Don't Go

That wasn't my father in the casket, that was just the bread, the meat and the fat. It's done it's job, he's done with that. 

You did good, you were a good dad. You gave us all the freedoms that your parents made sure you never had. 

I picture your own disapproving father, holding you over his knee, as he cut off your quiff. 

What was is about your style that signified something he felt he had to attack? You never did that, you were a good dad. And when your work was done, you were ready to go. Where are you now? I don’t think we’re built to know. 

You Make Me Feel Like a Smiths Song

This is my father's wake. The white bread, the meat, the drink and the cake. He lived for his family, for art and music; the coastlines and the rolling lands, the surf, mod, punk and pop bands.

Style wasn't something that interested my dad. I always figured he missed out there, by not being a Smiths fan. I thought he would have appreciated their Englishness, their conservativism, their melancholy; their nostalgia for a semi-fictional past: of girl bands, quiffs, and Carry on films.

This building is like a Smiths song: draped in England flags, it is almost entirely of the past. It's a fading old 7" on a dimly light jukebox; echoing through endless empty function rooms, a pile of twenties on the pool table, rusty coppers atop the rim of the poor box. Transistor voices, kaleidoscopic 12-strings, cardboard drum beats, woolly, fuzzy, all so very English. Badly tuned TVs. Drudgery, BBC, ITV, Beatles harmonies.

Empty institutional chairs in precise institutional lines, a locked groove stretching on forever through the rhyme, of swinging doors strewn with football colours, framed photographs of long dead politicians; sportsmen, comedians, serial killers; club singers, ventriloquists, sex offenders; ribbons, flags, forgotten, half-remembered. Even that fresh paint smell is arrogant, bad tempered.  

I see all those chairs arranged in rows, repositioned, stacked, un-stacked. I see the football colours and the England flags. As if we need to be reminded of where we are. Lost like ghosts. Nationalism at times when the nation’s failed the most.

National Pride in places the rest of the nation doesn't even know exists, or if it does, is happy for the place to remain in the sticks. 

Vanity, they say, is a kind of pride: when you’re smug about something that maybe you should hide. Pride in something you really don’t have: or youth, or wealth and things that don’t last.   

They bow and they kiss the hand that divides, the hand that takes, accuses, denies. For their bellies are full and their TVs wide. All the extra channels and two cars in the drive.

God don't get him started on the politics. We should never have let him go to college. Put ideas in his head that did. You never met the right girl that’s the trouble with you. You want to settle down. It's not too late for you. Just stop trying to try to do things we don’t know how to do.

Your family will fight to the bone over their favourite TV show, but only your friends will really defend you. 

Misplaced rage, loyalties in the wrong place, tipping your cap and shaking their hands as they confiscate freedoms you never knew you had. Divide and rule is the order of the day. It's in the water, the booze, the coal and the clay.

"Oh don't go, It's not too late."

Every day is like my father's wake. Every day is an echo of a better day.

White bread, beer, meat and fat. The future doesn't have to be an imitation of the past. Why do we always seem to aspire to that? The white bread, the meat, the beer and the fat. 

The rooms all smell of time stained carpets, of ill-fitting jumpers, meat raffles and indoor markets; record sleeves, paperbacks; Steven King, Union Jacks.

The taste of blood and tears in the mouth, beer, tobacco, Bitter and Stout. Bitter, Mild, accusations; Fear, Hatred, Resentment, Failure.

Coal and Clay

Look at the games rooms my god the antique arcade machines bleep and hiss away as they must have done for the past three decades, how are they still going? Ignorance is strength, pride and delight in obtuseness. Pac Man forever chasing ghosts around the exact same paths. These things were really built to last. They've been here so long that their whole style has come back, more times than the manufactures ever needed the cash. What are you supposed to do with that?

Do they know what they're worth? The building probably wouldn't allow anyone to take them away. They’re a part of the architecture, they are here to stay.

