Toasting All Siblings Everywhere

The Final Installment: The Brotherhood of Dub - Dub Transmission 

 

So there he sits
the dunce, the dullard
the toerag
the eternal glowing optimist
cigarette drooling
on unscored paper,

what kind of fool is that?

This white man deserving
of nothing
but contempt
waiting on a line or two
to drop into his lap
as ash
without the sense of timing even
to call it quits.

what kind of truant is that?

His poems, should he promise any
ought to go unanswered
breakfast for the institutionalized
the terminally sedated
God help us
they replace pistons, rods
with processors
so he may perch steeped in wanking
a bona fide effrontery.

what kind of damned idiot is that?

anyway
where are his credentials?

who encouraged him in the first
instance
to sit all day hatching piles
while leftovers
stink up the place unattended to
and people come knocking
just to ensure
that he has not done us all a favour.

what kind of a waste is that?

Ib Sibling

Deflated. Burst. Anointed.

He possessed a hacking cough. The kind of cough which cuts one off at the middle. Empties one's chest through the mouth and nose in gales which starve one's brain of oxygen until the head lights up like an open refrigerator.

Strings of phlegm hanging in ropes like green nets off the side of a boat.

A barking cough, on the other hand, while by no means less startling to those in the pink, lends something of an imposing character to the invalid. A suggestion of stately decrepitude which elevates the offender above the pitiful. A booming sovereignty to cow disapproving stares, or worse, wanton sneers of disgust.

This, sadly, was not the case.

His particular condition, then, reduced him to the level of the untouchable. The sneaking pariah stopped in its tracks by bout after bout of cacophonous disability. A ringing of ears. A wringing of hands.

Mouths falling open. Aghast. Enraged.

Hither and thither he slunk, mortified, waiting to be casually beaten to death. Or arrested, at the very least. And beaten to a pulp he no doubt would have been, were it not for the very real potential for contagion. Infection leaping from host to host as a leprous spore.

And at his toilet he simply cowered, smote with the stench of latrines. Pricked like a balloon on the precipice.

Ib Sibling

He Spent Some Time in Dharma

Me and the grape appear to have come to a parting of the ways.

Whether we are finished, or whether he is merely on holiday, is cause for some debate. A sobering thought. Either way, our rules of engagement - the gushing over that till death do us part - are on ice.

I was turning the bacon. Musing on the convoluted paths we've trod. We used to get on together so famously, stopping some way short of setting the house on fire, but lately things have turned a little sour. Routinely I might wake in the morning, sharing the outline of a long-running joke into the pillow, only to find he'd fled.

Closing the door mid conversation with a whisper.

Bedroom. Kitchen. The parlour with its shades of the morning after partly drawn.

Of course. Many sip their share of one-night-stands. Illicit slumberings between the decades. The grape slowly maturing. We took comfort in each other's arms, certainly, neither one of us giving the advantage. Shook hands quite amicably in a gentleman's agreement; while the hands simply shook in the morning.

The times we had.

I remember when we both fell out with cousin jack - sometimes 'Jack', more often 'Mr. Walker'; what's in a name? - his humour ran a little dry. Shallow as a snorting drain.

"What's that all about?" me and the grape exclaimed, in unison, when Jack fell heavy on a curse. And did not make it up off the floor again.

Well. We gave that bum his marching orders. Sent him to Coventry before the quarter broke out in flames. Again. Let's not split hairs; we met up occasionally from time to time, Mr. Walker turning up unannounced in that awful raincoat peppered with holes - bowed over with heartburn and remorse - but things seldom flowed quite the same. Too dark and unsavoury by far, for my liking. Blood in the urine. Staining the bowl.

Me and the grape frequently argued about it. The easy option, to forgive, forget.

This was something which was spoken about at length. Never resolved. And, too, there was that small matter of Walker's continuing peccadillos behind our backs. Nothing wholly outrageous, true, but a source of irritation nonetheless. Extramarital affairs. Innuendo. It did not sit well. Untidy as the wrong bottle cap screwed down at sixes and sevens, a dribbling tap which could not be turned off. No matter how determinedly one went at it.

He never could exert one ounce of self-control.

That is not to say we did not miss him. I did not miss him. We exchanged letters all through that winter he was in stir, but I refused to visit in person.

And let's not forget to consider how we were always moving in opposing directions. All the way back to god knows where. In the rain. The snow. Throughout it all, me and the grape remained tight. Thick as thieves. If Jack fell asleep at the wheel of the getaway car, we two were never at fault. Of that I am more than certain.

He ought never to have fallen in with us in the first instance. We ought to have been more careful.

Of course, it's easier to read the bluff when the cards are finally laid out for all to see. Palms up, hands raised. Hindsight is a peculiar thing. Like taking aim through the back end of a telescopic sight, tracking a bead straight along the barrel to where the eye yawns huge; unblinking.

I think on this as I ladle the bacon over on itself, the pools of crackling fat.

It has been some time now, but I cannot say I miss the grape. Not really.

