TRISH CLOWES

TRISH CLOWES AND MY IRIS AT THE STAGE DOOR, SOUTHAMPTON – 21/02/23

THE STAGE DOOR is a sort of theatre bar. There’s a chandelier and kind of red velvety curtains and a pelmet and posters of all different musicals on the wall, like Chicago and Phantom of the Opera and stuff like that. I can imagine them doing little theatre shows here, I really can. I start a conversation with the guy on the door checking tickets. “Are you the organiser?” I say. “Yes,” says the guy on the door, “someone’s got to do it,” he adds with a satisfied smile. “That’s great,” I say. “Would you like a raffle ticket?” says a grey-haired woman approaching with an old biscuit tin full of raffle tickets and loose change. “Um, yeah sure,” I say, “go on then. What’s the prize?” I’ve never won a raffle before and don’t expect to start now, but it’s good to know what I might not win. There are two prizes: a CD and a “nice” bottle of wine. The ticket costs one pound.

There’s a mix of people here, young and old, mainly old. There are some teenagers near the back, probably brought here by their parents. One of them has red eyes like you see in photographs sometimes. 

The grey-haired woman takes to the stage to introduce the band, but then forgets who she’s introducing. “It’s Trish Clowes,” says TRISH CLOWES. “Thank you,” says the grey-haired woman. “Trish Clowes!” Clowes is a lyrical and considered player, almost studious. There is something almost studious about her. Not in a bad or stuffy way, though. It’s not a bad or stuffy kind of studiousness at all. It’s an exploratory and thoughtful kind. They seem to be following sheet music most of the time – which is probably why it struck me as studious – which is different to most of the jazz bands I have seen so far in my short silly life, most of whom just seemed to be making it up as they went along. It’s very precise music. It takes flight, for sure, but when it does it seems deliberate, worked out, planned in advance, rather than, I don’t know, like a happy accident or something. I don’t register that there’s no bass player until three or four songs in when they play Tonal by Joe Harriott, which is a great tune, and I notice that all the bass lines are being played by Ross Stanley on the Rhodes keyboard. I really am not the most observant person in the world, it does have to be said.

But studiously...

The grey-haired woman returns before the second set and invites Trish and guitarist Chris Montague to choose the winning raffle tickets. Despite my earlier pessimism, I allow myself to believe that I might, against all precedent, actually win a raffle, and I get my hopes up, but it’s not to be. Other people win, and they look nonplussed, like winning raffles is totally normal and something that happens all the time. Maybe it does. Maybe there are just certain people who always win raffles, and certain people who never do. I guess we’ll never know

THE HOLIDAY

 

The holiday began shortly after we arrived. It was my birthday but I kept reassuring everyone that that was not why we were on holiday. It was not a birthday holiday. The fact that they coincided was pure coincidence, and the coincidence was totally coincidental. We would have been on holiday just the same if it hadn’t been my birthday, and it would have been my birthday had we not been on holiday. The two things did not need each other to justify their existence; they existed just the same. My two cousins were there, T__ and S__, with wives and kids, but everyone existed on their own terms. They sang me ‘Happy Birthday’ twice, just to make sure. I caught up with T__ and told him about everything that had happened, and all about the self-portrait in blood. He didn’t seem to think it was the absolute worst thing that anyone had ever done, which made feel me better, somewhat. We all chatted until we were too tired to chat any longer, before retiring to beds where the day ended with unconsciousness.

In Walsingham we took some photos of the kids facing a wall and then went to see the snowdrops. It was like a godless pilgrimage.

Everyone thought the snowdrops were amazing. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said T__*. He couldn’t believe it. “I know,” I said. “It’s incredible.” You may think that snowdrops are just silly little flowers, and they are but they’re not. There’s more going on there than just flowers. It’s like each little snowdrop is gently lifting up your soul to heaven. At least that’s what it felt like to me.

S__ took some pictures of a hornet hiding under a piece of bark. I have no idea what hornets do this time of year. I didn’t think they did anything, and this one wasn’t doing much, I have to say, just sort of sitting there with a menacing expression. S__’s been working hard on his photography and his hard work is really paying off. The results were pretty impressive. Later we saw a load of wood piled up like Christmas presents.

There was room at the inn so we went inside. Outside there were men talking in swear words. A priest walked by looking sheepish. R____ asked for a glass of milk so he could spill it and get another one. It was the first time I had ever asked for a glass of milk in a pub. And the second. We drew portraits of each other and asked each other what we thought of them.

