Jason Phillips's Blog, page 4

The Guilt of Stopping

Why am I in a rush? It’s not like I have a lot to do today. What shall I do? Should I just relax and do nothing. This sounds like a plan. But you say no. You must make a list. You must go and buy these certain things. Or you must get out of the house. But why? Who said we have to be busy?

There’s something to be said for staying still. Something about keeping the curtains closed and vegetating. Stewing in your own madness for a few days. Sometimes it can be the very burrowing into darkness that germinates the next sprout of creativity. Or it can help you get to a spark of realisation about something happening in your life. Things can resolve themselves. Action isn’t always the answer.

Animals do it. And we feed them and pet them and love them, never shouting at them, You Lazy Bastard! Get a job!

They love to run around, and chase and play and are active when they feel like it, but do they exude any trace of guilt when they decide to spend a few hours or days in front of the fire? Maybe just dragging their arse to the feeding bowl and back?

But for us, No, get up and get out and earn your fucking keep, boy! No time for contemplation. Or boredom. Or working things out. Or relaxing. You get 14 days holiday a year. And the other 300 odd are for working. Get on with it, you lazy, good-for-nothing shit!

 

After a few weeks off – holiday, illness, or between jobs – the guilt, usually in the voice of our mother, turns up. What the hell do you think you’re doing in bed reading at midday!!!? There’s plenty to be done and your lying around like an oaf! Bla bla bla.

If you can kill your mother, metaphorically, of course, then you can pave the way to freedom and creativity. Yes we have to work and yes we have to pay our way in life, but do we have to be busy every single second? Can’t we just stop and do nothing for a while? No TV. No Shopping. No chores. Can we let ourselves be. Let ourselves become bored and see where we fly when there’s no check list guiding us.

Filed under: life, talking bollocks

tvhead

tv literally frazzles me to fuck . I cant hold a conversation, I lose all patience and I cant engage

Theres a 42″ bastard sprawled along the wall at my mams.

Christmas day was insane. Four loud crazy kids playing kazoo and smashing and screaming. With the TV on in the background. My brain shut down. All the noise was hard enough but I’m sure the TV was also microwaving my loaf.

I turned it off about 8pm and suddenly I felt all the anxiety lift.

‘You cant switch it off its Christmas Night.’ ‘Whats the matter with you.’

9 minutes of peace before it was flicked back on.

I was on edge. I could no longer concentrate. Irritable and wanted to escape.

I dumped mine in a skip about 8 or 9 years ago and have never missed it.

 

 

 

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funny shapes

The depths of the pain that lay ahead was yet unknown to me. I would have to work through all of that, but right now I was leaving. I was saying No to this. I walked into the darkness. And when I got there I laid down. I stared into nothing and waited. The pain came and I embraced it. It enveloped me, took me over, became me like a bad spirit entering my being as if inhaling a rotten bong of poisonous mist. And, although impossible to see right then, that poison was my elixir for growth. The effect was in my blood, psyche and spirit for years. It never really goes and fundamentally changed me for good. Leaving me with a changed outlook, a new perspective, and a new dimension to my character.

We become more ourselves yet further from our original self.

This is moving on.

The pain can be unbearable. Or sometimes just a low humming depression. Or often a quiet whisper casually reminding you that you will never get better than what you had. That irritating internal little sibling telling you, ‘That’s it, you have fucked it. Forever.’

Unlike real life little brother’s you cant give him a Chinese burn. Short of shooting your brains out, there’s not much you can do to quieten him. And it’s easy for him to convince us we have made a huge mistake, leading to wallowing in nostalgia and getting stuck in regret.

After a while though, irritating internal sibling starts to shut up. Or we learn to ignore him. The pain is being worked through, we are changing, and though we may not know it, we can’t go back. We are new people, things will never be the same. Things no longer click the same. We are a new shape. And we must take our newly shaped psyche’s to new experiences for new fulfilment. The memories and the experiences shaped you but they can no longer offer you anything. You are ready for the new.

The problem is we don’t know this. And we can drag our miserable arses around for years moaning about what we had, what we haven’t got and all that isn’t right.

It’s easy to look back at all the shapes you made in the past and forget the ugly sides, tricking yourself into remembering the beauty of these strange shapes. But there’s always some ugliness too. And there was a reason you moved away from that particular puzzle. It may have taken a long time to break yourself from it, and it’s always good to remind yourself why you did. It had a beauty for a while and then you clicked out of it for a reason.

