Jenni Fagan's Blog, page 4

The Carlton Arms in New York

I loved staying at The Carlton Arms in New York. It is one of my favourite places to stay anywhere. I always think of it as a kind of Chelsea Hotel (before it became well known) although it has been in NY for at least twenty-five years. It is close to Madison Square Gardens and in a great position on E25th. The Lower East Side felt very like home to me. The hotel itself has been decorated by artists with great details everywhere. The owner is  super lovely and agreed to take part in my truth documentary, I filmed him in the uber cool foyer where the sheep lives. Some readers tracked me down whilst there and left books with reception for me to sign, I did so, with doodles. There’s always a cat or two living there. I plan to go back for a month next time, my kid would love it.

New York

Here’s a few more photographs from my week in New York. I have loads more to post and I have been faithfully shooting my documentary film on truth as well. The ice-cream photo is of myself and Bill from Bottle of Smoke Press. We had the most amazing afternoon in Woodstock with Gerard Malanga. Gerard is shooting me in another photograph, on a day after I’d been out with Miwi La Lupa, had walked home barefoot at some point, woke after too few hours sleep with a splitting headache on the hottest day ever. Of all the days I could be photographed by Gerard Malanga! He is an amazing photographer and chatted to me about Burroughs and the Factory, Lucien Carr, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith and all the amazing photographs he has taken, his poetry, his memoirs, his cats, life and love and liberty. It was inspiring and brilliant. I’ll do a proper blog on Bottle of Smoke Press and Gerard when I get home but it was a real highlight of my trip. Bill published me in Bottle of Smoke press years ago and is one of my favourite artisan publishers, he’s also a great person to talk to about all things American, political, counter cultural and otherwise. We drove back to NY late at night with two of his kids, I read them one of my truth poems and we did drawings for each other in the car and I showed them around all the brilliant and strange artwork in the Carlton Arms. I also hung out with Nate from Team Love, his wife Nelly, their super cute dog, Kelly Braffet and Owen King, we had the nicest lunch and great stories and chat, as you might expect. I felt so welcome, it was really super lovely. New Paltz where Team Love are based is the cutest town ever, it’s very old school and I have most of my shots of that day on film. Team Love are one of my favourite record labels and they have a great wee shop there. I will blog on that properly later on too. It’s late. There are sirens. I like the sirens here. They sound like a video game. Someone is whistling. The air conditioner is loud. I have to pack for Detroit. I fly out in the morning. There’s so much more to say on this part of the trip and I will get there, bit by bit.

Living In A Post-Truth Society

I’ve been in New York for five days. I’m going to do two blogs on this, the next one will have more of the people I’ve been meeting (the people are what make it for me in NY, for so many reasons) however, I can’t ignore the large orange child in the room either. The first thing that struck me when I drove into NY was how it reminded me in some way of Gotham City, presided over by crooks, villains and heroes. There is a cartoonish quality to the spectacle of Trump. It is a spectacle with a deadly reality. Trump is dangerous, as are the ideologies that saw him elected and that are widespread. We have a man unfit to serve and he has been elected as the President of the United States of America. Whilst fear is everywhere, also, there is defiance, there is debate, courage and dignity.

On Thursday I got a text from a friend to say an accident had happened in Times Square and to ask if I was okay. A 26 year-old, high on PCP, had driven his car into pedestrians on the street. Two people died and a further 22 were injured. The car kept going for several blocks. He later told officers he just wanted to kill people. It’s something that has been said by other people who have committed similar types of crimes over the last few years. Sometimes these acts of murder against strangers, are attached to an ideology or terrorism but often it is someone who has a history of violence, domestic or otherwise and who has got to the point of being psychopathic. I was in Woodstock that day, I’d taken the train from Grand Central Station and when I found out, I cried, because I’m a human, a poet and it’s hideous to know that anyone should die in that way, for no good reason.

It feels that people are more on the edge than they have been for decades. I think politics, poverty, education and inequality — all mixed with governments presided over by people who appear to have only the vaguest links to reality, has created a situation that is dangerously unsustainable.

The feeling and thoughts about safety and fear seem to be everywhere I look. I drove passed the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue late at night. Melania Trump still lives there with her son. On approach the road narrows, traffic cannot move, there are barricades, armed police — the air becomes frenetic with frustration, heat and a negative, strange energy. I can’t imagine living that way. I was told that in Trump Tower all residents have had any firearms removed, so have the residents in surrounding buildings and across the street. 500’000 people have signed a petition demanding the First Lady move to the White House because it is costing up to $146,000 of tax payers money to cover her security every day. Meanwhile, she has no desire to move to The White House or be in Washington or we all assume, anywhere near her husband. Apparently Bruce Willis lived in the building at one point, members of the Saudi Royal family stay there when they are in town and well known, corrupt, Russian officials. The neighbours are fed up of having to show ID and get frisked every time they pop out for a pint of milk.

I went to the Trump Building and found everything was gold. The elevator was gold. All possible furnishings that could be done in gold, were done in gold. I have never seen so much gold in one space. The emperor likes shiny things.

