Jason Phillips's Blog
December 25, 2023
November 18, 2020
17 Insights into the Creative Process
And as a bonus insight:
IT DOESNT HAVE TO MAKE SENSE!
now begin (*added after 2 people commented below that starting was possibly more important than all the 17 insights i had!)
drop us a line below if you have any thoughts
April 1, 2020
Why I am a Loser
When i was 25 i decided to start making music and stop being a door to door salesman.
My friend sat me down and said your too old to start now.
I thought fuck it let’s go. Nothing motivates me like someone telling me i cant.
He was probably right.
Im 43 now. And I have nothing. Im broke. blagging my way along in life. nothing to show for my efforts.
but what effort? Let’s break it down.
Dont get me wrong. ive had a great time, an amazing wonky journey of friendships and enemies and chaos and adventure.
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almost 9 years of Sicknote, traipsing over the UK and Europe touring the punk rave circus and building an army of party heads. Was a great time.
DJed all over too. And now Clusterfuck just put out their third album, a much darker project, born from anger at the loss of old times, old friends and previous ways of life. And now morphing into a slamming dark surreal show all of its own.
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Sober now and still plugging away I was reminded recently of Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’ where he talks of the 10000 hour rule. I think he nicked it off someone else, not sure who so cant credit the original source. In Outliers he uses the Beatles as one of his examples.. Talking of all the hours of jamming and playing live, mainly drug fuelled, in their Hamburg days. They snorted bucket loads of cheap speed to help them through their regular 3 hour performences, sometimes much longer, usually 3 times a day. For years. No one in the world was playing this much. They became EXPERTS in their field in a few short years. And this is what the 10k hour rules argues. In order to become a success, a true pro, you need to put in 10,000 focussed hours of deep work.
It got me thinking why i hadn’t seen much success, although on some levels I had a taste of success, none of it has been financial and in the grand scheme of things my projects were tiny and overall unheard of. ie underground. not to say i want to be the next beyonce, and not to discredit anything i done with my old projects, as i loved them just as they were. But everyone wants to at least make a living from their work and we barely scraped that even in the heights of our popularity. Why was this? Surely i had worked my ass off and where was the results!?
I installed an app on my computer years ago called Time Track Pro.. and even though my computer has changed several times and is now a hybrid of about 5 different machines all at least 8 years old.. (hence being called Mr Tusk), i must have used the same operating system somehow as covertly the app has been tracking my every move for 6 years plus.
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So i have very accurate figures as to how much time ive spent in my production software in the last few years. I dont have any figures before that, and i think i tend to go through phazes of crazy hours then zero hours of creativity. so very hard to say. But i started making music in November 2001. I was 25.. Its now 2020. Im 43. Wasted life? Dunno…. lets look at how hard i’ve actually worked.
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here are the figures…
Broken down..
31/3/14 – 31/3/15: 201 hours
31/3/15 – 31/3/16: 145 hours
31/3/16 – 31/3/17 165 hours
31/3/17 – 31/3/18: 167 hours
31/3/18 – 31/3/19: 0 hours
31/3/19 – 31/3/20: 182 hours
this comes in at 860 hours for 6 years. not sure what the fuck i was doing in 2018 but seems like i had some kind of meltdown… and a complete year off.
so in 6 years 860 hours = 806/6 = 143.3 hours per Year Average!
divided by 12 = 11.9 hours per month average.
Divided by 4 = 3 hours a week.
Divided by 5 = 36 minutes a day (with weekends off).
Yes the massive commitment i made at aged 26 weighs in at a hugely disappointing working day of 36 minutes per day for 18 years. How can i expect to make as success at this with this measly effort? What the fuck have i been doing!?
Now this has been my average work rate since this app has been tracking me. Im sure i was working harder when i first started making music as i was so excited back in the day.. and full of youthful vigour!… but lets run with the figures we have and assume ive always worked the same.
Approximately 18 years i been at it. And assuming this has always been my approximate work rate then….
18 years x 143.3 hours = so far a total of 2579 hours. Just over a quarter of the way to the Gold Standard for success and expertise… A QUARTER OF THE WAY!!!!! and im 43! oh shit. so at this rate i will get to where i want to go when? oh lets see.
At my current / past work rate of average of 143.3 hours per year. Hours left to hit 10k = 7421. So 7421/143.3 = 52 years! there we go i’ll finally hit where i need to be just as im hitting my 95th birthday. yay. then, at last, i’ll be the producer i’ve always wanted to be.
this is why i am a loser.
imagine where i’d be if i worked like a job. 40 hours per week or some shit.
