I just got in. I had a lovely couple of days away from it all, I had no Internet, no phone, no contact with the outside world for three days and it has done me the world of good.
I’m off to bed now but you can expect a series of updates on my adventures this week, I missed you a bit.
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Blog
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Home again.
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Best Man – an excerpt.
The following is taken from one of my short stories, it’s set at a Halloween party on a University campus:
A black vampire, a white vampire and Spiderman walk into a bar. It sounds like a good setup for a joke. The only joke was the amount of tequila they then made me drink. I had insisted on not drinking Sambuca because of what it did to my constitution so they had Sambuca and I had tequila, but it didn’t make the pain on my throat, and stomach any less, and it didn’t make how I felt the next morning any better. All it did was build in me the idea that I was a terrific dancer, something that almost anyone including myself could tell you is definitely not the case, I can barely walk down a set of stairs without fucking it up, let alone move like Justin Timberlake. I truly went wild that night though. With my mask on I was sure that everyone would just approve of me, and want to dance with Spiderman, that they would gather round me for group photos and then we could all dance like a robot from 1984 together. It turned out that while they found it mildly amusing, there is something very disconcerting and sinister about someone dancing too close to you wearing what would be best described as a children’s gymnastics outfit.
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Where Did All The Money Go? – an excerpt.
For the last couple of months I’ve been working on a book of short stories, the following is the opening of the story that gives the collection its title:
It’s a question asked of me far too often, and one that I don’t really have a particular answer for, but in the impossible style that I was taught in my three years of higher education I will attempt to make a statement, give evidence, and then follow that all up with an explanation because four years since I graduated I’m still making monthly payments just to pay off the two student overdrafts I managed to completely rack up in my time as a student. In many ways it was the most reckless I have ever been, and I don’t just mean financially. I did things I never would have done, I took risks I never would have taken, I got hurt and I hurt others and I got drunk and I got high and I laughed and I cried… what an afternoon that was. The important thing to remember is that you shouldn’t judge students ever, or group them, because everyone has a different journey, and everyone has different adventures and deep down, you know if you are tutting at a group in a coffee shop or an individual dragging their coat in the dirt as they head to the library that really, deep down, underneath it all, you’re just jealous, or at least highly interested in how they conduct themselves, and that’s why you’re interested, and that’s why you’re still reading. There is a lot to be taken from it, but this is by no means a definitive recollection, this is just mine, all mine and I hope there’s some kind of mirroring aspect for you, because you should enjoy yourself sometimes.
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Off for a bit of peace and quiet.
This is going to be my last post for a couple of days, I’m going to get some fresh air, space and exercise. If I don’t then I worry I’m just going to disappear off in a different and horrible way. Do you ever reach that point where you just feel like you’re burning yourself completely? I’ve got there. I put too much pressure on myself and unless I’m able to just stand up and walk away from it all then I know it’s got too much.
What I really need is to just not have to deal with everything. It’s sort of like running away from a part of myself, I just hope I can drive fast enough.
I’m going to schedule some posts to pop up for your amusement while I’m away, just to make sure you don’t forget about me, I know it’s easily done.
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Behind NME Lines.
As my good friend Ben said yesterday, ‘I wish I had come up with that title’. Behind NME Lines is an exhibition of NME magazine covers over the last 60 years taking place at NEO Bankside until 6th October. As it turns out this is just round the corner form work for me so I headed down there yesterday to check it out with my banter-ridden Sahara companion Terri who it turns out knows absolutely nothing about music.
The exhibition in itself isn’t that big, imagine an open plan downstairs of a house, fill it with blown up NME covers on easels and in frames and you are pretty much there. The interesting part is the layout of the magazine over more than a decade, a lot of that is down to technology of course but stylistically we have also come a long way, it seems bands are all too aware of what it means to get on the cover of NME (I’m instantly reminded of the scene in Almost Famous where Stillwater are told they’re going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone). The other thing it is easy to forget is just how many famous band shots were done as NME shoots. The Jackson Pollock-esque Stone Roses shoot, the Union Jack and still babyfaced Libertines first cover shot, Cocker flicking the V’s; these are all deep in our group consciousness and they are all here, it’s quite a humbling thing to behold. I can only look back on ten years worth and remember where I was in the world at the time that I bought that particular issue, but for some it must be a real walk down memory lane to see The Beatles and The Who on the cover and remember what that meant to them at the time, and also to think of how many bedroom walls those covers have been on.
