For those of you checking for a new post or feed, the wait is almost over....
There'll be a new Memoires post put up within the next few days. It will be a post about youth and love and friendship and lipstick on the eve of adulthood. It will belong to the nostalgic set of posts which get put up around here.... I suppose they all do. It will start with a motorbike crash and not get much happier than that.
It's 02.55am on a lonely friday morning.... I'm suffering from a badly cut hand and lack of sleep. If you're after poetry it's in the works. For now, it's one last cigarette then the night is mine...
Take care All... it's an empty world full of people... Shane. X
Know how you feel about the sleep thing...is a pain nothing to help me and am skint...
ReplyDelete"it's an empty world full of people... " One of the most beautiful word bouquet i've come across. Thank you Shane.
ReplyDeleteWell hurry up and post it you lazy bastard!!
ReplyDeletePS How ARE you??
oh yeah did I even tell you? i changed my blog to
ReplyDeletehttp://gledwood4.blogspot.com
no malware warnings on this one, no ridiculously overcrowded sidebar but otherwise same old shite, different day ;-)
... and what did you do to your hand??
ReplyDeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteyeah have been waiting/looking forward to a new post. Hope everything is ok. sent you an e-mail a couple of weeks ago.
Yas xx
Scene: grotty motel room
ReplyDeleteSuddenly two large men burst in, sweating heavily, and carrying large bags – of bank-notes.
“Lock the door, I’ll get the curtains.”
“I think we did it. I think we fucking did it!”
“There’s got to be fifty grand in there, easy”
“I swear I saw no one behind, no one behind us”
“Stay low here for two hours, then make our move”
“Pass one of those beers and turn the TV on”
“Why do I always have to get the beers?”
“Shut the fuck up! We just robbed a bank and we are fucking rich”
“Just got to stay cool. There’s hundreds of rent-dives in this area, can’t search all of them, and 50
grand is small-scale by their standards. We’re cool”
“Hey listen – we made the news…”
“ we are getting reports that some time in the last hour two criminals have robbed the Capital Bank at gunpoint in the city-centre on Jenkem Street. The police say the two bank robbers got away before they could get to the crime scene on the far side of the old city”
“Hang on a minute, turn that down, turn that fucking down NOW”
“OK, don’t lose your rag, they don’t see where we went, got it, we’re cool”
“Dagga, my old mate, you are missing the fucking point. Did you just hear what that presenter called us on TV?”
“She didn’t call us no names Billy, nothing”
“If you listen carefully to the next broadcast you will hear that she is calling us ‘bank robbers’”
“Bank robbers?”
“Precisely. Because our robbing of a bank, albeit motivated by poverty and social exclusion, is a stigmatiized and criminal activity, they think they have the right to stereotype us as ‘bank robbers’, which is to stick a label on us without any consultation, and so disempower us”
“So what can we do to stop it, innit? What?”
“I am going to call up the TV station and insist that they call us ‘people who rob banks’, or perhaps ‘persons who rob banks’. I will not have my human identity demeaned by the implicit attribution that all I do of any significance is rob banks, as so clearly connoted by the turning of a verb into a noun”
“Yeah, this is not just a personal thing, it’s a political issue”
“Language and its application are essential factors in the healthy evolution of our species”
“We are ‘people who rob banks’, not ‘bank robbers’, and this socio-linguistic discrimination must be weeded out by its undemocratic roots. [End of Act 1, Scene 1]
Sending you a kiss to make it better xxx :)
ReplyDeleteHey Shane
ReplyDeleteLike ur blog ur honestys amusing, like poetry too... looking forward 2 seeing what u got :-)
Claire
waiting for another great post
ReplyDeleteno pressure though :-)
Air is over-rated. Stick with coming
ReplyDeleteHey Shane,
ReplyDeleteWhat did you do to your hand?
I know I've dissed herbal treatments before but one that does work for me for insomnia is herbal sedative; Valerian. It smells kind of like an old tramps unwashed arse (no I don't go around sniffing their bums - the smell usually comes to you, especially on the tube)and rotten feet. Might be the smell that knocks me out. My cat seems to like it, he practically makes love to the jar I keep it in.
It's not quite like a sleeping tablet that will knock you out on the spot, you need to actually get in bed and get comfy.
Summer seems to be coming. That's something I suppose.
Take care
K
shane do you have any formal writing education or has it just evolved over time. either way it is very impressive buddy. jimbo bristol.
ReplyDeleteHey Jimbo,
ReplyDeleteWell I was always advanced in English and from a very young age teachers were marking me out as a future writer. At the age of 12 I won a London Schools poetry competition (though a year later I found myself flung out of the education system for good). So even though I was advanced in English and was doing well, I wasn't at school for the years when you learn about grammar and structure and literature and criticism. So no, I have no formal training.... but many writers don't. Many writers have degrees, but not degrees in writing or journalism... and even a masters in English Lit is no qualification of 'how to write'. So for me, from the age of fifteen (to now) I've just taken a very keen interest in literature and took the trouble of teaching myself about grammar and structure and rhythm. I also have this weird ability where I can read a page or two of any author and from just that can plagiarize their style quite convincingly. That probably means that I have a natural ear for words and rhythm and from that, have learnt how to evoke what I want with them. I also never read books for the story, but read taking hundreds of mental notes on pace, flow, sentence structure, style, etc. It's quite rare I ever finish a book. I've usually taken all I need from it way before the end. But there are a few authors who I pay the respect of taking in every last word. I think more important than having had any formal training is having a natural, raw poetry and a passion to express the world around you... the first is a gift and cannot be taught. Without that you can be a journalist, or a competent novelist, but you cannot take words to another level where they become your chosen art form. I don't say I can... that's not for me to judge, but I do feel i've a natural poetry and rhythm which has always been there. Even now, looking at stuff I wrote when I was nine, the poetry is the same and I can immediately see and understand that it was ME who wrote those words. But it's not easy to write well. People think it's effortless, but it's not... it's very exhausting and comes at a price. And everyday I learn more about writing and how to write, or advance my own thoughts on it. It's something that can never be mastered and which has always the space for further improvement. Anyone who thinks they've mastered writing is gonna have one hell of a shock on their deathbed... when they realize that words and language just aren't nearly enough.
Thoughts and Wishes, Shane. X
Hey K, I can't talk about my hand just now... just in case by some freak chance the wrong people see it. lets just say that there is a thing called 'a work accident' and if you have a work accident you get time off work and get paid after the first three days. But it's not easy to have a work accident... unless you're crazy enough to injure yourself... say 'slice your own hand open'. It's suspected that that is what I did and my employer would love to have proof of it. Of course I wouldn't do something like that! Only a heroin-addicted psycho would do such a thing. And as I'm one but not the other, it was a work accident which happened when I was all alone and caught my hand on a piece of sharp metal protruding from the wall. Not guilty your Honour... X
ReplyDeleteShane who are the authors that you respect so much? would love to read the books you would recommend.
ReplyDeleteHey Absolut Ruiness... I won't give away all my secrets, but a recommendation just for you is a Nigerian writer called Ben Okri. Read his book The Famished Road. Coming from India, a country with a wonderful history of mythology, I'm sure you will see a magic in that mans words which will follow you around the streets of Mumbai.
ReplyDeleteThe Famished Road
"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry."
Ben Okri - opening paragraph of The Famished Road.
Hope you're well Absolut R, and thank you for all your comments and time you've spent on my words... Shane. X
Thanks Shane! Will be all the more grateful after Iv gone through the book.
ReplyDelete