It will take me weeks here to fathom out the whys and hows of this character but like many countries it seems a hustler, a business person, a crook, someone with little to no concern for others, a narcissist, a risk taker, a fundamentalist — has the kind of skill set that puts them in charge of countries. Not everywhere, but look around the planet, there’s a fair few of them in charge.

Anyway.

I’ve learned that the schooling system here depends upon the taxes paid by people in the local area, so if you live in an area where people cannot afford to pay much tax then there will be very little money to invest in those local schools. There is absolutely no equality in that, it is sad and it is shocking. All children deserve the same quality of education. They all deserve the same quality of nutrition and some stability in where they live. Make that change first and so many good things would follow.

People feel sick when they talk about Trump, they are visibly distressed, they are utilising tactics to not let this dominate their life anymore than any of us can when he’s gas lighting the entire planet and has more power than any one person ever should.

The people who voted Trump in do not feel that way, although many of them are changing their mind plenty others have not. Those kind of Republicans are apparently raised to love their country more than they love their families. They think this man will restore the USA to some idea of American identity that has foundations in misogyny, racism, greed, capitalism, industry, awfulness and stupidity. Stephen Hawking recently said the greatest threat to mankind is stupidity, followed by climate change. I do not think he was wrong.

There are so many things I can repeat about Trump but you have all seen them countless times before, the media is saturated in him, it has become a part of the spectacle itself.

More and more Republican Senators are refusing to back Trump as President, although most have not yet publicly defected. Come has agreed to testify against Trump in court after being spectacularly fired as Director of the FBI. Lots of FBI members have photos of Comey on their social media showing their support and solidarity. A former director of the CIA released a statement saying Trump was unfit to serve. Countless other powerful professionals have done the same. There have been extraordinary protests across America, inventive, inspiring. The women’s march had over a million women marching to show their disapproval of his appointment as President and to show they would not be silenced. Other protests have included a group of Statue of Liberty’s with hands over their eyes. Also a room of women dressed like characters in the Handmaid’s Tale when Trump and others signed a bill to further reduce women’s rights over their own bodies, for termination or healthcare.

On the other side there are marches by Trump supporters, one most recently where they marched in with torches burning in something that could only be an intentional and provocative statement regards race and ideas of white supremacy. I am learning more about racism and thinking about white privilege everyday. The divide here between black, white, Asian, Latino communities reminds me of the class divide at home and it also reminds me of the years I lived in Peckham, in South East London. I didn’t leave all that long ago but would often have to lie to a taxi driver to get back there late at night. In the UK people often pretend there is not a huge issue with racism or class or poverty. That’s really not working out anymore. It has to change.

Under the new President we have Mike Pence, the Vice President believes that Darwin’s theory of evolution is not true. He believes that the world is only 6000 years old.  There is a Liberty University here that teaches students that God created the world in seven days and his flood was this historical event, that they saved the animals two by two. Liberty University had a model of Noah’s ark as a scale model next to a Boeing 747 and the US space shuttle, explaining how the animals fit in. They also surmised that there was a strong possibility horses, zebras and donkeys were descendants of just one pair of horses that were on Noah’s Ark, and they also argued that the discovery of the coelacanth “fossil-fish” had blown a hole in evolutionary theory. They were also teaching that sharks did not – as science tells us – evolve 400 million years ago, but they too were only designed 6,000 years ago. Liberty apparently declared that: “Sharks are not primitive remnants of pre-history, but are acutely fine-tuned organisms that defy Darwinian evolution.” According to a 2012 Gallup Poll 46 per cent of Americans have a creationist view of the world in which God created humans in their present form in the last 10,000 years. Republican Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor, stated via Twitter “I think God created the Earth,” adding “I think science and my faith aren’t incompatible.”

This is fundamentalist religion.

I cannot get my head around it but I better try because the fundamentalists have the power and the liberals are something they want to hunt out and get rid of, liberal views, climate warriors, human rights, social equality and even science is scorned and looked down upon by many of those voters, they hate liberals, they think we are the ones who are stupid.

On March 26, 2015, Pence signed Indiana Senate Bill 101, also known as the Indiana “religious objections” bill (Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA), into law. The law’s signing was met with criticism by groups who felt the law was worded in a way that would permit discrimination against anyone in the LGBT community. According to a FiveThirtyEight rating of candidates’ ideology, Pence is widely written about as the most conservative vice-presidential candidate in the last forty years.

I speak to lots of Americans who tell me that the hard right, conservative, Trump supporters — are fundamentalist Republicans, that we live in a post-truth society, that those voters do not believe in climate change, they think we are all going to die in a biblically predicted disaster, they absolutely and utterly loathe liberals and always will, and they have been raised to love their country, pledge allegiance to their country and serve their country as the utmost priority, even before their families.

It sounds like a cult to me.

I see flags being waved as trucks drive down the street. I started out this week on Ellis Island and I have been thinking a lot about ideology and how much it formulates peoples beliefs about life on earth. I am not against religion per se but I grow less tolerant of it every year and I am absolutely against the interpreters. I am against the use of a belief system to control people and to create structures by which people lose their own sense of accountability, autonomy or personal responsibility.

A friend said they (fundamentalist Christians and most Republicans come into that bracket) don’t care what happens on this planet because they believe heaven is their true home.

