consumer

 I am a consumer,

it is the end goal and justification for my existence. 

I go from sleep to consumption

with every waking breath I take.

Purchased and paid for with my time spent

earning.

I am a loyal customer,

I have chosen my space, the home I pay for

so that I can afford my existence.

I will not switch brands

as this is my identity,

my income defined outcome.

I am a hard working employee.

I exist to provide service

to those above me in station and economic background.

I am where I am as consequence of

food and education bought by my product designers.

I work hard to attain a better level of status

for the product I design.

I am a reliable renter,

as I own nothing that is my own.

All things surrounding me belong to other people.

They are my masters, my superiors, my lieges.

I will pay for all services rendered in a timely manner,

to work hard for the manor lord.

I am a product.

Well designed and easily purchased.

My agency is transferable to the highest bidder.

I am not a rare commodity and therefore

my value is low.

I am mass produced, mass purchased,

and one day,

I will be buried in the mass grave I can afford.

Could Have

 

I'm still waiting

to be smart enough

not to say anything stupid

with the voice I've been given.

A voice I was born with,

yet others paid the bill.

All these years silent,

as the mocking time

passed by, eroding opportunity,

down to its finest and most invisible

elements.

Yet still I await this perfect moment,

when the words will come,

perfectly poetic,

fantastically philosophical,

cutting and insightful,

to be referred back to

in time yet to come,

by voices yet to be formed.

I watch, I judge, I listen,

I criticise:

I could have said it better,

I could have done it better,

I could have made it better.

Not bitter,

just honest.

My critique of all the things

I did not do,

as I sat still, waiting,

for the perfect moment,

and the perfect words

for the perfect action.

I have not wasted my time,

I have been very busy,

doing nothing particularly useful

or productive

or necessary.

Only living and passing time

as time passes me.

And by the time I get to say what needs to be said

it will not be too late.

It will not be passed time for saying what was

never said.

No.

In that perfect moment, yet to come,

all the threads will come together,

artfully and philosophically,

and with a voice that all will hear,

agree with and nod along to,

I will say what I've been waiting for so long

to say.

But, until that moment occurs,

I will sit here,

waiting,

until I am smart enough

not to say something stupid.

The Beating Heart

 

This is the beating heart of the system:

a grubby handled microwave,

servicing an office of middle aged women,

seated behind desks,

typing endlessly at outdated,

behind the times,

nearing obsolescent,

computers.

Prisoners behind mountains of endless papers,

each important,

but lost in anonymity,

hidden by years and dates.

Behind each desk,

individuality in the form of a special child's

special drawing,

or a meaningful calendar,

a reminder of a nearly forgotten holiday,

so very long ago,

a heart worn on a sleeve,

hidden,

obscured,

forgotten,

consumed

by the ever expanding mountain

of papers,

each of them important,

lost in the anonymity of

scale.

The printer barely works,

in its attempt to add

to the ever expanding mountain.

It shudders and it starts,

it too wants a voice,

but is drowned out by all the voices,

hidden by scale.

This is how it ends.

With a signature on one of those anonymous

sheets of paper,

printed by an obsolete computer,

typed up by a middle aged woman,

hidden by a desk,

covered in clutter,

obscuring any lasting sense of the

individual.

Fatherhood

 

I have become a father.

It continues to sound strange or even look strange when I write it. But here we are, I am a father. I am a father!!! How bizarre.

Where was I? Oh yes, previously I was at the bottom, looking upwards for a way out of the depths. I was beginning to surface when I met Emel at a dub party, big sub heavy bass vibrating off of the speakers. It was the right place and the right time and we spoke, and it all just clicked. So perfectly and so organically. From the beginning, the strangest sense of new and old seemed to accompany our relationship. Frequently I commented on how it felt as if we had known each other for far longer than we had in fact known each other. 

It was quite bizarre, but it felt so good. Then she left, off to Turkey to spend time with her father who was seriously ill. We kept in contact and even ended up meeting later in the summer in London. This too was wonderful. We even arranged a holiday in Turkey. It was all a wonderful waking dream, life no longer lived at the bottom, looking up for some hopeful way out.

Then we returned back to Seville and got back into our ways of getting to know each other, either at her flat or at mine. Then one day, late September, she couldn't look me in the eye. I think I knew, but still wasn't quite ready to hear it.

“I'm pregnant.” She said.

Everything changed. Somehow I was ready for it. I have no idea how that was the case, because in no way was I ready for it, but somehow, I guess I just was.

So lets go back in time a little bit.

I am 41 years old now, and I really thought that I was never going to be a father. I thought after the collapse of my marriage, I was going to cut all strings and then just float through life pursuing experience over objects, and just fade away into meaninglessness.

