with a consumer grade CPU (i7 4core), 32 GB RAM, 4 GB VRAM. It seemed like the right upgrade in theory, but I would not find out with a defective unit.

CEX has a 14-day return policy and a 24-month peace-of-mind warranty, YIPPEE!

I chose a different model located further away (London) and opted for delivery. Eventually, after an agonising week trying to rouse CEX out of their stupor (the item remained at 'stock-picking-in-progress' for five days), I received a unit that had surely gone through hell and back: scratches, discolouration, sticky spillage, dust, dust, dust, and I'm not talking fine dust; I pulled dust-bunnies from the grills the width of my pinky toe.

CEX has a 14-day return policy and a 24-month peace-of-mind warranty, so I gave it a chance.

Lesson starts here, my friends…

• SSD, or how to upgrade an old MAC’s storage.

Sadly, the Mac Pro came with a third party 512 GB SSD fitted with an adapter.

Adapters - buy cheap buy thrice!

Between 2012 and 2019, Apple used two types of connector for their SSD blades, both proprietary. In order to use a third party blade, one would need an adapter. The part is widely available and cheap. Thankfully? No. Apple rarely does things willy nilly. In order to work nice with the Mac, the SSD itself needs to comply to the Mac's and its OS' requirements, ECC being the start of many geeky terms I won't bore you with. So you think you can use any SSD with the said adapter? No. No you cannot. It might work for a little while, but you'll soon encounter issues with basic functionality. You'll see the blank folder-of-doom with the question mark. You'll have to zap the PRAM in order to force it to detect the SSD, which can only be done with a wired keyboard, I should add (I love "vintage", but I'm not a fan of wires). Latest Mac OS update that necessitates a restart will struggle to complete and leave you sitting at a blank screen hoping that another PRAM ZAP will do the trick. Beyond that, every time you turn the Mac off, the adapter will cause a kernel panic and have the Mac instantly reboot instead, punishing you for modding it with a cheap hack.

☒ 2012 - mid 2013 7-17 pin SSD APPLE connector

☑︎ Mid 2013 - 2019 12-16 pin SSD APPLE connector

Cometh OWC, the Mac friendly people who offer a solution at a premium price, of course. Their Aura Pro X2 blades offer speeds the Mac's old architecture can realise, but at 4x the price of SSD blades on the market, I decided to look secondhand. Remember CEX and their peace-of-mind warranty?

CEX happened to have a 1 TB OWC at a bargain price — oh goody! Several days later, the order got cancelled. Apparently they couldn't dispatch the item without further explanation and the item returned online for the taking. I tried again. I'm still waiting. I expect the same outcome, but I have decided to play along and see where that leads me.

In the meantime, I discovered that Apple used three manufacturers for their SSD blades: Samsung, Toshiba and Sandisk. They used two different connectors: 7-17 pin between 2012 and up to mid 2013, and 12-16 pin from mid 2013 up to 2019. Technically, it's possible to source out an OEM Apple part! Good news! CEX, 14 day, 24 month. Can’t go wrong… Unless the item remains in stock picking limbo and ends in cancellation. The OEM Samsung did not return in-stock, however, and I’m still waiting on the OWC...

Cometh eBay. £45 shipping included, Apple OEM made by Samsung, 512 GB, apparently in good condition. I should get it in 48 hours. More on the SSD saga later.

• DISPLAY for MAC peeps.

Coming from a 5K retina display at 218 PPI which looks like ink on paper -- no apparent pixelation -- I could not go for the common sub 100 PPI display. High pixel density monitors are not easy to find, mainly because the PC market caters to gamers (fast refresh rate performance over quality). You'll find plenty of 4K screens at 120 Hz, but what about PPI?

Well...

Research lead me to a 2016 LG 24inch 4K display which offers 185PPI and a displayport. LG has since updated the model, rebranding it under their ultrafine line which only adds 1 pixel “advantage” over the old one (186PPI)... But with the latter using USB-C connectivity, and being twice as expensive, the old model it is! CEX, 14-day, 24-month warranty… But there’s a snag… They don't ship displays. Collect only.

The nearest one of the three available was in Bradford, seventy miles from my door. I love an adventure — DAY TRIP! Bradford is a massive crater illuminated to the brim with rows and rows of fairylights, like standing at the heart of a gigantic beehive breeding glowing larvas. I enjoyed the sight. The CEX employees were lovely. I discovered Dunkin' Donuts had infiltrated the UK too! Bonus! I got a £10 box of 6 (3 maple, 3 Boston creams) possibly for the first and last time, at least on this side of the pond. Dunkin’ Donuts isn’t worth nearly £2 a piece. But I felt the rush of the adventure, and the fruition of a successful bargain hunt raised my spirit.

CEX was too busy to let me test the display. 14 day. 24 month. Can return it to any store. High spirits. Sugar rush. I chose the countryside roads. Sundown. Narrow lanes. No street light. Peaks, twists, the thickest fog I have ever encountered. An omen.

Home, safe, the display turned out to be complete garbage: rows of dead pixels; wide long “burn marks” or "smears" with a bubble on the physical surface of the screen. I began to ask myself what is a 14-day / 24-month warranty worth if everything I buy from CEX is unusable?! I promptly returned the display at my local CEX. Despite it all, spellbound by their 14-day / 24-month warranty, I gave them another chance. What are the odds that a second display turned out as bad as the first? Sheffield? Crystal Peaks? Haven’t been in a while, why not… I waited for the online confirmation the next day, but got a cancellation notice instead. Apparently, the display can’t be located.

(…)

Cometh eBay. Pristine condition. No warranty, but fuss-free. Lovely seller. Unit like new. Why was he selling such a wonderful display? Because he is using Windows, and Windows can’t scale a high pixel density display like the Mac does. My gain. Cheaper than CEX’s. Jackpot!

One last piece of the puzzle missing, though…

• SSD saga continued…

After a week, the 1 TB OWC gets cancelled at CEX on the day I received the 512 GB Apple OEM from eBay. I could finally test my new Trashcan Pro properly.

Let’s gather up the gear I’m playing with first.

My "new" kit

• Mac Pro (Late 2013) 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 with dual AMD FirePro D500 3 GB

£380 from CEX

I added 2x 16 GB 1866 MHz DDR3, leaving 2 empty slots for later IF the Mac Pro is a good egg. The good egg gets more ram. The bad egg goes back to CEX and I rethink the whole thing.

I switched the problematic third party SSD with an Apple OEM (Samsung) 512 GB SSD, bypassing the need for an unsupported adapter.