Ideology across the world, in Europe, in the UK, in the USA is reaching peak division. It is unsustainable, impractical and downright dangerous to support the rise of a far right that is based upon archaic principles, outright madness and at times, downright evil. I don’t say that lightly but I know on which side of the fence I stand. I wish there was something better to say about this but at the moment there isn’t. The only light for me is that these conversations have had to go incredibly public. Ideologies going to war is not unusual to the human race, change occurs in times of great conflict and extraordinary people are fighting for a better future every day. I realised over the last year that I can no longer be politically silent or feel that my work is the place to hold my political beliefs and backbone. If I am silent then I am complicit. We can no longer afford to be complicit. Sometimes it becomes apparent that people are living through a period of great historical change and this is one of them.

In America each day Trump loses support amongst his own party and voters. Talk of impeachment is never far away. France is sent beloved gratitude for not voting in Le Pen. The UK sits on the brink of its own potentially disastrous election and people want change! They want something better, than a ruling elite so out of touch with reality that only people who really suffer are — everybody else, they are us, they are all the communities that are not them, they are most especially those of any supposed minority or disadvantage. We are all seeing the last stand of the empire. The tiny per cent who have the worlds wealth, the inequality across the globe, religious fundamentalism, the absolving of personal accountability or responsibility, one person believing they are more superior than another, entitlement — it can’t continue this way, capitalism is failing, ideological structures are showing huge, cavernous cracks and they are all impacting on society and the planet in unforgivable ways.

I promise that my other blogs on the road may not be as sombre as this one but our political climate has never felt more dangerous in my lifetime — it is time for change and people are working on it, out there, at home, we need to keep reaching out to each other along the way.

