Pages be witness

I slept most of today, rising in the dark at to stumble across to Andrew St. and the newsagent. At this point, Lee and I experienced a trough of frustration at our mutual decline into stagnation. We were tired and bitter at ourselves and our own weakness and enslavement to the Present.

Pages be witness: another dayweekmonthlife like all the rest, time squandered in self-perpetuating torment at my spineless existence.

Eyeless, brainless, no thought, no future, no work.

I’m driven to the conclusion that desperate measures are all that can rescue me from the stinking pit of MOMENT, and yet I’m simultaneously overwhelmed by the hopelessness of my case. I’m trying hard not to use words inappropriately. I don’t want to exaggerate, distort or paint an inaccurate picture, and I appreciate how easy it is to let dramatic words and phrases swim into mind’s view, and yet . . .

My plight is serious.

I’ve attempted nothing in the way of work, and the work that I have done is dissatisfying and infuriating. My essay on chance has preoccupied me in an indirect way for several weeks. The incidental moments and passing frames of mind have, with neglect, blurred now into an indistinct ribbon of interminable afternoons and nights. It’s impossible for me to pick out specific instants and dwell on them, in my usual fashion.

The particulars have gone and all I’m left with are the generalities . . . and as my life ‘in general’ has no structure or purpose at the moment I’ve got little to write about other than my work and housing situation . . .

Scourge of Britain’s youth

Routine: Masquerades, Barry there with his girlfriend (“I’ve got to go now” whenever he sees her alone).

Afterwards, Del and John finally went round to Broad Street and Lee, Lindsey, Stu and I went along too. Del and John subjected Barry to an hour-long verbal assault for his association with Jason and co. and his indifference towards what Turney kept referring to as his ‘true friends.’ I kept quiet, listening to the pointless wrangling and quite enjoying it. Then we all retired to Maynard Gardens to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween III on Ian’s video. 


Endless afternoons and evenings at Westdorgan Road—TV, kitchen, collective apathy, Boredom with a capital B. More drugs tonight after Maynard Gardens—the scourge of Britain’s youth. 


I’m tired. My eyes are heavy and my mind isn’t feeling up to much. The effort required to put thoughts into words is too great at this late hour. I find myself rereading things I wrote a year ago and looking back regretfully at the ease with which I seem to have lost a whole way of thought/writing.

It’s slipped away.

I am £80 overdrawn, with £50 in the Building Society, and another £70 on my limit at the bank available. Here I am, 20, time flying by. Two years is such a long time at 16 but now, it goes before I’m even ready to savour the moment.

Tits on a bull

Lee and I (the old formula over again) ventured once more to the abattoir amidst the skinned cows’ heads and cheerful slaughter men, because Lee’s latest piece (to be titled “Adam and Eve” and to be unveiled at a second year's exhibition) demands a cow’s cunt and bull’s equivalent which he will sew onto pillows:

“Could I have a cow’s genitals, please?”

“Only bulls have genitals, you prick. Is it the tits you want?” 


I loitered in the fresh air waiting for Lee and at length he emerged with a Londis bag full of still steaming fat and bloody flesh, uterus n’ all. Such tasks are becoming routine. He wants to create shock and confusion by being brutal and inconsistent, and a recent tutorial of his began the trend, although by all accounts his shifting position and constant U-turns came across less as brutal inconsistency and more as simple defeatism.

His next scheme is to create a disgusting room, à la Texas Chainsaw Massacre, complete with bloodied walls and, instead of a door, a curtain of human teeth. 


We at Westdorgan Road view the goings-on at the Art College with cynicism, and I think it does Lee good to be with us, otherwise he’s in danger of getting sucked in by the incessant pseudery, posing and bullshit that seems to be part and parcel of that College, and thereby losing all perspective. The trash which passes as ‘art’ in that place is incredible, and there doesn’t seem to be any critical faculty operating in either tutors or students. Any old rubbish is OK so long as it’s accompanied by an appropriate piece of self-justifying bullshit. No one is willing to be thorough or self-critical. 


At least I just joined the record library, which is something I suppose. I took out Stravinky's The Soldier’s Tale and Charles Ives' Pictures of New England and Symphony No. 2. 


The vocabulary is lacking.

24-hour lethargy people

How do I start?

I feel helpless and disgusted with myself for my laziness and blinkered attitudes. The thought of these blank pages is enough to fill me with a leaden sense of my own futile striving and hopelessly lazy temperament, whereas once I would’ve just picked up a pen and just started to write . . .

It’s almost as if I see myself as an empty shell, devoid of any colour or depth . . . This household has a grip on me, and I can’t shake it off. Brain like jelly, words wafting by, just beyond reach. 


Individuality is eroded in this environment of 24-hour lethargy, chronic inability to rise from bed in the morning, interminable TV hours red-eyed till close-down. My work suffers, and I’ve missed two successive tutorials for Harrison’s European Modernism course, for which I hate myself (the course is actually rewarding), and I’ve still to finish one of Faulkner’s novels let alone the dozen or so we should have completed by now.

I keep shoring myself up with the familiar, weary promises: “Always tomorrow . . .” 


I submerge myself in the collective nihilism of our little world here at Westdorgan Road and I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be alone and to read and to feel body-mind-hand suffused with power and shivering excitement at an idea.

I partially blame my cell-like room, although admittedly my lifestyle can hardly be called austere, but I still think that the absence of any private space into which I can retreat occasionally is responsible for my steady decline.

You don’t look the type

I’m dreading the Letter (or the ‘phone call) with the verdict on my future. Just now the telephone rang and I went to answer it with jangling nerves and a thudding heart . . . but it was only Andrew ringing to talk about the match.

Things are better left hidden and unsaid.

 Last night Lee called in at Westdorgan Road and he and I took the bus into town and went to the Underground. It was full of first year students and I almost felt pity for them all having so long left. I talked briefly with one, a Poly student named Jim who seemed surprised when I said I was at Watermouth.

“You don’t look the type” he told me, which I took as a compliment. 


Afterwards Lee, Barry and I went to Maynard Gardens. These days Gav’s room is always full of people coming and going. While we were there several soul-boys came and settled down, acting very familiar with Gav. His room presented a sordid sight; foil, wads of dirty cotton wool, used syringes, and Rizla papers littered the floor, all the seedy paraphernalia of the drug culture. Ian got quite carried away by it all and started talking about “jacking up” and “dorking out.” 


Barry too is always coming out with drug clichés, endlessly trotting out all the miserable words and phrases (“Chasing the dragon,” “skag,” ‘Blow,” “crash-out”). It’s difficult to believe he takes it all so seriously, but evidently he does.

This afternoon we were at Broad Street, in Jason’s room, and it made me realise again how much I despise that whole type (for it is a definite type that’s about these days, a newer version of the old hippy dope smoking, pacifistic, ‘Bongs-not-Bombs’ formula).

Lee and Stu and I amuse ourselves by parodying the sort of “it’d be good on acid” type comment that they’re always coming out with and which sums up their outlook completely. And sure enough, today as Barry and Jason discussed the relative merits of music vis–à–vis painting in terms of its impact on the audience, Barry declared that music is much more effective and Jason came back with, “yeah, but if go to a modern art gallery while you’re tripping . . .”

I should have got up and walked out right then.