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Thanks to Andrew Weatherall RIP… i have been inspired to take the music serious and treat it as a job. A word i and we all must hate… but he says it worked for him over the years. after i delved into loads of his interviews on the news of his untimely death. A true hero…… and so, ive decided to do just this. Creative work is very tiring so there’s no need to be scheduling 10 hours a day and setting myself up for failure. i’ve decided to commit to a Monday – Friday regime, of 3 hours a day…. This is a vast jump from my lifetime average of the pathetic 36 minute a day average i currently hold.
i’ve been testing out the 3 hours a day new part time job over the last month, and it’s producing some epic results, already the music is improving ten fold and the income is increasing with all the new releases. New projects, new directions, new albums seem to be writing themselves. The answer to success seems to be in the momentum..
On this new regime how long will it take for me to hit Pro level? World class level? well, there’s still a hefty 7421 hours to go…. i realise the 10k is approximate and not exact theory… but running with it:
15 hours per week x 52 = 780. 7432/780 = 9.5 years. wow . still another fucking decade. Im nowhere near where i need to be. Ive been a lazy cunt, and convinced myself i was working hard. I wasnt. The level of work required to be Great at something is huge. And ive only just begun!
on this mew regime Ill be 52 when i finally can say im an expert. 52! fackinell. wish i started when i was 12. And committed. Ah well, what can i do?
WORK MY BALLS OFF!!!!! NOW!
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Since launching the new job, 3 hours a day 5 days a week, i have released more music and made more money from it than i have in years. My previous best month on record was when i produced Dear Mortal, Clusrterfuck’s debut album in 2015, racking up a 48 hour work month, pretty slim by any working persons standards. a 12 hours work week? and thats my best on record. w t a f . Ive just broke that in March 2020 with a 60 hour work month. My new standard! Im on it and the results are beginning to show for themselves.
dO. THE. WORk.
dont wait for inspiration…
GET TO WORK
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most days i dont want to go and sit in the studio, in front of the computer. Im never in the mood to start. I can think of so many other things id rather do. But since commiting to the ‘job’… i do it anyway. sometimes sitting there with the software open and zero inspiration. Just sat there listening to previous projects. Then something will click after a while and ill start tweaking and fiddling and then im in….. and most days the 3 hours flys by. somedays it drags and i only just scrape over the 3 hours. but i must do the 3 hours every single day.
Or be A LOSER.
Forever!
check out my music here
February 21, 2020
10 years of Quimcore…
It’s now TEN years since i released my debut album as Flapsandwich… RE-RUBS VOL 1, dropped Halloween 2009… so i’ve dug it out.. and re uploaded it all to Tantrum Bandcamp so you can download or listen to it. here you go:
or direct link here:
https://flapsandwich.bandcamp.com/album/re-rubs-vol-1
ive also done a 50% discount on my entire back catalogue (well, everything ive uploaded so far) … look on the bandcamp and you’ll see all 5 albums for half price 
February 13, 2020
Gonzo Stoicism
Who the fuck is Michel De Montaigne?
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Montaigne by Dali 1947
No idea why, but i’ve become a bit obsessed with this French dude lately. (1533-1592).
He claims that he is the first writer to ever have, for his subject, put up himself for study. He promises nothing but blatant honesty in his study of his life and mind and opinions. And some of his rants are genius and others bat shit crazy!
His opus ‘THE ESSAYS”… is still available. There were 3 volumes, which he spent 20 years or so editing and rewriting and changing. He was the first ever author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as “attempts” to put his thoughts into writing. The french word essay meaning to ‘try’.
I recently dusted the Penguin English translation of Selected Essays. It was pretty tough going, to be tangled up in this guys mind and follow him on every whim and tangent. He was tackling, 500 years ago, some of the same shit we think about today.
He set up a library and writing desk in a turret in his castle, after retiring from working in the courts in Bordeaux, after the age of 42ish. The writing room is still as it was, and you can visit it, in The Dordoigne in France today. Back then France was in the grip of civil wars and it seemed like quite a dodgy time to be around. I think he got robbed several times, almost killed, his castle got charged and several of his men killed.
He had a rough time trying to build a family, and after several children dying very young, he only managed to have one daughter carry on the lineage. He speaks of brain-children. These are the children you leave behind for the world through a creation of work, and argues sometimes you may have more love for brain-children than your actual children. This collection of essays could be seen as Montaigne’s second child, and his only Brain Child.