But the building is not a gracious host. It stands tall but shadowy like a disapproving ghost, something constructed out of fear and doubts. As far as this building is concerned, it's still 1954 or thereabouts.

There's no one drinking here save for the bar staff, who do not speak; even their suspicions are muted and meek.

Only the over-sized TVs break the spell, retrofitted to the walls like the Ghost in the Shell. 

Coin-op vending machines full of plastic spheres, their contents all rusted, sun bleached by the years, anachronistic items that must have ceased to be manufactured decades ago. Brittle powder chewing gum, war time candy with a taste like a shadow.  

Men come here to hide from their parents. Men come here to hide from their wives. Sometimes women are allowed some nights. Sometimes women and children are allowed inside. They're a source of entertainment. Like foreigners on the bowling green. Christ look there's a bowling green.

"There's a foreign woman on the bowling green who does she think she is?"

The banality of bigotry, like a corpse buried beneath the perfect surface of the fucking bowling green. 

UKIP stickers in the shattered window of a council flat. The white bread, the meat, the fear and the fat. Foreign labour didn't put you out of work, you can thank the Tories for doing that. But still you smile and you doth your cap, you’re faithful, you'll get your country back. 

The Tories shut down the industries that built the towns like this. Now the residents vote Conservative. They believe that's right. They don't believe they're struggling, you can see it in their eyes: they've got all the HD channels, and two cars in the drive. Belief is a lie. Belief is a lie. 

Coal and clay, coal and clay. 

"Oh don't go, it's not too late."

Here are my ghost family, their complexions like clay. Even the young ones are colourless and grey. There is no sunshine here. There is no outside. Glaring reminders of all you've been denied. And do you have a boyfriend children proper job? Mortgage, all the HD channels oh well there's plenty of time for all that but that's not a proper job because I don't believe it to be a proper job I can't even imagine what that would really involve so it isn't real it can't be.

You've been all around the world why would you want to do that? I wouldn't let my daughter go around dressed like that. You read too many books, let them brainwash you into having an open mind about things. They should never have let you indulge your dreams. You should be at home, preparing yourself for marriage. That's what I believe and so it must be true. If you disagree what’s it got to do with you?

Belief shapes the world, belief is why we can't evolve. Belief in ideas, in imaginary things. You can't construct a physical world out of ideas and daydreams. 

Ah but you believe what you believe, you can’t get through to a brain that perceives: the world through the filter of blind belief and no proof, no facts will sway them from their truth.

This is the way of the circle of life, we’re chained to the wheel by blind belief. Look up, look out, there is more than this, but it’s not what you want, it’s not what you wish. Belief gets in the way of life and release, but that’s not what you want, that's not what you seek. You’ve lived so long in the shadows of a cave, freedom and light isn’t what you crave. You seek out fear, guilt and regret, it’s what you deserve so it’s all that you get.

In the culture of blame you have crafted your own chains, a culture of compassion would be a culture of shame. You can’t let people just live how they choose, let the powers that be tell us who to blame and abuse. For the ruling class’s failings, in the culture of blame: the people they’ve failed are the people we should blame.

This is the trouble with your belief: you invent horror stories for strangers on the streets. Fear and regret steer your every move, no amount of experience, no amount of proof: will let you see the world anew, a world of compassion, a world founded on truth.

Inside Outside

Inside, the wind doesn't move them, the sun shining through the windows shines through them. There is fear and uncertainty in the eyes of the young, a fear that must over time become: the look of defeat in the adults who look on.

Look how much she's grown, no I don't like that; isn't it a shame that she turned out like that. He's married to a woman but how can he still seem so… gay? Which one is his wife no that’s HER wife you say? That's his brother, he looks so much older, than I saw him last... ten minutes ago, no look I'm confused by all these new ideas but I’m afraid to ask.

We're not here for your pleasure so you can say how much we've grown, whisper how you don't approve of our hair or our clothes.