Sometimes - fixing breakfast, for example - I wonder if the grape and Jack might not have been in cahoots all along. Conspiring against me. Enjoying a laugh at my expense. That is the problem with people like that. One might spend all one's years in and out their company, for better and worse, but one never knows for sure.

Oh, we were tight alright. You can't take that away.

But how well does one ever know what makes another person tick? Especially in a bind. For all I know, the grape and Jack are living it up with ginnie, mary - the hired help - while I am alone here in the kitchen. Pouring over a mess of scorched flesh. Eggs breaking wind.

When all's said and done, people like that are no end of trouble. Jack shit. The grape included. And you know how much I loved him.

Come here a moment. Listen. Did I ever tell you all about that one time me and the grape and mean Jack black got ourselves in the most ridiculous scrape?

Ib Sibling

Underpinning a Cicada Chorus

 

I woke up fairly early this morning and plugged straight into the mainframe. I did not light a cigarette. I did not plumb in the kettle or fill my little china cup to the brim.

I checked my mail. The sort which does not drop through the letterbox in a brown envelope stamped 'this is not a circular'. I huffed and puffed and hummed along to the white collar noise of the fans starting up. I startled the mouse and stroked some keys.

Then I made some coffee.

I have not visited my bus-driver pal for a while. Released at last from the routine of rolling on and off the Golden Gate Bridge. He has not been posting lately.

His account of shore leave back in New Jersey - a reminiscence of the now defunct Palace Amusements - stirred my own memories of the funfair. A photograph from Coney Island of beehived women eating a hole in candyfloss without a safety net; a Glasgow Fair weekend on the Isle of Cumbrae circa 1970.

Millport is a tiny little island anchored in the southwest coast. A grassy knoll the approximate size of Alkatraz.

I typed:

"You can cycle right round the place in a couple of hours or less, I am told. They had a little fairground with bumpers cars; the dodgems, we call them here. I went on them one bleak Saturday night. Not only was I the only kid there, I believe I was their sole customer. I drove around in circles for the duration of my ticket, vaguely humiliated at persisting with the routine of negotiating nothing but empty space."

The New York photograph and my memory of the string of lights reflecting in the spectacles worn by my grandfather, my gandmother too, have merged in those intervening years. I seem to recall Engelbert Humperdink crooning over the tannoy, but the recollection may be unsound.

My grandparents silently watching me as I went round and round unsettled me. Their faces pinched, bent sinister.

"Are you enjoying yourself, ib ?" they wordlessly enquired. "We hope you are having a good time".

A kind of anxious telepathy.

Of course, every second out there on the hardboard polished deck was excruciating. The evening was not so warm that my grandfather forwent his cardigan. The roaring houndstooth sports jacket.

Later, we returned to the guest house. My grandparents sat drinking whisky. Toasted by what may or may not have been an open fire. I do not remember if there was a working television in the visitors lounge; nor if it was tuned to snow.

I remember my grandfather's face beginning to redden. His voice turning louder. Slurring. Lingering near the ceiling before drifting onto the hearth rug like ash.

Ib Sibling

By Lassitude or Intrusion

The weightlessness of surfing,

the unmonitored pursuit that is
catching a wave
into dead space populated
by figments,

brings me crashing to the beach.
Buried. Inside out;
retching around a glassy pebble.

A gallstone.

An avalanche of unanswered mail,
virtual splintered bone.
Orbit and muscle, unblinking eye.

The sin of omission. A harbinger.

Ib Sibling

A Stench of Torment Rose Beguiling

i.
You might recall sly stooping, a little
frozen rancour on the turnstile.
A ladybird caught in the corner
of my mouth, pubic hairs
between my teeth. Snowballs.

Slipping in front of a House of Cards.

ii.
And then there was the barker
belching, tempting good grace.
The taint of cockles and
whelks, snails on the puckered lip
of a lurid painted precipice.

A wall of sudden death.

iii.
Of course, that is the wicked thing
about detours. Shortcomings.
Often there is just dereliction in
addressing the germ of things.

iv.
And again. The old lady in the sideshow
booth was only so much of a charlatan
as demand allows. Fair game for change.
A pastry in a blonde wig on a Saturday.

Black and Tan. Ill.

Stiff as a motherfucking board.

v.
Rusting zippers and jammy fortune,
fair to middling. The running soft to firm.
Long gone now, I expect.
A faltered scam laid out flat on the slab.
Or spirited away in a puff of smoke;
There is magic in a gypsy funeral.

vi.
A halogen lamp on a stairwell. A bike
of wasps travelling in circus formation.
The unstung heckler at the back of the tent.
A collapsed lung. A handkerchief waiving.

Hammer and tong on a bed of nails.

Ib Sibling

Interstellar Courtships and Couplings

A couple of decades ago, I took up residence in a basement flat in the west end of Glasgow. At some juncture long before my tenancy the factor had seen fit to remove the iron railings which would have ordinarily protected my bedsit from prying eyes and housebreakers.

Sawed off a quarter of an inch above street level, rusty and pockmarked like bleeding stumps left to fester in a yokel's mouth.

The excision was probably as a result of the war effort sometime in the early '40s. All remedial surgery abandoned.