It is definitely worth checking out, and literally faces the sloped entrance of the Tate Modern if you need another excuse to get out of your life for a bit.
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Day before payday blues.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to work when every month I struggle to make the money last. It isn’t even as if I’m living a lavish lifestyle, I’m a man of very simple means and very few wants, I just have too many outgoings at the moment.
Last night I had to embarrassingly tell my girlfriend that I didn’t have £2 to get the bus home, and that we would have to walk. Stuff like that pisses me off but there’s no way around it. In other ways I like being the poor oppressed writer though so I can’t really say anything. It feels like everything I own is coming apart at the seams, nothing really works in the way it should, and I always have to double think any purchases I do want to make. In a way this frugal lifestyle will be good for me when I do strike it rich because I’ll truly appreciate what I do have.
In the meantime I should probably just shut up, it could be a lot worse.
Goddamn money, it always ends up making you blue as hell
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Murakami.
I just wanted to take a moment to comment on how much I am enjoying 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I’ve enjoyed everything of his I have read but this book in particular is really special. Maybe it’s the fact that shortly before starting this I was trudging my way through Fifty Shades, maybe it’s because I’ve put off reading it since Christmas because of the size and weight of the book and I know I’ll have to commute with it everyday. Whatever the reason I’m glad I got round to reading it now and I’m telling you to go and pick up a copy of any of his work because it really is quite beautiful.
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Rant.
What business of yours is it how I choose to conduct myself. Maybe you should just take a good hard look in the mirror you little TOWIE haired cunt. Go about your day and leave me to mine. What’s the problem here?
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My 808th turned leaf.
I really need to quit smoking in any capacity. Last night I ended up trapped in a dumb fog when I should have used the time to write, write, write. I made a promise to myself that if I wanted to be a writer I had to commit to it entirely, and let a lot of things fall by the wayside to do that. It looks like we’ve got another item for the bonfire.
I’ve made my choice, I need to push myself into that square hole with all my might if I’m ever going to manage it. I still need a couple of days away from all this to think it through, hopefully this weekend will give me that.
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2005 me.
I believe it was seven years ago today that I would have been filling my parent’s car with everything I had ever begged, borrowed or stolen and headed off to Buckinghamshire to begin my adventures as a fully flung student. It’s a time of my life I am still very hung up upon, a point proven by my obsession with writing about fictional versions of myself getting into all kinds of hi-jinx on campus. The reason it is so at the forefront of my mind today is that this morning I was at my girlfriend’s as her youngest sister repeated the steps I took seven years ago. Everything was boxed up, everything was thought over and considered, and then they packed it all into the back of the car and headed off to Roehampton.
It was an interesting and emotional thing to watch, especially given the fact that Sarah is a twin, and while she goes off to University Holly has deferred for a year to try a different avenue first, testing the water as it were. It is the first time they have really been apart in nineteen years and it is going to be a hard adjustment for both of them to make. I can remember the thoughts I had in my first weeks away, how I would fantasise about what my family were doing, and how they could possibly cope in my absence, but once that all moved aside I began to realise that although I was tied to them, and that link would never break there was room to become myself in a lot more ways. The freedom afforded to me by University was one of the greatest life lessons I have encountered and as such I look back on it with firm fond memories. It is a time when you are going through so much physically and mentally, internally and externally, and you really start to work out who and where you are, what you want to be doing, and you get an awful lot of lessons along the way.
I would like to say good luck to anyone making those journeys this weekend, or in the coming weeks and remind you that it’s different and it is new but it is one of the best decisions you ever made, and it is well worth the debt.
Paul Schiernecker 