We're not here to educate you. It's not our fault that you aged but never grew. You've stayed the same for decades, entirely unchanged; and you're somehow proud, that you’re old for your age. Staring faces silver grey, staring at us like we're the ones who’ve made the mistakes.

At least I'm still capable of change, still capable of feeling the sun upon my face. 

"Don't go, don’t go, it's not too late."

The Fadeout

We stand outside and the wind moves our clothes, the sun shines in our eyes. I'm shaking hands with a slender man I don't recognize.

He is a shadow, sunken and grey, peering out at the world beneath cloth cap and shades. The voice is an echo from when he was young. He pushes words out like smoke from half a mutated lung. Every word exclaimed as if every moment of life is a surprise. Someone else, he says, has died. I'm still here, oh wow, oh well. You're looking good, you must be doing well. 

I wish that I could say the same, but I’m not even sure I remember his name. Decades of yesterdays, in the milky eyes emotion, malnourished limbs move with a medicated slow motion. 

Later I discover that this man is younger me. Flesh and blood, coal and clay. 

He took heroin and it took his youth, sharp of tongue and sweet of tooth. Beware the vultures at the wake. White bread, meat, fat and cake. Does he remember me, when did we meet? He's staring down a one way street, in the car park, where a man stares back while he burns some tires, and children’s toys to fuel his fires.  

You lot aren’t from around these parts? Mate, we’re the ones you wouldn’t want to meet in the dark. We’re unified though we live far apart, at least we don’t spend our days burning weird shit in a car park. 

But I have to say that there are no vultures here. My father’s brother has disappeared. Somehow he felt he wasn’t working class, he didn’t condescend to us long enough to ask. If any of us even give a fuck, that he’s not here, I guess he is better than us.  

The wealthier ones seem less animated, more colour has bled from their hair and faces. They are tired of all they see. Money can't buy you youth or dignity. Old age doesn't have to be this way, there are many older people here with something positive to say. The glint of youth in their eyes and smiles, energies lilting with humour and style - though life has been really fucking tough, they can still fucking laugh it all off.

"Fuck it, life happened to me, I didn't do that, I didn't make that shit happen, it’s all in the past. There's no shame in old age, in the lines on my face, there's no shame or sin in the place that I’m in. I did my best, never crossed anyone, I’m not ashamed of the person I’ve become."

B/W

Sometimes my friends and I appear kind of ageless. But that isn't our style and there are lines on our faces. We have energy, because we're not consumed by hate. Hate drains, compassion elevates. We have side-stepped the pressures of conformity. Life certainly hasn't been easy, and nor should it be. We're not ready to surrender. Not to this mundanity. Don't want to belong. Have to look beyond. 

I'm hugging goodbye my childhood friend and I feel her sadness even after it ends. The longer it lasts the sadder she gets. She hasn’t grown, never fled the nest.

Life has not been good to her. Her eyes are the eyes of a ghost, barely blue, wide in a kind of muted horror. Was she the only other person crying at the service, besides my mother? 

You were so strong. What happened to you? A strength that didn't deserve to be robbed. If there was something I could do, but you can't you can't help anyone they’ll only resent you.

As children we were unified in our anger, but you always saw yourself as stronger. Staring at the same old shows on TV, staring at the ghosts in the vending machines, staring at the shadows on the walls of a cave, staring at the mess of the world that we made.  

Even the young here have no youth, it’s not aloud, it has no use. The only difference between us and you, is we’re still learning, and you refuse.

Faded England flags flutter in the merciless wind; in the car park, where a man stares and burns things. 

My friends and I are alive and yet, in a way that makes us seem like a threat. We don't leave. The building fades. The people go back to sleep, unchanged.

M. Taylor, October 2017. 


All proceeds from Imaginary Weather (containing The Landscape Welder, dedicated to my dad) will go to Myeloma UK until the end of the year:
https://themekanoset.bandcamp.com/album/imaginary-weather