And now it’s time to let go and be the new weird shape you are. It can be a lonely time, being a new shape with nowhere to go and no longer fitting in with your old jigsaw. You are a floating dodecahedron, lost in space, bumping into things. It may take time, but there’s always pieces that will snap in perfectly if you stop trying to make the same old shapes you used to have. Embrace the new weird puzzles you can make with the other funny shapes around you.

Filed under: life

thinking of homeless people’s butts…

I see homeless people on the pavements and in doorways after a rough night’s sleep with nothing disconnecting their butt from the cold concrete. Sometimes a little cardboard. But not much else.

After learning a lot of survival, and traveling and getting bang into Ray Mears over the last year or 2 I’ve learned that one of the most important things when roughing it in the open over night is disconnecting yourself from the floor. The floor literally sucks away body heat. You can have warm blankets and cover, but if your body is close to the ground, it is likely you will freeze.

And we have seen this lately with daily news reports of homeless people, regardless of age, dying on our streets at night. Here and now in 2017, we seem unable to help our fellow citizens simply survive a winter night.

The problem is huge, and the government needs to put in some serious solutions into practice and fast. But what can we do, me and you, right now, today?

People are of differing opinions. Some say don’t give them money, which, personally I find ludicrous. Some cities fine their beggars? Some police take their sleeping bags. Some people give them money or sandwiches. Some of us volunteer. Give them our clothes etc.

I have a couple of ideas, not saying it’s going to solve the problem, but I guess if we all came up with little ideas and put them into practice then we can make that tiny bit of difference.

The first one for me, is solving the problem of convection (I think that’s the right word). Most of us have roll mats thrown in our wardrobes or attics. We used them for camping a few years ago, or yoga that we long gave up on. There must be thousands of them out there, sat gathering dust, in our warm houses. I think if we could take them out  and offer them to the homeless explaining to them that they should sit on and sleep on them this winter it could make a huge difference to their body temperatures. I know from experience, roughing it in the wild with my bushcraft buddy, and sleeping in below zero conditions abroad with no tent, the importance of the roll mat was paramount. Before I owned one I said I couldn’t be bothered carrying the awkward thing around. Until the real cold came in and the ground literally sucked out all my body heat, I couldn’t sleep and my teeth chattered, it was agony.

For the sake of a £3 roll mat, it could be the difference between freezing to death and having a decent night’s sleep.

So please go into the attic today, and give these mats to the people on the streets.

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My second thing I been looking at this week, is supporting local charities that are doing the work the government is failing to do. They are constantly trying to make these cold winters more bearable for the folks who are stuck out there battling the elements.

I figured there are two ways to help, give them cash, or volunteer. As most of us are run ragged trying to earn enough to pay our own bills, i been looking at the donation angle.

I thought what can i do? I got together with some friends and banged together a song about the issue, a remake of Jona Lewie’s Stop the Cavalry, remade as Stop Austerity (Wish I had a Home for Christmas). we made a quick video and offered the song as pay-anything download with all the proceeds going to BOOMERANG a local charity who are very active in feeding the homeless here in Cardiff.

We uploaded the video a couple of days ago, some local press picked it up and we have already raised over £250 in the first 48 hours… please have a look at video below. I’ve added the donate button for the song button below if you’d like to support… THANK YOU.

share it on facebook video:

https://www.facebook.com/flapsandwich/videos/327188437759741/

the song will be in your inbox the same day you donate… THANKS. if you havent already please click to donate:

and get in the attic and give away your tents and sleeping bags and most importantly those roll mats.

 

 

 

Filed under: creation, in the wild, life

Iolo

Iolo was 33 years old, unshaven, dirty. His past seemed like a dream. It was almost as if he were born a moment ago, like this, upon this dirty sofa, out of the darkness.  The radio was slightly detuned. He blew out some smoke and stared into the distance. Into the ether. Into nothingness.

He took another long drag from the soggy roll up. The phone vibrated twice. ‘Its time’. He squashed the entire rollie with his thumb into the ashtray and sighed a deep smoke into the gloomy room. He took the brown envelope from the table, put it into his inside jacket pocket. He opened the oven door and took out a large knife in a case. He went to the ladder and climbed into the attic. He pulled the ladder and hatch shut with the wire that was tied to it.

