Respect. That’s what it all comes down to. Respect one another and don’t be a shit about it. That’s what I’ll tell a police officer if I get caught. It isn’t likely to happen, because they know about me, and don’t have the inclination to do anything about it. They respect me, and I respect them. That’s why they look the other way. After all, our ways and means are basically the same, and I do things that they’d like to do, but aren’t able to.
A baseball cap and a touch of peach fuzz on his chin. He sat at the bar and I saw flashes of flesh around his ankles. At that moment, he might have been the sexiest person in the world. But then he started talking to somebody who wasn’t there, and argued with somebody else who wasn’t there either. He didn’t say anything to me and I WAS there, but I was grateful for that.
We walked around Staithes Harbour while the tide was out and the sun went down and the boats ended up in the mud.
Charlie was in a reflective mood.
“We once visited Le Tréport and when the tide went out there was a dead body left behind. It was a man who had gone missing a few days before. The sad thing is that he had lost a boot, and I have always wondered where the other boot ended up because one boot was no use to anyone.”
It was a depressing story but a beautiful end to the day.
That was a bloody good dream I had that night.
I walked into a room and found Sam Roberts smiling like he always did. I expected him to disappear, but he didn’t, and he gave me a big hug.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m always here, but you never see me,” he chuckled.
“I’ve not seen you for nearly 40 years.”
“Well, this week you’ve been thinking about me, and that’s a good reason to see you.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“But I also have something to tell you,” he added. “I want you to know that we never go away, and that means that you should never be sad.”
“Grandad, I’m not sad. In fact, I’m incredibly happy to see you.”
He was about to say something else but thought better of it. I could see that his figure was quickly fading, and there was only enough time for him to smile and wave, and in a flash, he had vanished.
Today, I thought about that dream after I received the telephone call to say that my dad had passed away.
Francisco said that I must see him perform while his circus was in town.
The last time I’d been to a circus there were galloping horses, lumbering elephants and ferocious lions. A bit like Mr Galliano’s Circus, written sixty years before, but there was still a connection.
This ‘new circus’ was different, a theatrical performance with circus skills, dance, music, and storytelling. And there were lots of clowns which made it difficult to pick him out. But he’d reserved a seat on the front row and knew exactly where I was sitting. I recognised his skinny frame when he bounced over in full clown regalia.
The boy with the big dick and a smudge of eczema on his left buttock stood before me and placed his hand where his heart should have been. Then he put something into the palm of my hand.
It was a ceramic egg with a clown’s face painted on it. I stared at it, unsure as to whether I should give it back or not, and then I saw that it was Francesco’s clown face on the egg.
When I looked up he’d gone, lost amidst the chaos, still fooling around, and not taking life seriously.
Two stories. Two boys. “The realisation came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn’t imagine when it would end.” In 1945, Alberto Moravia was writing about puberty, moral dilemmas and sexual awakening. Agostino, the story of a 13-year-old boy’s adolescence and an obsession with bad boys on sunny beaches. I think back to that age, and, almost certainly, I might have been Agostino himself. And then there is Luka, a troubled boy, who appears in 1948’s Disobedience, who resists societal norms and expectations, and acts strangely. Only later did I read that this was supposed to be allegorical, and meant to highlight his refusal to serve in the Italian army during World WarTwo. I didn’t like Luca much, but there again, I had completely missed the point. I’m a dumbass!
All things considered, there is something perverse about this Sunday afternoon. But the sun shines and makes you do things that are out of the ordinary. And on this day you follow a stranger into the Oxfam shop and watch as he browses a secondhand copy of The Divine Beauty of Mathematics. You kid yourself that this isn’t wrong. Strange maybe, but when he bends over to put it back on the bottom shelf, and purposely shows you the crack of his arse, then everything about this is okay.
What is it with buying new notebooks? I see one that I like and end up putting it on the growing pile of unused ones, and I tell myself that one day I will put down all my thoughts and ideas until it is full, and resist the urge to start a new one. But it will never happen because there is something therapeutic about starting a new notebook. Those seductive pages that urge you to write something brilliant, but never actually get around to it.
I saw you several times and you ignored me. Why do I remember that? It was because I thought you were handsome. But ignorance turned into friendship, and I hadn’t realised how generous you were. And that generosity came from Robin Hood. Steal from the wealthy, and give it to others. I met you tonight, fresh faced and smart, a tap on the shoulder, a cheeky wink, and you gave me a bottle of beer. I doubted that you had ever ignored me.
They said he was a prodigy, and I didn’t doubt it. Pour le piano. He played notes that were delicate and haunting. But those gentle sounds had meaning and showed that he recognised beauty but didn’t know what to do with it, and this was the cause of his torment.
He peered from underneath a baseball cap, sad frightened eyes, that looked at the door behind.
“When Debussy died on March 25, 1918, in Paris, it was being bombarded by the Germans….” He stopped playing, “ … “and it was raining.” I’d heard this line before but couldn’t remember where.
He walked towards the bookshelf and pulled out a pack of Marlboro cigarettes that were hidden behind Patti Smith’s A Book of Days. The holy egoism of genius. He blew smoke into the air. “I am repaired, reconstructed, remodelled, remixed, rethought, reimagined, reinterpreted, rekindled, reactivated, but not rebooted!”
***
Almost everything here is inspired by Art of Noise
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 