THOUGHTS ABOUT "EVERYTHING I DO" AND 1991

I was very tempted to deal with this most problematic of number ones with a swift six-word dismissal – something along the lines of “Well, you really needn’t have bothered” – and leave it at that. But in view of the exceptionally sad and unrepresentative procession of number ones which 1991 has offered, I can’t just leave it there. Not that you’d know from looking at this imperfect list, but 1991 not only boasted one of the best, hottest and longest summers in living memory (as I recall, it seemed to start midway through February and carried on well into November) but was a fantastic year for music.

If 1991’s two defining singles were, beyond question, “Unfinished Sympathy” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – Britain and America, black and white, what led up to them, what they led to – then everything else worthwhile about that year has some kind of umbilical connection to either, or both. There seems to have been a recent cooling of admiration for “Unfinished Sympathy,” which, though perhaps understandable in the sense that newcomers arriving at it now may wonder what the fuss was all about, so thoroughly has its vocabulary been absorbed into pop, remains unjustified. Those of us who sat or stood agog on first listening – and equally those of us who had already been primed by the previous autumn’s release of “Daydreaming” – knew that here was a beginning of time worthy of rank with “Good Vibrations” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” or “Cold Sweat” or “I Feel Love” or “Transmission.” Its terrible beauty lies in what is excluded from the record more than what is incorporated (the Wild Bunch having learned from dub and electric Miles and Jam and Lewis with equal fecundity); there is no bassline (Prince!), the song’s topline melody, carried solely by Shara Nelson’s vocal, takes some while to discern, Wil Malone’s Thom Bell-meets-Ben-Britten string arrangement is deliciously yet disturbingly minimalist, and – as confirmed by the ending’s explicit tribute to the ending of Joy Division’s “The Eternal” – the production is more than an apt match for a song about incompleteness, disorientation, indecision, dread. But its encroaching power also arises from its dextrous ability to weave so many strands of what had been good about post-punk, New Pop and post-Chic dance music into a spectacle so seamless and solid; this was the end of a journey which had begun with “She Is Beyond Good And Evil” and “(Somebody) Help Me Out” alike. Even Trevor Horn, who later cut the song with Tina Turner, had to bow in awe.

Likewise, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” absorbed everything that its author loved about his lonely eighties – the holy yearning of his C86 tape inhabitants, the hold-and-release tension of the Pixies, the bollock-bypassing power of Big Black, the Buttholes, Sonic Youth and Killdozer – all pent up for years and unleashed (expertly, for producer Butch Vig understood pop) in a torrent of not quite linear exhortations and ecstasies. No one who witnessed the stage invasion performance of the song on The Word (born in 1967, Cobain knew that the whole idea was that everyone should be able to join in), or the doped, 16 rpm growling rendition on TOTP, or saw them onstage at the Kilburn National or at Reading, or listened over and over to the aqueous blood of Nevermind, could have been in any doubt that Nirvana were a gateway; if not to Cobain’s own future, then to the generation (must we call it X?) who saw it as the call to arms that it was, that this was the next step…but to where?

And deriving indirectly from the beneficent, welcoming eclecticism of Massive Attack’s Blue Lines came Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, which encapsulated everything Bobby Gillespie knew in 1991 – but since he wisely left 99% of the record’s musical groundwork to others the record was the personification of the searing primary reds and yellows on its cover. Still, call Screamadelica a Sabres Of Paradise album in disguise, but it couldn’t have happened without Gillespie’s stupid, joyous, knowing, ignorant absorption of whatever he’d bought in Reckless or MVE the previous month, or having Weatherall drag him off to Acid House clubs to get the Primals away from becoming…the Stone Roses? Their performance at the Empire Leicester Square at the end of that August was spectral, nearly inhuman in its greatness; the endless chanting of “A Love Supreme” from someone who barely half a decade earlier wouldn’t be dragged from his Kim Fowley collection when still running the Splash One club back home in George Square. It was incendiary, illuminating, and we didn’t sleep for two days afterwards.