• LG 24inch 4K UHD IPS LED 24UD58-B DISPLAY

£130 on eBay

As close to Apple’s retina display as a budget monitor can get. I’m very pleased with this purchase. I work with it at a 3008 x 1692 scale. My eyes can’t focus at a close enough distance from the screen to notice any discernible pixelation. At 185 PPI versus the iMac’s 218 PPI, the window round edges aren’t as smooth, but by a narrow margin. You’d need to be as hopelessly finicky as me to notice.

• Accessories

Magic keyboard + trackpad (space grey), Apple HI-FI (more on that), ORICO SSD 10 Gbps enclosure + various USB3 external HDDs, Apple iSight camera (more on that).

First, I dressed the Apple OEM SSD with a layer of thermal tape then formatted it in online recovery mode (command + option + R on restart), and installed Monterey from scratch. Since, the Mac Pro has behaved like a Mac should. 

LESSON #1: don’t use third party SSD with adapter.

I should add that I tested 3 different adapters — all resulted with a less than desirable outcome. Unless you prevent your Mac to ever go to sleep and never, EVER restart it — I can’t recommend a third party solution.

Orico 10 Gbps SSD enclosure

Since I had bought a WD 1 TB “green” SSD to test the setup with, I opted for an ORICO SSD enclosure for fast external storage, which brings us to the Mac Pro’s older connections problem.

However tempting it is to get a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure, HDD, RAID, etc… DON’T! I already had a G-TECH raid for my iMac 5K, and the external SSD enclosure proved faster despite being limited by the Mac Pro’s USB3 speed (5 Gbps versus Thunderbolt 2’s 20 Gbps) which comes down to the mechanical HDD’s limitation versus the SSD’s. And yes, the SSD on USB3 outperformed the 7200RPM RAID 0 speed on both small and large files using Blackmagic’s speed test software.

LESSON #2: don’t waste your time and money searching for a Thunderbolt 2 solution.

Many RAID enclosures or external HDDs with Thunderbolt 2 are now too old to be trusted, and unless the unit is designed for the Mac, their software won’t be supported with the latest Mac OS. My G-Tech works with the Mac’s own disk utility tool, but others don’t and will be formatted for Windows.

Apple Hi-FI still rockin'

Speakers… I have 2 HomePod Minis that I wrestled with for a while. I used them -- or tried to use them -- as a stereo pair. Ideally I wanted to reproduce the look of the old Powermac G4 Cube with its gorgeous spherical speakers (see G4 Cube picture at the very top). But the HomePod Minis never worked as expected with the iMac 5K nor with the Mac Pro. I suspect it comes down to the older bluetooth 4 as the HomePod Minis play well with my Macbook Air M1 (bluetooth 5). Never mind, my Apple HI-FI still works and the Mac Pro has and optical sound output. The HI-FI is a fabulous boombox. They are hard to find and fetch a fortune, but I’m lucky to have gotten one back then. Apple’s HI-FI truly sounds amazing.

LESSON #3: old gear is fun

Apple iSight Camera 2003 - 2006

Speaking of legacy products… I love Apple’s old iSight camera. With the iMac 5K sporting a superior and integrated cam, I benched the FireWire iSight Camera and never thought I’d use it again… Except, the Mac Pro doesn’t come with a webcam, and it’s enough that I have to stare at LG’s generic plastic design all day that I thought of resurrecting the old iSight for a bit of Apple chic.

But it has FireWire 400, I hear you say dismissively?

Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 + FW800 - FW400 adapters

I found Apple’s Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter on Amazon for a reasonable price, £2 more than the cheapest one on eBay or CEX. With a £3 FW800 to FW400 adapter, my iSight camera is standing proud above all this “new” kit and working fine. Nostalgia? No! Not “entirely”! I call it recycling. Good for the environment, and I look better in standard definition too!

• SO IS IT WORTH ALL THE FUSS?!!!

Or is it Mac-fanatic indulgence? The Mac Pro actually outperforms the iMac 5k on many things, and I got quite lucky. As it turns out, the first Mac Pro I returned was manufactured in February 2014, not long after the model was first introduced. The second one, which is running smoooooothly so far, was manufactured in October 2018, not long before the model was discontinued. How can you find out when your secondhand Mac was manufactured? Here’s the link for you.

PROS

• Runs Monterey like a top

• Faster with multi-thread computation (particularly with video encoding) than many newer Macs

• Standalone unit — if it goes bust, I still have a working screen — if the screen dies, I still have the Mac Pro

• Upgradable to impressive specs - CPU - RAM

• Can boot with Windows unlike the M1/M2 Macs

• Compatibility with existing software

• Still handles latest pro apps without a sweat

CONS

• Very slightly slower on every day single-thread tasks such as surfing and mail (more cores = lower GHz)

• Output: Thunderbolt 2 (legacy mini displayport connection), USB 3 (5 Gbps), HDMI 1.4 (30Hz @ 4K), bluetooth 4

• Expensive eGPU expansion only

Right, enough geeking about for a while. I do hope this has helped some of you.

[riverspatrick]

An Art Is To See 芸は見をたすく

Picture me at 12, Catholic high school, forging an identity, refusing to go to the barber for the usual Douglas-Fairbanks from the hairstyle-for-boys poster, picking the plain black clothes from the racks at the local Woolworth. Blame Mafalda. She’s the one who encouraged me to transition from the medium of comics – her own medium no less – to an art book. My parents were hoping for a Manolito (ambitious capitalist) when I was truly a Miguelito (traumatised hippie). I’d now consider myself a Guille (awkward child)/Libertad (hopelessly cynical) hybrid. That I was sent often to the principal’s office shouldn’t surprise anyone, then. Straight from the pages of a Mafalda comic book. I had the puns to boot. Mafalda taught me well.

At 13, Father Brimstones retired from his post and for the first time in its history, the school welcomed its first secular principal who grew fond of me. Instead of lecturing me, his office became a pitstop to enlightenment, I kid you not. If he still lived today, I’d thank him for sentencing me to community service at the school library under the supervision of Mr Beauregard, the wise and astute librarian. The unpaid work paid off for everyone. Socialism at its best. Mafalda would be proud.

Mr Beauregard had the admonitory stance and marital status of a Catholic priest. In hindsight, I presume that by mirroring his employer on the exterior, he was able to let a few controversial books slip onto the otherwise pure and sterile shelves of a conservative school.

Seek and you shall find.