I find it fascinating that these records of thoughts still exist today, giving us a glimpse into the minds of our ancestors. His pioneering self-centred style was loosely a prototype for Gonzo journalism to be born 4 centuries later, with its P.O.V. narrative of the events and thoughts of the experiencer. This style sits you in a comfy arm chair moulded in a front centre location in the cerebrum of the author. What can be more fun than a virtual reality trip… we ARE the author!
He was a Christian who studied philosophy and had an interest in living to the full. He often quotes The Stoics in all their wisdom, also taking apart the wisdom and looking at it from every angle.
He disregarded other styles of philosophy he had no time for, by simply taking the piss:
“But what will he do when they harass him with some sophistical syllogistic subtlety:
Bacon makes you drink; Drinking quenches your thirst; Therefore bacon quenches your thirst?
Let him simply laugh at it: is is cleverer to laugh at it than to answer it. Why should I unravel that? It is bad enough all knotted up!”
I’ve collated some of the bits I underlined in the book here, there’s a lot… There were a plethora of nuggets, and I wanted to put them somewhere where i could dive in again for a refresher! I still, however, urge you to pick up a copy and indulge yourself.
A bientôt Mon Ami.
Over to Michel……..
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“It was a melancholy humour brought on by the chagrin caused by the solitary retreat I plunged myself into a few years ago, which first put into my head this raving concern with writing. Finding myself quite empty, with nothing to write about, I offered myself to myself as theme and subject matter. It is the only book of its kind in the world.”
Book 1, Essay 20: To philosophize is to learn how to die
“How absurd to anguish over our passing into freedom from all anguish.”
“As we are born we die; the end of our life is attached to its beginning.”
“Triumph over time and live as long as you please: death eternal will still be waiting for you.”
“No night has ever followed day, no dawn has ever followed night, without hearing, interspersed among the wails of infants, the cries of pain attending death and sombre funerals.”
Book 1, Essay 26: On educating children
“Our lessons will slip by unnoticed if we apparently happen upon them, as, restricted to neither time or place, they intermingle with all out activities.”
“There is a great difference between not wanting to do evil and not knowing how to.”
Book 1, Essay 31: On the cannibals (the recent discovering of the new world)
“Those ‘savages’ are only wild in the sense that we call fruits wild when they are produced by Nature in her ordinary course: whereas it is fruit which we have artificially perverted and misled from the common order which we ought to call savage.”
“Ivy grows best when left untended; the strawberry tree flourishes more beautifully in lonely grottoes, and birds sing the sweeter for their artlessness.”
“Just as our wives are zealous in thwarting our love and tenderness for other women, theirs are equally zealous in obtaining them for them.”
“Being more concerned for their husband’s reputation then for anything else, they take care and trouble to have as many fellow-wives as possible, since that is a testimony to their husband’s valour.”
Book 1, Essay 39: On solitude
“Socrates was told that some man had not been improved by travel. ‘I am sure he was not,’ he said. ‘He went with himself!’
“We take our fetter with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them.”
“In lonely places, be a crowd unto yourself.”
“Let us pluck life’s pleasures: it is up to us to live; you will soon be ashes, a ghost, something to tell tales about.”
“You have lived up to the present floating and tossing about; come away into the harbour and die… Renounce all concern for your name and glory… Among other gratifications give up the one which comes from other people’s approval.”
“You and one companion are audience enough for each other; so are you for yourself. For you, let the crowd be one, and one be a crowd.”
“We must do like the beasts and scuff out our tracks at the entrance to our lairs.”
“You should no longer be concerned with what the world says of you but with what you say to yourself.”
Book 2, Essay 1: On the inconstancy of actions
“Anyone who turns his his prime attention on to himself will hardly ever find himself in the same state twice.”
“Every sort of contradiction can be found in me, depending upon some twist or attribute: timid, insolent; chaste, lecherous; talkative, taciturn; tough, sickly; clever, dull; brooding, affable; lying, truthful; learned, ignorant; generous, miserly and then prodigal – I can see something of all that in myself, depending how i gyrate; and anyone who studies himself attentively finds in himself and in his very judgement this whirring about and this discordancy.”
“Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly. It is impossible to put the pieces together if you do not have an idea in your head of the whole.”
“What is the point in providing yourself with paints if you do not know what to paint?”
“The bowman must first know what he is aiming at: then he has to prepare hand, bow, bowstring, arrow and his drill to that end.”
“Our projects go astray because they are not addressed to a target.”
