Pick me up and turn me round

April 21, 2018 — Leave a comment

I used to dismantle, remantle, unstock and restock the shelves of a tall wooden, cheap, bookcase every time I moved house. I think I’ve lived in 19 houses or flats, 2 countries, 5 cities. I think I might have got the bookcase when I briefly owned a house, and then when that didn’t really work out, I think what happened was that I felt dislodged, and as though I didn’t really live anywhere, unless the bookcase was with me.

It was pretty big, though. About 3 or 4 of my house moves happened within 18 months. The bookcase couldn’t survive that. Especially as at the time I was trying to let past things unfurl away from me, so that I could find myself again. Who knew where I’d gone? The bookcase, with its books, was like a tether. I used to look at it when I lived alone and feel at least something that I could recognise. But you can’t live in the past. And when some of the moves meant sharing a bunk bed with my mum, or renting a box room with just enough space for a child’s MDF bed, I couldn’t put the bookcase back together again. I wrapped the books in parcels of four or five, black plastic bags taped around them. They looked like packages of drugs I’d seen on TV. My grandma kept them in her loft.

A great height

April 3, 2018 — Leave a comment

When I flew to North America I looked out of the plane window down at land brown and vast and felt, for the first time, no connection to what I saw. I was a stranger to it.

The school I went to had its own reverend. I think in one of the assemblies that he addressed that he talked about the feeling of coming home when he saw the arch of the Humber Bridge. I sort of knew what he meant, but only really sort of, because for me Hull means the turbid thick brown water of the River Hull, not even of the Humber, and it means the wrought iron bridges that would sometimes make me late for school if a boat were coming down the river so that they had to cantilever up. Also something about the smell of creosote on wooden fences, and the smell of chocolate (not there anymore) near by the permanently raised bridge recently visited by Banksy.

There is something about the physical landscape of a place that ties me to it, even places I haven’t been before. Birmingham greets me as though we’re good friends. The first time I came to East London it felt like we had something in common. Maybe I just like places of migration and movement, places with people and change. That vast landscape beneath the plane (Greenland?) was empty, so high up, and as terrifying as the ocean.

Nice pipes Tamika

November 12, 2016 — 1 Comment

The book I’m writing (very slowly as it is becoming quite personal) now has snuck its way into the first person plural. I loved Eugenides’ Virgin Suicides written in the ‘we’ and ‘us’ voice but I dunno if I’ll be able to pull it off.

My work practice is sneaking into my writing too. I’m writing and talking a lot about movement, memory, the performed and the moment of disappearance in the live. D and I made a kind of comic book ages ago together: kind of to try out the Cage/Cunningham model of creating something in different but related art-forms without the art-forms being subject to one another… so for Cage/Cunningham the choreography and the music were on equal ground. Neither one were in the ascendant to the other. So with the book/pamphlet/artist leaflet that D and I made. It’s since turned into something a little more concrete now tho. Stars Dots and the New Junk contributed a CD to go with it and it’ll be sold in Orbital comic book shop in Soho, London til the limited run we made is all gone. I shan’t tell you what it’s called though, as my involvement was always supposed to be a mute form of writing seen from the corner of your eye. The original object was meant to be anonymous and left around to be picked up by strangers, so if possible maybe it can still have some of that despite its 15 minutes of fame this evening at the music launch.

cool poster

Let me know if you think the first person plural is going to be a really bad idea.

If you’re going to be up North, then go to this exhibition. I had something to do with it. Despite that, it is very good.

Writing seems to be urgent now. What else can I do but document.

December: Christmas Ghost Story

December 22, 2014 — 2 Comments

The car shakes us as it travels over gravel. I watch the bushes at the side of the road. My head is against the glass of the window. The seatbelt is at my neck. The bushes have spiky leaves in yellow, light green, dark green. We pass a set of bushes with fuzzy red berries, long spindles of branches. ‘What are they?’ I turn to ask Martha. She doesn’t look away from the road.

‘Just bushes,’ she says.

The house at the end of the drive rises. Its white columns are like the bones of another house, a house that has long ago withered into this one. It’s a sun bleached carcass of a house. Martha’d said that she’d found it last minute. That the reviews were good. That the pictures were good. We’d spend a few days here then head up to meet the others at the mountain lodge. My ex was going to be there, at the lodge. Christmas isn’t the right time to break this to her, we both think that, so we’re stealing a few extra days stolen before we have to be just friends.

