She Belongs To Me

Funny phrase these days, because well it’s a funny phrase and Bob Dylan was not being serious anyway. He was being ironic I suppose. And the songs over in about two and a half minutes. Which I suppose makes it a sketch, but by god does it paint.

Somewhere, deep within this is me, making some walk on appearance like Hitchcock; and that’s the way I want it to be. Off camera some awful things are happening, and when I’m ready I will talk about them. But in the meantime, I will remember the time I gave her first meal, of bottled milk.

She may not belong to me, but she will always be part of me.

America

I’m toying with an idea in my mind. The malaise I have, the notion that all lyrics/prose of the modern day tends towards the literal. The direct. The oh so unsubtle statement of intent.


What happens if the substance is merely a casual exchange of words. No vitriol, no conflict. Just a casual aside.

I will not quote from the Paul Simon song, but I will link to him.

Listen to the lyrics, they are the most sublime mix of words and vocals. Truly. Click on the image for the song !

Downtown Train

Early yesterday I wrote a six page piece that was supposed to be turned into a blog. It was pretty downbeat and went a little like this:

It’s five in the morning (sounds like the opening of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat – except his time was four) and I can’t sleep. I’m in that place occupied by Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Very blue and mournful, the sort of place they sound- tracked with a saxophone on 80’s records.

As I wrote the fog lifted and I cheered-up. So I wrote something on the upswing:

I have two options. Pull on that Famous Blue Raincoat and get mournful and morose; or treat the whole thing as some terrible cosmic joke and think of others not just myself.

I even had time for an epilogue which was going to be today’s blog. Except it’s late and today has become tomorrow. But I only got round to writing down a Tom Waits song title – Christmas Card from a Hooker, and the place mentioned in his song – Euclid Avenue.

Euclid Avenue also happens to be a stop on the New York subway. There’s lots of songs that mention its stations or a particular train. Take the A Train for one, or Downtown Train (the train’s direction) . Downtown Train is as commercial as Tom Waits gets. It was even covered by Rod Stewart. But I like his unadorned de-80’s-ed version.

It’s simple with little complication. A boy a girl, a train going to Brooklyn (before it was gentrified and bastardised by the Beckham’s) and a refrain about every night being the same. Which reminds me of my discarded blog that went like this:


A job gives your life a little light and shade. And it’s neither hot nor cold in the JSA shade; just a constant slow pulsating wet weekend in Camden or wherever you hail from.

Minor irritants such as the temporary loss of benefits (It’s happening to me at the moment); and being sent on another one of those Government job training initiatives; are just part of that slow pulse.

I’m leaving out the observation that such things are supposed to keep a Dole Wallah awake. Because its patently untrue. I tested this scenario out yesterday. At 9am I called the DWP and Housing Benefit Office. At 9.30am I was out the door and heading for Jobcentre Plus. At 10 they gave me an appointment for 2.10pm to sign-on (ok I missed my last one).

I then walked a couple of miles to an external agency we will call The Alan Turing Project – because there real name bears as much relation to its function as something called The Alan Turing Project.

My claim is at Stage 4, which means I have an interview every week in some crummy office miles away. They keep me hanging round and form filling for two hours. I discover their printers don’t work, computers are half broke and water machine is without cups. I also discovered they don’t really do jobs outside the shelf-stacking minimum wage variety. But because the Government initiative dictates they provide a job in eight weeks, motions must be gone through. And all the time a ton of money is being wasted because these people are being paid to do what I already do – search for jobs.

It’s now mid-day – where did that morning go. I’m sitting in the Housing Benefit Office with a number in my hand; then after an hours wait, I’m handing over proof I get JSA, a days pay-slip and a letter from me saying I worked for one day a couple of months ago.

I do this because a gap was created in my JSA that needed accounting for. And while this gap remained unplugged, my Housing Benefit was suspended; because the DWP sent out a mail saying my JSA had stopped. Only it had not stopped, there was just this gap. I’m told my Benefit will resume in three days.

It’s now after 1pm, I have no time to eat; so buy food on the move and head for my 2.10 at Jobcentre Plus. I get seen at 2.10 on the nail and then I’m out on the street, a little light headed with hunger.

Suppose it must have been 3 by the time I eat, at this stage fatigue had set in and I’m dog tired. A full day sorting out the consequences of one day’s work. Getting people back to work is what they are supposed to do, not make the process as difficult as possible and stressful to boot.

I snooze at 5pm, put to sleep by the mindless certainty of bureaucracy. Somebody somewhere is siphoning off a packet from this pantomime; they must be; otherwise it would be one big waste of time and money.

Anyway I digress; back to Tom Waits and his Downtown Train. Click on the image and enjoy the simplicity.

Winter in America

It’s almost impossible to write words under this Gil Scott-Heron track. Please click on the image to play the track. It’s not necessarily of today, but by god it’s summarises a lot of what’s happening today.

Sunday Morning

I know it’s Saturday, but yesterdays dark night of the soul, was yesterday. Today it’s Sunday Morning. Thank you Velvet Underground and Nico.

If Paradise is Half As Nice

What a great song title. What a wonderful idea. And I grudgingly agree, really I do. With the weight of the world upon you, sometimes it takes another event to put things in perspective. Or sometimes it just highlights how shit things are. Sadly, I was a victim of the latter. No Walton’s soliloquy for me, just the eyes blinking in the cold headlights of reality.