Of course there was also – especially! – rave; the KLF that era’s pop supremacists, and then Orbital, LFO and the Aphex Twin, all emerging from their various provincial corners to continue what Larry Heard, and for that matter Art Of Noise, and for anti-matter Joe Meek, had started; the Low Countries turning New Beat into a demonic Carl Orff chant which made Enigma sound even more like Ray Conniff; T99’s astonishing “Anaesthesia,” Human Resource’s “Dominator,” Quadrophonia’s “Quadrophonia,” endless, anonymous one-off smashes (Bizarre Inc, Brothers In Rhythm, Scotland’s Oceanic and Time Frequency), the Shamen dying and reborn (more about them in 1992) – and most significantly the Prodigy, smashing into that autumn’s top three with “Charly”; the terror of seventies kids’ public information films magnified and turning upon its parents with the greatest fuck-you attitude in pop since Jerry Lee Lewis. And then you had Altern-8 emerging with their Vicks sinus masks purchased from WH Smiths, 808 State triumphing with their manifesto for blood “In Your Face” and fantastic Ex:El album, happy hardcore just lurking around the corner at the farthest reaches of the FM dial, already stretching its lingerie to enter into the jungle…while Bomb the Bass’ “Winter In July” was an elegy for the eighties worthy of Massive Attack. That doesn’t even get us as far as the Orb, with their landmark double Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, and “Little Fluffy Clouds” finally and movingly shoehorning Steve Reich, Pat Metheny and Rickie Lee Jones into the top ten.

And Saint Etienne, with that summer’s soundtrack, Foxbase Alpha, still a potent lesson on how to learn and take from the old without sacrificing the new (Adele and others would do well to take detailed note of its example); there is the sixties bubblegum card idolatry, but also a Marine Ice cube of nowness – no one who did the rounds of Camden Town could fail to understand “London Belongs To Me” entirely, and “Nothing Can Stop Us” with its never-better use of a Dusty Springfield sample (even Dale Winton acknowledged its greatness) might have been never-was pop, but for us that summer it was absolutely on-the-punctumised-spot pop. Their distant cousins Stereolab also emerged that year with the Neu! pop of “Superelectric” (remember, no one else was doing Neu! pop in ’91, no one at all).

There was shoegazing, of course, and Chapterhouse and Slowdive’s albums have yet to vacate these shelves – shot down almost before they’d got started (were male critics frightened off by the generally feminine thrust of shoegazing?) but their music (as with, bless them, Lush) has persisted and still sounds good, and not just in an absentee Cocteau Twins sort of way. Blur were, as ever, somewhere in between; their debut album Leisure was messily optimistic, yet astonishing things like “Sing” already gave notice that their path was going to be neither obvious or uninteresting.

But shoegazing suffered in part because it had no choice but to crouch down mock-unworthily facing Loveless, a record and a group who are in a lot of ways still unwriteable, even if only because so much has already been written, possibly far too much. Suffice it to say here that with Loveless, MBV took the feminisation of pop further than anyone had yet done, and arguably no one has advanced on it since, by which I mean the detachment of body from music (the logical extension of the Bailey/Edge “playing with no hands” approach), the absence of male groin swerving, the near-total unification of thought, clarity, blurring, process and product. And in their Town and Country Club gig that December, a tape of which I still proudly possess, they played the music which in most ways I’d waited most of my life to see a “rock” group play (at last, they’ve caught up with Ornette!).

There were yet other pleasures to be sought; the sublime classicism of Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque, the third of Creation’s unbeatable 1991 trilogy, the generous faith which delivers songs of the elegant quality of “Star Sign” and “The Concept”; and Laughing Stock, Talk Talk’s nascent conclusion to 1988’s Spirit Of Eden, Mark Hollis walking even further into his own forest and finding something approaching peace and sanity. Meanwhile, Julian Cope walked towards the poll tax riots and released Peggy Suicide, his best record in seven years (and, in “Safe Surfer,” possibly his best ever song)…and perennial eighties indie no-hopers Pulp suddenly found themselves with the single “My Legendary Girlfriend,” and everyone with equal suddenness started listening. Did I mention the first Electronica album?

Hip hop remained potent in 1991; the year’s curveball was without doubt And Now The Legacy Begins by the Dream Warriors (Toronto ahoy!), a brilliant diffusion of old jazz samples and near-abstract new school electronica. The most articulate record was Ice-T’s O.G. (Original Gangster) – his “New Jack Hustler” is poetry worthy of Langston Hughes and should long since have been added to basic school literary curricula…and how depressingly true its sentiments remain today. Where Public Enemy remained the most blisteringly direct of rap acts with Apocalypse ’91: The Empire Strikes Black, and A Tribe Called Quest the most seductively ebullient with The Low End Theory, then PM Dawn were perilously close to falling off the planet entirely; the Spandau-quoting/bettering “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss,” a deserved top three hit, was a sneakily ethereal farewell to, and reinvention of, New Pop, and their album went out even further (“Reality Used To Be A Friend Of Mine”).