The rare books were found besieged by the institutional on the lowest shelves from the darker reaches of the farthest room from the library’s one entrance and exit door. Few ventured past the bright, open front-room where one row of shelves filled with the essential academic books relevant to the school’s curriculum didn’t block the sun. Rows of tables and chairs were widely unused unless a full class was made to study there in the absence of their teacher. Crossing over to the other room, the shelves outnumbered the few rows of individual desks lined up against tall and narrow windows. By the flaking yellowed paint from the damp window frames, the dark corners where eery shadows roamed and the uncomfortable chairs, you’d think the room was intentionally left this way to keep the students away from veering too far off the beaten path. And they were right to do so, if indeed they meant to, for I ventured deep inside the darkness and found a transformative light.

I was a curious Smalltown Boy.

The books I found, lord almighty! They could only be signed out to an age appropriate student – 16 and over – or I could flick through them from the farthest desk along the East wall where one of only two windows didn’t face a building. Sat anywhere else on a cloudy day and you could barely make out the ink from the page.

That’s how the outside world introduced itself to an outsider – there existed an alternative to my one-moose town! Somewhere lived people of a different ilk who broke all cardinal sins and lived to tell the tale! How had they managed to avoid god’s lightning spear?

Removing the cover sleeve to ‘Japan’ by Seiji Kurata, a collection of photographs documenting Tokyo’s subculture, would be the only censorship made to the book. Originally, you’d find a jolly drag queen announcing without ambiguity that the pages at her back are nothing to do with feng shui, bonsai or origami, harmless forms of Japanese art most Westerners are familiar with – no!

The book may have past the censor board the same way nudity is shown before watershed on National Geographic for its exotic content of academic interest – Japan’s sinful ways could be explored from a safe distance if only to expose the devil’s rule on nations that didn’t follow Christ. I did not see the differences; these outsiders were instantly relatable to me. I had rarely seen people without the veil of emotional repression and conformity, exposed, proud, full of conviction, and it gave me the courage to be fearless and unapologetic, to be an artist.

It isn’t so ironic that I should be introduced to drag queens, transexuals, homosexuals, prostitutes and the Yakuza at a Catholic school. No one can oppose something without exposing it, feeding the immortal beast they are hoping to starve.

[riverspatrick]

In ___ We Trust – A Lesson.

It takes money to access Anna Della Subin’s recommended metaphysical books, for without the monetary means to procure the physical copies, I’ve been priced out of her picks. Her own excellent out-of-print book, ‘Not Dead But Sleeping’ which I own, is listed used for £127.99 on Amazon, or £4.83 for the Kindle version. £4 on Apple Books. If only the same applied to the six all but one out-of-print books teased in the article. In Anna Della Subin I entrust my slim wallet.

It begins with ‘Eros the Bittersweet’ by Anne Carson. Still in print. Up to £20 from Physical to Digital. If you want the Hardback, it’ll cost you £70, and even that is reasonable compared to the second book from the list: ‘The Geography of the Imagination’ by Guy Davenport, long out of print, without a digital option. Following the link to Amazon US presents me with two options: the hardback at $469.98 or used from $249.99. In the UK, whilst £125 will buy you the hardcover, a used copy in paperback fetches a tenner up to £100 depending on its condition. The Birth-mark by Susan Howe will cost much more in the US than in the UK where a paperback copy can be purchased for under £4 and less than half that for the digital. Finally, ‘Dreams, Illusions and Other Realities’ by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, also out of print, demands a £40 average with a steep £11 in shipping for the slightly cheaper used copy.

Had the prices been reasonable – on Anna Della Subin’s recommendation alone – I would have bought the lot without a second thought. As it turns out, their price tag gave me pause to investigate a little further what the books were about based on their official synopsis and readers’ comments. To sum it up, I’d have been disappointed had I rode the impulse; the material, whilst described as metaphysical, is a little too academic and theological for my liking.

It’s the word metaphysical, isn’t it! I barely know Anna Della Subin, in fact, I don’t know her at all. I remember loving the one book on my shelves she authored, the aforementioned ‘Not Dead But Sleeping’, in which she’ll relate a quote from communist poet George Oppen to a reflection on Quran’s people of the cave. It’s a pattern. Her book opens with two quotes hung from the top of a blank page: “There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.” by the great Martin Luther King Jr., and “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” from Corinthians 15:51. The only kinship between the paired quotes is in how their meaning is left to anyone’s interpretation. ‘Dream’ like ‘metaphysical’ has as many definitions as there are people to define the word, past and present.

Metaphysical. From an atheist perspective, I’m thinking psychedelic, dreams, subconscious, transcendental meditation, Timothy Leary and Unica Zurn, woo-hoo! That’s my kinda jam!

Meta –– beyond/abstract.

Physical – body/concrete.

I’m thinking reaching beyond the body from within oneself. Others will look outwards to a higher power, something I would call spiritual or religious. Generally, if a stranger recommends something to me, I’ll assume the stranger doesn’t know me well enough to do so. Sceptical wall erected, trenches wide, bridge up. “Are you trying to convert me?” I’ll ask, calibrating each party’s expectation. “What school of thought? Does the author dress to the right or the left? Kardashian or Kafkashian?” What then is this humbling impulse to trust someone’s opinion on anything with limited knowledge of the said someone or the context in which their opinion is based? Blind faith? Moi? An atheist!

I have done the same too many times with different artists from different disciplines. Most famously with a band called Bloc Party. I heard ‘Silent Alarm Remixed’ first which sent me to the local shop for the original LP the same day. I trusted the band from then on, waiting for the next great thing. It had to be great, how could it not! Then the second LP came, and the third, and the fourth, and I’m funding Bloc Party religiously, left waiting for the flame that drew me to their first LP in vein. Deaf faith? I did the same with authors, painters, sculptors, directors, philosophers... Is one work enough that I should lose all critical sense, give away the key to my soul with which they’ll let themselves in ad infinitum? I need to change the locks.

The familiar. Tribalism. I recognised Anna Della Subin as my tribe, so I trust her. The metafamiliar – it should be told – since neither her likeness or Bloc Party’s had anything to do with said devotion. Marketing campaigns bank on familiarity, whether they hire a celebrity to advertise toiletry, or stage an actor having tea and biscuits to make them more relatable to the audience before selling them an otherwise less palatable boiler coverage insurance. Of course, outside the UK, tea and biscuits might not make someone relatable, but I’m sure you catch my drift. Familiarity through the senses. Fresh crusty baked bread stimulates all five senses hence being the most familiar food globally. Breaking bread with someone. I love that expression. Nicely tanned and plump – a feast for the eyes – the scent alone is comforting. Cracking the golden crust as visceral as popping bubble wrap, snap, crackle, pop! Dipping fingers in the warm, velvety-soft flesh. Nothing tastes homelier anywhere on earth. Present me with steamy golden buns and I’m yours.

