"Between Thought and Expression..."

"...there lies a lifetime."

Lou Reed wrote these words in 1968-69, and he was clearly a far more considered man than I am. For his statement is sometimes true, a thought can sometimes gently stimulate the synapses for what seems like an age, before impulse finally makes its way to sensuous, charming mouth or expressive hands, like the spark expanding along the metal loops of a Tesla coil before it crackles into reality, a flash of inspiration in a bar; a bedroom; or even on rainy streets where puddles are irridescent with oil dropped from ill maintained cars.

The person brings forth elegance and flourish like a skater posing at the end of a spin. The effect is deadly.

How wonderful it must be to be able to allow your brain to effortlessly pick the right thing to say or do, for it to act with studied contemplation before it lands the bowler on the hat-stand without even looking.

Me, I operate at the two other extremes. One is where the lifetime's contemplation becomes eternal, a never ending lightning streaked fog of indecision and panicked pondering, agonising over whether something is the right thing to do. By the time the decision is made, the moment is gone and the action is trapped within a pile of dust long after you've died.

The other extreme is where expression is so fast, it actually proceeds thought and almost rips it' way backwards up your spine to explode a “Oh my god, how could I have said that?” bomb in your mind. Sometimes its the only way to try and break the cycle of obsession described above, but the dangers are countless.

Most of the time you just end up mentally slapping yourself in the face, or scrubbing your knees with a brillo pad.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 04.03.14

Sister Ray and the Transgression in my Head

I've out the song on now, the classic Velvet Underground festival of sound, the scratch of guitatrs, the stilleto organ stabs and the metronomic pound of Mo Tucker's drumming.

The song tells a tall tale of a drag party, where sailors and queens suck each other off while observers struggle with mainlining heroin in the dark, collapsed veins under hep stained skin, struggling livers, the nod out to avant garde Ornette Coleman sax riffs. All is presided over by Sister Ray, King Drag Queen of the Lower East side, seducer of seamen, conductor of sex parties and orgiastic ejaculations on the dirty carpet, a carpet littered with needles, bent spoons and dead lemons.

Cotton buds stained brown. Oxidised blood stains on the arms of the sofa covered in burn holes, exhusted hipsters and smacked out poets. There is a panic as the police bust the door down, cocks are hastily put away and the stashes are thrown out of the window, dirty dock water laps against the warehouse pilings, the hep cats climb down the iconic New York fire escapes.

That's the song. And it never happens here and I want it to, I want to play this very damn fucking song and watch it all happen in front of me, violent fucking, screaming maniacs dancing with whips, bad poets having their tongues cut out and aliens landing in a black spaceship in the courtyard.

The aliens take the drag queens and EMOs away for pentrative medical tests; and I play guitar and kick the face in of the chav trying to spoil the party...make him kneel as if for a faceful and then knock his teeth down his throat, harvest his skin and throw him out the door for the urban foxes. Leave us alone, this is the world of the elites not the peasants, the coolest people doing the most sordid and unspeakable things and leaving marks and stickiness all over the place, as I watch emotionlessly, drinking black rum from the bottle and occasionally spitting it in people's faces like toxic phlegm. The epileptic lady and the boxing helmet bops, grand mal attack in the car park when she leaves. People engaging in Public Displays of Affection told to either fuck or get out of the room.

For I am Sister Ray, in a waistcoat and bowler hat, and what I say goes.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 20.02.14