 

Fion was singing in her car. It was that song again. She was wearing her mirror shades and showing a lot of leg. Her watch beeped, ‘Its time’.  She pulled over, slammed the door and sat herself in the laundrette. She lit up a cigarette and sat still amongst the hum of the tumble dryers.

A long man in a long black coat sat over behind some machines. He was reading a small old book. It was orange with age and he was mesmerised by it. His long legs poked out of the coat and his shiny shoes crossed each other. He licked a long finger and quickly flicked a page over, never averting his eyes.

Ffion sat for a while. Then she strode over to the long man. Stood before him pushing one dirty sneaker onto its side against the floor. Well? She asked.

The man ignored her and continued to read. On the book cover was printed badly, maybe even stenciled the words. The Law and underneath the initials A.C.

well? She asked again.

Im sorry? the man asked peering up over the small paperback, perplexed.

She stared directly into his eyes.

Her watch beeped, ‘GET OUT’. The long man shoved a heel hard into her stomach and she flew back into one of the washing machines, crumpling in pain to the floor. He slipped the book into his large pocket and walked fast but calmly out of the door and disappeared into the crowd.

Iolo heated the knife with his zipper lighter. And then put some weight on the back of it and pushed it through the large block. He put one half of the block into his small rucksack and the other he put behind a panel in the roof.

The detuned radio from downstairs suddenly clicked off.

He could hear come one shufflin around. He stood completely still. Cold breath evaporated through his nose into the air. The sound of searching through drawers. He listened, still as a statue. His heart was throbbing in his head. He crouched down, his fingers pushing into the wooden floor.

 

Ffion was back at home. She fed the cat. She double locked every door and window and then laid on the sofa. The cat sat on her stomach in the very place where the heel had connected. It curled up and purred.

They dozed off. People were laughing real quiet on the Tv. Cars hissed by the window.

Her watch beeped. She didn’t stir. It beeped again.

 

Iolos phoned vibrated loud in his pocket. The sounds of the movements and searching below him suddenly came a halt. He bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes. The latch of the attic clicked…

Filed under: life

C.V.

 

The CV: the universal practice of filling a sheet of paper with lies to impress someone who might swap some of your life with some money.  They sit back in their big swivel chair and skim through all of our lies and decide who to bring in to interview. At the interview they are looking for the most obedient slave who would give the least amount of trouble and do as they are told. Over and over ’til they keel over.

Surely Henry Ford or someone round the time of the industrial revolution invented this shit. ill give you just enough to pay to live and buy some shit if you give up every waking hour and be our machine!

But real robots are now taking over. And there’s less and less work. It’s harder and harder to impress them, and because there’s so many of us fighting for the dwindling jobs they can pay us less. Or give us less favourable terms. If you dont want it, there’s someone else outside ready to bite their arm off.

I’ve had 39 jobs. Every single one of them has been shit. Being the cog in some bastard’s machine depresses me. But we got bills to pay. Big bills. My rent has doubled since i moved into my flat. My council tax is £140 a fucking month. I sometimes feel like sticking my head in the deep fat fryer.

I was offered some more casual work recently, after my market job came to an abrupt end, it was only 12 hours a week but it paid enough to keep the wolves from sending another eviction notice. A local record shop and a local hostel were advertising for casual work, both asked me to pen a CV.

Wow. A cv. First one id written in 20 years: i thought id better get my GCSEs on there. An E in Home Economics that’ll show em. My email address. Um, some of the things i have been up to the last few years?

I wrote a book. I walked a lot. I watered plants. I shovelled shit. I lost the plot. I roughed it in a squat in Marseille for a few months. I worked in a kitchen (and got sacked after one day, but still), I sold lots of scarves. Im currently Mistletoe Man in Cardiff. Ive made lots of weird music. Ive learned to drum. Ive Djed around the place. Ive laid around a lot. wanking. And reading. Ive read loads. Fed my brain. Wanked some more. Gissa Job?

I left school in 1993, disappointed my parents with my exam results, and completely dropped out of everything.