As for American “rock,” REM’s “Losing My Religion” welcomed Generation X as much in its quiet boldness as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” defined it – if only the Manic Street Preachers’ “Motown Junk,” the British “Teen Spirit” released in 1991 which nearly everyone who wasn’t a music journalist missed, had been properly available and gone to number one - and their Out Of Time album, though these days mainly viewed as a prequel to the unassailable greatness of Automatic For The People, is an eloquent delineation of what needed to fall (“Radio Song”) or be redefined (“Losing My Religion”) – and no one could object to their finding their own way back to “I’m A Believer” via “Shiny Happy People.” But the promise of the Runaways and Patti (and Suzi Quatro? And Gertrude Stein? And…) also made a violent impact with Pretty On The Inside, Hole’s first and best album, with Babes In Toyland’s To Mother and Bongwater’s brilliant The Power Of Pussy not far behind. And yet there were also Metallica (with their finest record, or at least the bookend to Master Of Puppets) and the Pixies, coming to an end but persevering with Trompe Le Monde, whose first side at least remains faultless. And from where-the-fuck-knows-where blew in Mercury Rev with the no wave one-song Astral Weeks that was “Carwash Hair” and the bewilderingly compelling Yerself Is Steam album.

I haven’t even mentioned the Keep Rock Scruffy camp of Carter USM, the Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and the like (with the partial exception of Carter’s 30 Something – the precise flipside of the Pet Shop Boys’ Behaviour, made more pronounced by their temporary ownership of the Reading Festival that Saturday night; alleged headliners James, though a perfectly fine and noble group, need not have bothered turning up – they were not my cup of Ribena, but goodness they were loved), and yet other events spring to mind (Definition Of Sound? “Missing The Moon” by the Field Mice? Curve?).

The reason why I have devoted 2000 or so words to describing what was so great and immortal about the crucial music of 1991 is in great part to offset a singularly depressing year for number ones, since, with the sole exception of the KLF and perhaps a couple of partial exceptions towards the year’s end, it has consisted of bland, unidemographic film themes, or subteen novelties, or a general refusal to face the present, let alone the future. Above all it deepens the central mystery of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” spending almost a third of that year at number one.

The record was at number one for 16 straight weeks – that is, four months, from July through to November – the longest continuous run of any record at the top. Indeed, the previous double-digit number one run was achieved by the previous record holder, Slim Whitman’s “Rose Marie,” on top for 11 weeks in 1955 (fittingly, the veteran country star guested at one of Adams’ Wembley concerts that autumn to indulge in a duet of that latter song) – though Frankie Laine’s cumulative 18-week run with “I Believe” over three spells in 1953 is now unlikely ever to be bettered.

And yet the most remarkable thing about “Everything I Do” is its total unremarkability. It doesn’t sound like the sort of translucent epic which would cross all boundaries and appeal to everyone; instead it still comes across as just another conveyor belt power ballad tacked onto the end of a hopeful blockbuster (in this case, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, featuring Kevin Costner as himself, Morgan Freeman warming up for playing exactly the same role in Unforgiven and Alan Rickman as Peter Wyngarde), bolted together by Adams and his co-authors Michael Kamen and producer Mutt Lange. Everything about it seems so mechanically assembled, from its pauses and meticulous build-up of volume and assumed intensity (the “there’s NO love! Like YOUR love!! And no OTHER!!! Could give MORE love!!!” in the bridge, the dying organ following the post-Rod hoarseness of “I’d die for you,” the sadly noted presence of Little Feat’s Bill Payne on piano) that it could only appeal to people who wanted the façade of love rather than its dirtier reality.

Speaking of which, many records were stopped at number two by the Adams juggernaut, but since they were generally of the order of “More Than Words,” the Everly Brothers tribute proffered by lo-cal Red Hot Chili Peppers wannabes Extreme (and yet this was the year of Blood Sugar Sex Magik and “Under The Bridge”!) or the Scorpions’ ghastily whistling triumph-of-capitalism ode “Wind Of Change” they need not bother us too much. But the unluckiest was the best – “I’m Too Sexy” by the hip, knowing and intelligent New Pop disciples Right Said Fred, number one in the States but stuck at number two behind Bryan for six long weeks.

