Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

Song Of The Day – When I Come Knocking by Poncho C. Saint Fingers

Posted on 25/11/2016 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

From the single ‘When I Come Knocking’ (1980)

Posted in Song Of The Day | Tagged Awesome guitar hook, Boss tune, Greasy Records is a great name for a label, Poncho C. Saint Fingers, Song Of The Day, Soul, The Days Of Disco, When I Come Knocking | Leave a comment

We blew it.

Posted on 11/11/2016 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

Leonard Cohen once prophesied ‘Democracy is coming, to the USA’. But despite its lyrical brilliance I highly doubt he would have pictured Donald Trump ever becoming America’s president when ‘Democracy’ was penned twenty-five years ago. I recognise there’s something macabre about juxtaposing this, despite the highly coincidental timing of Donald Trump’s remarkable election victory with Cohen’s death two days later, but the sequencing of the two events is perfectly emblematic of what seems like an insidious moral and intellectual decline. I’m not saying this is actually the case, but it feels as though we’ve been steadily edging towards the cliff edge for the last fifteen years, and now we’re on the precipice, and that the steep fall’s yet to come. It’s as though we’re through the looking glass. We live in a world where life is closely imitating a highly satirical Simpson’s episode. How bizarre can things get?

On a broader level the events of the last two years have reminded me of the ending to the movie Easy Rider, and specifically a quote by Wyatt towards the end; ‘We blew it’. It’s a perfect analogy for our contemporary political peculiarities and disengaged age. When I first saw the ending to Easy Rider it got to me, how could they end it like that, man? That’s fucked up, and deeply unfair, like a stab to the gut. But when applied to the current context it now makes total sense, and in a way it was justifiably karmic. Wyatt and Billy were hedonistic opportunists out to make money with little regard for anything or anyone else and they hid behind the laissez-faire thinking and spiritualism of the movement to justify it. Only once the drug deal had been completed did Wyatt realise the hollowness of their goal, and not long after, both he and Billy were to find out it was too late to rectify their mistake.

While Brexit and Trump’s election could unquestionably hold dire and unforeseen consequences for many (regardless of what they believe or how they voted), both events can be seen as a karmic rebuttal for all those angry and smug columnists, tweeters, analysts and political commentators who have anointed themselves as the centre left consensus of sensibleness ‘among the sea of idiotic extremes’ they’ve been betrayed by. Perhaps it’s the shock they needed? In recent years this pious lot have been complacently ignoring the seismic changes happening around them, instead they contented themselves by spewing demeaning rhetoric from their cubicles and digital echo chambers with clichéd articles berating and blaming those who don’t agree with them (pointlessly too, as they are never likely to read their material) often just to pursue a micro issue that’s important to them, or, worse than that, just to score points on the internet.

It’s just a thought, and as I’ve come to realise recently, but perhaps people’s motivations are more complex than they appear? Forget those who visibly oppose your views with direct abusive feedback which you can then use to validate your superiority, what about the silent majority, who often keep their beliefs to themselves? How do you reckon those who voted for and with Donald Trump and Nigel Farage react to being derided en masse by this destructive soapboxing as a combination of greedy, stupid, impressionable, delusional, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, sexist and bigoted? Perhaps we could recognise that capitulating to the antithesis of thought, namely diplomacy and empathy, to counteract discord and dishonesty is true stupidity.

But sadly it’s far easier (as I’m doing here) to write condescending articles in an effort to prove how clever and right you are than offering constructive ideas or solutions for stuff. That shit’s too hard. Think about it – using sweeping generalisations to patronise the poor and uneducated, and attack the educated and affluent who vote to keep what they’ve earned, is, when you reduce it down, just as selfish and shallow as voting to leave the EU because you don’t like immigrants.

Folk much cleverer and better read than me, and who are better writers, will offer more thorough and convincing takes than that and this: but it’s clear now that Reaganism and Thatcherism have succeeded. They made it not only acceptable but logical to embrace opportunism over altruism. Combine this majority inclination with digitalism, cynically manufactured hysteria towards shite like Terrorism after the 11^th of September attacks (a hysteria which hasn’t died down since) and the rise of social media, and society has become even more fractured when technology, in theory at least, should have had the opposite effect. Today if you don’t like someone’s views or they strongly disagree with what you believe something stands for (not if it actually does, that doesn’t matter), you can just block them, avoid certain articles and publications or never visit these enclaves on the net. It’s never been easier to insulate yourself from the opposing view.

The result? Democracy and political journalism are now almost entirely tribalistic endeavours – a cheap way to separate yourself from otherness; I did or said this therefore I’m not them, and I want you to know that; on Facebook, on Twitter, in a soundbite, in a speech or in some other public form. So many of us only care about how we’re perceived by our like-minded peers, are interested in ourselves generally or concerned with what we want to believe. This is a lack consideration for others, and it’s a problem, as, in the end, it solves absolutely nothing.

Well, fuck, this piece was a shitey rambling hypocritical mess, but, well, I’m not getting paid for it, nor is it to be published in the Guardian or the Times. Plus, I’m not calling you stupid, telling you what to believe in or how you should vote, so it’s got that going for it.

So, yeah, what of the future? Well, right now Lenny, as he tended to be, is completely (and unfortunately in this case) right, and I reckon he’s exiting stage left at just the right time too:

Posted in Politics | Tagged Cohenism is better than all the other isms, Democracy is coming to the USA, Destructive soapboxing, Digitalism, Disengaged age, Donald Trump, Easy Rider, Facebook, Gone for politics as the category but I dunno really, Justifiably karmic, Leonard Cohen, Media, Newspapers, Nigel Farage, Piousness, Reaganism, RIP Lenny, Terrorism, Thatcherism, The Future, The Simpsons were right, Twitter, We blew it, Will people wake up and stop being so cuntish?, Wyatt and Billy blew it too man | 2 Comments

Punchline

Posted on 20/10/2016 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

In this business converting burgeoning resentment to laughter confirms that you’ve got it. I’ve never had reason to doubt the adage, until now, now that I can’t. With the lights glaring above, the audience below is an abyss. However, an abyss it is not. Only the complete ambivalence offered by a true vacuum, or in this context the total humiliation of performing to an empty room, would justify the acrimony I feel. Stand-up comedy is completely reliant on systemic feedback, and their silence is offering me none but telling me everything.

This agony should provide the kind of mental instigation that’ll extract me from my predicament. Maybe in retrospect it will, but it’s no help to me right now, as I fixate entirely on conjuring something, anything. Semantical, yes, but having belief in your abilities is stronger than having faith in them. You gain belief from success. Faith is the precursor to belief. Faith is pure aspiration, of wanting to turn the unproven into the proven. Reversal of this natural order is cruelty – belief is but a distant stranger to me, and so I’m relying on faith that I can recapture belief. I’m aspiring to be something I used to be, and just how can I do that when I can’t remember the next segment and it’s probably terrible anyway? Gosh, it’s warm in here and my body isn’t helping matters by exaggerating the heat with a nervous flush. The preliminary sweat’s itch has now arrived and is crawling over my skin. Still silence as the muscles in my legs begin to feel flaccid and could buckle under the weight of my body at any moment.

Have you ever felt that dread of being gassed into a semi-conscious hallucinogenic state before a septic tooth is extracted? Was that rhetorical offering posed to the audience or internally? Just as confusingly my brain’s not yet suffering from my physical symptoms. Anticipating this torment’s onset, you experience a queer internal weightlessness as you’re crushed under an invisible mass whilst the physical world collapses around you, is only marginally less awful than the experience itself. Schadenfreude often has scope, but not when it’s paradoxical – say a comedian describing wanting to pass out to alleviate the psychological torment of dying on the vine. Someone’s paying with the expectation that they’ll be amused, not subjected to some creepy arsehole rambling on about his existential crises. At least, right now, I haven’t descended to that desperate measure. Then a quip from the crowd, “fuck off and get aids”, or something to that effect, provokes a stifled laugh from someone else. It offers the perfect opportunity for a pithy putdown. I smile, in a conspicuously wearisome fashion, as a prelude, but the retort that instantly occurs is imperfect, I hesitate, and now the moment has passed.