The Truth Is … no.2

The truth stole my banana and stuck a flag in it. Stars, stripes and confederacy — kiss me America, I’m lonely and you have lost all of your hunters. The truth has a walk on part. Blink and you’ll miss it. The truth is a crazy diamond. The truth is spinning records and it turns the music up. The truth is dancing. The truth is not stopping at a red light or an amber or a green. The truth holds a door open. The truth is everyone on Lexington says in unison at 3pm — we hate that motherfucker. They say it every day. What truth is there in hate? The truth is motherfucker sounds so much better in a Brooklyn accent. The truth is sex. The truth is crying in a cafe earlier in the day. The truth is in your vocal tone. The truth is his voice in my ear. The truth is his voice was never truthful. The truth is many people believe their own lies. The truth is the truth. Don’t believe the hype. The truth lowers the tone. One or two tones lower and all I think about is sex. The truth is exotic. The truth bears liberty. The truth is beside itself. The truth is we truly do hate that motherfucker. We begin to say it at 4pm each day too.  The truth is he’s playing golf but instead of balls he lines up nukes. This doesn’t stop me dancing. It doesn’t stop you. I am not afraid to live. You are not intimidated by oranges. I am Poland. I am sparkling. The truth is going home. The truth is older than you’ll ever be. I was signing my name at the cathedral of debatability last night. I was a spy. I was followed by a guy with a gun. He was noir. I was not a girl. I was all colour and he wasn’t ugly. I had a gun and it shot words. The words hung in the air until the man ate them. I shot words and the gun had a habit. The man had a horse and ill intentions. He was all malevolence and I decided not to sign. The truth is my name is not in a huge old leather book. It would have been the end of me. I turned to go and he attached himself to my body. He was a growth on my body. The truth is on the left. The truth went before me. The truth couldn’t help nor could anyone else. The truth is I am in Harlem. The truth is an artist who does great owls and who tells me for the first time in decades as a grown man, as a black man, as an intellectual, an artist, a southern gent, a businessman, as someone who has loved and lost and still gives to the world — he is afraid. The truth is braver than either of us. The truth has different things to fear. The truth is I am afraid and the artist is afraid and I meet other people and we talk about fear. We talk about fear and we talk about how we ignore it and go and meet our friends and defy psychic terrors by loving the ones we are set for. The truth is fear won’t be ignored. It will hunt you down. The truth is almost extinct. The truth is I exist but I’m absolutely naked. The truth is air conditioning. The truth is haunting. The truth is I wouldn’t know a truck juck if it jaunted over and jived with me. The truth is the trucks here look mean. They look like they want to kill everybody. I’m told some people sook up their trucks so they emit even more black smoke, so they look even gnarlier, cos those people don’t believe in climate change and they want to toxify the air in the hope it might give cancer to at least one or two liberals. The truth is climate change was a conspiracy thought up the Chinese. The truth is the man who believes that runs a huge fuck-off country. The truth is the vice president believes humans were created six-thousands years ago. The truth is loving your country more than you do your family. The truth is a cult. The truth is if you are brainwashed since birth you can no longer tell the truth anymore than a kamikaze dragon racing down the freeway — cock in one hand, jerking off into the night. The truth is fucking preposterous. The truth is unfit for drinking. The truth is on a pedestal. It’s a medical supply room. The truth gives free advice. Do you have what it takes to become a citizen? Today almost anyone can become a citizen but so few a human being. The truth is the first Naturalisation Law. The truth is the United States of Anxiety. Originally the truth only granted citizenship to free white persons. What the fuck is naturalisation? Since when did law respect nature? What is with those words? Only a white person can be natural? Law is based on isation? The truth is the vice president will not eat lunch with any woman who is not his wife. The truth is they want to teach creationism in school as if it were a real thing. Don’t laugh Ireland, you tried to convict someone for blasphemy and the laws you have for women and god make me ashamed to have so much fucking Irish blood. The truth is annexed territories. The truth is ambivalent. The truth is — who belongs here? The truth belongs here. The truth is here but we’re ignoring it for cake. The truth is 1868. The truth is three years after the Civil War. The truth is not in Congress.  The truth is that word still fucking bugs me. Naturalised. What the fuck do you mean by it America? What do you mean by diversity? I hear kids saying it in white neighbourhoods. Oh, if we go there, we’ll see more diversity. What is with this word diversity? It sounds like a pop band. What is naturalisation? The truth is a man that tells me he has no white friends except from where he works and he grew up in the ghetto and he is writing a sci-fi book about two sisters and he often is unseen beyond the colour of his skin. The truth is a vigilante. The truth is violent. The truth is under these hot streets. It’s rising up from the subway. It’s rattling the L-train. The truth is racism never went away. The truth is fear of people. The truth is people fear other people. The truth is they make you fear other people because it is profitable and practical to keep people afraid. The truth is a woman could not appear as a ‘person’ before a court of law not all that long ago. She was the responsibility of the male. Like a dog. Or a bicycle. Or a razor blade. She was not allowed to be naturalised. We all know women are not natural.  The truth is queer. The truth is constitutional psychopathic inferiority. The truth is that was a legal prognosis for anybody gay. The truth is love is not a disease. The truth is immigration and naturalisation services required examining physicians to issue a certificate classifying gay aliens as mentally defective. The truth is those are not my words. They are official. They were legislatively dangerous. The truth is aliens are queer too and none of them want to speak to you. The truth is alien. The truth will not stage an intervention. Sure, their world is pretty (they’d say) but they place no value on its soul. The truth has a brilliance. The truth is people whose hearts shine through their clothes, whose intellect astounds me, who open their arms and say — I will. The truth is in 1979 physicians refused to write certificates declaring gays as psychopaths. The truth is in 1990 (I will repeat) in 1990 with the passage of the Immigration Act of (I will repeat) 1990 Congress removed homosexuality as a health-based exclusion for US citizenship. What is a gay alien? What is alien in your queer? If I’m a psychopath then you’re a sugar bowl. If you’re a sugar bowl don’t expect me to stir you. If sugar bowls have birds around them nobody is tweeting. If nobody is tweeting then the word is dead. If the word is dead then we’ll all draw language. We’ll show each other pictures of hearts and beds. The truth is fucking history. The truth is beloved. The truth is I miss him. The truth is he lied to me. The truth wants me. I want the sea. The truth is I’m not doing yoga. The truth is I resist it. The truth is my body. The truth is my brain. The truth is the amygdala. The truth is the holy grail. The truth has dimensions. Dimensions of dimensions. The truth is fuzzy fuzzy wasnae fuzzy but he was a fucking bear. The truth is I swear too much. The truth is I don’t swear enough. The truth is vitriol. The truth is scared. The truth is we come back to this. The truth is we’re controlled by this. The truth is it is effective to rule 7.5 billion people predominantly through division, exclusion and fear. The truth is 1d. The truth has plumbing issues. The truth is lighten up, brought to you, in a hysterical voice, by the Queen. The truth needs a coffee. The truth won’t eat your bagel. The truth is I loved him and he never let me in. The truth is I keep one arm out at all times but extra especially during the night. The truth is he won’t call me. The truth is you better check under your bed. The truth is I’m bemused. The truth is this is a planet. It does not have an adequate explanation. Chill the fuck out about it. It’s just a few seconds of existence on this plane. The truth is I’m a fat girl who likes to hear sirens. The truth is I judge your judgement. The truth is barefoot. The truth is paddling. The truth is clear water. The truth is fireflies. The truth is war rages. The truth is love. Love is truth. We all want truth in love but when is it really true? It’s true when it’s a true thing and when it’s not it’s not. The truth is I scroll through my phone for someone who has never been there. The truth is missing. Someone bring it a blanket. The truth is not to be found so don’t look for it in Maine. 