In the evening R____ got his finger caught in a door and screamed like he had never screamed before. Wife was worried that he had broken it. Something bad always happens to him when we come here, but still we come. R____ didn’t look too happy about it all.

We didn’t do much in the morning, but played football. I was proud of myself that I won convincingly even though I was outnumbered three to one. At lunchtime we became indecisive about what to do for lunch. The choices seemed endless: eat out, packed lunch, eat in ... Actually that was pretty much it. There were those three choices. But it was hard choosing. I made up a song called The Kitty Dance and sang it at full volume marching through the house like the Pied Piper, with R____ and O______ following in my wake, and all the grown ups looking at me like I was crazy. I don’t know any more, but I tell you one thing. If I’m crazy now, I’ve always been crazy. After that we went to Holkham Beach. I’m just in a place right now where I have, like, zero desire to go to new places. It’s strange for me because usually I like to go to new places and get bored just going to the same places all the time, but not any more, it would seem. Not any more. It was mid-afternoon by the time we got there, and the sun already seemed to be setting. It’s the time of year when the sun always seems to be rising or setting, but never quite making it somehow. It was a perfect afternoon for photography and S__ was hard at work, perfecting his craft. The guy just doesn’t let up!

We had to carry R____ and O______ back on our shoulders because they had got their feet wet - against best advice - and were worried that they were going to get “hypothermia”. We played Truth or Dare as we walked back through the woods to the car park. “Truth or dare,” said O______. “Truth,” said S__. “Have you ever,” said O______, “fallen flat on your face?” “Yes,” said S__, prompting much hilarity from R____ who found this hilarious. “Truth or dare,” said R____, joining in. “Truth,” said S__. “Have you ever,” said R____, “fallen in a pile of poo?” 

I’d been to Oxburgh Hall before so it seemed like the perfect place to revisit. I told the kids it was haunted and took a photo of an unknown lady.

We went for a walk in the woods and took photos of the sunset and the children, both things beautiful, I suppose, at least in part, because of their transient nature. J___ spotted a tree trunk that looked like Mickey Mouse.

Walking back to the car was the loneliest sport in the world. C______ saw what she thought was a "bird of prey". "That's a seagull," said S__, laughing. But it wasn't a seagull. It was an owl, swooping in the darkening sky.

S__ said it was the best place like this that he’d ever been to, which it was hard to argue with. I couldn’t think of a better one, or at least a better time I’d had at one.

When we got home we toasted marshmallows and no one got burnt or scarred for life or anything. We looked up at the night sky, hoping to see shooting stars. C______ saw a couple, or at least she thought she did, or it might have been a bird, but the general vibe was one of disappointment. “Oh well,” said R____, “I guess I’ll just have to see a shooting star a different day.” It is one of the quite frustrating things about this life that you have to be very patient if you want to have rewarding experiences. It’s a hard lesson to learn, for young and old alike.

Late at night when everyone had gone to sleep I finished my triptych of drawings of me and S__. Then I went to sleep. It was late and everyone else was already there.

*T__ didn't really say this. I made it up.

WEYES BLOOD

WEYES BLOOD/SAM BURTON AT THE ROUNDHOUSE, CAMDEN – 8/2/23

With everyone watching my every move for signs of a kind of burgeoning madness, it’s nice to get away for the evening, back to London where the boundaries of “normal” are wider, where there’s less space to move, but more room to be yourself. Stuck in traffic on the Westway I take photos of people left alone in buildings, buildings which seem like vast reservoirs of empty space in the heart of the city.

Left alone

Spot the person

WEYES BLOOD fans are younger, more attractive and more female than your average fans. And more enthusiastic too. Even though I arrive at THE ROUNDHOUSE ten minutes before the doors open there are still several rows of them between me and the stage. I put my earphones in and listen to the latest mix of the album I've been making. It sounds great. It’s nice to listen to it here in this cavernous space. I look around at all the pretty young faces and wonder what they would make of it. Probably not a lot, I have to admit.

