So I finally find the time for an update. The irony is: The only time that I feel I have the opportunity to write is at work. It’s not as if I was just faffing about and not doing anything; it’s more like it’s my job to faff about and not do anything.
Alright, so I’ve prepared and initiated the media contacts for the Dublin event, I’ve done the odd bits and bobs, and now everyone has miraculously disappeared and I sit here and got nothing to do. Oh dear, even sorting invoices by date seems an inspiring activity now.
I am eating a cheese sandwich.
To recap shortly what’s happened over the past two weeks: Nothing. Well, ok, my boyfriend was here and someone else is coming over today, but hell – you can’t even go dancing in this city.
Last Saturday we ended up in 5th Avenue, a nightclub which would easily win a prize in the category Ugliest Venue North of Nuneaton. It’s advertised as “Your No.1 Indie Experience” – and a No.1 experience it was indeed. Just what it was to do with Indie music I didn’t quite understand. The DJs clearly didn’t have the time to pack their CD case and had hurriedly grabbed Crossing All Over compilations no. 1 to 45. They ended up playing everything from ‘this one song by Nirvana’ (i.e. Smells Like Teen Spirit) via Linking We’re-Oh-So-Fucking- Depressed-Kids-And-Have-No-Future-But-Just-Can’t-Resolve-To-Draw-
The-Right-Consequences Park and 2003 Kerrang singalongs to ‘this other song by Nirvana’ (i.e. Come As You Are). The kids (aka the clubbers) were having fun, but I guess that was more because of the alcohol.
I felt too old and out of place and the music reminded me of my dreadful teenage days. It left me wondering what it made them feel like – most of them were a little too young to remember the Stone Roses and Oasis songs they were shouting. They probably still watched Batman and sang the Ninja Turtles Title Theme. (Not that I had my head screwed on the right way when the Stone Roses where still around.) What can I say? It was embarrassing and dreadful at the same time. The fact that I paid four quid to get in didn’t make it any better.
What else? In a few weeks time, the good times will be over. No more smoking indoors, no more flicking your butts carelessly on the streets. Cigarettes will once and for all become associated with the cold and a slight drizzle, with getting up, leaving your drink behind (at least no one will want to drug-rape me, I guess) and being – quite literally – an outsider. Ok, so cigarette smoke smells and damages your health. But people, let me tell you: This fricking health craze, this overbearing nanny attitude and this sense of smug non-smoking superiority are so the antithesis to cool that I’ll rather be wet and cold and have my drink spiked.
I wouldn’t mind giving up – if I could, that is – but all this hoo-ha has really put me off. I know well enough that I am damaging both my purse and my health (and yours, but who says I care?), but so far that’s never deterred me. The only reason for giving up is the knowledge and very real experience of actually being hooked on the stuff. In the face of all this anti-smoker talk, however, I am beginning to take pride in it.
Talking health and smugness, by the way, I’d like to suggest that the next thing the state should be cracking down is Muesli. The shit is full of sugar and fat but people still think it’s not only not damaging their bodies and fostering obesity, but believe it’s actually doing them good. Still, there no high taxes on Muesli. There’s no legal age. Heavens, people are feeding it to their kids! Every day. Give or take a few years, the little’uns won’t want to live without the stuff. Oh, and greenhouse-grown lamb’s lettuce. Could someone please pass a law requiring me to carry a voucher with enables to obtain that only once a year?
Yes, I know – it’s not about cracking down on the smokers. It’s about the smoke. Because it’s damaging. To others. My environment. My loved ones. Or whatever.
It’s like not poisoning the pigeons but simply forbidding them to shit on the monuments. By decree. Good job.
I try my best to look busy. I think I manage well enough. No one’s paying me any attention. Monk is preaching on the phone. Flower is.. well, wherever he is now. One never knows. Kasparov is contemplating studying in Germany, for fun, not for a degree – but doesn’t speak any German. Blue is surfing on myspace, or summink like that.
By the way, I don’t mean to sound disdainful. I love the work (if there is any) and I quite like this lot. They’re fun and generally good and welcoming people. To be frank, if I had the choice I’d just stay here and work. We might need to put on a few more festivals in order for me not to be bored, or I might do three days a week and some freelancing (Me, Shakespeare) or washing the dishes (Me, Rig to Ratches) – anything really. Just no more German universities. It is hard to be loyal and enthusiastic, it is hard to stay motivated when every time you go abroad you’re being reminded that in your own country you’re but a parasite stealing the taxpayer’s money. A lazy leech clinging to the hydrocephalic head of the administration, sucking them out, sucking them off, sucking up. A fly living off the by-products of the cerebral digestion process of your professors – they eat knowledge and sometimes they discharge the unnecessary remnants and then we feast on them. Feast on the dumbed-down version of Foucault – with the ‘ouc’ still in their bellies.
Fucking Shakespeare Me. Twenty minutes and I’ll call it a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment