Fires Were Started

Why are meetings so boring? Why do meetings exist? What ever gets decided at meetings apart from which is your favourite biscuit? When do meetings ever make you feel better apart from if the coffee is strong?

Why do I never talk in meetings? Why can’t I concentrate on something for more than 5 minutes before I’m  taking my mind for a wander? Why do I fixate on one or two people and invent fantasy lives for them?

These are my minutes of my meeting today.

Simple morning pleasures - an analysis of La Isla Bonita from Wired - if only Madonna could have madness like that still rather than boring old lady disco

I went to the Serpentine Gallery for the Derek Jarman exhibition at the weekend. It’s an inspiration, I tells ya.

It’s a show to coincide with Isaac Julien’s new doc about Jarman which I have real reservations about, but you can forget about that anyway. The poetry speaks for itself in the show, and I’m glad (especially in light of the documentary’s canonising of Derek J) that nothing fake or reverent gets between you and the beautiful pictures, moving and still.

In fact, it’s a very personal experience in the gallery, which is amazing for the Serpentine, which always feels overcrowded and fussy. You can collapse on puffy cushions and watch Blue in a communal experience or, even better, be surrounded by about 10 screens of varying sizes on which Super 8 films play - and these are just stunning powerful films which overwhlem you with play and liberation and, oooooh, just a total feeling that 98% of other films have no soul and look like they were made by mindless cynics.

And you know what else? So many people there, all immersed in these romantic wonders, all silent but together, all declaring a love for someone the world seems to ignore apart from these retrospectives when he’s remembered again. You feel like you’re in a club of amazing people - people who’ve strolled as if by magic into a new zone of mystery and possibility.

It’s so ace. I love the attention he’s getting - as this nice little film (maybe a bit pointlessly but it don’t matter) says. Now can everyone please remember he’s still relevant for the next few years? And oi, sorry to carp on, but can we make the real tribute to him be a celebration of the free romantic spirits that we still have before they die or give up?

Look, I know I sound curmudgeonly, and  I do hate complaining, but there’s actually easy practical stuff we can do - starting with celebrating and supporting good original stuff, and ignoring bad boring stuff. Otherwise, what’s the point? Shut the cinemas and turn off the TV signal. Can you ever imagine the literary equivalent of Jarman being so subject to the ebb and flow of chattering class opinion?

So this plan to play Premier League matches abroad - it makes me feel queasy, shocked and mainly repulsed at the greed, the arrogance, the desperate grab for bucks, and the total abandonment of community engagement.

I admit it, I have a nostalgic view of what a football club means to its local area. I come from a place with one team for miles around, a team that dominates local identity and is intimately tied with the perceived fortunes of the city. To me, a football club is nothing without its community - of course, there is a displaced diaspora who follow it too (like me) but we radiate from the original location and are drawn to a specific home where our dedication flows to. It’s a place of catharsis and worship. It’s a place. It’s not a concept.

So this makes me really sad - because it will happen, and the fans who live nearby will be ignored and the final source of community for our identikit urban areas will be destroyed. I’ve heard a lot of apocalyptic talk about this, and for once, we do need to be shrill. Society has been worn down over the last 50 years in this country. This is the latest kick to the balls.

And you see amazing scenes today at Old Trafford (I won’t digress to talk about the 0% chance of Leeds fans doing something as moving as that sadly) and you see right there on the screen what we’re losing. Our kids will look back and hate us for making them paranoid individuals, possessive apes, horrible beasts who suspect their neighbours.

Total irony too that the team who I hate for many reasons, one of which is their representation of all that’s wrong with hyper-Capitalist arrogance in football, can be responsible for a beautiful moment of tender community and respect at just the moment when fat men in suits want to kill such things in football.

What can I do to stop this? I mean, really, what can I do? Tell me, and I’ll do it.

Well, sort of. It’s for the I’m-unsure-about-it new movie Juno. This is a very sweet, if really weird shy, performance, though heavily proves that Kimya D is a zillion times more cool than Adam D.

I found this on the ace Spout blog by the way

You can see in here…

We just stayed here.

That’s a real cottage in a real (remote) part of West Wales. I tell you that not to gloat over a nice time, but because it’s simply a total excitement that a place like that exists and hasn’t been destroyed by the march of glass and boring crotch-thrusting architecture.

All made of old branches and twigs, with a big fire, a secret loft bed, birds going wild, sheep staring, dirty bath, bobbly yellow walls made of ancient Earth, it’s a place with a personality. Just like being an owl. Owls have it good - everywhere they live is like that.

It was fun reading the guest book, with its competition to be the most bourgeois possible - how many kids did you conceive there? What did your food at the faraway gastropub cost? Just how friendly were you with the publican nearby? How closely did you align yourself with the local dolphins? Spectacular and beautiful - and I really mean this - not just as a place to stay, but also in the way the guest bookers feel like they need to justify their fun, and have instant self-analysis.

And guilt too. Everyone feels ashamed about their normal lives. And so did I. I’ve never had that before. I always feel guilty, but about specific things, not all of me. But you know, it is a totally different attitude when you live slower and you take heed from the limitations weather imposes on you and the wanders of field creatures, and I love that. London gives you everything all the time and it means you’re always occupied but always so bored every second, so distracted, restless.

So what to do?….be a rabbit or a dog probably. I had a great dream last night I was a rabbit bombing Tesco - I was so small, no-one suspected me.

Final thought - why did everyone in the book apart from us drive? Don’t you want to abandon all of your control? Isn’t that what fairytale cottages are for? They’re not for driving or for killing machines.