“No wind is right for a seaman who has no predetermined harbour.”
Book 2, Essay 8: On the affection of fathers for their children
“I am incapable of finding a place for that emotion which leads people to cuddle new-born infants while they are still without movements of soul or recognizable features of body to make themselves lovable. And I have never willingly allowed them to be nursed in my presence.”
“I would have been more punctilious with boys, who are less born to serve and whose mode-of-being is freer: I would have loved to make their hearts overflow with openness and frankness. I have never seen caning achieve anything except making souls more cowardly or more maliciously stubborn.”
“I was thirty-three when I married; and I approve of thirty-five – the opinion attributed to Aristotle.”
“He is right to laugh at spouses who lie together after fifty-five, their offspring unworthy to live and eat.”
“The history of Greece notes how //many great athletes// deprived themselves of any sort of sexual activity during the time they were getting their bodies in trim for the races, wrestling and other contests at the Olympic Games.”
“Whenever I hear of the state that some other man is in, I waste no time over that but immediately turn my eyes on to myself to see how I am doing. Everything which touched him touches me also. What has happened to him is a warning and an alert coming from the same quarter.”
“I know only too well from experience when we lose those we love there is no consolation sweeter than the knowledge of having remembered to tell them everything and to have enjoyed the most perfect and absolute communication with them.”
“The village-women where I live call in the help of goats when they cannot suckle their children themselves… These nanny-goats are trained from the outset to suckle human children; they recognize their voices when they start crying and come running up. Theu reject any other child you give them except the one they are feeding; the child does the same to another nanny-goat.”
Book 2, Essay 11: On cruelty
“To act badly was too easy and too cowardly; to act well when there was no danger, too commonplace; but to act well when danger threatened, was the proper duty of a virtuous man.”
Book 2, Essay 37: On the resemblance of children to their fathers
“Neither be afraid of your last day nor desire it”
“Let praise rush to pile up around me, thickly not thinly spread, plentiful rather than long-lasting. Then, when its sweet voice can strike my ears no more, it can be bold enough to disappear with my own consciousness.”
“If anyone is worth anything, let is appear in his behaviour, in his ordinary talk when loving or quarrelling, in his past-times, in bed, at table, in the way he conducts his business and runs his house.”
Book 3, Essay 2: On repenting
“If all complain that i talk too much abut myself, I complain that they never even think about their own selves.”
“Evil swallows most of its own venom and poisons itself. Vice leaves repentance in the soul like an ulcer in the flesh which is forever scratching itself and bleeding.”
“In my own climate of Gascony they find it funny to see me in print; I am valued the more the farther from home knowledge has spread. In Guienne I pay my printer: elsewhere, they pay me.”
“My decisions are so fashioned as always to take the easiest and the surest side. I find that I proceeded wisely, according to my rule….. and in the same circumstances I would do the same a thousand years from now. I pay no regard to what it looks like now but to how it was when I was examining it.”
“I have few regrets for affairs of any sort, no matter how they have turned out, once they are past. I am always comforted by the thought that they had to happen that way: that they are in the vast march of the universe and in the concatenation of Stoic causes; no idea of yours, by wish or by thought, can change one jot without overturning the whole order of Nature, both past and future.”
Book 3, Essay 3: On three kinds of social intercourse
“We must dispel the vices of leisure by our work.”
“No occupation is more powerful, or more feeble, than entertaining one’s own thoughts – depending on what kind of soul it is.”
“Being a man who does not ask to be thought better than I am, I will say this about the errors of my youth: I rarely lent myself to venal commerce with prostitutes, not only because of the danger to my health but also because I despised it.”
“Every place of retreat need an ambulatory. My thoughts doze off if I squat them down.”
“Books have plenty of pleasant qualities for those who know how to select them. But there is no good without ill… Reading has its disadvantages – and they are weighty ones: it exercises the soul, but during that time the body remains inactive and grows earth-bound and sad. I know of no excess more harmful to me in my declining years, nor more to be avoided.”
Book 3, Essay 5: On some lines of Virgil
“Gloomy thoughts should be made pleasant by jests.”
“Let us not be ashamed to say whatever we are not ashamed to think.”
“I loathe a morose and gloomy mind which glides over life’s pleasures but holds on to its misfortunes and feeds on them… like leeches which crave to suck only bad blood.”
“I hunger to make myself known. Provided I do it truly I do not care how many know it. Or, to put it better, I hunger for nothing, but I go in mortal fear of being mistaken for another by those who happen to know my name.”