This once grand tenement was overrun with rats and death watch beetles. At least the Jehovah's Witnesses kept away. I slept on a decrepit double mattress dumped in one corner on the floor. The roaches marched past at night on a food patrol just inches from my face.

I located the tv cable slung from the roof and drilled an entry point in the timber sill. I hooked it up to a portable black and white set which gave me a pretty decent reception. Late at night the cable would whip and slap off the front of the building in the wind. Even in the depths of summer. One evening I was working my way through a couple of bottles of red when the little screen burst with snow. I stumbled to my window. Some f@cker had severed the cable a couple of floors above and dragged it into their hovel.

I never watched any television after that. Instead I banged away on an electric typewriter I purloined on a visit to my mother's house.

With junkie logic I reasoned it might better serve me than her.

The Spaniard next door had overstayed on his visa. He was on the run from doing National Service. I didn't blame him much. His sister lived on the ground floor. Between them, their cooking smelled worse than shit. I have no idea what they served up, but the kitchen sink was perpetually choked with their leftovers. They never seemed once to clean up their plates.

One night I got more drunk than usual and when the Spaniard passed me in the hallway I pounced on him. No doubt he was as inebriated as me. I grabbed him by the neck and banged his head off the wall until his eyes rolled in their sockets. He started laughing and kept on until I finally let him slide to the floor.

F@cking draft dodger.

Of course. National Service in the UK was by then a thing of antiquity.

Living in that basement I found my perspective wholly skewed and altered. Anybody who has endured similar accommodation will know instantly what I mean. The world outside is framed from the ankles down.

Even passersby clear across the street lose their heads entirely.

Occasionally, a gaggle of youths would rumble into war without provocation. Disembodied screams and machetes dangling inches from my window in the aftermath. The glass was so thin it might have cracked under a wad of phlegm. As it was, not even the most antisocial element bothered to put it in.

There really wasn't much to steal in any case. I left my bedsit unattended once for the better part of a fortnight and when I returned it was if I'd never been gone. I didn't bother to fit curtains. It was dark enough down there as it was.

The entire time I lived there I did not take even one photograph. I worked a regular day-shift and visitors were usually too appalled to come back a second time. Of course, the fault may have lain with my social skills. It was my habit to hit the bars until closing time and attack the typewriter as soon as I got home.

I became quite skilled at banging out one fairly lucid page after another while otherwise hopelessly intoxicated.

Ib Sibling

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

I remember reading somewhere, vaguely, that Bob Dylan once attempted to make a go of it peddling bespoke wooden legs.

Handcrafted prostheses, to be more precise.

Is there even a splinter of truth in it, does anybody know ? Or is the tale entirely apocryphal ?

I admire the idea of it, the screwball absurdity of the very thought; the monocular attention to detail.

Had Dylan not gone stellar on the back of a purloined, well-timed lyric or two, I can envision our sage hobbling into such a entepreneurial cul-de-sac. Squirreled away; ornately skulking in the sawdust of his folly.

Had Zimmerman not come over all electric, we might have had prosthetic:

A rabid mob on pogo sticks on the fringe of a motorcycle accident. Baying for blood as the carpenter hops in the wings, knock-knock-knockin' and chalking on his board.

Ib Sibling

Don't Speak too Soon Kid, the Wind Warned: There is a Gale Brewing

The wasted tail fin hovers under the radar. Peeling decals fluttering. The cockpit has been hosed down and the instruments crackle on autopilot; a rusting colossus immune to nagging, neglect. and niggardliness.

From the ground its black silhouette hangs like a painted flag. The ghost of 'SF Sorrow'. One by one those remaining occupants crawl through the hatch and drop. It would be cheaper to get there by underground, missed opportunities refracting off steamed glass like kisses on the top deck window of a stalled bus.

The girl you covet waits at the bus stop. Her knees are trembling. She glances up and over her shoulder, where sweet wrappers and discarded beer tins pock thistle and wayward berries. There is something moving behind the fence. This is the sound of your free period on a summer's afternoon. Or the 8:00 AM journey from a suburban outback into a blotter tinctured oasis of hallucinogenics and Ritalin lozenges; an aggravated spinster in laddered tights by the roundabout who shares much in common with Sunday's maiden aunt. A spindle-legged hankering. Old English Spangles and Dandelion Clocks. Arachnids weaving unseen in the dewlaps, spotted hounds off the leash and foaming. And. Transgressions on your tongue.

Ib Sibling

The Circus is Still in Town

I am standing in the off sales at the counter - in conversation with the proprietor through the open grill - when the bell over the door behind me tinkles and a hand settles none too lightly on my shoulder. All sense of good humour evaporates in an instant.

A mendicant with a melting face appears just to my right and covers his brow apologetically as I wheel about to confront the cause of this impertinence. The purchased bottle is reassuringly heavy should provocation warrant my lashing out.

"What say you, sir, " I demand.

"Have you no manners at all, you impudent fellow ?"