Except, I identify as a cynic! Smoke and mirrors won’t break my walls! Who cares if the iconic Grace Jones chooses Barclays, I’m a discerning peep, such gimmick has no power over me! I chose Lloyds because at the time they had the most convenient opening hours. Things have changed since, but never mind, Grace Jones, despite being a familiar artist I adore, will not convert me. Jehovah Witnesses, no matter if you are the lovely Kim from two doors down or Prince resurrected, god-dammit, YOU, SHALL, NOT, PASS!

Yet, Anna Della Subin nearly had me emptying my Lloyds saving account. Fox Mulder was right – TRUST NO ONE!

[riverspatrick]

DC VS DISNEY

I’m compelled to perpetrate the DC versus Marvel trope despite the fact that the entertainment industry is made better by diversity and representation, not by profit and trends alone. DC VS Marvel, Mac VS PC, Coke VS Pepsi – the rivalry is engrained in our consumer minds, hard to deprogram, whilst all parties profit on the spectacle, because you can’t think of one without the other. It’s all part of the show. Villeneuve’s Dune made more than twice its budget in profits whist Black Widow did not, even though I’m willing to bet more people saw the latter than the former. Yes, Disney will sell more action figures and lunch boxes in the end, but the point I’m trying to make is how the industry’s success is hard to calculate on profit alone. Disney isn’t solely responsible for the success or failure of their franchises. Marvel and Star Wars characters mean so much to the fans that a show like The Book Of Boba Fett will score highly with its audience for nothing more than displaying their favourite characters on screen, such as the Wookiee bounty hunter Black Krrsantan, the Hutts twins, or Camie Marstrap and Laze “Fixer” Loneozner. Just ask Star Wars fans who these characters are and watch the passion on display. Challenge them to sum up the story of the show in a compelling way and they will likely falter. Boba survives from being digested by a monster, becomes one of the sand people, then defends his claim to Hutts’ vacant throne. The title alone spoils most of the story given that the character should survive for his book to be written. Writing about the cameos, easter-eggs and pants-creaming characters would require several paragraphs and a lot more context from the deepest reaches of the Star Wars lore.

I’m not on anyone’s side. DC or Marvel, I usually avoid the superhero genre, but after watching Peacemaker’s first three episodes, I realised that DC are banking on their advantage over Disney’s Marvel, and are making the best of it. Predictably, the home of Mickey Mouse would never green light Todd Phillips’ Joker or James Gunn’s Peacemaker, whilst DC can, and that’s a great thing since it brings the thriving and enduring superhero genre to that audience outside the mainstream who have been neglected for some time. I mean, what else have we got to look forward to other than another Wes Anderson delightful but formulaic work? Anderson’s work has become a Tintin-like Bill Murray serial: Billy In France, Billy In India, Billy In Hungary, Billy In Japan, whilst studios play it safe with remakes and take fewer chances on stories that could infuriate both the left and the right. It’s much too easy to offend someone these days, unless you tell the story through the superhero lens. A Ken-like enhanced male who fights with a name and costume inspired by the American flag? Only an established superhero franchise could get away with so much stereotype. The guy fights a whole planet-worth of aliens for days and there isn’t a hair out of place on his head. Whilst the Marvel universe tries to feed every bird with one crumb, DC has the freedom to play the full gamut, from G to R, blood, fleshlights and tighty whities.

You only need watching the opening title to know Peacemaker is not another CW woke-teen-pleaser, or the glossy kind of brain-starver Disney+ is known for – Peacemaker is pure, unhinged madness! Forget the action figures, I’ll buy Peacemaker branded tighty whities NOW, HBO! If I’d only look as good in them as Cena does however...

[riverspatrick]

Bukowski, eat your words!

Cancel Culture is nothing new. The relationship between artists and their audience is a fickle affair. Think American media cancelling The Beatles, good Christians burning their albums across the country back in the day. The following decade, they’ll burn disco albums. Before then, they burned books, they burned witches, they committed artists and thinkers to asylums, they threw people to the lions for people’s entertainment, they crucified them too! Cancel Culture is as old as anyone’s memory.

I read the news today, oh boy... BBC Broadcasting House, Central London, a man climbed a ladder to reach a statue by sculptor Eric Gill who is alleged to have sexually abused two of his daughters, his sisters and a dog. The man, armed with a hammer, tried his best but clearly wasn’t an experienced vandal – had he researched how to destroy a stone-hard statue, he would have brought at least a chisel. In the end, the man managed to peck a few bits off before giving up. Shakespeare’s Prospero & Ariel still stand firm above the entrance door.

Good thing the man with the hammer had no interest in quantum physics as it turns out Erwin Schrödinger was a pedophile! Hammers follow the laws of physics and can’t break theories – how could Schrödinger be cancelled now? However tempting, I will keep my cat-in-the-box puns to myself. You’re welcome.

That said, one evening, feet up, I’m watching telly after a long and difficult day writing (you’ll find me there when I’m defeated), Rob Beckett plugs his new book saying it took him three months to write. “It took bloody ages,” he says. As the crowd applauded Beckett’s great effort, they scorned mine. I’ve been at this darn book for three years and when I feel this way, I instinctively turn to Bukowski or Burroughs, men who won’t admonish the wretched, the scum of the scum.

Charles Bukowski – the person – makes me uncomfortable, his art makes no attempt at redemption either – so why do I turn to him or his kin for advice? Burroughs? The man who killed his wife and like Bukowski has nothing but contempt for the human race? I have more books from Burroughs on my shelves than any other author. These men have done and said more than enough to be cancelled, so how do I keep turning to them for advice without remorse? What draws an audience to flawed artists, the same audience who expects the artist to be without flaw? The irony wasn’t lost on Bukowski who reflected on how “they” come to him, he doesn’t come to them, yet “they” always without fail try to rid him of the flaws that led them to his door in the first place.

Flies critiquing the fresh turd they landed on.