Another isolated laugh, but this time couched with pity, is offered as I’m guided from the stage. All the staff avoids making eye contact. I exit the building in the most surreptitious way possible, no doubt in the same way any contraband is smuggled in. The centre of town is eerily still; the shops, pubs, takeaways and clubs all appear, at a glance, to be closed. There are no people with their odours, lewd exhibitions and intoxicated exhalations, and no traffic or Taxis are waiting for fares, yet it’s only quarter to ten on a Friday night. Aside from the still functioning street lights, a mass human extinction event could’ve occurred. I walk, and keep walking, observing as much stimuli as possible. Around the corner I come upon a hideous form, a car scarred with mechanical leprosy with all of its wheels amputated, its ghastly colourisation reminiscent of punitive leukaemia treatments. It’s a manifestation of my circumstances, still there, but only just, and unlikely to be revived. At home I enter into a dismal Hemmingway-esque scenario of drinking a succession of rum and tonic waters as I scour my catalogue of unfinished works, sketches, ideas and thoughts scattered over paper and word documents. Things start discouragingly as I revisit a shitcom screenplay I’d written, god knows why and how many years ago, about a gay gynaecologist whose clientele is mostly footballer’s wives.

At this point the wasteland territory men of my age occupy, nearly all of us having acquired a self-loathing complex or latency by this point, was drawing dangerously close. Surely one of the most crude and gruesome exhibitions imaginable is spending whole weekends in bed, naked from the waist down, power watching Band Of Gold episodes on some dismal satellite channel with esoteric content tailored to lonely married men. This sort would become serial killers if there wasn’t some semblance of contentment and the tawdry releases offered by soft-core publications didn’t exist.

Then a more promising concept arrived, comparatively, of course. And by promising I mean cynical, and yes, it needed work, but it could become something. Surely, at the very least, its scenarios and brand of dialogue, the kind that incites petty scorn, would get it commissioned for BBC three? Fictional displacement appeals to its core demographic of bitchy sofa dwellers who relish any opportunity to attack vague caricatures of folk they know, and even elements of themselves. Set in a call centre, it was appropriately called, “Call Centre Cunts”. I had the opening sequence visualised – a gaggle of slovenly, ugly, self-entitled (therefore disproportionately arrogant) thirty something careerless men are huddled around a morass of desks and computer equipment;

‘Ha, fuck me. Here, you wanna check this twat’s name out.’

‘What?’

‘Littledyke.’

‘Hey that’s homophobic. We’re only temps mate.’

‘Yeah Mike, we’ve got fuck all rights.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being little though, or a dyke, so there’s nothing wrong with being a little lezzer, is there?

‘There’s bound to be one in here. Isn’t what’s her face one? Eh, Hitler haircut. Works on the third floor?’

‘Yeah her, but she doesn’t dress like one.’

‘You can’t tell for certain who is.’

‘Yeah you can.’

‘How?’

‘Well my dick’s one for starters.’

After several hours marooned on the sofa waiting for the text to expand and improve significantly, I was interrupted by a text alert. My agent, don’t worry, he has other more successful clients, left me a message after learning of my latest performance. Surprisingly, it signified grave concern at the potential repercussions for me, not disappointment or anger at what being associated with me might cost him. He claimed to have visited my flat three times over the last two weeks, but each time I wasn’t in. This struck me as an odd comment. Surely he must be lying? Trying to find sanctuary from professional failure in this digital age is exceedingly difficult, though I was inadvertently offered temporary respite by the ceiling, as the light emitting from the television hit it to create satisfying hues. Finishing yet another alcoholic concoction I fancy another, but that requires a vertical posture, which I’m too exhausted and inebriated to consider. I tilt my head, one of those awful after hours gambling shows is on, but the remote isn’t immediately visible or within reach.