Fact 1: I’m unemployed
Fact2: I have precious hope of finding a traditional job.
Fact3: I can actually employ myself; just have to convert those synapses to money!
Fact4: I’m seriously disempowered, so when they ask me what I do, what do I do?
Fact5: And I don’t bloody do nothing. I write the Novel (4 years and counting) , I download a template to update my website, I look into writing smart phone apps (compiler on my computer – downloaded last week), I read the job mails every day; I apply for jobs – none this week as there has been ZERO. I’ve sold most of my possessions on eBay (that people actually like to buy – exclude books and paintings which are a bit like the black spot from Blind Pugh-Treasure Island reference for those not familiar with RLS) – but I investigate eBay as a source of income for what I have left. I run every day , to keep my ticker going. I make phone calls here there and everywhere, to try and reduce my fuel direct debit (failure), to respond to a call from an agency that was never returned. I read on the Guardian blog about Housing Benefit - some people think of me as a Benefit Scrounger (there appears to be nothing else but this for these people). I think of responding that my Tax and NI contributions amounted to hundreds of thousands, but really it doesn’t matter – you’re only as good as your last breath.

Fact6: My daughter left Primary School today. And I sat there feeling like a complete failure, watching her effortsly go through the end of her early School Years; amongst parents who can give their child everything. This was never a scenario I envisaged. When she was born, I paid thousands for all those childhood necessities. I took her every week to a restaurant and bought books by the dozen. Now I serve her cheap food, and avoid giving a fiver pocket money (because I really can’t afford it) . Oh and if you say, but you can teach her things, take her places that are free. You forget one thing, TV and other people.

I wish I could be like Edith Head

I’m interchanging David Watts with Edith Head, mainly because Edith managed to become a David Watts, by creating her own niche in the film business.

Edith somehow got a job as a costume sketch artist at Paramount, with only rudimentary drawing skills. Well that’s how the mythology goes. But she managed to climb the slippery pole and become Chief Designer at a major studio.

When she started in Hollywood, men were the chief designers, and Edith was thrown the scraps. During her early years at Paramount she was taken under the wing of Travis Banton (the studios Chief Designer), who delegated the jobs he didn’t like (actresses were not his favourite species) to her. She found her niche designing costumes for women, incorporating the actress’s personal preferences into costume sketches; rather than foist her personal taste on them. Ordinary actors/actresses were commodities, so the idea of choice, was not part of their working lives. Naturally for those lucky to become extraordinary, there were benefits; larger salary, star status and a little more choice. Edith progresses by the drip-drip method, some of her clients became stars, with the power to request her services. When Benton left, Head was appointed his successor.

Edith kept the same look right up to her death; a short fringed hairstyle and round dark glasses. The dark glasses were a relic of the black and white days when designers would wear tinted lenses to check how their costumes would look on screen. The glasses gave her an inscrutable, ageless look. And coupled with the unchanging school teacher black/brown clothes and hairstyle; pre-empted the modern day fashion designers with their signature looks. Karl Lagerfeld is the most obvious candidate here.

She dressed both men and women, but it’s the gowns that made her famous. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday; Grace Kelly in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief; even Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid , which was released after her death.

Edith managed to become David Watts, without actually being David Watts. And in many ways that’s what I’ve aspired to. If your personality precludes, becoming the head boy in the school, head of costume design, head of IT; then the Edith Head strategy is a possibility.

I was reminded of my own Edith Head Empire building when commenting on a Guardian blog. The piece was purported to show real IT peoples view of the IT crowd(C4 comedy show), by using a couple of project managers and a technical architect. In the course of venting my spleen, a whole host of memories came flooding back. But first here is my reaction posted on the Guardian website :


A late comment. The three people you use are representative of a certain type of what is termed non-technical person. The sort of tier in the department pyramid you can remove, and feel no pain whatsoever. The rise of the project manager has been happening since the 90s, outsourcing as one of those enlightened people punted as a new idea has been around for decades. I agree with whoever said this was a picture of times past – in terms of a big operation, the lone ranger geek type was culled big-time when the dot com bubble burst. So you started getting managers walking around talking about soft-skills and adding value, and all that shite. The weird thing about the IT crowd is they are clearly desktop-support , and no server-support(operations team) or development team exists. These of course can exist somewhere else in the world, but it would be a nice touch if they sometimes communicated (in a off stage way) with the IT Crowd. Rather like Carlton your doorman in the old American sitcom Rhoda.

But I left the following out, because it’s a bit too personal and serious for a comment on a comedy blog. No matter how secure you think your empire is, someone is going to find a way to topple it. The old adage nobodies indispensable may be a cliché, but it’s correct. I spent a good few years, mapping out my own little area, so I could keep out all those project managers and management speak types. To use one of the spineless ones sayings, I made my own “comfort zone”. Ah but that was not to last.


The pain would be a little easier if the mechanism for my personal toppling was by stealth, but it was obvious and without camouflage. Here’s the missing part of my comment:

Funnily enough my last employer re-employed all the outsourced people, including myself. Then (as most people predicted) made them redundant after a year or so. The outsourced people spent their time handing stuff over to people far away in Asia, and once they were done, chopped. Digging your own grave is the best analogy.

I wish I could be like Edith Head.