Bukowski isn’t the first to advocate for integrity-above-all, but the message is delivered with such authenticity that I find it more impactful coming from his boozy lips than anyone else’s. Can a glamorous, buttoned up, dazzling-white-teeth Debby or Fabio teach me the meaning of being true to myself? Bukowski the moreish tart candy, the vindaloo that has me swearing on the loo every fucking time. I’ll order the vindaloo again. I’d order spicier if my favourite takeaway made it.

Why then does J. K. Rowling’s anti-trans stance irks me more than Bukowski’s anti-everything stance? How am I compelled to burn Harry Potter books whilst proudly displaying the work of nihilists on my bookshelves? Perhaps because Charles Bukowski embodies his work with self-awareness and honesty with an alluring raw vulnerability whilst J. K. Rowling is oblivious to her inner You-Know-Who.

Never mind all that, it has nothing to do with what I’m trying to say. Bukowski, Burroughs, it’s their prose that I turn to, not the men. Can’t the art of a demon be heavenly? Their art inspire me to carry on doing me, not what is expected of me – so say the grumpiest, sleaziest old men.

[riverspatrick]

The Darkest, Deepest Tunnel Yet

But we found a way out. It isn’t sunshine and rainbows, yet. We got out on instinct and sheer luck. This wasn’t the queen’s “Annus Horribilis” where the richest person in Britain, perhaps the world, would have servants and the whole country to fall back on if anything went awry – we were on our own, just the two of us, which, despite how helpless we felt, proved sufficient.

We first met at the end of such a dark tunnel almost 25 years ago. We fell madly in love and journeyed through a routine of comfort and bliss until we were hit from all angles by piles of shit. It all came out of nowhere! Job loss, house flood, death on both side of the family, being shot at on the job. My partner was a paramedic in Canada. He was called on a scene but it turned out to be a setup. Some people had taken to shooting at all uniforms indiscriminately. All this happened within weeks. That’s when we decided to move back to the UK.

We returned to a routine of comfort and bliss, until – BAM! – the shit found us and lashed at us like Hitchcock’s Birds: a terminal urethral cancer diagnostic for my partner which after several agonising weeks proved wrong (it turned out to be a fistula which necessitated months of gruesome and invasive surgery); his aunt whom I cared for died suddenly; her homophobic will executors accused us of theft and murder; the Tories won the election and took away all art funding and my career in the process, all within a month leading up to Christmas. We somehow got back on our feet and for a while, life was good. No hiccups. All fine and dandy. Honky dory.

If we had never crossed these dark tunnels before, where everything hits us at once, layers upon layers, maybe I would not have felt as physically sick as I have being thrown in our recent dark tunnel.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining. I actually mean to explain why I haven’t blogged in a while and also to bring you wonderful news: it can’t rain all the time. Case in point, I’m currently writing this entry in my new house, a house we own, and a lot of house for the money thanks to Blackpool’s bad economics, or so I am told.

It began with Covid lockdown measures. My line of work became unsustainable as it centres around social contact. My partner was furloughed twice. Nothing special. On his return to a changed office, his role had been diminished significantly, he was constantly ridiculed and undermined. Money owed to me for previous gigs never materialised on the expected date. One Sunday, the landlords of the cottage we had been renting for 7 years showed up at our door to let us know they were putting the cottage for sale and they wanted us out within the month. They were still trying to evict us after being informed that we legally were entitled to a 4-month notice, minimum. We prepared by selling the car to halve the payments with a cheaper car. Looking for a place to live, we concluded buying was the wisest option. Once we had the mortgage in principal and after missing out on many houses, we found the perfect place but before the papers were signed, my partner was told his job was in danger. He managed to convince them to hold off on any decision until we got the key to the house and as soon as we did, they made him redundant. He is currently serving his notice at their request, despite being told that he can’t let the office know which makes it almost impossible to look for a job since his LinkedIn account is intricately linked to their ecosystem.

It hit us hard. Emotionally, I had never felt like this before, it made me physically sick, giving me a taste of what depression can do to someone’s health. It was visceral and corrosive. Meditation would alleviate the worse symptoms, but the pain gradually returned within the hour. It wasn’t the fear for our future, but rather how we were being treated by those we had trusted for so long. The losses of our most fundamental needs – home, joy and income – were made worse by people’s total lack of empathy in their selfish pursuit. We were treated like an obstacle, a nuisance.

I lost the drive to write for a while. Finding a way out of the tunnel took all my energy. It also caused a rupture with two oldest friends. Funny how such events bring the best or worse in people. The last message I got form one still confuses me, as though he got annoyed that for once I was worse off. I’ve not heard back from him since. Nothing about it was helpful in our situation. The other friend has a well documented saviour complex and cut ties because we refused to go live in his basement and be cared for by him. Both friends live in Canada. We live in the UK.

As I play house all day, sorting out cupboards and decoration, I look back at the turbulent days. They seem more distant than the five weeks which stands between us. I remember that I had never felt as horrible, but can’t quite recall the feeling itself. It made me appreciate how depression and anxiety can physically affect someone. We’re settling back into a routine of comfort and bliss. I know the cycle will repeat itself but it won’t be for a while. Did it feel particularly painful because we had gone through such a tunnel before? Will anticipation make the next one much worse? Oh what a thrill! Now, where to hang my favourite Basquiat print...

[riverspatrick]

The Shame Monkey

My greatest shame is to have acted inappropriately with others. I was a young horny teenager. I remember humiliating a boy from my high-school year because he refused my advances. I could blame him for being a tease — he’s the one who insisted on having a piss together in the woods after school, he’s the one who looked down when I was too shy to look at his. Everybody knew I was gay, I had come out hoping it would get me expelled, but instead, it attracted a few curious lads and granted me access to the coolest girls in school (the ones who spent recess in the smoking lounge at the side entrance), one of which remains a good friend to this day. I remember his name. I was infatuated with him and later heartbroken when I realised it would never progress from a gander in the bush.

When I finally looked down, I saw nothing but a trickling dark bush of pubic hair. I felt cheated when just the thought of taking the long way back home with him had me walking with my shoulder-bag front and centre. I always gave him a good show. I was shortchanged. I shared my experience with the cool girls. His new nickname spread like wildfire. He stopped having showers after PE class. He never took the long way home again. He did not return to our Catholic school the next year, though perhaps for unrelated reasons, I’ll never know, but what I do know is how it had felt seeing him humiliated — I felt righteous!