‘Spooky house,’ I say.

Martha shrugs as she pulls our bags from the boot. ‘You think everything in the countryside is spooky.’

‘Bring me to a city,’ I say, ‘I’ll be happy.’

‘New York next year then,’ she says, slapping my arse. ‘Here, help me with the keys.’

November: Hero Type I (born to it)

November 10, 2014 — Leave a comment

I knew her mother. A woman who didn’t like other people much. You wouldn’t ask her to take in a parcel for you, to watch your kids while you popped out, for any kind of favour. I didn’t know she even had a boyfriend but she must’ve. One day she was ‘showing’ and took to wearing smocks. I asked her about the dad, a few times I asked. She said he was away, said he wasn’t into commitment, said he wasn’t interested. To be honest I think she was just saying things off the top of her head, getting rid of me kind of thing. Anyway the bairn, when she got here, was right bonny but a wild thing.

Flammarion

October: Autumn story 2014

October 2, 2014 — 3 Comments

I usually write about autumn in October but this year, even though autumn is finally here, in the difference in the air itself, in the wetness of the air, in the russet twilight, I won’t write about it. Things are changing. I can’t spend my life looking back. Always staring into myself like Narcissus into a lake, although actively listening for Echo, re-working things that float around in my own head, taking twigs of experience and twisting them into some kind of wicker metaphor for something that could be universal. I should write a story about what is going to happen, or what is happening right now in this moment, unravelling at the speed of an eye over text. That’s what I should write. Even using ‘should’ begins to play into the past tense, but maybe doubt is the mood of the present tense, maybe ‘am’ has embiggened its role in our tensual state. No, I think I’m wrong. ‘Should’ is the moment before the present. But what can you say about the present? I am writing this. I am writing this to you. You are reading this. You are thinking, what will happen at the end of this sentence? Or maybe I am thinking that and in thinking that I reach the end of the sentence. Become the moment between the present and the future. Where are some characters to accompany us together riding this to the end, we’re both here, but is there anyone else?

September: Remember (guest post)

September 1, 2014 — 1 Comment

I’m still working on my dissertation and creative project story fans (as of writing only 2000 words and lots of edits to go). Next month normal service resumes but until then please enjoy this guest post by the very talented Sue Oke. She blogs over at susanmayoke.com. Pop over and say hello!

North to South

It’s the voice I hear first, a baritone with the unmistakable soft edges of a Yoruba accent. We turn at the same time, tentative smiles of recognition blossoming as our eyes meet. And then he’s grinning, wrapping me in bear hug, his enthusiasm temporarily infectious.

‘How are you? How are the children?’

I grab a breath, the rote , ‘We’re fine,’ slips out of my mouth.

He barrels on, ‘And what of Oga?’

Oga… chief… boss… master… he’s using a title to refer to the man who, twenty years ago, used to be my husband.

August: Renew

August 13, 2014 — 2 Comments

In July, August and September I have to write a lot to finish my course. Instead of writing new things for my blog I’m going to tart up some old things. An early version of this story appeared in Words With Jam magazine in 2011. Let me know what you think.

We’re Chained

The ice cubes in Ali’s glass made tiny twitches as the vodka melted them. ‘This means something,’ she said, her voice hoarse.

‘I’m sorry?’ I said. My chest ached with the sadness that bore down on my ribs. I wanted to drink, and talk, and not think about the way each second, or gesture or even thought, was a second, gesture and thought further from where you and I had been.

June: EZY7410

June 23, 2014 — Leave a comment

I can’t remember much of the flight – its innards if you like. I was told that in Spanish the word migas is for the soft part of bread. The middle part surrounded by the crust. Do we have a word for that? It’s what I need now to describe the missing part of the flight in my mind, or if not missing then out of focus, getting out of the way when I try and look at it. Not that anything happened on the flight. I think. The outsides of the experience I recall. At the boarding gate, waiting for the plane to taxi up to the window. Wondering if the plane would be in a hurry – it was already an hour delayed – and would taxi too quickly, bashing into the window, killing us all or maiming at least/ at worst.

January: Brünnhilde (ii) (backwards)

January 19, 2014 — Leave a comment

I love your abused mouth; your lips pad together with final words.

I will die here too in a place where no-one can say my name, except for you. And you are dying mouthing not my name, but his.

Cities have fallen and cities will fall.

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