SAM BURTON makes comfortable music for comfortable people. Not in a bad way. It’s just not challenging anyone, or making anyone uncomfortable in any way. But that’s OK, I suppose. I don’t know where I got this idea from that art should be challenging or make you feel uncomfortable. That’s certainly not how “normal” people view art. Normal people don’t use art to challenge themselves or make themselves feel uncomfortable. In fact, quite the opposite. The Weyes Blood fans listen respectfully and attentively, apart from one girl near the front who spends the first few songs talking so loudly that she can be clearly heard above the music, and seems completely unaware of her surroundings. I marvel at her confidence and lack of self-awareness, and wonder if maybe that’s what confidence is, a lack of self-awareness. It reminds me of these lines from a story called Women and Women by Izumi Suzuki that I read this morning:

There were things in this life she didn’t have a clue about. But it’s precisely because they don’t know about the dreadful stuff that ignorant people are able to be so confident.

I’m not trying to say the girl is ignorant, just that she seems to lack self-awareness in this situation, which is what reminded me of the lines. The backing singer, Hayley something or other (I didn’t catch the surname) takes over the main vocals for one song and gets a much much bigger cheer and round of applause than Burton gets after any of his songs, and it’s hard not to feel a little bit bad for him. It’s actually the only vaguely uncomfortable moment of the entire evening, though I’m pretty sure it’s only me and Burton who actually feel the discomfort, though probably he doesn’t either, so maybe it’s just me. He doesn’t say anything to the audience, beyond introducing the band and saying thanks at the end. Maybe he’s shy, I think, or maybe he just doesn’t have much to say. That was mean, wasn’t it? Oh well. Whatever. Never mind.

Comfortable

There’s a couple behind me, a man and a woman. The man is talking about starting some sort of organic, vegetarian food business, and the woman talks about this kind of art tunnel that she wants to make. The man thinks it sounds like a great idea.

WEYES BLOOD makes beautiful music for anxious people. In fact, it seems almost lugubrious at times, something that Natalie Mering seems aware of when she acknowledges that there’s “too much fog” on the stage. “No more fog,” she says. “It’s apocalyptic enough already.” And it really is.

"Apocalyptic enough"

She sings about “people hurting” and everyone being afraid, and between songs talks about how we’re living in “dark times”. The only person who can provide some clarity, apparently, is Adam Curtis, who provides some characteristic visuals for God Turn Me Into a Flower. 

Some clarity

But, I’m afraid, it just doesn’t ring true to me this evening. I mean, sure, social media is terrible, and it’s hard choosing something to watch on N______ sometimes, but for the kind of affluent Westerners lucky enough to be at The Roundhouse tonight, these are not dark times. It's entirely possible that human beings have never led such comfortable lives. I think that’s why we’re so anxious and afraid. Because we’ve got nothing else to occupy our minds, and anxiety just fills the void. We’re underused. So, I don’t know, I love Weyes Blood, but it all just seems a bit hollow this evening. It’s almost certainly just me though. The girl next to me is having some sort of religious experience. When they play Movies she screams and holds her head in her hands, like some sort of miracle is being performed, which I suppose it is, in a way. Of course it's just me. I’m not anxious enough maybe. Or maybe I’m too cynical, or too tired, or crazy, or just too damn comfortable.

Got everything I need

CHILDREN

 

I kept making sandcastles, and my son kept destroying them. I wanted to make a little sandcastle village with, like, a hundred sandcastles, but my son wouldn’t let me. He had other ideas, as sons often do.
  It was a grey, gloomy sort of day. A bit of a wind, a few spots of rain, some glimmers of sunshine. A bit of everything, but not much of anything. I didn’t feel too tired, but I didn’t have much energy either. It was a five out of ten sort of day. I’ve been having a lot of those lately.
  I had given up building sandcastles and was just staring out to sea when wife joined me. She had walked down from the beach hut, like someone coming to check on the progress of a subordinate.
  “How’s it going?” she said.
  “It’s all right,” I said.
  Wife stood there for a moment watching the kids. They had followed all sorts of trails, and were lost in an imaginary thicket.
  “They’re having fun,” she said.
  “Yeah, they love it here,” I said.
  “I was just talking to your dad about you.”
  “What were you saying?” 
  “Well, Lee was running around like a maniac. He’s really on one today. Have you noticed?”
  “Yeah, he’s...”
  “And I asked your dad if that’s what you were like when you were that age.”
  “And what did he say?”
  “He said you were a hundred times worse. He said you would have made Lee look calm and timid.”
  “And so I asked him what happened, if there was anything that happened that changed you.”
  “And what did he say?”
  “Well, it was really interesting, actually. He said he didn’t know whether anything had happened, but that he could pinpoint the time that you changed. He said it was when you moved school.”
  “Oh right.”
  “What do you think happened?”
  “I don’t know. Puberty, probably. I kissed a girl for the first time. Maybe the guilt complex kicked in.”
  “It’s interesting.”
  “Yeah.”
  I looked out to sea. In front of me Lee was throwing pebbles into the sea.
  “No throwing!” I called out. “Don’t throw stones! You could hurt something.”