And yet this was a time when singles sales were said to be beginning their decline, an age of short, sharp runs at the top. So what, or who, exactly kept “Everything I Do” at number one for so long. Although it eventually passed the million mark, its sales were not record-breaking (given that, for instance, the original “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” had sold over three million in just five weeks at the top) and the murmurs spread that it had retained the number one because sales were generally low and there was…wait for it…no competition.

No competition? But I’ve just spent the best part of an hour and a half detailing everything else that was happening! Still, look at the chart peaks of some of those singles I mentioned above, and others besides – “Unfinished Sympathy” stopped at #13, “Losing My Religion” didn’t get past #19, “Higher Than The Sun” was lucky to snatch one week at #40, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” made it to #7. Then again, consider the cumulative sales of their parent albums, all of which have continued to sell (and still occasionally re-enter the album chart) to this day. Such records were designed for long-term impact.

But in 1991 they didn’t cross over. As good as Simply Red’s Stars is in its own way (and at its best, e.g. “For Your Babies,” it is very good indeed), its status as the year’s top seller spelt it out; benign and essentially harmless music designed to appeal to the maximum catchment area. While Hucknall is smart enough to put his profits to good use (much of the royalties from that album helped finance the indispensable Blood and Fire reggae/dub reissue label), what is there to say about Dire Straits’ On Every Street (apart from the odd Johnny Marr influence in the title track) or Waking Up The Neighbours, or the polite double face of New Rock, Use Your Illusion I & II by Guns N' Roses, with its four top five singles, including a Schwarzenegger film theme, two 1973 cover versions and a bad 1973 Elton John pastiche, or…well, there may be something to say about the radio of that time; Radio 1 in particular had not yet undergone its Matthew Bannister purge, and apart from Peel at night and the Evening Session slightly earlier, it was still primarily staffed by many of the same ageing DJs and producers who had been present at its launch in 1967, whose politics were conservative (usually with a capital C) and whose musical preferences followed suit. Thus the Establishment – Collins, Clapton, etc. – still ruled, and despite its original purpose being a station for youth, it was now largely designed for the same valiumised housewives who would have wept along with Vikki Carr back at the beginning of this story. They didn’t still quite trust youth to make its own mind up, and several of the year’s key dance crossover smashes – “Charly” among them – were not even playlisted. And while Generation X, both here and there, had the volume, their parents still had the spending power, and with the still nascent onset of the CD reissue “revolution” the old songs were still favoured, the past still cherished at the future’s expense. “Everything I Do,” then – a Simon Bates Our Tune if ever there were one – symbolises in its terrifying (if impermanent) triumph the death which lies in cherishing what you already know and shutting your mind and life off to any notion of a future. I’ll leave it in the corporate past, where it belongs, with the corporate types who release albums with titles like Waking Up The Neighbours then move into a house in Chelsea and buy and close down the pub next door because it makes too much noise. As for Canadian music in 1991, I was always more of a Consolidated fan.

NEVER MIND THE ROYAL WEDDING, HERE'S THE BOOK OF THE BLOG!

Kate and William might be hitting the streets on Friday 29 April but so is this:



More information here.

2009: A Club Odyssey: CODA

It was now the early afternoon; the sun glowed golden on everything, lending a grandeur to even the shabbiest of their possessions. He had already mentioned leaving upon their first discussion, but now it was clear that he would, for now at least, stay. What once was had come back again; it was like any drought or lack being relieved, a pleasure that was quiet, fulfilling, without being necessarily obvious to any outsiders. Of course there were no outsiders now, beyond a few loyal friends. They gathered to celebrate his return, to celebrate their once again being together, her safe from...them, and him safe after many longueurs and escapes and the ultimate fight, one where he sped through what he had to do as if it was nearly - nearly - just another chore, so close he felt to her, to what they perhaps once could be again...

