Notes

The revolution that takes place in your head, nobody will ever see that.

3:27 pm - 09/19/2016 -

Last days of the counter-culture precariat

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With only three weeks left for me in Hoxton, I finally bought a studio desk in a textile factory. Arriving everyday like a laptop camel in my shorts, I love the counter-culture cliche of having my own office. Like the many regrets you have when time is running out, I wish I had done this years ago. To physically and cognitively separate my work, life and playtime into different components.

Creaking back to the mid-twentieth century, the factory will probably be demolished in 18 months time. Hackney Road is prime real estate location for developers. A debilitated aisle of pre-war housing and cheap grocery stories that connects Shoreditch with Bethnal Green.

The Hackney factory is owned by a picture frame business that no longer makes anything as they import all their stock from China. By virtue of abandoning manufacturing, Studio X was born and I purchased my desk space from two Spanish artists with dark chocolate beards and floral shirts.

Like everyone else in the studio, the Spaniards make entertainment for a living. Producing a boutique fashion magazine with an initial distribution run of 4,000 copies. Sub-letting their remaining space to freelancers, I paid £140 a month for a small desk and work next to a Hackney fashion stylist and three interns:

  • a ginger anorexic doll
  • dim-witted posh girl
  • a blonde street urchin in a baseball cap

Jackie sources expensive clothes for a Radio 1 DJ with a glorious 1970s afro. Attending photo shoots for most of the day, she delegates the hard graft to her gophers, who scurry around London collecting wares on behalf of a BBC celebrity. When I compare it to the soul destroying office jobs I did at a similar age, I actually feel relieved they are going down a non-conformist path.

For none of us have come out right in the wash, but we make do and mend in this strange economy on our own.

 

 

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11:43 pm - 08/25/2016 -

Double room for rent near Old Street

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One of the benefits of working independently is the freedom to have absurd flat viewings. Like this morning when a muscly tattooed Polish chef, who couldn’t speak a distinguishable word of English, and his Irish brother-in-law came round to see my flat.

Standing together in Greg’s old bedsit, an austere collection of second-hand furniture and sunlight, I politely explained my role and responsibilities. My lips were parroting the same old lines, a puffing collection of melancholy sighs and amusing asides.

Has it really come to this?

With his industrial strength tattoos and rock warrior attire, I instinctively felt Marius’s future lay elsewhere. A skittish energy filled the room as he sat down, like a naughty child entering a doctor’s waiting room without any toys.

Immediately detecting my unease, the Irish chaperone gave bizarre assurances on how ‘sweet and clean’ his brother-in-law was. That he would be a great flatmate and I would barely notice him at all.

‘You seem like a good bloke Daniel, we just need to get him settled for a month before we find something more permanent.’

Marius’s painted biceps became more pervasive as he nodded along with his mentor’s sermon. At this point I began to feel sorry for the guy, like he was being auctioned off to anyone desperate enough to take him.

‘What a great place Daniel’s place has here…wouldn’t it be great to live so close to the canal?’

We then all shook hands at the front door and promised to get in touch the following morning to confirm. Of course, none of us did. Flat viewings oscillate from white lies to abject desperation in my experience. A mini-series of half-truths and lips sharpened from making judgements.

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4:35 pm - 08/24/2016 -

Wandering muse

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As I walked down to Brick Lane with my portfolio on my back, heavy with words and responsibilities. I arrived at the Kahalia Cafe and made eyes with a wandering muse. Sitting underneath the skylight with her laptop, I remembered writing about her in 2012, how she sang so beautifully alongside a bearded minstrel in London Fields.

She became a passing bohemian fancy of mine back then, with her rose petal clippings and strung bow guitar. I’ve noticed her sing a few times in local flower markets, and looking back what made her so attractive was the serene purity of her voice.

After spotting her in the coffee shop, I recalled watching her at Broadway Market with her cello partner one lazy autumnal morning. There was something tangible in the air that day, the weight and tenderness of her voice was beautifully controlled.

Her spirit was free and she appeared (maybe somewhat naively) to live an innately gifted life, one far removed from the bearded entrepreneurs and fat posh mummies sitting next to me. Someone free from the ugly necessities and masks we must wear just to survive.