The scoundrel is scarcely more than a midget, luminescent eyes set in a tiny wizened countenance not unlike a monkey's. Awash with madness and decrepitude. He opens his mouth to offer some imbecilic retort but succeeds only in drooling incoherently. Silver threads of spittle lace the upturned chin.

Quite disgusted, I brush him aside and make for my exit.

"Good day to you, sir," I sneer.

Crablike, the awful creature sidles to the door and holds it ajar. If only I had my cane, I mourn. A damn sight more efficacious than the ungentlemanly swing of a loaded bottle.

He accompanies me out onto the street, persisting still in his ridiculous attempt to engage me in what must pass for banter in the lower orders.

What new foulness is this ?

He rolls back his coat sleeve and and raps on what is evidently some loathsome wooden appendage; a prosthetic of unfathomable crudity.

"Hnnnn... See ?" he croaks, and wags the painted fingers at me in a positively Dickensian gesture. "Fuckin' see ?"

"What's this ?" I snarl. "I'll have no truck with such nonsense. Be off with you,
I say. At once!"

It is not yet dark, else I might bludgeon the grotesquerie to the pavement and make my ill temper manifest. As it is, I feel compelled to stay my hand. Given
the woeful disparity of his circumstance, I can ill afford witnesses.

Still...

I lean into him and bare my teeth.

"Fuck off, then," I tell him. "I don't give a pickled rat's arse."

He stares at me uncertainly. Well. We do what we can.

Ib Sibling

Cheap & Spectacularly Nasty

The bird - rotund; a ball of downy copper and rust - appeared wedged between an outcrop of rock and the packed soil of the bank. The only thing sharp about it was its tiny beak. Jabbing the air in tense circles like the frail arms of a punch-drunk boxer. A featherweight.

It did not look as if it would go the distance.

My son had come running to me.

"Dad. There's a wee bird over there with a huge beastie on it."

And so there was. A spider, toiling at its web, a bright pustule of iridescent green sprouting wavering filaments. The bird was clearly distressed.

"Get it off it, dad, " my son whined.

The web was unusual. I have never seen the like. Where other webs are uniformly flat, however intricate, this one was a sphere of shimmering gossamer.

A dandelion clock. Round and round it the spider went, spitting out its silk. The little bird shivered and squawked.

"Get it off!"

The closer I watched - transfixed and undecided, failing my child - the more unsettled I felt. The palm of my right hand pressed tight on the damp moss, supporting my weight. I could not reach out to dislodge the spider. I did not want to make contact.

A great shadow bore down on my neck as a pocket of cloud swallowed the sun.

Dizzy, I snatched up a twig with my left hand and prodded gingerly, spastically at the offending growth. There was something at the core of the sphere. Something dull and opaque.

"Dad!"

I am an indifferent parent. I have no stomach for it, I realized then. Neither was the slender stick equal to the task. It missed and the sphere burst open like an obscene spore, ashy tendrils ballooning out and releasing the contents of the sac.

The bird screamed and fought to release its wings. The spider scuttled this way and that, quite unable to repair the damage. An egg. Milky white and fragile as a pulsing tumor.

"Oh, dad..."

I looked at my son. The fury in his eyes. The stick lay heavy in my hand.

You can't beat an omelet without breaking eggs.

-----------------------

I came awake from this peculiarly vivid dream this morning around 05:00AM. I lit up and considered whether to leap out of bed to hammer it down. Twenty minutes later, it was etched there so consciously I decided not to bother and went back to sleep.

Much later in the day I came to the conclusion I had been visited some rather disturbing anxieties. It did not seem quite so sinister with one eye first unglued.

Ib Sibling

It's a Flatbed Affair on Four Bald Tyres & a Cracked Windshield

It is my birthday today, siblings. Like those awful greetings cards needle, I have pretty much stopped counting; I know this because often I miscalculate my age by a year of two when somebody has the effrontery to enquire. I have to think carefully and tally up the lost decades.

In preparation for the opportunity at least to engage in polite celebration, I shaved off some alarmingly grey stubble. Most of my head hair is thus far immune, happily, but the growth on my face has been bleaching out for quite some time. Having experimented with some close cropped facial topiary this past several months, I finally decided I was beginning to resemble a Captain Birdseye in training. I can think of far worse potential jobs, of course, but it is not the kind of look one wants to sport recreationally. While a more youthful countenance might comfortably advertise a fashionable pussy tickler, there is a fine line between just that and the suggestion of something altogether more unsavoury in the older male.

In my impatience to vacate the bathroom and pour myself a tall glass of something alcoholic, I managed to nick myself in several places. Those deepening creases between nostril and upper lip; cheek and jowl. I dispensed with the sidewhiskers entirely.

The first glass, then, was ultimately medicinal.

Prost!

Ib Sibling

You Can't Think Your Way Out of an Avalanche. You Can Only Feel

I miss your smile. I miss your smell mingled with mine and your laugh over nothing substantial. It's the inconsequential parts of  'a'  to  'b'  and the journey between them which makes me want to bury my face in your soul.

Ib Sibling

Beware of False Profits

The apartment was a small collection of rooms she knew only too well. It was not just that it was limited. She had spent so much of the past eight years in here that each skeletal skelf standing upright between its floorboards had grown as familiar as the fingers on one hand.