...but of course after a while he was restless; he longed for the sea, a crew, new things to see; but she wanted to go with him too. It was their own conflict and not one that could be easily solved. He had to go on, he said; why, she would say, quite reasonably. But she knew he loved tests, and that this one, the next one, might be even greater. And that no matter what she was with him anyway; his chaste time on the island, after the wedding, here and there, proved that. Ultimately there was no difference between them, save for the physical, the geographical. He moved on, but not before promising that he would change things forever, without violence, that those radicals he met at the club would not always be defeated...

She smiled and took up weaving again, this time letting it stand every night, and they waited for spring and the next adventure to begin.

2009: A Club Odyssey Pt. 17

"The scene was a mess; the girl gang that attacked, not caring who noticed or who cared, started it all, those delirious women threw spiked orange juice and went for the big man, though they were all targets. The insurgents had it easier after that, mocking those that ran away, helping the girls find weapons, lending their own...your guy and his helper were there but I think they were too shocked at first to know what on earth to do. But the helper - who must have some special powers I'm sure - opened the way to the big man, and your guy just wailed on him like a blacksmith with an anvil. There was no escape." He looked at her with a kind of calm sternness and said, "He did what he had to do. That man tried to hurt you and that is what any man would have done in return. I'm going now." And so he left, and her own familiar found her soon enough, walking the wending paths and wondering about how Orion was a hunter in the sky, her guy wasn't a hunter but forced into killing. She felt sad for him but felt nothing, numbness, for those who had hung around. They were dead to her, whether they were or were not.


******************

"The DJ kept playing songs all through it, barricaded as he was in his booth. The first one sounded kind of desperate, to tell the truth, but it wasn't like he was going to play anything hardcore. Then he got a bit ironic and I knew everything was going to work out. Once that was over it was all calls for ambulances and people who survived limping off. Your guy had seen enough and went off with his pal, I heard his pal saying "Well that settles that, windypants" and then she gave a look of total contempt to those who had lost, saying that if only they had listened to her and not just themselves, they would have survived. But they didn't."

******************

They had reached the house, at last, after walking a long way; she had gotten home already and was resting, talking with her companion amiably and expecting...him, not quite knowing if he would bother to show up. It would be a long time before he would get home, shouldn't it...

He paused and looked up at the house that for so long had been just the idea, not the thing; the dream and not the vision. Despite the warnings of his friend he paused a bit more, no longer afraid of anyone or anything. There was the bed, the windows, the door, the roof, the garden which was wild and yet still beautiful, all of it a bit run down but lovely still...he walked and remembered their awkward courtship, him winning her as a prize but this not making them what they were to become, their inner and outer lives having to adjust this way and that...they said yes and yes, but then he had to go, despite his feigning madness...she thought of the same things, saw a few hangers-on leaving quickly and her heart brightened, even though she still wasn't exactly sure what to think or expect.

*********************

A knock on the door; his knock. She got up, straightened her dress and calmly walked to the door. A pause; no, I'm not looking out the window again. Enough. Really, enough. Not the tiny window eyehole in the door either. It's him or it's not and if it is...her stomach rumbled. She opened the latch and the door swung open...

...and there he was, a little abashed. They didn't really look at each other at first; suddenly officially knowing was almost too much. Their eyes met at last, however, and the truth, complex and yet boiling down to something simple, was there. Now for him to act this way and her that, the old rituals, ancient even at this stage, for her to be skeptical and him mostly quiet...

...but it was there; it flooded the room; when she said "How do you know I can't move the bed for a guest?" it was pretty much obvious what was going on and how he knew. She began to cry and he moved to her and held her, and his pal, who was there but invisible now, just the voice in his head, was happy. They got up and danced with joy, once she had stopped crying, dancing from room to room, eventually collapsing and then all was well, or as well as it would ever be.

Could they ever really be parted again? Her view was that he was still free to roam, because that is what he did; that if they were meant to be together then they would be. It is written, as he said, it has always and will always be written. Our story will last, long after us. It is one of the story of stories and we can do what we like.

2009 A Club Odyssey: Part 16

It was the end - that could be in no doubt. Him just sitting there made her feel as if she was still running down, down, the wind shaking in her, her tongue and voice gone, because if he was not a god then he was certainly more than a man; she was just able to hear him talk. Fire, or at least some heat, caught in her blood, as if her heart expanded to her lungs, her arms and legs. It was a good thing she was already sitting down, or else she would have to sit down.