My dad took me to Llanwern steelworks where I completed a test and was fast tracked for an interview. My bro had been working there for last 5 years and dad had been there 9. I had a career ahead of me. He took me for a drive around the place. It was a mass of chimneys and shit. Yellow cancerous smoke and fat depressed men. It was a dystopian homoerotic fuck up. Where were the girls? Where was the music. I said ‘no fucking chance’, and my mam cried. I took lots of mushrooms and went to raves in the woods. Cue a wasted youth of riding the raven of danger. Facing it doing it trying it. And not listening to anybody! I went off the fuckin rails. I still tried to keep down shit jobs to pay my way but ultimately fell apart and got into fuck loads of debt and made laods of mistakes. Ive been in debt up to my eye balls because of this life style. Ive had bad habits. Ive broken more of them. Ive got out of debt. Ive learned. Im older now – wiser? Or just different? I still want adventure.

I handed in my CV (minus the flagellation). I didnt hear anything back. Who the fuck would want to employ a me? I wouldn’t. So I keep doing new projects. New adventures. Most dont work, or dont pay. Move on. Next. Keep at it. Im still poor. I work the minimum hours per week possible to keep the landlady from having a seizure. I keep all the rest of the time I can for my projects. I love making shit. One day, one of these fucking ridiculous projects might pay me something. If not, well i’m a scarf selling wanker til I die.

 

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Filed under: life

how to keep everyone warm?

 

I just spoke to a homeless outreach worker I know, Dennis. He tells me rough sleepers have tripled in the last two years. He doesn’t have to say it though. Just walk through any city centre in the UK. Cardiff, for example – I have lived here in the centre for over ten years – and no winter have I ever seen so many doorways with poor lonely souls cuddled up in stained duvets. Heads buried to escape the cold. And then there was the lady who went to bed in the park behind the Museum the other night, in an old cheap tent, got her head down and then in the middle of the night froze to death.

 

With the technology and skills and amount of time that humanity has had to solve these very basic but fundamental issues surely we can help our fellow humans keep warm for fuck sake. But hey, lets spend more on weapons. A submarine, that will nuke entire nations, whilst people in our community beg at our feet, and curl over and die outside our windows. We have lost sight of our own, we can’t even provide basic shelter and heat for our people. Why do the majority of people in the country deem some kind of  submarine weapon of mass destruction more important than a simple warm room for a young lady who is down on her luck, a victim of circumstance?

 

Shelter is the basic need of every living animal, and us advanced humans have turned it into an investment game, something to trade. The most basic of needs has now become a game for the money grabbers. Let’s all compete. Fuck everyone else. Lets Win! It’s a method of making people rich, stamp on the poor and trade up, and inflate the cost of what is essentially just a pile of bricks. Inflate and inflate and trade and get rich. To the point where more and more people can’t possibly even get on the ‘Housing Ladder’.

Ladder? This suggests that we should get in on the bottom rung and then climb up. Why up! Why not get in and stay there? Why the greed and desire for more and more. Obviously being a ladder (singular) we can’t all climb it at once, without kicking other people off. Or stamping on people heads below, or even stopping them getting on at all. The more the price of bricks falsely inflate, the more we climb, the richer we are. Winning at life. Winning at snakes and ladders.

 

If we aren’t in the game of making money from a house, and we genuinely just need a room to meet our basic needs, then we are forced to deal with the demons on the ladder. The bread heads, or the people who have been tricked into playing, all petrified of falling off they clamber for the top. The homeless just need a room, one single room, but the ladder dwellers need to think of their portfolio. It’s their investment that matters. So everyone is profiting from houses. Profiting from basic needs. Is this moral?

 

Cheap, affordable housing for everyone, or how about free housing for everyone? Why falsely inflate the price of the very thing we all need, by so much that the bottom few percent find it impossible even to find the money to start a tenancy. Trade with something else, leave the fucking housing alone. How many empty building are there already. How quick do ugly buildings fly up at an alarming rate these days? I say: Everyone gets a free room for life. Ok, if you want to go out and build a mansion go for it. You will always have that room, a back up, storage, a personal locker. Or if you’re not arsed about upgrading or competing, you can stay there, in the warm – and not perish in the frost in ‘Great Britain’ in 2017.

I can only hope that soon there are so many fat bastards at the top of the ladder that it topples over, bringing them all down here again. Then maybe we can start a new system, which includes everyone.

 

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Filed under: life, other people's shit, talking bollocks

What’s the 1″ picture frame?