Now, I have a son. An actual kicking, screaming, pooping and peeing son. Who smiles. And grimaces, and sighs contentedly when finally all of his boxes of requirements are ticked. An actual son. It is madness.

And here is where I would like to have my cake and eat it.

I am 41. It is 2023. He will be 20 and I will be 61. And it will be 2043. These numbers astound me. I really wish I could have had hi8m sooner, when I was younger.

But when I was younger, I was a fool. I was in the worst space to be a father. I was immature, petulant and a child myself. I smoked far too much weed. In fact, looking back, since I turned 16, that is all I ever did and all I wanted to do. I had such an incredibly sad and limited drive and motivation for life.

Don't get me wrong, I loved every last second of it when I was inside of it, but now, looking back, I cannot help but shudder at the waste of all that time. With the wrong person, in the wrong headspace, too stoned to know any better.

I wish I could have the mental clarity and the experience and be in the right place such as I find myself in currently, as well as my youth. And my old hairline. And my old teeth.

Now, I just feel kind of old.

To conclude. Emel and I registered Finley Akay Hennessy Can at the civil registry office today here in Seville. There was a young man and his girlfriend, they could not have been older than 16. I think about these two children.

36 when your child is 20. 61 when your child is twenty. Maturity and experience, or the vigour of youth?

None get to walk both paths, but it really would be nice to have my cake and eat it too.

Dags

I like dags. I always have. My first dag was a basset named Sammy. My memories of her are a blur. I know my family and myself weren't the best family to her. When we moved to England, we put her down rather than taking her with. Life was different in the '80s. 

I remember learning to train dogs with my mother. Some are easier than others. Some are nigh impossible to train. Take a basset, the most untrainable dogs. Some think it is because they are too stupid to train. I have the view that they are in fact too intelligent to train. 

I have had many types of dags in my life, but bassets are by far my favourite. Big dogs on little legs. Silly buggers. The next basset I recall quite fondly was Melissa. She was a pup when I was "going to university". In reality, I was staying home, smoking weed, reading and making music. I was obsessed with the blues and doing my best to teach myself how to play.

I used to be a punk. I would go to this amazing guitar shop after school and just hang out. Ronnies allbang and strummit. I loved the place. I loved Ronnie. He was so fucking cool. I was just some dumb punk kid, too concerned with how others saw me and focused and trying to be cool. One day Ronnie took me aside and told me I was an idiot. He then taught me about the blues. He had some vinyls of some blues, something quite uncommon in white suburban South Africa. 

I would smoke weed, listen to Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker and try and imitate their sound. Melissa would join me and sing along. Honest. She had a fantastic blues voice. Now, I will admit, she liked the smell of weed smoke, and from a young age, I would give her the occasional blowback. Not a good thing, but I was a young and foolish man at the time. This may have contributed to her somewhat eccentric personality.

Then came my ex wife into my life. She changed everything. Red flags fucking everywhere. But I was too young, too high and too stupid. We got quite serious and later on, adopted two dags. Shiva and Shanti. Lovely dags. Sadly Shanti passed away at a very young age, leaving just Shiva.

Shiva and Melissa did not get on. A parallel to my ex and my family. This ultimately had a tragic ending years later with the final moments of Melissa. I loved that dog. She was so damned special and unique. What a character!

Years passed and my ex and I moved to Spain, Valencia. One day, waiting for an unreliable friend, sitting outside a bar having a drink or two, we both saw the cutest little Amstaff pup, walking into the street. We both reacted and dragged her back to the man who we thought was the owner. "I'm just looking after her, actually looking for an owner.".

Sold.

That is how Boni came into our lives. What a sweety. She went everywhere with us. She changed so many things. Walks to the parks, trips to the beach. Always happy, never sad. She loved other dogs. She made friends with all the dogs in the neighbourhood where we first lived in Valencia, Buen Orden.

Then a colleague came to work with a skin and bones pup named Dennis (after Bergkamp). He looked like the perfect Clyde for Boni.

That weekend Boni met Clyde. They hit it off immediately. He was a nervous rescue pup and was scared of me at first, but then after time, he became my shadow.

Not long after came a house in the village, Boni and Clyde became Boni, Clyde and Bella. 

Then came the Pandemic and Biggles.

Dags had become the centre of my life, my routine. I would wake, walk and feed the dags. Then go to work, come home, walk and feed them again. In between work and workouts there were more walkings and feedings. As you can imagine, four dags is quite a handful.

Then came the collapse. My marriage ended and I had to leave them all behind. Them and the memories. It was easier to leave some things behind, but it has never been easy to leave the dags behind. I love dags.