"Fuck," she said. "You need to get out of here. We need to get out of here."

He looked up at her and nodded. Lit another cigarette and exhaled a plume of acrid smoke. He thought it covered his sigh. She heard it all the same.

She had grown sick of his sighing. He, in turn, was weary of her constant protests; interruptions; and dismissals. He was just plain tired.

"Yeah. You said that earlier," he said.

He neglected to add that not five minutes before, he had given up the same response. He watched a larder beetle drop into a gap between the floorboards to escape a shaft of paling sunlight. It wasn't that they were everywhere. It was that the actuality of their cohabitation was tacit which aggravated him more than just a little. And their deftness in eluding rent. They scurried while he squatted.

She looked at him in disgust and hurried into the kitchen. He overheard the sound of crockery scraping and knocking against the taps. The sound of running water and plumbing groaning. He wondered how many cups might survive the tea making ritual on this occasion ? If he would be prompted to go outside and grudgingly purchase some more.

"You know, " she said, her colour rising in spite of her determination to remain unperturbed. "You really ought to do something."

He belched out more smoke, and rose to his feet irritably as the coughing started up again.

He could hear the children fighting in the next room.

"Yeah, " he said. "You said that earlier."

Ib Sibling

addendum:

She was right, he needed to do something. He picked up the pair of shears lying beside the chair & walked quietly into the kitchen. He felt the tiredness drain from his being.

NØ

Life’s a Drag, Petrolhead

Today I feel crippled by inertia and irritated by the nagging impulse to 'do'. There are many things I could do; there are many things I should be doing. Already I am on my sixth cup of coffee of the morning, and I am drumming my fingers next to the keyboard and mentally logging strokes.

Woolworths is in the death throes of its closing down sale. I should throw on my jacket and speedwalk on over there to see if there are any bargains still to be had. Ignore the pained expressions of the soon to be jobless drones manning the cash registers and throw in my lot with the slavering mob. The prospect of doing so is not overwhelmingly appealing. Ho-fucking-ho. If I suffered from hemorrhoids, I would sooner scratch my ass.

Ib Sibling

Whispa Cat in a Sinister Hat

There is a single overhead bulb burning in the centre of the room. It looks to be 60 watts, maximum. Not too bright and sickly yellow.

It casts a shadow like a rug on the floorboards. The detritus. Something is taped to its underside, and when I get right under it and reach out both hands it burns my fingers.

The bulb has been burning for a long time.

The adhesive is melted to the glass and when I pull on it gently it almost wrenches the bulb out its socket. I have to ignore the burning and press my fingers firmly onto the hot glass to hold it in place.

It is a Yale key. Wadded inside the masking tape like a piece of spent gum.

I sit down on an upturned packing case and turn it this way and that. It is nothing special. There is only one door leading into the room, and that is hanging from its hinges. There is nothing else in here which looks designed to hide a secret. A lot of crap and soggy cardboard.

I reach in my pockets and dig out a cigarette. I hesitate briefly before dropping the match, but everything is too damp to catch a flame. It smells of mildew and the elderly. Tumors and fungus. Water drips from a broken sink in the far corner.

I push the hair back out my face and examine the key. What a waste of fucking time.

I have not the faintest idea what it might unlock, and even if I did, what good would it do me?

I hate puzzles.

It's like a dead battery on Christmas morning. A dog wagging its tail and running circles and a cupboard full of junk.

Ib Sibling

I am a Long Odds Wager...A Dark Horse

Clouds intrude. Tubercular fingers
seizing up the blue. Pinching in
from the south-east on a mission
of little mercy. Harbingers of hard
cheese. Errand boys of slothful
mistrust; creeping pillars of rain.

Watch out for rainbows. They sneak
in from the north, winsome smiles
that inoculate and provoke confusion.

Ib Sibling

Come on, Brothers & Sisters. Follow the Pavlovian Bouncing Ball

The settee lies not just at the side of the road but in the ditch, halfway down the grassy verge of a two seater relationship come unstuck. Stunned and gasping as if reclining weight just sent it backwards on a slow sliding sprawl.

Hollowed out cushions. Sad indentations still bolstering not quite visible occupants. Ghosts.

Squat and ugly, it sits basking in 2:00 AM halogen glare. Stoned and bleeding stuffing; invalid and in denial. How did it get here? How could it have come to this? Left for dead on the hard shoulder where the hairpin bend turns savage tricks.

You blink and glance in the rear view mirror. Light another cigarette and put your foot down in the rain.

Ib Sibling

The Perfect Soundtrack to a Cocaine Deal Gone Sour

I am inordinately fond of
venting my spleen.

However.

I am often quite squeamish
when it comes to
picking up the pieces.

In the Morning.

Ib Sibling

You ars Varied Walcum, Brooders. Give Us Your Love.

apology
I shed
my skin more readily
than I do
a grievance. Or
a grudge.

It is not
an attractive
characteristic,
I know.

I concede that much.
I concur.