The Truth is no.1

The truth is rattling pipes in the Carlton Arms, it’s ghosts hands all over my face at 4am when I wake and realise the Lower East Side spirit world has been alerted to my presence. It’s 84 stories. It’s high. It’s wailing. It isn’t interested in being reasonable. Don’t ask it to be reasonable. Don’t ask it to answer to reason. It’s penises all over the pavement jabbing so far into the sky they’re trying to penetrate reason. The truth is every thing you never wanted. The truth will be denied. It’s name’s not down. It’s not getting in. The truth is contraband. The truth is Broadway. It’s never been Wall Street. It’s a bracelet you can’t afford. Bracelets are so close to handcuffs. Handcuffs are so close to wonder. It’s two people touching each other up on the Bowery while I wish was in love and you pretend you’re not watching. The truth is E & 23rd. It’s a woman rollerblading out the grocery store and weaving straight through oncoming traffic with upside down crosses all over her trousers. The truth is a secret knock. The truth isn’t listening. The truth is your brother. The truth is you have no brothers. The truth is you have three brothers and you never knock. The truth’s got all the cigarettes and all the alcohol and it steals petunias. The truth is waiting. The truth is in a bar and it’s about to get kicked out for the third time this week. The truth has went to bed. The truth is someone you’ve not lain with yet. The truth is you won’t ever sleep again. The truth is you’re already sleeping. The truth is you want to be in that bed of acceptance and hope and love and cherish-ability so badly you chop off your fingers. The truth is it is stupid to chop off your fingers. What are you going to hold a cup of tea with for a start? The truth is — that bed has feet like claws and tiny, fat, muscular chicken legs. It gallops through the streets at night whilst you hold on screaming. The truth is that the truth is that the truth is. The truth is pretty but it’s also fucking yellow. The truth is I don’t trust people. The truth is I trust some people but never ones who drive anything yellow. The truth is I don’t trust money. The truth is. The truth. The truth is not the road to Happiness. The truth is 63 cents. Have a nice day! the truth says. The truth is wearing a woman’s dress and frilly, frilly knickers. The truth does not have hairy legs. The truth won’t run a bath for you. The truth is barely legal. The truth wants to know your incapabilities. You struggle to spell incapabilities. The truth is rich people look out their windows and wonder what we are going to do to them and they are frightened of us and a bit disgusted too, so they pay lots of people like us to shoot lots of people like us — if any of us get too close. The truth is they should wonder. The truth is they are murdering scientists at the Arctic. The truth is in France. The truth is some men wouldn’t know the truth if if was gold plated and delivered by Willy Wonka in an elevator full of uranium. The truth is a Godzilla figure screwed to the top of a NYPF truck. The truth is a Brooklyn accent as he walks by me and I debate taking his hand and reading him a poem. He is the truth and the truth is me. The truth is female. The truth is an honest fuck. The truth is white feathers float by my window and once one changed all direction to fall directly into my hand. The truth is too many people have tattoos now. The truth is I should give more of a fuck about my waistline and less about ideology. The truth is ideology is only based on ideas. The truth is they sell ideas as if they were a true thing, a fixed thing, an unfixable thing. The truth is if kids were born into a world of ultimate tolerance with a lifetime to be loved, fed, held and given time to think and respond and create then the human race, would finally evolve but we don’t want that, do we? Fuck that. Let’s vote in the kind of psychopaths who’ll gladly nuke us all to death. Or just fuck with us until we wish they had. The truth is it’s time to kill your gods. Every last one of them. The truth is those gods were all female and it was fuck all to do with original sin (check your faulty chromosome XY’s) but the transcribers had issues with truth. The truth is no men are equal. The truth is there are two kinds of people. The ones who own the people with all the guns and the ones who don’t. Crooks and heroes. The truth is against Captain America. The truth is the good guys are the bad guys. So says all the rulers. The truth is there’s many crooks and they’re closing down libraries and that’s barely the tip of it but the truth is they don’t read but even more than that they really, really, really, don’t want us to fucking read. The truth does not go down in history. The truth has an alibi. The truth might not be televised but it will certainly be on You.Tube.  The truth is if you grab a woman by her vagina the first time you meet her what you are trying to do is send a message to the creator of all life (you hate that we the bearers of the vessel of life, brought you here and made you feel so fucking helpless) you are trying to tell the creator you know where to find them and that you can reduce the mystery of life to meat. The truth is rapists and robbers run countries all over the globe. The truth is they own the people who own the guns who own the prisons who own the hospitals who own the schools who own the banks who own the money who own the law who own the healthcare who own the welfare system who own the King, Queen, Jack and Jill of clubs. The truth is hateful. The truth is afraid. The truth should be afraid. The truth is they say we’re helpless. The truth is we are not helpless. The truth is they say we’re brainwashed, numb-fuck, capitalist, lethargic, apathetic, uncaring, stupid, nullified fuckabiilly germ-craters with pennies for eyes. The truth is we let five strange men who call themselves government kill the world and we let them do it because they call themselves government but more because they are murderous and terrifying and we are all of us tired. They also killed your neighbour. They kill you softly so you won’t complain. You would complain but you’re one-billion and three in the queue. Your call is important to us. The truth is they. They go inside your stomach and tell your unborn child it will never be free. They tell it there is something wrong