“If you praise a hunchback for his fine build he ought to take it as an insult.”
“That rule in which ordains that //ladies// must detest us because we worship them and hate us because we love them is indeed cruel, if only for the hardship it causes.”
“Like one of the gentlemen in my neighbourhood who was suspected of impotence: whose tiny dagger, drooping like a flabby parsnip, never stuck halfway up his underwear.”
“Lock her up, shut her in. But who will guard your guardians? Your wife is clever: she will start with them!”
“Marriages and wives are called good not because they are good but because they are not talked about. We should use our ingenuity to avoid making such useless discoveries which torture us. It was the custom of the Romans when returning home from a journey to send a messenger ahead to announce their arrival to their womenfolk so as to not to take them unawares.”
“A good marriage needs a blind wife and a deaf husband.”
“..either she had set herself on the road to becoming chaste because of the indifference of her husband, or else that she had sought another husband who would stimulate her desire by his jealousy and excite her by standing up to her.”
“Do I not always talk like that? Am I not portraying myself to the life? If so, that suffices! I have achieved what i wanted to: everyone recognizes me in my book and my book in me.”
“All topics are equally productive to me. I could write about a fly! I may begin with any subject I please, since all subjects are linked to each other.”
“The poet who tells all, gluts us and puts is off: the one who is timid about expressing his thoughts leads us in our thoughts to discover more than is there.”
“Think how far kisses, the form of greeting peculiar to our nation, have had their grace cheapened by availability…. Cold leaden snot drips from his dog-like conk and bedews his beard. Why I would a hundred times rather go and lick his arse.”
“An ugly old age when openly avowed is in my opinion less old and less ugly than one smoothed out and painted over.”
Book 3, Essay 6: On coaches
“As a rule, where you feel less fear you experience less danger.”
“Such pleasures – as festivals… have an effect only on the lowest of the low; they immediately vanish from their memory as soon as they have had enough of them; no serious man of judgement can hold them in esteem.”
“Liberality without moderation is a feeble means of acquiring good-will, since it offends more people then it seduces.”
“The man whose thoughts are set on getting thinks no longer of what he has got. The property of covetousness is, above all, ingratitude.”
Book 3, Essay 11: On the lame
“The distance is greater from nothing to the minutest thing in the world than it is from the minutest thing to the biggest.”
“Our reasons often run out ahead of the facts and enjoy such an infinitely wide jurisdiction that they are used to make judgements about the very void and nonentity.”
Book 3, Essay 13: On experience
“Cut anything into tiny pieces and it all becomes a mass of confusion.”
“Never did two men ever judge identically about anything, and it is impossible to find two opinions which are exactly alike, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.”
“There is no end to our enquiries: our end is in the next world.”
“The more simply we entrust ourself to Nature the more wisely we do so.”
“It must be important to put into effect the counsel that each man should know himself, since that god of light and learning had it placed on the tympanum of his temple as comprising the totality of the advice which he had to give us.”
“Child: thou hast come into this world to suffer: suffer, endure and hold thy peace.”
“You are not dying because you are ill: you are dying because you are alive; Death can kill you well enough without illness to help her.”
“What about those stinking possets, those cauterizations, incisions, sweat-baths, draining of pus, diets and those many forms of treatment which often bring death upon us when we cannot stand their untimely onslaught!”
“Anyone who is afraid of suffering suffers already of being afraid.”
“Death is more abject, lingering and painful in bed than in combat.”
“My nature is to follow the example of Flaminius (who lent his support to those who needed him, not to those who could help him) rather than that of Pyrrhus (who had the characteristic of being humble before the great and arrogant before the common-folk.)
“We should be less concerned with what we eat than with whom we eat.”
“I reckon that it is as injudicious to set our minds against natural pleasures as to allow them to dwell on them.”
“I who… welcome the pleasures of this life find virtually nothing but wind in them when I examine them in detail. But then we are too nothing but wind. And the wind (more wise than we are) delights in its rustling and blowing, and is content with its own role without yearning for qualities which are nothing to do with it.”
“Things are sensed through the understanding, understood through the senses.”
“‘I haven’t done a thing today.’ – ‘Why! Have you not lived? That is not only the most basic of your employments, it is the most glorious.'”
“It is for petty souls overwhelmed by the weight of affairs to be unable to disentangle themselves… not knowing how to drop them and then to take them back up again: O ye strong men who have often undergone worse trials with me, banish care now with wine: tomorrow we will sail again over the vast seas.”