“I'm only human after all, don’t put the blame on me,” the song goes…

Later, I remember rejecting someone’s friendship because she made me feel uncomfortable. With the security of a group of friends, we humiliated her so she’d leave us alone. She would later be diagnosed with autism. She was trying to belong, which couldn’t have been easy for her. She was a misfit and she’d recognised her kin and I suppose she was more like us rejects than we cared to admit at the time. I still feel ashamed. A bunch of rejects rejecting others, monkey-see-monkey-do, poo-poo-pee-do. I had the opportunity to apologise years later, even though she did not remember the event the same way. Shame is a trickster.

At 15, my taste for toys had shifted from action figures to Nintendo. I took a job as a busboy to pay for my new passion. For extra favours, I got extra money; my boss knew just how expensive video games were. Every time I was offered extra cash, the favour became a little more uncomfortable. When the last favour proved too much, I didn’t return to work. I didn’t have to quit officially, I’m sure my boss who was older than my parents knew his final request had been one too many. I was curious about “real sex”, bored with fooling around with my mates, but I wasn’t ready for that much “realness”. He never called. I received my last paycheque by mail and a new young thing filled the vacancy. By that time, my collection was so big I kept it hidden from my parents because had they seen the whole loot (which included a Gameboy Colour, a Super NES, and more games than I ever played) and confronted me, they would have read my shame. I’m a bad liar. I blush just thinking of lying.

I still feel ashamed when I pickup my Switch and play the old games from that era. I feel shame for having enjoyed the extra favours for far too long— I was a horny teenager and it felt good, initially. I feel shame for running away instead of saying no — I agreed even when it didn’t feel right and it proved my parents right for calling me an idiot. I feel shame for staying silent when I saw the new busboy — but if I had said anything, they’d say I had it coming for being gay. Shame breeds shame breeds shame breeds shame...

I hear people say that I must forgive myself. I don’t know how it’s possible. It sounds too convenient. I don’t believe I have the license to forgive myself. Confession, repentance-prayers, and holy-water are required to appease my Catholic soul. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have learnt to cope with my shame, its power over me isn’t as crippling as it was since it hasn’t been fed in a while, I simply can’t help but admire its resilience, pinching my gut every time I hear “da-ding”, Nintendo’s startup chime for Switch Online’s SNES games.

I have questioned what my motivation was to share this with strangers in a virtual space. Recently, after completing Bojack Horseman followed by Tuca & Bertie (two adult cartoons that share the same DNA and explore similar issues), I thought long and hard about my own shame. I came to the conclusion that shame thrives in darkness and perishes by the light. It’s a budding theory which I’m willing to put to the test, just don’t let the Faith Of The Seven know about it, thank you very much.

[riverspatrick]

In Coyote’s Care

Vulnerability is an open book disarming the readers by grabbing them by the heart. Ivan Coyote’s ‘CARE OF’ is aptly titled in how the book is composed of letters addressed to Coyote and Coyote’s replies. Vulnerability is contagious, and that’s exactly the book’s greatest strength.

Ivan Coyote makes a career of caring. Think motherly care, fatherly, brotherly, sisterly. A self-assured friend, a trusty confident, a grandparent’s unconditional hug. Where Dr Phil’s answer to your letter would be self-serving and on-brand, Ivan Coyote’s selfless soul and life experience shine through every word. It is a shame that ‘Care Of’ will be confined to the LGBTQ+ section because it is a thought-provoking work of great humanity in all its glorious colours, an insight into an expanding queer spectrum from diverse, uncensored and sometimes opposing perspectives. These are people wide open at their most vulnerable, unafraid of being judged, seeking advice from a great carer. There are many relatable stories in this book, whichever colour of the human flag you are, and there’s no person more caring to address them all.

Highly recommended, of course (in case I didn’t make it clear enough).

[riverspatrick]

The Devil Is In The Detail

This is a story of abused power, of divine authority and the institutionalised evil and devils earning their wings for doing it. Background check: I grew up in the Catholic institution at a time of transition. Priests and nuns were being replaced by educated citizens within the school system and whilst the head of our school was a priest and some classes were still taught by dog collars, they were outnumbered and gone by the time I graduated. The purge had already happened in larger cities and our rural community resisted the change for far too long. Our school was once a college devoted solely to theology, putting white collars on young sons of farmers who could not afford an education and didn’t fancy the farming life, which would have otherwise been their only option. The college would be downgraded to an all boys private boarding school where they taught European superiority, latin, and the sciences of the great bearded architect in the sky. The priests didn’t relent their hold on power easily and they would have remained in power had it not been for a terrible event which forced them to step down from their posts.

When the abandoned nunnery at the back of the building was destroyed in a fire, the authorities on the scene uncovered the bones of children buried between the walls. It made the headlines of course, but further details were never made public and it remains unknown if the scene was ever investigated by officials. The rubble was swept under the rug quickly and a giant greenhouse sealed the grounds within months. Few people remember this. I asked the city for archives. The official word is that the nunnery was replaced by a greenhouse at such and such date. A matter of fact.

I remember because my father was a teacher there. All the local children went to public school but I had to go to this horrible private school because my father was a proud man. My father kept every newspaper clipping which mentioned his holy school, good or bad. After the fire and the horror exposed, my father reassured me with his favourite fit-all quotes: it-is-what-it-is, things-were-different-back-then, what-god-wants-god-gets. Such apathy did not come from his mother.

My gran fell in love with a white lumberjack, losing the respect of the Métis community who raised her, and her official status as first nation on her wedding day because of the ruling patriarchy. I loved my kokum (Michif for grandmother) and she loved me the most. I spent whole summers at her house. By that time, following her husband’s death, she had moved up North to be with her ageing siblings, far away from where my father lived, up steep hills and through man-made forests of towering twigs that magically grew from barren land. You never heard the song of a bird in those woods. A deer couldn’t walk between the pine trees and the sun-deprived ground offered no sustenance for the smaller animals that could, but the desolate landscape eventually opened up onto a great lake crowned by dozens of identical houses and a tall church spire. I never felt more at home anywhere else and that says a lot about my father’s home.

She had two surviving sisters and a brother for neighbours. We’d be together every day, sharing a meal or a song around a fire whenever possible. Between them, Koko (nickname for my kokum) was the only grandmother. The joy on their face when I arrived and their sadness when I left will always be imprinted in my memory whenever I think of them. When I hear about the residential schools scandal, I remember their own story of loss and grief, but I also remember their prayers to baby Jesus, the virgin Mary and the holy ghost. They all told me that I looked like baby Jesus and that one-day-without-a-doubt the Holy Mother would appear to me.