with it. They tell it there will be many more things wrong with it when it comes into the world. There’s nothing wrong with your unborn baby. In all its complexity it is utterly perfect. They are they. They are happiest at Easter. They are happiest on days when it is said men without a heartbeat, essentially corpses, rise from the dead from these caves where they’ve been staying and then they decide that dying for our sins is you know, pretty much a job for the boys and the kind of thing you have to do again and again and they make their hearts beat and angels push boulders down hills and blah-de-fucking-blah-de-blah-blah. I say they because Jesus was one of them. One of the lads. He was on the football team. They like women who look like dolls. They like women who fuck like dolls. They like to piss on them. That’s called fake news. They hate women. That will never be news. They hate women because we made them and pushed them out our bodies into a universe without explanation and so they took up their birthright-baton as tyrannical murderous demigods, because a trail of fucking con men before them persuaded the great and the good of the masses that we had no choice but to sign up for many, many lifetimes of hideous fuckery. The truth is we can’t take the truth. The truth is we’re not bred for it. The truth is we are all institutionalised but some are more institutionalised than others. The truth is the ruling elite are some of the most heavily, generationally, institutionalised people on the entire planet. They believe there is only us and them. There is in fact only them. The truth is two old people walking down a street holding hands. The truth is the boy on the bicycle was shooting just to the left of me into traffic so I thought that was okay then. The truth of it is — I want. The truth is sitting a US citizen test — in Disneyland. It’s legal to murder there. Ask them why Dahmer was their biggest fan. It’s all performance on the streets. The sense of performance is palpable. It’s gold boulders. Its crossing the road. It’s the stop/walk sign. It’s the man on the desk at Trump building getting ever more uncomfortable because of the habit I have of looking someone right in the eye when I want to know an honest answer. The truth is fiction. It’s a not-for-profit corporation. It’s men owning women’s bodies. It’s a war on women being declared legislation by legislation. It’s voting in a rapist. It’s voting in a government across the sea (my way) who used to be ran by a child abuser and who weren’t really voted in and who don’t care a fuck for the great unwashed anyway. It’s voting in a woman who wants to hunt foxes down and starve the poor and she too appears to be (apparently) guided by God. Aye, aye, aye, okay then. The truth is someone holding your hand. Its laying in the dark knowing you are nothing to the machine but knowing you are the centre of your own universe. It’s being accountable to the stars, the soil, the future and that long line of ancestors all chain-smoking fucking furiously and watching your every fucking move. It’s your cock inside me. It’s your face when you come. The truth is women taste better. The truth is there’s little point to boxes when nothing about me is square. The truth is knocking. The truth is better late than never. The truth is we all deep down inside know that fear when waking in the dead of night. The kind of dread that could drive us from our bed and out into the street naked and screaming and inconsolable, the kind that makes an old woman drown herself rather than have her neighbours see … she’s frightened of living another minute in her skin on this earth, she is frightened as a child, she has become pure terror because she knows what the bogeyman says and the bogeyman says it’s raining. The truth is you should grow your pubes back. The truth is 1% Iberian. The truth is on a train in Moscow. It’s on the fifteenth chair in the second most cabin. The truth is they’re murdering gay men in Chechnya. They’re throwing them off buildings in public in Iran. The truth is I know a woman who got stoned to death in the street last week. She dared to hold her lovers hand in public. The truth is I know that woman you know that woman you are that woman — the truth is a boat with a hundred people on it many of them crying, terrified, gripping the sweaty hands of children — that is your fucking boat and it is my fucking boat and all the people we love are on it. The truth is we are letting paedophiles and traffickers in at the Woolworths pick and mix of women and children in camps so close we could walk to them. Those kids are you, those people are you, they are you in another fucking life. The truth is the people who own the people who own the guns who own the prisons who own the psychiatrists who own the courts who pledge allegiance to the bogeyman who tell the fuhrer he did not kill himself in vain who let white supremacists march through the streets right here and now under the guise of fucking liberty — right fucking here today — the same ones who only made it illegal to rape your wife in the UK in 199-fucking-3 (in what is supposed to be one of the most civilised countries on earth), who killed their last witch in the 50s, who hung their last inmate in the 60s, who allied with a country who took away reproductive rights from women this year so we would know our bodies are owned by the bogeyman and he can do whatever the fuck he likes with our baby machines and our silly, silly idea that we were ever even vaguely equal in the eyes of men like him. The truth is little rich boys take the earth for their shiny plaything. The truth is we are all expendable and some of us, people of colour, LGBT, the disabled, the poor, Mexicans, Latinos, the Ukraine, the future space travelling children of Korea, all of the women, all of the children, all of the working class, all of the underclass, all of the weird, the strange, the brilliant, scientists, writers, we are more expendable than others and expend us they will. The truth is if we shush-the-fuck-up who’s going to hold our hand when they mow all of us down? The truth is this planet is yours. This is your planet. Those stars are shining just for you. You are meant to be here. The truth is you are beautiful. The truth is we are only in the beginning. The truth is we have to begin — now. Again. Over. The truth begins with light.

