SEPTEMBER 20TH, 2007 | ARCHIVE

School in June

I'm in the studio with Mick and we're meant to be working, but he's working and I'm kind of dreaming, in a primary school sort of way.

I'm dreaming of not being in this room but being out in the open, roaming around the city, jumping off and on trains, in and out of cafes. I want to smell the suburbs. I want to leave the town and walk through the country park by the reservoir. Then I can look back on the town and think about what's happening there. From up at the reservoir, the town gets reduced to a series of Trumpton type emotions and adventures, which turn soaring into songs if I want them to.

I used to love this poem when I was at school. "School in June” it was called.

"There's no a cloud in the sky
The hill's as clear as can be"

You could actually see the hills from our classroom when we were being taught this poem. I should have just got up and left; taken the poetry literally.

It's weird when you think about it. This was a poem from a boy's perspective. It is championing the possibilities of freedom on a school day in June. We were asked to enjoy the poem, to empathize with it, but not to enjoy the experience it proposed, which could have been given to us as easily as the ringing of a bell or the unbolting of a door.

Today is different. I could walk out of here, but I really should stay. You see, there's a difference between what you want to do and what you have to do. What's the difference? Here's what I propose.

What you want to do is an illusion. What you have to do is heavenly. Heavenly purpose, and therefore blessed.

What I want to do is.. all over the place. It comes thick and fast - as ideas, desire, and daydreams. It’s inspired by lust by pride, and by a false sense of entitlement.

But then want turns to must...it's a fine line sometimes; it's probably happened to you already today. A fork in your own metaphysical road in which you are aware of the two choices. You hesitate and listen for a small voice to whisper in your ear..

Shoe Toffee

I started off down the street today. There was dog shit all over the pavement. I skidded on it yesterday. (My flight path was still marked there for all to see.) What I wanted to do was write

"Why don't you get your dog to shit all over the pavement?"

Sarcastic, you know? Chalked onto the old high wall beside the pavement. That's what I wanted to do, but I let it go. I think it might be the dog that's moved in next door, and I'm trying to be friends with it, so I'll let him off this time.

Reminds me of the time that I parked in someone's spot by mistake in my apartment building in LA. I got a note, which said

"Hey Asshole, park in my spot again! Please!!"

I didn't much like it at the time, but at least it was funny.

I think perhaps chalking on the wall outside my house against my doggy neighbour has no heavenly purpose, so I just skip it

In the staffroom

I walked on down to the river, and along, as I usually do, listening to tunes that we're working on. Pretty soon my head starts to hurt with the decision making process so I take time out, and I want to hear Everything But The Girl. I put on Each And Everyone, which was a hit for them in the mid eighties. I remember reading a review of the group - that they were music for schoolteachers to listen to. This stuck for a while; in fact it put me off liking them more because I was shallow and tempestuous. Now I can't imagine anything better!

Oh to be the respite for some overworked and overburdened English Mistress..

Take off your heels. Relax into a hessian armchair. The staffroom is warm. Help yourself to a Tunnock's Teacake. Let the cheeky young German master bounce out of the room. Sneak your headphones on. You can see bodies through the haze of your half shut eyes, but all you can hear is music. Sweet, comforting, affordable, music. A pragmatic young Swede eases into a love song, and it kills you. The strings and horns beguile and twist you. It's doing wonders for your hangover!

Further along the river, when the path opens up into the park, I start to pass the young and the collegiate. The girls smile. It's not often I get smiled at by strangers. The reason the girls smile at this time of year is that they've just arrived to the neighbourhood, or they've just got back, and they wouldn't mind someone easy and bookish looking to help get them through the winter months. Someone respectable. I have a respectable looking pullover on, and a shine to my shoe, therefore I will do.

I try to smile back, though the smile I think is more like a nervous scowl, and I totter on. They just want you to bring them toast. In November. When they're camped under the duvet with Brecht.... actually, that's an assignment I could handle.

But I am emphatically a situation unvacant, so on I totter. Onwards, ever onwards toward Mick, the Studio, and Musical Incarceration! It’s not perhaps what I want right at this minute, but it’s what I have do, and therefore gets a blesséd thumbs up.

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