Chapterine 66: That man, bad micro-trip, bad sleep, mad dreams,

not so much end of line more the end of sleep...

Monday 18th March, 2024, 12.00 midday my flat Parkway

Sans zopliclone, sans sciatica meds, sans sleep, sans everything - what a fucked up week. Nothing seemed to work - I felt fucked up and vile all day Thursday , Friday Saturday and Sunday…what the fucks going on…? Is this some cosmic punishment for fooling with drugs…aren’t I even allowed that simple pleasure?

That man

The last good time was the new Wim Wenders film Perfect Days on Wednesday evening with my lovely artist friend A. Like Wings of Desire the film seeemed to be suffused with a gentle love of humanity…meaning I wept with joy/empathy/nostalgie throughout (I’m weeping all the time now - quite alarming is this the big crack up?) . On the way out A met to two friends. They’d been to Japan and talked about a powerful experience they’d had with the Abbot of a Shinto temple. It was all very nice but I’d wanted to stay longer with the feelings from the film. After they’d gone A said over his shoulder as we were drifting towards… ‘Jem was in a band - you might know them - The (here I recall a slight hesitation as if were wondering if I’d have heard of them) the Pogues…’

So this amiable soft spoken gent wearing a dark wool overcoat and holding a trilby was Jem Finer - one of the maniacs I’d seen over the heads of thousands of careening punks the memory of which had drawn just a few days ago to seek out the now mythical Hammersmith Palais. How - what? Sweet.. strange… synchronicitous…?

A and I had a coffee - my voice so messed up and his hearing so bad that conversation was minimal. Happy to walk back alone through one of my favourite little pockets of modernist treats and the still modest feel of the streets around.

Slept very badly again. I’d booked into see Yayio Kasuma’s Infinite Mirrors installation at the Tate Modern, so a microdose of acid seemed appropriate…maybe it would give me a little lift….

Noooooo….wronnggg…truly badly awfully wronngggg, Dragged myself to Kentish Town walked the handsome poodle, all the while kept my eyes down lest people see how mad I felt/I see in their eyes how bad they felt I looked. Collapsed onto bed back at base and dozed for a bit.

Waking checked calendar and realised I’d missed my slot at the mirrors - but decided that given I was so wrecked the Tate Modern was the place to be.

To avoid the possibility of being thought a drunk or drugged lunatic. I wrote a message on my phone to show the ladies controlling the queues to the show

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Hi l have Parkinson’s disease so my voice doesn’t work very well

I had booked for 13.45but misread that  as 15.45 - can i still go into to the exhibition?

The kind lady said yes - and so I joined to queue to get into the exhibition area and then the queue to get into the quite small structure where the infinity was on display. I realised I'd been spoilt by a number of extensive, hugely dramatic. wholly immersive (and free) video installations at 180 The Strand. From roughly 2017-2020 much of this hulking brutalist building was work in progress - which meant all their exhibitions were free and often involved walking through a maze of almost totally blacked out tunnels made of black material and then stumbling into some extraordinary video experience. And whenever I went there would be only a handful of other people around.

So off my face as I was with over micro dose of acid I was less than excited about following a gaggle of middle aged people into the Infinity Mirrors space. Though warning that we must not step off the walkway through the mirror space spiked my imagination - a little. his was the warning that time travellers were given in one of my favourite Ray Bradbury short stories A Sound of Thunder - and because the protagonist's foot did slip off the walkway and killed a butterfly...[well you'll just have to read it}

I turned the phone on its side as that gives a more dramatic effect than the actual experience itself- which was pretty mundane.

I tottered out of the Tate and went home.

I’m writing this on at 22.30 on Friday 22nd and the bloody sciatica is back with a vengeance - so I’m going to stop here and bung this out so I’ve got some small sense of achievement to end this week on.

PD Queen

Jennifer Sullivan

has been cheering me up with excellent chats and has pointed me at some new bands most recently The Kills and this lyric fits my mood just now

I'm bored of cheap and cheerful
I want expensive sadness
Hospital bills, parole
Open doors to madness

I want you to be crazy cause you're
Boring baby when you're straight
I want you to be crazy cause you're
Stupid baby when you're sane

Cheap and Cheerful The Kills