Ellis Island Photographs

#Outriders & Edinburgh International Book Festival

I am in New York. I just got back from Harlem where I went for brunch at the Tsion cafe on St Nicholas, I recommend it. I’m one of five writers who has been sent out on the #Outriders journeys by Edinburgh International Book Festival. We are Harry Giles (Canada), Malachy Tallack (USA: North Dakota via Appalachia to Louisiana), Kevin McNeil (Argentina), Stef Smith (Mexico) and myself. I am doing the Rust Belt to Silicon Valley. I am exploring truth in current political times and meeting loads of people along the way, making a film of some of those conversations, writing a lot of stream-of-consciousness style poetry and prose. My aim is truth so sometimes that will cut a little and sometimes it will do so a lot. That’s the point of poetry. To remove the filter between what we should be and what we actually are. To encompass the raw and validate it. Well, that’s some of its purposes anyway. So far my journey itinerary looks like this —

New York, whilst I am here I am going to Liberty island, it seems like the right place to start. Then I am going to Ellis Island, which processed over 12 million immigrants before it was closed. I believe Irish ancestors of mine passed through there. I never feel comfortable in a city until I’ve visited some of its oldest institutions. I am heading over to the NYPL, visiting an artist in Harlem who I’ve never met before, apparently he’ll be wearing a white linen jacket. I am  photographing art and chatting to artists at The Carlton Arms where I am staying, trying to catch Miwi La Lupa, meeting writer Sassafrass Lowrey to talk all things political, word-like and otherly.  I am also heading out to Woodstock. Over there I will be meeting an assortment of writers and artists including Team Love Records (I adore their label), Kelly Braffet, Gerard Malanga (he’s doing my portrait) and I will catch up with Bill from Bottle of Smoke Press. The morning after that writer Cyndy Drew Etler is flying up to meet me, she reached out because of my background growing up in the state care system in Scotland and because she connected with my debut novel. Cyndy spent time in care in the US, in a unit where they used to (among other things) drug the girls. We are going to the Guggenheim to talk all things institutional and art based, I will also meet my NY Editor for the very first time, that will just be the first four days! 

Detroit — I am then going to fly to Detroit, spend time there with writer Lolita Fernandez and meet up with my travelling companion in literary outlaw chic — Bonnie Jo Campbell.

Kalamazoo river in Michigan — I’m staying in a river shack belonging to aforementioned extraordinary writer (Bonnie-Jo Campbell), we will drive there from Detroit. I hope to meet her donkeys. I may go shooting. I want to speak to people locally (like I am doing everywhere I go).  

Chicago — Whilst in town I’ll be on an Indie radio station talking all things truth, visiting a boxing club (possibly) forming a day long grind core band with writer Beth, catching Irvine for a few sherries, going to the DuSable Museum of African American History, speaking to people at the Poetry Foundation.

Portland — Flying there, there will be stuff, it will be done, Bonnie Jo and I start our main leg of the journey together here.

Oregon — We are driving out with Eric, who we will have picked up in Oregon, he is driving, we are writing, arguing, debating — first stop is to see Ken Babbs at his farm, he is one of the original Merry Pranksters, was a huge part of the famous counter culture bus that drove with among other the Beat poets and prior to that he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He has told me the truth is at a house near the old commune. I am glad at least one person is being direct about it. 

On the Road — Taking in the Redwood National Park, looking for wolves, taking eco readings, going through Napa Valley, all on the way to our next stop. Nature is not an incidental part of this journey. Global governments and climate treaties are nowhere near where they need to be, to even remotely, address climate change. I will be looking at that and also, focusing on the extraordinary changing landscape as we head further down to Silicon Valley.

San Francisco — Visiting a literary outreach programme where I will be talking to the kids about my upbringing, what words have meant to be, how I came to be a writer, Bonnie Jo will be chatting with them too and we will both read them some work. We may visit one of the homeless tented communities, although that could be in Portland. I will do a reading in a tiny old-school S&M bar. 

Again … all the way, I will be filming, chatting, debating and writing about truth. 

We will also meet Emer Martin and get political before sailing forth on our trusty train from San Francisco to LA.

Los Angeles —  I want to book end the ideological exploration of what the USA has built itself upon (started on Ellis Island and the route of immigrants across the history of this country) we will pass by the Hollywood sign, among other things and there are a few more people to meet there too (yet confirming). I will find somewhere to get a tattoo and speak to some of the body artists I meet about truth in our political times.

The truth to be debated as I see it is …  political, personal, global, peripheral, industrial, historical and geographical.

I am talking to taxi drivers, people in the laundry, on the street, the tube, in bars, I am listening! The first night I got here I dreamt about a giant ear …

My foundation for all things is often structural. The position of the other. It’s where I came from and I think it gives the best view of the mainstream, the centre, the powers that be and how they are being and how we are all impacted.

I want to photograph Detroit as a city full of new energy whilst also having the highest area of depopulation as an industrial centre that experienced a devastating decline. I spoke to one of the outreach volunteers in Detroit who had spent time there after working in a natural disaster zone in India. He said conditions in some areas he spent time in (in Detroit) were far more distressing.

I am thinking of Celine’s Journey To The End of Night.

I am thinking of Gotham City.

All things here are presided over by the daily news of Donald Trump. I went to the Trump building yesterday and had some strange conversations, the security men were suspicious and the elevator was gold. There was a lot of gold to be fair. I have never seen so much gold in a building. I will go to Trump towers and I will of course write about the political situation. Every day there is talk of Donald Trump facing impeachment, his leaks to Russia, the ever rising and dangerous situation with North Korea, that skirts into the territory of nuclear weapons and war. Trump makes grandiose declarations about nuclear power, about a war that would affect everyone. He is dismissal of climate change (claimed at one point it was a conspiracy thought up by the Chinese government). He is passionate about the removal of women’s rights, human rights, any rights he chooses. He appears to be running the country via Twitter. Last week he sent out a tweet that merely read — We. He is the cult of celebrity gone monstrously wrong. In the US protests are widespread including the rise of some far-right, racist white supremacy groups out on the streets. I somehow couldn’t imagine this just a few months ago and now the US is a country that appears to be teetering on a constant brink of something awful. The media are being refused access to truth. Trump talks about truth all the time and anything he does not like is dismissed immediately as fake news. Psychiatrists are concerned. Environmentalists are concerned. Teachers, parents, children — those who lived through the civil rights movement, the LGBT community, even the poor communities whose vote he went after with a mercenary zeal — are concerned.

