Only Disconnect
when will I believe?
In 2012, Tracey Moberly (artist, director, realiser of many a male creative project) invited me to exhibit at the Tate.
It was my first poetry film. I wanted to share this as I was reminded of the statement, listening to a podcast with Andrew O’Hagan on Granta (and the Lynne Tillman is excellent). I’m a fan of O’Hagan, really because of the essay he wrote about Julian Assange on LRB, and I used it when I taught a class on feature journalism and literary journalism (Joan Didion and this essay by Gay Talese set the tone for all the Gonzo fabulous that followed)…
O’Hagan was talking about these times, saying Only Disconnect, in reference to EM Forster’s idea from Howard’s End, of “only connect”, which talks about the class struggle to become bohemian without umbrellas (there’s more to Rihianna than you may expect).
It’s something echoed in this great podcast with Irvine Welsh and Yanis Varoufakis, who I hadn’t realised was educated in Scotland.
I’ve been trying to turn off forever. Mainly by disassociation, but now, with my 4 month-old computer back from the “yeah, it’s out-of-warranty” Apple store, incurring some heavy expense, and a three week separation, my files are shot to pieces, some lost in action, others looking like my lock-up (see below…very deep below, with all the Leonara Carrington-esque struggles and notes, and records, and books…which I’ve been raiding, going on a weird journey of finding copy I actually wrote vs what editor’s published, and it’s no surprise I resigned from a column on The Daily Star, Born to be Wild…). I’m excited to hit the keypads hard as it heats up in this anarchist palace in Spain, where one of the few bars lie where Hemingway hasn’t drunk in gives great distraction, and my, the boys give it their best sometimes…
In the days I’ve been reading Laurie Lee sleeping in a sack around Spain, and Gerald Brennan’s South of Granada, which is hardcore peasant lit. I have John Berger’s Pig Feast lined-up, but do find it difficult to read others when I’m actually writing (I only knew Berger as an academic, Ways of Seeing, which aside Susan Sontag’s On Photography and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies were the text books of my year at Kingston art school). Going back in time with literature is the best time travel.