“Nor is there anything more striking about Socrates than his finding the time when he was old to learn how to dance and to play instruments, maintaining that it was time well spent.”
“Philosophy says that all activities are equally becoming in a wise man, all equally honour him.”
“Greatness of soul consists not so much in striving upwards and forwards, as in knowing how to find one’s place and to draw the line.”
“Pain and pleasure, love and hatred, are the first things a child is aware of: if, after Reason develops, they are guided by her, then that is virtue.”
“It is the life of a fool which is graceless, fearful and entirely sacrificed to the future.”
“The delight of happiness and well-being… We.. must study it, savour it, muse upon it, so as to render condign thanksgiving to Him who vouchsafes it to us.. I deliberate with myself upon any pleasure. I plumb it, and now that my reason has grown chagrin and squeamish I force it to accept it.
I associate my Soul with it, not that she will get drunk on it, but take joy in it: not losing herself but finding herself in it; her role is to observe herself as mirrored in that happy state, to weigh that happiness, gauge it and increase it… She gauges how precious it is to her to have reached a point that, no matter where she casts her gaze, all around her the heavens are serene – no desire, no fear or doubt bring disturbing gales; nor is there any hardship, past, present or future on which her thoughts may not light without anxiety.
And so I pass in review, from hundreds of aspects, those whom fortune or their own mistakes sweep off into tempestuous seas, as well as those, closer to my own case, who accept their good fortune with such languid unconcern.
Those folk really do ‘pass’ their time: they pass beyond the present and the things they ‘have’ in order to put themselves in bondage to hope and to those shadows and vain ghosts which their imagination holds out to them – like those phantoms which , so it is said, flit about after death or those dreams which delude our slumbering senses – the more you chase them, the faster and farther they run away. Just as Alexander said that he worked for work’s sake – believing he had not done anything, while anything remained to be done: so too your only purpose in chasing after them, your only gain, lies in the chase.”
“I accept wholeheartedly and thankfully what Nature has done for me.”
“Temperance is not the enemy of our pleasures: it moderates them.”
“Aesop saw his master pissing as he waked along. ‘How now,’ he said. ‘When we run shall we have to shit?”
“Let us husband our time, but there still remains a great deal underused. Our mind does not willingly concede that it has plenty of other hours to perform its functions without breaking fellowship during the short time the body needs for its necessities.”
“Thou art a god in so far as thou recognizest that thou art a man.”
“And upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.”
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Michel De Montaigne – The Essays…. Go buy it now!
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February 18, 2019
Gammon Rage
the Brexit Anthem is here, from Bingo Wings….
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=554132351735761
download here
February 12, 2019
Demon of the Dawn
What is this?
This hollow dread that awakens thee?
Emptying you of your very self
from gut to lobe.
Doth thou hath Truth awaken thee? But Truth exists only in the world.
He is hard to shake! But shaketh thee must!
Or ye day shall be dictated by the unwelcome guest.
Bad spirits – warn off, as bad people also.
So your day can be lived as Veritas intended.
Seek no futher,
Shoo the Demon of the Dawn.
Dive into Truth,
before he taketh his grip
and chokes the joy from your very life.
December 31, 2018
HAPPY NEW YEAR -live stream..
did you miss me talking shit to camera last night….
HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS…. let me know what you want from me, FOR GODS SAKE!!!
October 27, 2018
October 5, 2018
I’m Spinning Around
i was laying in the pile of cushions i had rescued from the skip, in my attic: my new pad. there were friends staying in all my rooms downstairs in the flat so i had recently located into the dusty cavern in the roof.
the first thing i had witnessed on my return from my summer europe jaunt 2 weeks ago, on an old fat arsed tele stuck to the wall of a 1950s hotel in jersey, was a concert by a 80s pop idol. i had flicked through several channels of polite english people talking bollocks and ended up on Kylie live in London, celebrating her 50th birthday with a tour. It was sparkly and gay and absolutely amazing.