The park was quiet. They were the only kids there. I took photos of all the litter. There was litter everywhere. It was disgusting. The local teenagers had been having some sort of drugs party in the children’s playground. There were hundreds of those cream chargers that you see everywhere nowadays. I’ve no idea what they use them for, but there you go. 

  When we got back it was almost dinner time. Daughter found a stick on the way home, and son was upset that he didn’t have one, so we went out in the garden to look for one. He found one pretty much straightaway. 

  “Here’s one,” he said, holding up the stick, pleased with himself. 

  The kids went down the alleyway with the chalks, and I started getting ready to make dinner. 

  I went outside to smoke. I looked up. I could see the neighbour’s balding head bobbing over the fence. He gestured towards the gates that offered communication between our properties. He appeared holding a large plant, about the height of an average man.

  “You would like?” he said.

  “For us? Really?” I said.

  “Yes. Tomato.”

  “It’s a tomato plant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, it’s like a tree.”

  “Yes, like a tree. Yes. Turkish tomatoes.”

  “Wow, lovely. Turkish tomatoes.”

  “Very delicious.”

  “Thank you. That’s so kind of you.”

  “I’ve got ten.”

  “You’ve got ten plants?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “Maybe we’ll give you something one day.” The neighbours had given us so much over the years. We’d given them almost nothing back.

  “Oh, no, no.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He noticed the broken panels on my gate. They came off the other day. They got caught on something, and when I pulled the gate they came loose. There were several nails sticking out. The neighbour ran his fingers over the nails in the gatepost, and looked at the broken panels with their own versions of nails sticking out like little dangerous plants reaching for the sun. 

  He looked at me seriously, solemnly, with sad eyes, as if searching for something inside me.

  “I will fix it tomorrow,” he said. “Not safe for children.”

TOOTHPASTE

In the twenties of the twenty-first century S________ produced so many different types of toothpaste that it was possible, even if you never used another brand of toothpaste, to never use the same product twice. Indeed, even if you found one that you particularly liked, it was hard to find it a second time as the packaging and price of the different types of toothpaste seemed to be in a constant state of flux. I often wondered about this, and the possible motives behind it, but I couldn't make any sense of it. It seemed to me a sort of toothpaste anarchism, but I could never work out how it benefitted anyone. I was reminded of this because I had stumbled upon a new variety that I really liked. Intrigued, I started reading the small print on the packaging. I discovered that S________ toothpaste was made in Slovakia, a country I knew nothing about. And I wondered if that was OK. Was it OK to know nothing about Slovakia? So I asked some students I was teaching if they knew anything about Slovakia. “Does anyone know anything about Slovakia?” I asked. Blank faces greeted my question. “OK,” I said. “I just thought I'd ask, on the off chance.” I told them that I wanted to know because I was going to write a story set in a toothpaste factory in Slovakia, even though this was not true and was not the reason that I was asking them, but the truth was that I just didn't want to get into all the toothpaste stuff with them. They probably already thought I was weird and I didn't want to add to that impression. And then I had a break and told some colleagues about how I had got addicted to Polos and my teeth had started cracking and bits breaking off; and about how I switched to the sugar-free variety and discovered that they had a sort of laxative effect if eaten in the quantities that I was accustomed to eating them in, which was OK for a while because I was generally quite a constipated person, but ultimately it was no good, and I'd had to give them up. And then I wondered what kind of story I could write about a Slovakian toothpaste factory. And I thought maybe I could write a story about a man who kept getting all the different types of toothpaste mixed up, and putting the wrong toothpastes into the wrong tubes, but the owners didn't mind because they were toothpaste anarchists and all they really cared about was creating toothpaste uncertainty, and toothpaste confusion, which they regarded, for some reason, as the best conditions for toothpaste sales. And all the while the man suffered terribly from toothache and missing teeth and bleeding gums. The story would be a sort of clunky metaphor for the capitalist system. Most stories were clunky metaphors for something or other, but this one would be clunkier than most. I would write it. There would be lots of jokes about the different varieties of toothpaste.