But,
coming out my hole
like
invertebrates, generally,
tasting the air,
I do my best to let
it
slide.

Ib Sibling

Hasta la Vista & a Glasgow Kiss

 

Just this morning after dropping my son off at school I witnessed a fight. That it was immediately preceded by much shouting and hurling of threats is usually enough to convince me that such an event will probably not escalate into serious violence.

It was too public, in addition. Scores of people looked on impatiently to see if anything juicy might materialize out of it. An entertaining scrap of a story to later trade with work colleagues over lunch. I met Rosa coming in the opposite direction and, since she had to queue to withdraw money from a cash dispenser, it provided me with the perfect pretext to stop, look and listen.

The confrontation appeared to be prompted by an incident involving both parties' children. Neither of whom were present by this point. Possibly, those kids had exchanged blows earlier. Or one of their parents had said something out of turn.

This in itself is sometimes enough to ignite a major incident. A couple of months ago a child's father was concussed with a claw-hammer outside his daughter's school. The young man wielding the offending instrument - a parent himself - did not pause in cycling past the playground to reassure himself that serious injury had been done. Vengeance was dispensed. The hoods were up and identities protected.

After a fashion.

Anyway, the exchange of insults this morning reached a more dramatic conclusion than I expected. One woman kneed the other into the street and fell on her with fists and feet. Somebody in the queue for cash behind me laughed. The victorious woman's partner stood above the bloodied party and jabbed his finger at her lying prone in the road. His face was marked with intersecting lines of scar tissue.

Open razors are still very popular in Glasgow, although carpet knives are more frequently the weapons of choice. They can easily be folded away, of course, and are less awkward to attempt to explain away.

I know him and his wife vaguely. To nod to at least. He walks a pit-bull regularly, and his wife sometimes says hello. Despite appearances, neither of them have struck me as being unpleasant in the past. Or best avoided. There are far worse out there. More indiscriminate offenders.

The fracas drew to a close without a blade being drawn. That much was evident, and I dare say some people were disappointed.

There will be repercussions, though. No doubt.

"Tell your man I'm goin' to fuckin' do him an' a'!"

And turning to his wife. "And don't fuckin' get me out my bed for fuckin' pish like that again."

My apologies if I've labored the event. Maybe you too were hoping for a more visceral denouement. \

Ib Sibling

A Scream from the Balcony

 

It's after 4:00 AM here in this shitty tower block and I can't get back to sleep, brothers and sisters. Oddly, the little clocks on my sidebar both seem to have disappeared. Who knows for sure? Maybe they have decided to strip the code off the page and let me bleed out into the black. I have no idea any more what time it is in New York. 

Ib Sibling

Where Would Punk Rock Be Without Neil Young ?

Before the new day shyly arrives with its threat of tortured failure and betrayal, I want to give up a little honesty. This is for Beer and Matt and Nathan and Brushback - who I very nearly forgot to mention in my inebriated state - and Jon and a whole lot of others. Keep On Keeping On, motherf@ckers.

I just glanced up at the kitchen clock. I'm too late.

Ib Sibling

Ideal for Any Funeral as an Antidote to the Bogus Angst of the Big Chill

 

Several years back, I bumped into a roadie in a bar in Glasgow. He was taking a break from rigging a tent for T in the Park. I despise T in the Park. The only thing remotely appealing about this event is that it's sponsored by Tennents, a Glaswegian brewery. I told the roadie this and he concurred good-naturedly. He was a decent bloke. I asked him who was headlining in this tent and he grimaced and looked away. Travis, he replied. Bad luck, I said. We both laughed and ordered another drink. A pint of lager for him; a Jack Daniels for me. He took out some rolling tobacco and I offered him a cigarette. On his left arm he wore a tattoo of his young daughter. We swapped stories regarding tattoo parlours and the perils therein. Above the newly inscribed tattoo I could make out something much older, indelibly reposing in the folds of his shirt. I squinted and gasped. "The Ruts D.C." was the partially obscured legend, an open invitation to a brotherhood of tainted blood and a sibling regret.

Ib Sibling

It's Sunday Morning. The Weekend is Dead.

Remembering the grey twilight of the early 70s up and down the sewage stoked shores of these hallowed isles.

An era of miners' strikes and constant power cuts as a consequence. Unemptied refuse bins piling on the streets and troops deployed to clean up the decaying heaps.

Nobody seemed to mind too much. The miners were heroic then, the martyrs of Great Britain's declining heavy industry and just in their demands for better pay.

The winter was long and filled with blackouts; kettles were boiled and baths filled with military precision lest the lights blinked off and caught you in the dark. Children padded home from school through the sleet and snow and watched what they could on the tragic lantern before the cathode rays invariably died.

Late at night their parents secretly cursed those same strikers they countenanced by day. Heavy metal canisters of Calor Gas appeared in every house like early Christmas presents.

 Ib Sibling

 

When the Sheriff Comes to Town, You Gotta Be Quick... or Draw.

 

The newsagents at the top of the street where I sometimes spent weekends with my cousins and aunt and uncle was called "Broadway". Any hint of reflected glamour it may once have clung to had long since vacated. Even the boxes of continental chocolates on the long shelves were by then covered in a fine film of dust.