A colonised people converted to Christianity and made to suffer by the church they worship. It puzzles me still. I wish I had had the opportunity to ask them how could they keep faith in their tormentors?

I hear about institutionalised racism. Looking back in history, I see something far worse: institutionalised evil. Whilst the Catholic residential schools in Canada made it their mission to whitewash First Nations, the same systematic evil happened in Ireland where a sea of unmarked little shallow graves flows through holy grounds. These were the innocent children of the Irish nation. Orphans or sons and daughters from dirt-poor families.

The forest for the tree.

Colonisation, missionaries, conversion. It’s still happening today. Christian aid feeding a set-menu of bible and porridge to poor nations where there is no alternative.

I loved being outside with Koko and her siblings more than spending time inside their home. There were crucifixes in every room above doors and tables. In the bedroom where I slept, at the foot of the bed hung an illustration of the virgin Mary and the holy son sitting on a golden throne at the edge of a river of fire filled with distorted bodies. I remember how serene Mary and Jesus looked overseeing a sea of agonising souls. A perfect portrait of apathy. I remember the twisted eyes and mouths of the unholy. Above my head was a painting of Jesus holding his heart in one hand. A heartless man with a Mona Lisa smile. I always averted his roaming stare but I felt it piercing my flesh and pricking the marrow of my shivering bones.

Koko and her family told me about the horrors of the church before heeding the toll of the bells and kneeling at the pews for an hour every day during which time I collected crayfish by the lake for our supper. I’ll never know Koko’s reason for not forcing me to go to church with them, but I’d hazard a guess. I only wish I knew how they could kneel before this priest who later retired following a child-abuse scandal of his own.

No, these were not different times – empathy and love are not new virtues! Fear the leader of people who has the power to absolve his own sins. Good would never appoint evil as its servant.

(...)

Jesus-Christ-on-a-popsicle-stick – I need a coffee.

[riverspatrick]

Gender-Fluid

In preparation for a project, I watched an old Channel 4 documentary called ‘What Happened To The Gender Benders?’ the day before I received Ivan Coyote’s latest book (which I will discuss in another post) and read about Demi Lovato’s new identity and Elliot Page’s six-pack. All the while, I had to fill a form before being considered eligible for the project. I was told if I selected that I identify as male, I wouldn’t get the work. I was pressured to select ‘other’. I slept on it, then decided I had to share the thought.

Non-binary doesn’t sound right to me. It sounds divisive. Us and them, which is a binary concept. Everyone I have known have questioned their gender identity in their own way, even the toughest school bully who loved getting head from me in the woods after school eventually reciprocated (he was teethy as I remember it) as long as I agreed that it didn’t make him gay. We had long conversations after our rather short acts. He was tough and sentimental. Few feel they live up to the social construct that is imposed upon them, and the level of peer pressure varies depending on where you live too. In some places, men are killed for being effeminate. Growing up in my neck-of-the-woods, you rarely saw women wearing skirts and makeup, and many men were scrawny hippies with flowers in their hair. Behind the pronouns and the title itself are questions that have been raised by past generations under different names. Gender-bender, third sex, I prefer gender-fluid to non-binary.

I was born with a penis, male is my sex, but it doesn’t define my gender. Make no mistake, I love my pleasure zone, but having a penis never made me the man my father expected me to be. I’m half a man in his eyes, which by his standard is still better than being a woman. I’ve been called he, it and she (pejoratively) before, neither bother me, I see pronouns as purely practical, not factual. Bureaucracy. Most people call me by my name in my presence and those who are closer call me ‘love’ or other nicknames of their own. I could never be ‘they’ because I reserve the pronoun for them nameless people who rule the world in the shadows, you know, the ‘they-say-this’ people? They say you should eat three meals a day. They say men are like this. They say women are like that. They say I’m pansexual because I fall in love with a person regardless of what they have between their legs. They say I’m gay because I currently love a man. I’m not they. I am singular and depending on the decade, I have been labelled differently. My friend Brenda (né Paul) insists that I am non-binary now. “That’s all the rage these days,” she said after giving me a speech on the myth of the post-op phantom-limb.

What’s wrong with androgyny? I’ve always had long hair, I love a good dollop of eyeliner and I find skirt-like garments – be it an extra long t-shirt with a belt (how eighties of me) or a kurta – refreshing. You’ll find me wondering round the shops in nothing but a custom nightshirt and Crocs. My friend Brenda makes them. Looks like a dhoti but without the cultural appropriation, inspired by that famous picture of Klimt. I don’t want to be defined by what I am not. My name is River, not Not-John or Not-Jane.

[riverspatrick]

Through her own words, she is exposed

I once heard a mother in Sinéad O’Connor’s voice. With hindsight, I think it was a coping mechanism, a child instinctively searching for a surrogate mother to fill the vacancy. Whatever the reason for my interest, it doesn’t matter – no one reasonable can reason with the past. When Sinéad O’Connor released ‘This Is To Mother You’, I wept, though it felt more like a send off, mother telling me to go on without her because by that time I thought the sappy song was utter shite. I was done with surrogacy, I needed something more visceral, more tangible – I was horny as hell! No time for ma’s sloppy kisses.

I kept in touch. It’s comforting to me still to hear the sound of her exceptional, familiar voice.

Earlier in June, Penguin Books published ‘Rememberings’ by Sinéad O’Connor, (not by Magda Davitt or Shuhada' Sadaqat or whatever name the singer goes by today which wouldn’t make commercial sense) and after some consideration, I ordered the hardback since the price had dropped by half two weeks later.

The foreword reads: “Chiefly I don’t remember because I wasn’t really present until about six months ago.” Which sounds like a warning. “There are many reasons I wasn’t present. You can glean them here.”

Should I devote more time reading an amnesiac telling her life story? Amused, I turned the page.

Everything is peppered with mental illness, not by my interpretation, but literally by her almost casual use of the words. SPOILER WARNING! Standing at the edge of the platform, Sinéad was hit by an open carriage door of a passing train when she was 11. She goes on explaining with scientific certitude: “It has been scientifically proven that such head injuries can cause mental illness or make worse any mental illness a soul might have been born with.” From then on, everything unravels like a track of dominoes placed in an infinite loop with Sinéad, Magda and Shuhada standing them back up as they fall. She even admits: “I have a hard time believing God would be cruel. But just in case I deserve otherwise, I hope the fact I’ve sung will make little of my sins, which are ugly and legion.” “Blasphemy!”, I’d cry if I was a religious man. Charming God with beautiful songs for a favour? Jesus!