It’s a writing technique I learned from Anne Lamott. I love her. Her writing is so funny and easy. She gets to the core of things – pure honesty, brutal, revealing. And it just glides. She talks of how hard it is to write, in one of my favourite books, Bird by Bird, and how, when she sits down and looks at the blank screen, her mind gets nasty and turns against her. She has, on her desk, a 1″ picture frame. It reminds her to not think of trying to write a hefty tome that will go down in history. It says, look at something, small, and describe it. And do it each day. Describe a tiny thing, once a day. Even the biggest classic texts that have stood the test of centuries were composed this way. One small step at a time. So, no need to get overwhelmed by the impact you are trying to have, or by the size of the project you are embarking on. Just describe what you see in today’s 1″ picture.

It’s a tiny snap shot. It’s looking at one thing. And describing what you see. One of the most perfect examples of this for me has to be Bill Wither’s picture frame, in his classic song, No diggity.. Here Bill looks into his picture frame and there he sees his Grandma’s Hands… And he simply describes what he sees. And it is beautiful, simple, short and to the point. Perfect.

Grandma’s hands clapped in church on Sunday morning

Grandma’s hands played a tambourine so well

Grandma’s hands used to issue out a warning

She’d say, “Billy don’t you run so fast

Might fall on a piece of glass

Might be snakes there in that grass,”

Grandma’s hands

Grandma’s hands sooth the local unwed mother

Grandma’s hands used to ache sometimes and swell

Grandma’s hands used to lift her face and tell her

She’d say, “Baby Grandma understands

That you really loved that man

Put yourself in Jesus’ hands.”

Grandma’s Hands

Grandma’s hands used to hand me piece of candy

Grandma’s hands picked me up each time I fell

Grandma’s hands, boy they really came in handy

She’d say, ” Mattie don’t you whip that boy

What you want to spank him for?

He didn’t drop no apple core,”

But I don’t have Grandma anymore

If I get to heaven I’ll look for

Grandma’s hands.

here

So what is my 1″ picture frame today? It’s a picture frame within a picture frame. and inside that 2nd frame is Bill Withers and Anne Lamott. Bill is looking into yet another picture frame, where there is a picture of his Nan’s wrinkled hands, soflty clasped. Anne’s frame is empty as she looks at it for inspiration. And this is it.

So keep coming back for my picture frames. New post every Tuesday, Subscribe so you don’t miss out over there>

 

Filed under: creation, life, other people's shit

i have given my birthday away

its my bday tomorrow (22nd nov). i used to love my birthdays. gather everyone up and have a massive ol’ party. celebrate. one life and all that. get slaughtered, make some memories (or not). hey everyone! CELEBRATE ME!!!!

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some parties i had with one of my best buddies growing up, Vicki x

somewhere along the way this all changed. i’m not sure what happened. is it because i dont drink anymore. or because i’m an old fart? i just totally dread it. for weeks in the build up…. and then on the day, i just wanna hide. i hate the fucking fuss. and i have no idea what to do.

really though, who cares? what does a birthday mean? a hairy sack ejaculated and managed to find an egg. then, there you were. and now you want us all to celebrate this sweaty bonk, every single year til you fuckin die? jeebus. i cant congratulate you for that. you didn’t do anything!

i am giving away every birthday from aged 41 til i die.

that means i don’t want anything! i’ve got everything i need. i’m still struggling to get the bills paid, but who isn’t in this era of austerity from the picnic eating foxtrot wanker tories? if you are compelled to buy me something, because you think i am a legend –  a pint, or a tea or a meal, or a studio, or just a card – then thank you. however, for you and me and all concerned send the amount of money you would spend, here instead:

Grassroots Cardiff, A place for young people 18-25 to go and seek help with all life problems. It offers them company, a friendly ear, and access to creative projects.

it was a huge help to me when i arrived in cardiff, in a mess, lost, lonley and down in the dumps. sending me into a studio for the first time in my life, allowing me to organise dj workshops, helping me make a short film that was shown at events and cinemas around wales. and eventually sending me on a charity work trip to Africa. Then finding me housing (which led to my current flat) and sending me for counseling. Not only that i met some people who have turned into my best friends for life.

Their building and their funding are under threat, send them some money and help them continue their work.

click this image, and send them the price of that card i dont want: nice1>

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Filed under: life, other people's shit

tekno value @ black swan

here’s my new plan: new writing (blog post) every tuesday,  new music every saturday (tunes/vids/dj mixes/interviews)… enjoy this weeks Dj mix from last night… bit of a wonky one. big shout to merrick of tekno value…

Filed under: creation, life, music, my shit