"Are you all right? Say something, please. Who were those women? I mean, bacchantes at this time of day?" He was genuinely puzzled, kind, which of course made the whole thing worse. She shook her head, glad for some neutral territory. "Bacchantes don't really care about the time of day, normally." A bird hooed and hooed, hooted once definitively, as if in agreement. "Long night?" he said, and then stopped. She looked at him as if to say that this night was the last, there wasn't going to be another one. Not away from home, at this rate. Looking at him, which she could barely do that last time, was something she could do now. His eyes drank her in - small, frightened, very much alone. It was why he ran after her in the first place; not to confront her, but to let her know that, while he didn't want her any more, he was still very much concerned about her. "I think I know what's going on, in case you don't."

"It's on, it's on, you know they're fighting. I mean, it was going to happen. You were right to get out. The fight is a good one but I didn't want to get involved; I am a prize coward." "And he would have thought of you as the enemy, which you aren't." "Well, no, I needed your help, they didn't." She began to cool off, a little. She was getting used to his voice, like hot water. "They thought they could pull it off, and I led them to the club and..." He shook his head at the simplicity of it all. "God, they really are sheep, aren't they? Did they really think that you were going to do something for them? To say, take it all, who cares?" I got to know them and what they were like and just how far I could go." She watched a squirrel hop past, then paused. "I saw the hunter in the early morning. Did you see him, in the sky? A good sign." "Yes." "I think that hunter was a woman, you know." She looked at him with some puzzlement now. "There was a girl there who just wanted to kill one man. That's how it started, then all hell proverbially broke loose. He started in then, aided by his friend, and the bodies piled up..." How do you know all this? "Gut instinct. Let's just say I know, but really it was all foretold anyway. And yes, he knew full well it was you, you know." She felt the heat blanket her again; he seemed closer than he was, she found it hard to breathe and turned away. His brown eyes were too big; he wasn't Pan, exactly, but she began to see why the bacchantes would run towards him, similarly big-eyed and breathless. It's on, it's on, she thought, I have to get going home, to get there before he does. She got up abruptly and began to walk. "Can I come with you? Part of the way? I know I can't, aah..." "Yes, but we must hurry. He's in pain and I have to think of a way to trick him, to give him pause. I have to forget. Tell me about the hunter."

TEN YEARS OF ILX: A LIFE SAVED

I first became aware of I Love Music through what was then called New York London Paris Munich (a.k.a. Freaky Trigger), and I became aware of the latter because Simon Reynolds bigged it up in an end-of-year round-up in the Christmas 2000 Wire. Mainstream published music writing meant next to nothing to me in those days; the theoretical rush which had powered the writing with which I had grown up and by which I had been influenced seemed to have totally vanished, to be replaced by demographic-friendly waiter’s lists, things which told their desired audience exactly what they wanted to hear, rather than things they didn’t know. I went to Reynolds’ then blog for further info, traced the links, and NYLPM/FT looked like the kind of place where my kind of music writing flourished, or had even been resuscitated. ILM kicked off as a comment box to NYLPM/FT and expanded from there.

I first posted there in April 2001, with some comments about the then state of the music press and specifically the NME (yes, it was MC Stuck Needle even then). I didn’t intend to follow it up at all but this guy Robin Carmody responded and actually remembered me from the old combative days of the Melody Maker letters pages (perhaps fortunately, my numerous Letters Of The Week have yet to resurface online) so I stuck around. My then partner Laura was pretty sceptical about the whole thing, thought that reading it was a waste of time, let alone posting to it. But Laura was busy studying for her professional librarian qualifications and so my presence on ILM was an excuse for me to keep out of her way (at her request).

Things worked pretty well for a month or so. Then Laura fell seriously ill, was diagnosed with cancer and deteriorated rapidly. She died nine years ago this Wednesday just past. And I went to pieces, pretty publicly. If I wanted to erase any internet carbon footprints they would constitute the vast majority of what I posted to ILX (as it had then become, ILM, ILE and its sundry satellites) after August 2001; talk about redefining the term “projection.” Still it has to be said that the people who (for me) counted on ILX were remarkably patient and supportive of me, even when I was at my worst, and through the networks of friendship which opened up for me via ILX I was able to carve a path through to the renewed life which I now live. An extended meditation on Pulp’s We Love Life which I posted on ILM in October 2001 was republished shortly afterwards on FT at Ned Raggett’s request and the reception gave me the confidence I needed to go ahead and set up my own blog. The rest is history and doesn’t need to be retraced here.