For the last few days FBI members have been putting pictures of James Comey up on their social media, in solidarity after his dismissal.

Trump is considered unfit for his position at best and dangerous to civilisation full stop at worst.

Somehow everywhere I go this disturbing situation is everywhere.

Anyway, I want to listen more, read more, talk more, formulate my thoughts and I will get back to the subject of current politics in the US and how they relate to what is going on in the UK and Europe. 

The other pieces of writing I will be posting throughout the journey make up my own literary endeavour whilst on the road, unusually, they will not be edited and will come out pretty much as they are. When I say I intend to seek truth and tell it, I mean that. My personal take is often direct, brutal, poetic, coarse and heavily influenced by art and music. My own particular take on ideology and the structures of society inform almost everything I do.  

I am here to extend my thoughts political, personal and otherwise and I intend to give back to this journey with an open heart, humour and all the artistic and intellectual energy I have, but first — too — emotion.

I cried on Ellis island yesterday, because of this picture below.

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The journey of immigration across the globe is so huge, so vast, so powerful and frustrating and at its core there are people who are brothers, sisters, children, parents. This photograph is from after the end of the Vietnam War, when hundreds of thousands of people attempted to flee Southeast Asia, mostly from Vietnam, by riding overloaded boats to nearby countries. Those countries, like Europe currently does, did not know how to cope with the scale of the immigrant crisis. They eventually announced that they would refuse any more “boat people,” which sparked action in the international community to try and devise a global resettlement program with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 1.3 million Southeast Asians were settled around the world including 800,000 in the US.

Current estimates of how many need resettled in the EU today come in at around two million distributed through the “global north”— EU, US, New Zealand, Canada and Australia. Over five years that would be 400’000 per year in countries that comprise 850 million inhabitants.

That barely tips the 12 million exiled by war in Syria, violence in Afghanistan or Iraq or Eritrea or the huge myriad of countries where people are currently unsafe.

Germany, which expects to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year, but several other EU countries are openly hostile to accepting refugees.

I think about the kids and the parents a lot. I know what it is like to not know anyone in the world and to rely on the kindness of strangers for your safety. I don’t know what it is like to do that in a camp where you may not even have a social worker to turn to, or speak the language or have anyone appear to care at all. It really, really gets to me.

The world has become more frightening and I am afraid. I am angry at the current political situation across the planet and I no longer feel I can be silent, if I am silent then I am complicit.

I will not be that.

I began my journey into the US on Ellis Island to start out in a place where 12 million immigrants passed through to become US citizens.

I took the US citizenship test. I failed, spectacularly.

I’m going to post a whole lot of Ellis Island photos after this, then my truth no.1 blog, then I have to find my way to Harlem to meet an artist in a white linen jacket who I’ve never met before, who paints extraordinary owls and faces based on African death masks. I shall be back before too long.

PS — I’m doing this in transit so forgive me any errors, do, honestly.

Madame Jo Jo’s — backstage before gig, with Reg

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There’s A Witch in the Word Machine

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This is the title for my next poetry collection. I am currently writing a lot of new poetry and hope to perhaps have this in a coherent form by next year. In the meantime, records, records, records — gin.

The Sunlight Pilgrims is keeping Great Company

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Ola. I apologise for blogging so rarely and erratically. However, I am currently writing two novels set over one-hundred and ten years. I am also writing an animation feature film (arthouse, for adults, not that kind no) and working on my first short film as a writer/director. I’m off to America in a few weeks time for a huge trip as part of #outriders with Edinburgh International Book Festival — I am aiming to blog a lot whilst I’m there. Tonight someone tweeted to me that they had just taught their last class at Columbia and ended with The Sunlight Pilgrims. It is in such a nice stack of books it kind of disarms me. People ask about ‘the second novel’ how was it? Are you okay? How was it received? What does it mean to you? To anyone? My neighbour asked me outright as I was trying to get into my house with my shopping (wearing an old Micky Mouse t-shirt and v.grunge hair) if I thought my first book was my best one? Well, I don’t. I love The Sunlight Pilgrims. I grew as a writer with that and I did what I wanted to do. Take a risk. TSP was also on Off The Shelf’s 15 Dystopian Books for People Who Don’t Read Dystopian Novels  — again in extraordinary company and sat right up the top. These things are good for novelists. They help us keep going through the cultural wastelands armed with spears and fury. Both things, are vital for book writing. So, if I am not here so often it is because I am mostly time travelling through 110 years in two huge books that have taken over most of my life. Giving thanks for things like this though and I’ll be in NY soon, then Detroit, Chicago, Michigan, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, San Diego, LA. It seems like a dream but I’ll be typing to you from it very soon.