Then came today. Today I signed the paperwork handing ownership of Boni and Clyde over to my Ex. Dear reader, I cannot begin to express how much that simple action hurt. I am honestly looking forward to signing the divorce papers in the near future, but signing over my dags to that woman hurt me to my core. 

Is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?

I don't know. What I do know, is never be too high, too young or too stupid to see the red flags for what they are. Toxic people are unlikely to become not toxic, no matter how much you may wish for them to. Sometimes you will just need to walk away and carry with you the weight. The weight of what you can carry and the weight of all that needs to be left behind. Regardless, learn to carry the weight sooner rather than later. 

New Years Eve 2022

 Here we are, the final day of 2022. It's been a somewhat topsy turvy year to say the least. If I think back to this time last year, I was in a very different place, mentally, emotionally and physically. 

This time last year I was in the early stages of recovering from the collapse of my marriage. I was still broken, but the edges of my psyche were finally starting to reconnect. The work I had put in to heal myself was starting to work. While life in Seville was still strange and different for me, I has started to make some really good friends and was starting to find my feet in life after marriage. 

Mostly, I had started to see the light.

Then came spring after that cold and dark winter. It warmed the edges of me and life asked to come back in. I allowed life to re enter and happiness and joy started to hesitantly regrow where previously all had withered into brown memories of where life had flourished. The wounds had healed, the scars had formed, and tougher now, I went forth looking for new pathways in my new life.

Work, writing and working out gave me focus, direction and structure.

Yes, I was drinking way too much and smoking way too much, but that was fine, guided by the immovable nature of the 3 Ws.

Then I went to a Dub gig in late Spring, early Summer. I met Emel. Through the sub and the smoke, we spoke, we connected. Since that night, I have been writing a bit less and living a lot more.

This Summer, I went back to Summer school and taught in England. I also went to 18 different Wetherspoons. I stopped smoking weed and tobacco. I stayed with my brother in Bristol and my sister in Macclesfield. And with Emel in London.

From England Emel and I toured Turkey together. It was amazing. The connection we formed in the Aegean was beautiful. It felt like we had known each other for years rather than months. As with all things though, our time in Turkey came to an end and life and routine returned. Back in Seville our time together continued. 

Then one day, I was at her apartment and she told me the news. She was pregnant. She was quite scared to tell me. I did not know how to react. It changed everything. For the better. We moved in together and got to know each other better. I stopped drinking in the week and was pretty good about working out and working, but the writing fell off somewhat.

Then in late Summer one of my friends, Pawl, asked me to join his band. Music fully returned to my life. I have run with it. I bought a midi keyboard and drum pad, got Ableton again and started making electronic music again.

Autumn brought with it rain and early sunsets. Movies on the couch with Emel and the knowledge my parents had moved to England. A writers club re started and regularly met up to discuss the non progress in my writing. Whoops.

Autumn became misty morninged Winter, Christmas lights went up in Seville and I had someone next to me who I could enjoy them with, rather than the bitterness of the previous Christmas, when I saw the same lights, but alone, and miserable.

Then we flew to England, myself and Emel, to meet my family, together for the first time in a decade. And it has been amazing. An excess of food and alcohol and fantastically fun family tension. It has been the greatest gift of all. Aren't clichés grand.

Here I am, sitting on a couch in Portishead, writing these words on New Years Eve, 2022. My life has been turned completely around this year.

From darkness to light, I have put in the work and as always, I am at the beginning of something new. Pain has given way to hope. It feels good. There is an optimism that fills me. The cynicism and bitterness of past iterations of myself seems so unnecessary now. In 2023 I will become a father and once again life will change completely. 

In conclusion, life goes where life will. We cannot predict it or force we merely have to adapt. In consequence, the best we should do is Radiate Positivity Mother Fuckers!

Happy new years and I hope 2023 is a nice set of weights for all of us to lift and strengthen our minds, emotions and bodies.

In the meantime, here is my latest track:

https://soundcloud.com/dead-plastic/house-track-001

have listen, leave a like!

Patterns in the sky

In the last few weeks I have had an epiphany: I am done being depressed. I know, easier said than done, but to be honest, fuck it. I'm over it. A significant part of this is down to the most essential realisation, simply put, I was not happy, I was just stoned. All. The. Time.

Right now, I am trying not to be stoned all the time. It is a challenge. However, due to some external factors, it is easier now than it previously was.

As a result of this realisation, I want to start writing about slightly different things, slightly more abstract things, instead of going on and on about my difficulties with overcoming the collapse. The collapse is done. It is over. She chose poorly.  I am worthy, of love, of happiness, of respect, of honesty. I am worthy. Yes, I have been shit in the past, I am still shit in many ways, but, I am putting in the work and effort not to be. So fuck the bullshit. She did what she did and that is her karma.