Alas, I kept on tapping away in the distance, knowing that someone – someone wonderfully talented can survive and prosper by making beautiful things.

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11:19 am - 07/27/2016 -

Laissez-faire

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It’s been a while since I was in Scotland for something other than Christmas. Over time it becomes a character in your head rather than a place you call home. From the Angus glens, which shine as brightly as a yellowhammer to the beautiful arches of Old Edinburgh. I take my luggage with me, but I still can’t let go.

I began thinking how I could live in a grand Edwardian flat close to The Meadows. Avoid the bagpipes and walking tours, and live undetected with a metropolitan glare. Scotland is a complex, frustrating and deeply beautiful place. I have my reservations, but maybe here I can construct a narrative that someone can believe in.

Back in London, where I’ve lived for nine years, days become weeks, weeks become months and you tally up the slow, incremental inches of progress. But it takes so fucking long doesn’t it? Why does it have to take so long?

For every moment I’ve endlessly replayed to the point of fixation. Like you’re on the cusp of something brilliantly promising and then it disappears. Its the beauty and rhythm of her mind that I miss the most. How it just took off like a swift in the summer wind.

She’s a far cry from this artificial paradise – a home to everyone and none at all.

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12:59 am - 07/19/2016 -

A celebration of commonality

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All I want to do is make connections with people. Join up the unspoken sighs we privately share and express them vividly in my own language. Like when I ordered a ‘wee’ bottle at the theatre and spoke to a barista about the respective softening of our Scottish accents.

A wee, friendly conversation might be a normal everyday occurrence in any other city, but in London this was a borderline epiphany. For a few minutes, I experienced a kindred sense of belonging I hadn’t felt in years. All she did was ask me which part I was from.

Stonehaven? Is that right? I’m fae Barrhead myself. Softly spoken and yet miles apart, a celebration of commonality by a cash till.

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10:26 pm - 07/16/2016 -

8.08am to Hendon Central

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Sitting amongst the cheery chatter of keyboards in north London, I wonder why I’m so fixated on matters outwith my control. My mind rattles around like a broken trolley, swerving and spiralling in different directions. I feel like I don’t make any decisions of my own.

Juggling two books and a barren phone, I wake up earlier now and go on the tube. Reading about an outsider artist from Chicago and the perils of hypervigilance, I rattle past 1930s suburbs in the sunshine. Its a non-linear journey with no tangible end in sight.

Alas, change is always partial and always by degree. Like what did people do in offices before they sent emails to one another? I need to be far grander in my ambitions than merely taking up space. I want to live passionately and make huge, spectacular heroic mistakes.

Nothing will change otherwise. Nothing will change at all.

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1:24 am - 06/17/2016 -

Running up that hill

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Don’t feel guilty. What most people don’t understand is that they are characters to someone else, that there are layers. We get so caught up in just one, that we don’t allow people to grow and change.  We stick them in boxes immediately, and if you’re not writing it’s fine.  I’ve never had someone discover my blog, although I’m sure if they did, there would be hell to pay.

Keep writing – you could go somewhere

Jane is one of my beautiful forgotten acquaintances, a waif thin blonde poet from Los Angeles who randomly emailed me in 2004. She was an enigma in many ways. I never really knew the girl behind the haze of poetic messages, but we both shared a love of confessional writing. I particularly loved getting emails from her in the small hours. The wonders of millennium technology was still remarkable to virgin eyes in 2004.

Looking back I find it amazing that someone so young could be so warm and insightful about the realities of life. How is this even possible? She was barely even twenty when she wrote this.

I don’t think either of us had had any real sense of each other IRL. We were complete strangers to one another in that respect. Our correspondence was a weird abstract friendship that could only have flourished online.

I don’t recognise myself reading my old emails. I barely write at all now. You run out of things to say, or come to the realisation that everything you want to say has been written by somebody else.

It’s the fear that stops you from writing, the fear of someone you know or might meet will judge you without them realising, there are layers upon layers that make me unrecognisable to that person. That if you ever wrote them about them, there would be hell to pay.

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