Only once there can we appreciate that desperation is truly the last vestige of hope. The newsagents down the road has a number of laminated paper party (I assume – though perhaps they’re aimed at comedians going through a crisis of confidence too?) masks of celebrities and other vile characters of public interest, one being Katie Hopkins. But will the newsagents be open tomorrow? Surely it will be? It’s a Saturday. If I arrive on stage wearing a Katie Hopkins mask with the eyes cut out surely that would induce a few laughs, as an icebreaker? But yet again it’s entirely complacent plagiarism, moments later I realise I’ve subconsciously stashed and now stolen it from Vic and Bob’s nineties parody of Stars In Their Eyes. However, I might just get away with it, as most people have probably forgotten it. The key is diverging from the format enough and making it somewhat sophisticated, despite its appearance. I’ll produce a guise and act that mocks her many cynical minority phobias and yearning for cultural atavism, a brand of fiction that entices the carping of complacent, unthinking, insufferably dogged neo-liberals who are helping to foment fascism’s reappearance. The theory, in theory, is a logical one – I’ll be freed by being entirely beholden, or should that be committed, to the sketch which necessitates further detachment from my routine. Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be a shite comedian playing a fraud, the sort of trite rubbish that perpetually populates shitty evening quiz shows.

Speaking of light entertainment, those quiz and panel shows were a good earner. It’s amazing to think that I used to frequently appear on them. They should be less popular than cancer of the ringpiece, but then most people vote Conservative, watch Britain’s Got Talent and listen to Bruno Mars, so of course the format’s ubiquitous. Nothing crushes one’s confidence more than failing to be considered funny enough for them. Where I find myself now certainly isn’t funny. I’m appearing as Katie Hopkins in front of a huge audience, and all of them are wearing paper masks of my face with the eyes cut out.

And they aren’t laughing, and so the process begins again. Random thoughts start to race in and out of my visual cortex; weird green jelly being eaten by pensioners, your uncle’s bad breath, your uncle’s shite taste in music, your uncle, ugly girl with a face like a bag of hammers smiling at me, runny eyeliner, morbidly obese men parading their spare tyres in replica football kits, doghair in dogshit, fascist moustaches, wanksock, rancid turnips, you don’t have planning permission for that, talking anorack, paella left out, cumface, Real Stories From Auschwitz sponsored by Mediterranean Cruises, constipated by wotsits, Mexican Wave at Dianna’s funeral, canteen smells of off fish, why do twins always have the same haircut? Malteasers – the lighter way to enjoy diabetes, big toe nail clipping found down the back of a sofa, homeless folk with pets, now think of something profound – spontaneity is the genesis of all traditions, at least I know what Ecuadorian bananas taste like, Julian Assange probably has them daily, why do my palms have that overwhelmingly repellent smell after you’ve been clutching something metallic for too long? I once developed a hernia bruise that had a smiley Gordon Ramsay face. Now my bowel’s going ballistic, like a rampant gorilla that can’t remove a butplug from its arse. The audience have disappeared, as has my Katie Hopkins attire. The lights are now off, only the dim safety lighting from the fire exits and the corridors at the back prevent the venue from being pitch black.

Were all those years of stand-up routines, laughs and acclaim all the figment of a diseased mind? Had I spent years roaming the streets at three in the morning with the sole intent of breaking into venues with stages to perform to nobody? If so, the lie was a salvation, and this epiphany, the punchline, the delusion’s climax, is its most diabolical act – that I’m not funny, I was never a comedian and that I had no audience to lose.