Here was a woman we had escalated to super stardom to allow us to let out a deep love we all had in us but were incapable of showing to the actual people in our lives. we had chosen her instead, to direct our unified love upon. so much easier than telling your snoring fart-sack of a husband that you loved him. not only was she the cutest thing ever and an icon for the british, but somehow we had allowed her to get away with these terrible songs, collectively showing that this was something much much deeper than just music. and much needed! being with her allowed us to be with each other and get out our stagnant unexpressed love! it was a community thing. we had all found a way to feel love together and we had chosen this dodgy pop music and beautiful little lady as our vehicle for adoration and good vibes. and she was classy. the perfect british pop idol. no smutt here. madonna may be he queen of pop but kylie was the princess diana of pop. and who wants an old queen flashing her gash at the kids? when you can have a cute princess smiling and dancing and bringing the plebs to tears by her mere presence?
a text had come through from Leo my big gay friend saying our Kylie had taken to stage at 8pm, no support act. fuck.,.. i put on my gayest shirt and slipped through my attic hole and out into the chilly night. outside the venue the place was desolate. no people,. no touts, no chance. i asked one of the door security in a bright yellow tshirt if he had seen any touts. yeh there were loads, Billy was just up there.
Billy? from Cardiff City?
Yes, Billy the Badge he said walking me up the road to find him.
no one.
he told me to scour the car park and see if i could see him packing up his merch into his van. after a good look around the arena i came back with nothing. i stepped into the venue and got patted down by a pat butcher / giant haystacks hybrid, despite her gargantuan stature she had the most lovely coy smile and rosy cheeks. a guy was beeping tickets at the next door. he pointed over to the box office.
in front of me there was one young chap being served. i waited a few paces back thinking i’ve got about 30 quid to my name and tickets are 80 quid so why the fuck am i queueing up. then i heard the guy say No no i only need the one thanks,.
The lady looked at him and i could see her ripping a single ticket off a strip of four. i’m intersted in one! i called over to the guy. he turned around and sized me up. erm yeh! sure thing. he said ‘make that two actually’ to the woman. and then when she poked them through the gap in the window he handed me one. i said, how much do i owe you…? desperately hoping it weren’t more than 30 quid. guest list he said.
i put a tenner in the charity box and got beeped through the door with my new friend. Im jack he said., and we shook hands. how the hell you got guest tickets? ah my friend is the bass player in Kylie’s band,. I was supposed to be coming with some other s but came alone in the end. Wow you’ve made my night. we shook hands and as we walked into the main arena he disappeared into the crowd. i looked up and in the middle of the thousands of stumpy welsh people elevated in the middle of them all ,. glowing in a white satin gown stood Kylie. She looked out of this world. Ours. The peoples princess of pop.
Thousands of welsh ladies and gell-haired, snazzy shirted men all shook their bits and looked up with glistening eyeballs. I tucked in to the crowd and got close to the action. a tall chap in a cowboy hat probably in his 50s started rubbing himself on me. i think he was flirting but literally i have no idea how that game works, so may have just been being friendly. but his arse was telling me otherwise.
in the interval i moved to the other side of Kylie’s big catwalk , not only to escape the flirtatious arse but to see if could get a better view of the show.
‘mr Phillips!’ i spun round and there was my old mucker FiFi looking rad as fuck all glistening and faking a kung fu kick at me. we had a huge hug. Kylie came slinking down onto stage dressed in full bikers leathers and absolutely bowled me over. i was speechless. and here were 8000 people all completely in love with this one tiny woman. ‘Slow’ was the song, so sultry and her dancers were slithering about on the floor.
To my family Thanks you for everything … Kylie said, and looked down to the side of her cat walk. ‘But you are all my family’ i turned to Fi, What s she mean? Is her famliy here? YEh said Fi Didnt you know her grandmother is from Bridgend. WHAT! YEh her family roots are Welsh and her new boyfriend is from Caerphilly. WHAT!!!!!
i watched her belt her way through the rest of her set, with her very dramatic dancers, cool as fuck band and tribe of adoring welsh munchkins. she was touched by the crowd- you could see her tears as the screen showed her close up. ‘Especially for you’ was momentous. i cant believe im writing that. and have already had my arse kicked by several friends. so bring it on. I cried at Especially for you. punk rock bitch! beat that Jonny Rotten. you do butter? i do kylie bitch.
the call for the encore shook the walls and the amount of love in the air was huge and palpable and sweaty. you could just poke your tongue out and have a taste of it. and it tasted of CWTCH. (deal with it.)