Aside: a farthing for your thoughts, dear boy.

Rosa rides a mountain bike. She takes it everywhere rather than use the subway or file onto a bus. I like to watch her ass as she pedals off.

Ib Sibling

Independence Daze

Sometimes there is a fourth monkey depicted with the three others; the last one, Shizaru, symbolizes the principle of "do no evil". He may be covering his abdomen or crotch, or just crossing his arms.

Ib Sibling

A Hospital Radio Dj's Hokey-doky Script

 

Repeatedly, I have asked the GHA - the authority which houses me and thousands of others here in Glasgow - for paint in order to rid my landing of grafitti and the smears of unwanted guests who frequent the building late into the night to either inject drugs or get drunk while averting police intervention.

The entrance to the building is "protected" by CCTV and the concierge service is overstretched and underpaid.

I get up in the morning to take my son to school and we step gingerly over suspicious puddles to call the lift. We finally get down to the foyer and find fresh daubings on the walls under the 24 hour big brother scrutiny of strategically placed cameras. No one knows who these uninvited visitors could be. Their names are scrawled and etched into the brickwork. No dogs are allegedly allowed in the building, but the lifts are often swimming in urine.

They clean it up and the dogs keep on coming. Large, vicious looking mastifs with studded collars. Kept on a leash by chain-smoking midgets - mental or otherwise - who require a dog to pack a punch. Smoking is not permitted in these buildings either. It can not be healthy for a Rottweiler to live in a multi-storey block ; I suppose they enjoy having to do their toilet in an elevator as little as I relish stepping in it. Perhaps they will be rescued some day and retired to live on a farm.

I will invest in a baseball bat in the meantime, I tell myself.

I have repeatedly asked for paint but the housing authority refuses. First, they told me not to worry because they have a contract to take take care of it themselves. Then they told me it was really a Health & Safety issue. I might slip or something and perhaps break my neck. Anyway, they added, these blocks will be coming down soon. How soon ? I asked. We don't know, they replied ; there's nowhere else to put all those people right now.

I laughed. It might take another five years. Two, at the earliest.

What's five years to a ten-year-old boy ?

Ib Sibling

An Obligation, an Irascible Itch

Where we diverged geographically, we lived on the same page. 

 

My sister sent me a text message today warning "TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL DISADVANTAGED PEOPLE'S DAY". What can it mean ? She mistrusts my epic humour, certainly, and is forever trying to catch me on the wrong foot. It's like a game of darts where the points have all worn blunt.

I nod my head and grin.

The good news - depending on your vantage point, dear reader - is this. I am drowning but not yet prone beneath the surf. Some kind Presbyterian souls passing by, grabbed hold of my wrists, and gently pulled me ashore. I say Presbyterian, but more accurately I should suggest Catholic, for that's undoubtably where my taste resides; catholic in my sensibilty, and catholic in the agate, celtic rock I shall perish on. Or perhaps not. It all depends, I suppose, on which way the wind blows.

Thank you all equally and hallowed be thy name.

Ib Sibling

Here's Another Clue for You All...The Walrus was Paul

Remember the Easter Egg Hunt! 

 

Those people closest to Ernestó Agnursson did not need to subscribe to the cloud. When he made his music the whole favela stopped to listen.
     Infants stopped pawing at their mother's breast. Bakers stopped baking their bread.
     He stuttered. He whistled. He rumbled and growled.
     There was more weight in his small intestine than in a pedal drum. His teeth chattered. His anus rattled, occasionally rang like a cowbell on a Yamaha Boom.
     Ernestó Agnursson was a one man orchestra.
     Where the Ministry conspired with the Big Fruit to trick the pygmies into paying a monthly stipend for their fix, Ernestó Agnursson was an affront. A slap in the face. A threat to the bottom line.
     King Asbo first met Ernestó Agnursson in a barbershop in Easterhouse.
     When Ernestó dropped by to trade recital for shave and trim.
     Where the old colonialists reign in small print, and the royal pen skips with the minute hand over death row, the introduction came quite by accident.
     The king sat in the big chair. Working at a cigar while the barber's scissors danced. By the time he promised to make Ernestó a prince he was bald as a poor man's bicycle tyre.
      The king knew everything there was to know about the science of sound.
      He could strip it back to its essence just by listening to it.
      In his youth he ran electrical repairs from his mother's house. Shotguns barked. Ice cream vans exploded. Asbo did not hear them. He was up to his elbows in the physics of transfiguration.
      He built a radio transmitter from the ground up. The Ministry tore it down. He built another. He disseminated Hometown Hi-Fi and flew the black flag.
      The king listened to Ernestó Agnursson and knew all that was needed was a little echo. Reverb. A half twist on the high-pass filter.
      Like an old school instrument of wrath, Ernestó worked straight out the box.
                                              

Ib Sibling

Back to the Drawing Board

This is not what I had planned for the next two months. 

But this is what I do, 

so... 