I hung on in there for just over eight years, and times were more often than not stormy. If I had the time over again I wouldn’t have said around 98% of what I did say and a lot of people there still haven’t forgiven me but there’s nothing I can about that; people are people and I can’t force them to like me, any less than I can compel them not to slag me off for something I posted nine years ago, when my life and circumstances, and therefore my beliefs, were entirely different from what they are now. But then you had the collective community response to 7/7; what can I say, that proved how important ILx could be when push came to shove, and the response helped drag me out of my self-destructive purpose-free ennui and, again, towards the life I now have.

I stopped posting regularly in June of last year; there was no big precipitatory factor, I simply drifted away. This was just before the Bimble business but that certainly didn’t encourage me to return. In fact since June 2009 I’ve posted precisely twice on ILX; once to note the passing of Harry Beckett, and once to provide a link to an old CoM piece which somebody couldn’t find. And both of these were within the last month, which may or may not signify something. ILX belongs to others now – the second generation of the community – and these days I tend to break bread with the old school ILXors in the Popular comments boxes, the more patient speed of which agrees more with the sort of things I want to talk about. The last decade has been akin to going to school again, but in a good way; learning how to live once more was the main lesson and I would have been a goner without it.

And, just to clear things up, I am definitely not Geir.

2009: A Club Odyssey, part 15

It was early, quite early, as she caught the little local bus - one of several she'd had to take over hill and through dale, dipping and sloping here and there. The sun was over the horizon by now, slanting and glittering through the trees, the sky a clear blue. She was tired; she didn't want anything more than to go home.

But she didn't have to go home in this way. She had a growing fear that she would come across someone and that he - the last suitor, the one she could not shake off - would appear. There was no way to know but to confront (possibly, possibly not) him; and so she was on this bus, going up, uphill, then veering along a residential street. She felt like the eagle that could look at the sun; the sun on the horizon that dazzled and stunned in equal turns...

...the bus crossed the bridge, yes that one, the view giving her a glimpse of so much she had just experienced, the dome, the tall buildings, the river; then it was gone and the bus went between the pavements and cars and all the greenness and freshness and vividness of the day began to oppress; this was too much like something else to bear up being itself, just itself, for too long. She saw a figure that looked like him - almost, but not quite - ahead, and knew as she looked that he in turn would look back.

She buzzed to be let out and the bus stopped at the corner. She had no idea where to turn, whether to confront him or no; the pull towards him was as strong as the push. She could not look at him; she knew he was most definitely looking at her. In her guts she knew one thing, that she had to go home, and so she began to run down hill, and sure enough he followed, yelling "Hey! Stop! Please stop! Don't go away!" But she could not stop.

And the hell of it was that the beauty of the day was in her face non-stop. The flowers, the light on the grass, the birds singing, but she was again breathless and finding her way down through the path to the field below, hoping she would not somehow be stopped, that she would not stop herself. "Please please stop, I didn't mean to hurt you!" he cried out. She could hear him closer now, calling her name as well and clearly, clearly not giving up. She had no allies, no friends here, in the dense intensity, the twigs and flying seeds in her hair, but all of a sudden some girls, some rather excited girls, loomed ahead. Their eyes were wide in ecstasy, honey and cream were their clothes and their hands were sweet. "HELLLLP!!" she cried out, and they saw him grimacing trying to keep up and in their madness they thought he was someone else, and set upon him like a pack of wolves. They shrieked, they chased, they did not let up--

--she could not pause as the path turned sharply to a side, the ground flattened at last, pavement reappeared, and the girls had caught him, she heard his shrieks and covered her ears. This is what it was like, and half of her wanted to go back, to help him, but she was simply too damn tired, from the night.

Somehow - perhaps because he looked like a woodland creature himself? Because he was stronger than he thought? - he did escape them, just barely, to run down to her, improbably; the pull for him was too much, and the girls, when they did reach him, could not agree, quite, on what to do to or with him. He was bruised and roughened up, but no more...

...he reached her, as she was still gasping for breath and sitting, more like lying on her side, looking at a flower. Those girls were not her. He sat down and looked at her, the only one who survived and who would survive. He had no special gift, and this is what saved him in the end. The sun shone on the grass, turning into gold, the birds trilled in the silence. They soberly looked at each other again.