I fantasized of writing a song for Kylie. and her loving it. and then us falling in love for ever and having the best fun together, even though she was too old for babies, what a shame but still we would have the best life and best fun and it was going to be amazing. and yeh everyone had left and i was still stood there when i snapped out of my dream. yeh you’re a fat bald bat living in an attic with no money and you think you’re gunna pull kylie. yeh we are the plebs. keep dreaming boyo!
i spunked my last pennies on a Kylie t-shirt that sported a huge picture of her face. outside i met up with Leo and his friend Zak. They took me to ‘Hairy Marys’. This was near my home and every time i had walked past it in the last two years, i had looked over in disgust at the noise and mess hanging out of the tacky shithole. but not tonight. no! tonight matthew, i am jason donovan. and i am flying on love!
straight on the double spiced rum. i was on fire. sharp as a razor, id hit that ever sought after happy tipsy feeling. riding the wave! the reason we all drink! the barriers are down and you’re on form and you THE MAN! a girl wobbled over with a frog brothers hair band and hairdo and whispered in to my ear: i fucking hate your hair. i looked at her calmly in the eye and over the pounding kylie tunes whispered ‘it looks like you have a birthday cake on your head. love’ FUCK YOU! she shouted then laughed and hugged me. look out i was on fire. weird, but on fire. and my steven segal pony tail was proving to be a hit. . a woman snuggled up to me and told me she had never seen her husband so happy. he was completely hammered and wiggling his bottom on the dancefloor. you’re in a gay bar, maybe its a sign? we laughed and took some photos and danced. i was THE MAN! leo and zak were chatting in a corner. and we necked more rum.
i noticed a girl on the far podium dressed as a cheerleader and her shape was just beautiful. the way she moved i was mesmerised. as usual when seeing a girl i like, instead of talking to them or dancing with them i went really quiet and hid behind some other people. and then just peaked out at her. breaking my attraction trance a transexual woman with the build of a boxer caught my eye. she was proper going for it, real over the top sensual dancing and looking directly at me. i tried to arch my neck round her and try and show that it was the cute girl behind i was interested in. but she was now crouched down licking her fingers. she was caked in make up, had bulging breasts and a tight fitting red dress. her jawline was stronger than mine and she looked like she could beat the holy shit out of me before any love making may take place, or after, or during. or all three. i was terrified. i politely tried to look around her and make it obvious but found this completely impossible as she ripped down her top and exposed two mahoosive perfectly round tits that i could not break eye contact with. she licked the top of her breasts and then put them away and got back up onto her feet and started spinning around. holy fuck, i think i’ve just accidentally pulled a man. zak had clocked what was going on and was laughing at the fear that was dripping from my face.
i walked leo and zak to a taxi. and then decided id go back into marys alone. i had passed my point of being on form and was slowly devolving into the disco slug. i was now dancing near the cheerleader and her friend, who were having the time of their life, but i was kind of just on my own and awkward. YOUR DISCO NEEEEDS YOU!!! the cheesiest of all kylie songs came on and i hopped on to the podium with the girls and let off big time. then i felt awkward again. i took my phone out as a safety measure and pretended to text. she grabbed it and started laughing! WOW ITS AN ANTIQUE!!! i laughed and then took it off her and continued to not text anyone. i drank more rum.
after Dj Kevin had exhausted the Kylie repetoire he dropped Venga Boys. two 5 foot lads took to the podium facing each other. they looked more star wars / dungeon and dragons than gay icons but they stood there and the whole club stood still. as the beat dropped they busted some crazy foot work, high fiving each other a bit too often. when the beat dropped out again the more teddy like one done like a wave from his left hand up and over his shoulders to his right hand and just froze with his hand near my head and stood still…….. the beat dropped and he didn’t move. everyone looked at me. i reached up and touched his finger and sent the wave along my arms and then back down and then touched his finger again and it sent him into some ecstatic break dancing moves., everyone screaming at them not quite pulling it off but really trying very hard. breakdancing ewoks in the gay bar. Bizarre!
i was buidling up to talk to the cheerleader again but now the room was starting to spin and i was feeling more and more useless and ugly and alone. i walked over to a woman who sat alone and showed her my kylie tshirt and she looked completely freaked out and two blokes come running over as if they were gunna punch me out. i looked up and saw cheerleader leaving with her friend. arm in arm, kissing.
i dragged my hunchback outside and hobbled over to mcdonalds, getting uglier and lonelier with each step. i ordered eight cheeseburgers with no buns. just a pile of meat. i seemed to be mumbling something to myself and i had nothing to say to any of the people in the queue. i was the freak. i came outside,. the streets were empty. i sat on the cold concrete floor and stuffed eight burgers into my mouth at the same time. with all girkins and cheese and sauce dripping onto my lovely white kylie tshirt. i somehow got into my attic hole and rolled around naked. and kicked over my studio and nearly came through the ceiling.
cue a 4 day hangover that turned me into a glum mr bean.
bring on Ocsober.
Eeeurgh.