That said, it is still valuable to rigorously self analyse and self assess the past.

So here goes.

Sometime ago, probably ten years or so ago, we were in northern Uruguay, Punta Del Diablo to be precise. We were staying in a hostel run by some dreadlocked hippies. It was amazing. During the day we had met some English bloke and his eastern European girlfriend. They were somewhat crazy. We did some drinking and some smoking. At some point his girlfriend got a bit wild. If I remember right, she started doing some weird grinding sort of thing on me. It was weird and kinda inappropriate. As such, the hippies that ran the hostel kindly asked us to get her out of there. So we went elsewhere and carried on with the drinking.

Then it was time to leave. These were the good old days, when my ex and myself were a team. She was wrecked, I was less so. We needed to find our way back to the hippy run hostel. There were few street lights and less road signs to differentiate between one dusty road that looked the same as the next dusty road. Being the man, I had to get us home. Equally, I had to pretend that I knew how to do that. I did not if I am honest. 

That is when I looked up. This is 100% true by the way. I looked up into the sky unaffected by light pollution and could clearly see an arrow in the sky made of stars pointing. I was wrecked. I interpreted it as meaning. I followed the stars. And we found our way back to the hippies, her leaning on me and stopping for the occasional vom or two.

I look back at this. At some points in my past I saw this as a clear indication of our suitability. In fact, many of the signs that I saw for us to be together were signs witnessed in various states of inebriation and intoxication. I know wonder about all those signs seen at all those different times. Were they in fact patterns in the sky or delusion?

Let us zoom out a little bit.

Pattern recognition is an essential component of biological life. In my view, biology is governed by fairly simple rules: 

1 -  everything is food or not food yet.

2 - Eat food, don't be food, reproduce, upgrade. 

3 - Spend less energy, get more. 

The ability to recognise patterns is fundamental to being successful at the game of biology. The lion that can first see and then predict the pattern of the antelope eats food and can then reproduce. The antelope that can see and predict the pattern of the lion's behaviour can successfully not be food, then eat food, then reproduce.

As a consequence of the importance of pattern recognition, biology engineered the pattern recognition hardware of the brain, which in turn programmed pattern recognition software in the form of thought.

Out of that line came forth the human animal, supreme in its pattern recognition ability. So good was the human animal that it was the first to not only recognise patterns, but also to invent new patterns. Not just in the mind of the Human animal, but onto walls, into tools, into words and songs and dances and clothes and worlds that had never existed until thought made them real.

With the human animal, biology shifted from the physical to the neurological. No longer did energy have to be predominantly reinvested into the body, rather, increasingly it was reinvested into a brain that saw patterns in all things. And perhaps, most significantly and unique in the world of biology, the human animal asked WHY?

We saw the pattern of the sun, the moon, and the stars and we asked why? We answered with invented patterns, patterns that made sense and we all agreed to these explanations Until some did not. Explanations of patterns went to war with alien explanations. Until one explanation could dominate all the explanations. But then new forms of seeing could be invented as a result of understanding patterns. We could see into the universe, we could see outwards at the universe. We could see inside ourselves, and all of a sudden, those old explanations to the patterns no longer made sense.

New wars over explained patterns were fought. Until again, one explanation could dominate. Almost as if the explanations themselves were governed by the same laws that governed the shaping and changing of all biology.

Here we stand, we have all this technology and science that have ultimately chased the presence of God as an explanation into the furthest corners of imagination that require belief as evidence of existence.

Let us now return to my arrow of stars.

What was I seeing when I looked up and saw the arrow pointing me home? Was it merely patterns of coincidence? Coincidence of astrological time coinciding with a homo sapiens under the influence of alcohol stumbling down poorly lit streets looking to the stars for guidance. 

Or was the pattern placed, designed and intended? Or perhaps somewhere in between closer to one side or the other?

You see, I was raised in a very religious home. I went to church every Sunday until I was 16 or there abouts. Then came the substances to blur neurological frequencies and I started stepping away from such explanations as god and godliness. I stepped away from family and down pathways of errors and mistakes, lessons to be learned and scars to be formed.

I became certain of the idea that all could be explained by logic and science. If not today, then tomorrow when new lenses through which we can see the universe more clearly are invented and discovered.

However, now I question the breadcrumbs that appear to have been left. Left for us to follow or mere coincidence of time and space?  

Knowledge is for the dead, belief is for children, if you are anywhere in between, the best you can hope for is to attempt to try to understand.