 

 

While I was working through some damaged sounds in my P folder of Musick that Needs Work, I shared Pye Corner Audio. This touched off a brief dialogue that began with this comment.

MarkyD sez:
     "Thanks NØ. I desperately want to like Pye but couldn't really enjoy Hollow Earth or Let's Emerge. I suppose I want my hauntology to be more James Kirby. I will listen to these with more humility." 

 

 

 

Leyland James Kirby is a cult-favorite English musician otherwise known as The Caretaker. The Caretaker references Jack Torrance, Jack Nicholson's slowly unraveling hotel groundskeeper in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The Caretaker debuted with 1999s Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom, glitchy waltzes that echo through your most haunted empty ballroom.

 

 

The Caretaker - Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom, 

V/Vm Test Records OFFAL02, 1999.
all decryption codes in comments

Engagements -
The Haunted Ballroom   
By the Seaside   
One Thousand Memories
Haunting Me   
A Summer Romance   
Den of Iniquity   
Dream Waltz   
A Handful of Stars   
Request Dance   
In the Dark   
Reckless Night   

Interval -   
Thronged with Ghosts   
From Out of Nowhere   
Friends Past Reunited   
You & the Night   
Moonlight Seranade   
Disillusioned   
The Revolving Bandstand   
Garden of Weeds   
"Excuse Me" for Ladies   
In Days of Old   
September 1939   
Thanks   
The Haunted Ballroom   
Untitled

 

 

 

The Caretaker is most known for his breakthrough 2011 release An Empty Bliss Beyond This World. Arranged from edits of Jazz Age ballroom tunes found on forgotten 78s in dollar bins worldwide. Kirby re-worked the dusty samples to crackle, loop, & fade indiscriminately, repeating themselves or abruptly changing course. The record is as dreamy as it is unsettling, trapping the listener into the locked groove of someone else's distant memories.

 

 

The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, History Always Favours The Winners, 2011.

All You are Going to Want to Do is Get Back There   
Moments of Sufficient Lucidity   
The Great Hidden Sea of the Unconscious   
Libet's Delay   
I Feel as if I Might Be Vanishing   
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World   
Bedded Deep in Long Term Memory   
A Relationship with the Sublime   
Mental Caverns Without Sunshine   
Pared Back to the Minimal   
Mental Caverns Without Sunshine   
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World   
Tiny Gradiations of Loss   
Camaraderie at Arms Length   
The Sublime is Disappointingly Elusive

 

 

 

 

 

Over time, the Caretaker has explored the theme of neurodegenerative illness, using his records themselves as metaphors for the progressive failure of the human mind.

Here The Caretaker provides you with a 72 track release offered for free via downloadable MP3s on the official V/Vm website, seventy-two memories in which to lose yourself. It is the aural sound of "Theoretically pure anterograde amnesia", a condition where it's impossible to remember new events. This is a release of audio designed to be forgotten with few reference points appearing from a dense audio fog of an amnesiac condition.

 

 

The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, V/Vm Test Records, 2005.

Memory One   
Memory Two   
Memory Three   
Memory Four   
Memory Five   
Memory Six   
Memory Seven   
Memory Eight   
Memory Nine   
Memory Ten   
Memory Eleven   
Memory Twelve   
Memory Thirteen   
Memory Fourteen   
Memory Fifteen   
Memory Sixteen   
Memory Seventeen   
Memory Eighteen   
Memory Nineteen   
Memory Twenty   
Memory Twenty One   
Memory Twenty Two   
Memory Twenty Three   
Memory Twenty Four   
Memory Twenty Five   
Memory Twenty Six   
Memory Twenty Seven   
Memory Twenty Eight   
Memory Twenty Nine   
Memory Thirty   
Memory Thirty One   
Memory Thirty Two   
Memory Thirty Three   
Memory Thirty Four   
Memory Thirty Five   
Memory Thirty Six   
Memory Thirty Seven   
Memory Thirty Eight   
Memory Thirty Nine   
Memory Forty   
Memory Forty One   
Memory Forty Two   
Memory Forty Three   
Memory Forty Four   
Memory Forty Five   
Memory Forty Six   
Memory Forty Seven   
Memory Forty Eight   
Memory Forty Nine   
Memory Fifty   
Memory Fifty One   
Memory Fifty Two   
Memory Fifty Three   
Memory Fifty Four
Memory Fifty Five   
Memory Fifty Six   
Memory Fifty Seven   
Memory Fifty Eight   
Memory Fifty Nine   
Memory Sixty   
Memory Sixty One   
Memory Sixty Two   
Memory Sixty Three   
Memory Sixty Four   
Memory Sixty Five   
Memory Sixty Six   
Memory Sixty Seven   
Memory Sixty Eight   
Memory Sixty Nine   
Memory Seventy   
Memory Seventy One   
Memory Seventy Two

 

 

 

 

Enjoy,
NØ 

 

This is what I had planned for the upcoming month...

That Didn't Take Long

Well, it didn't take the Google Gestapo long to crack down on this idea. I've been working on it for quite some time, so now I have to reconsider what I'm doing next. 

Project (un)officially on hold. 

Be back soon.