Soon, I closed the book. I didn’t take notice of the last page I read. I couldn’t climb back up the rusty Helter-Skelter of another page. Her writing is claustrophobic, she describes the world through fog as though she is trapped in the smoking room with a limitless amount of cigarettes and matches.

There’s a blue print to each chapter. Different words, different names, different places, same scenario, same outcome. The only commonality is the author. I could go on about it – much ado ‘bout nothing –  what did I expect? The warning was there, foreword, in plain English: “Chiefly I don’t remember because I wasn’t really present until about six months ago.” My fault for trespassing past the sign at the gate.

I blame her doe eyes, the unhinged beauty of the untamed. She could ram you in the groin and you’d blame yourself for having startled her, and by her own meanderings, she milks it for what it’s worth.

[riverspatrick]

I like to say that I grew up a ‘United-Colours-Of-Benetton’ child. This new Lego set in celebration of Pride Month is everything! You can get it here.

[riverspatrick]

Britney Spears Proper Grunge!

How’s that for a click bait...

Some pop I’m allergic to, especially the kind I refer to as Bubble-Gum-Pop; a sickly sweet thing that dims fast and sticks to your shoe. When Butch Vig (Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins) became the producer-du-jour and swept Lou Pearlman’s teeny-boppers (Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Britney Spears) off the charts with a wave of grunge, I cheered as though I had been been saved from Alex’ fate (A Clockwork Orange)! I have been conditioned to be repulsed by Britney. I’m not a hostage to the infliction – I am able to ignore the itch and avoid scratching to the bone – but I will not intentionally play ‘Hit Me One More Time’ or the like, not even ironically.

That said… An imposed IUD, bitch! Really? Yes, I wholly empathise with the Mickey Mouse Club alum, something my teen-goth-self would have never anticipated.

Britney is all over the front page (It’s Giving Me Road Rage) and I finally clicked to read what the fuss was about. It turns out, Britney has had the grungier life! Enough to make Shirley Temple blush, made all the more tragic by Britney’s limited range of expression. Made to wear an IUD by her father? Public breakdowns at a Hollywood hair salon, addiction, mocking the sanctity of marriage, exposing her vajazzle to the paparazzi, DUI with baby on her lap – all the usual Rock’n’Roll we take for granted – but an IUD against a woman’s will shouldn’t be considered typical in this day and age.

It reminded me of some American reality star who casually revealed in an interview that he drove his teenage daughter every year to the doctor to make sure her hymen was intact. Happy Hymen Day, daughter! Let’s see what Father Hymen has for you under the bush! You get a gift if you are a virgin, hell if you ain’t!

In this day and age, bitch! Really?

An IUD! Don’t you know who she is? It’s Britney, bitch!

[riverspatrick]

Editing VS Emotion

Before sitting myself down in the writer’s chair, I go through a sort of ritual. Nothing too fancy. Nothing to do with superstitions. Perhaps I should call it a trigger, something similar to putting on a uniform.

Because our house has limited space, and I couldn’t possibly dedicate a room to my writing, I am surrounded with stuff which keeps me grounded in reality. I find that focusing on other senses helps me narrow-in on the page. I start with burning some incense. My partner can’t stand it otherwise. Incense is a ‘me’ thing, a trigger which has become synonymous with writing. Then I select a playlist from my iTunes library according to the mood required for what I need to be writing. Discreet music, background music, almost invisible but emotive. Brian Eno, Hania Rani, Rafael Anton Irisarri, instrumentals only – words bring me back to the surface.

If this isn’t enough to put me to work, I’ll calibrate my mind by reading a few pages from a book. It can be any book, but over time, I grew fond of John E. Woods’ translation of Süskind’s ‘Das Parfum’, which I consider exceptionally well written, though I have mixed feelings about the author’s sexist undertones. Maggie Nelson also motivates me. Too often I’ll call in the big guns: Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’, which, in my humble opinion, is a short story with too many words, and how dazzling they are! How magnificent the prose! I’m not entirely sure what the book is about, despite the introduction or the synopsis, yet ‘Midnight’s Children’ always puts me in the mood for writing. I don’t question it further. It does the job. End of story.

I’ve almost come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t lean on the latter anymore. To the point: Rushdie made me write 153k words, he did! Bad Rushdie.

More than 100k for a first novel is excessive, every agent at every seminar, lecture or event I have ever attended has been clear on the matter! Yet here I am with my 153k novel, and every draft has added thousands more.

For a commercial appeal, editing as cutting-out can be an emotional process. Readers are more likely to want more if the writer gives them less. I’m a generous writer. It’s a curse.

Then comes Hunter S. Thompson. I’m sure there is a similar writer to calibrate my writer’s brain with who is less of a tragic human being, but his succinct journalistic approach has helped me a lot during this ongoing process. Thompson can paint a vivid picture with few words. He can be a real bummer, but he is the best editing muse I’ve got at the moment.

Whatever works...

(I’m open to any suggestion, please help, I’m going gonzo!)

[riverspatrick]

Anything & everything may become familiar.

I have learnt this lesson many times before and I learn it again: I should never commit to the working title of a project. Several years ago, for a while, I began titling projects by start date and type. Photo120599 or Paint281106. I’d name the work once it was completed, just as I prefer naming a pet after meeting them. I did it for the same reason I’ll start doing it again.

During the creative process, you might find yourself conforming to an established title. ‘Wee Bean’s Underground Adventure’ may become ‘A Giant Patch Of Runner Beans Swept Over London’ if you dare.

Familiarity is a crutch, a beaten path, the dearly-departed muse.

When I sat down and began writing the manuscript, I named it ‘1 MEN IN 2 HUT’ before I knew what it would become. I write “stream of consciousness”, and whilst I had an outline of the story and principal characters, the book had its own demands as it grew to maturity, in fact, initially, a fishing hut was instrumental to the plot (a bit like a changing stall or Superman’s phone booth… Yes, yes, like the Tardis too, I hear you), until it wasn’t. The story grew from a body swap tale about diversity and tolerance to an eco-tale on the magical strength and resilience of the life within us all — this ancient living force, older than the sum of all its living children who merely borrow life for a brief moment before returning it. Age as an illusion, how birth and death are neither a beginning or and end if you stop with all that navel-gazing. In short, it’s about ageism, the potential in all of us, and having forgotten how to speak our common tongue — Mother Earth’s.

I gave the manuscript a name before it had a voice.

It wants to be called ‘A TRADER OF OLD MEN’, and I agree.