One of those emails that makes it all worthwhile:

Thanks for starting up Fosca again. Wish I could fly a quarter of the way
around the world to see you. But know that at least someone will be buying
whatever you guys manage to put out.

Currently struggling with programs to generate synthy basslines and beats, starting with the appallingly named Fruity Loops v5. Like website design, it’s about time I put in the hours and really taught myself how to do it.

Found myself saying this at a party the other day:

“I’m against the Conservative Party politically, but I’m for them sexually.”

Morning – find it harder than ever to get up out of bed and journey to the therapist. Aches and pains. My jaw has started to click when I eat, though there’s no pain. Never did this before. Started a month or two ago, when I began to sleep with these tooth-whitening gel-filled moulds in place, as per dentist’s instructions. Both dentist and GP say the clicking is nothing. Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbours.

Sunny day. In a front yard of one of the houses on Highgate Avenue, two men are breaking rocks with enormous mallets. Work personified. And yet I consider getting out of bed one morning a week to attend a Belsize Park therapy session akin to a task of Mr Hercules. I could be breaking rocks in the hot sun, just like in Mr Strummer’s jolly song, I Fought The Law. And yes, before you write in, I do know that’s a cover version.

On the tube to the session, Claudia A gets on at Archway. I explain where I’m off to. She says “If everyone who found it difficult to get up and go somewhere every Monday morning needed therapy…”.

Therapist reminds me to get a job. Even the most menial employment would, he thinks, get me on the road to doing the work I really want to do. Work begets work. I’ve had all the time in the world these last few years, and what have I to show for them? Can’t argue with that, really. It’s advice I’ve heard elsewhere, too.

I have a second appointment in the clinic – a 3 monthly assessment with a youngish woman. A few days before, she posts me a lengthy questionnaire for to complete and bring to this meeting, where I offload more of my mind’s baggage. Effectively two therapy sessions in one day. And still I feel I’m barely scratching the surface.

I mention this assessment meeting with Mr S, the regular therapist.

“So, did you fill out the questionnaire?”
“No. I haven’t had the time.”

He laughs. Understandably enough.

What HAVE I been doing? I simply have no proof unless I write it down. Maybe if I write it down, I’ll realise just how much time I waste. Stare back at my wasted day, in the hope the next one will be more productive. It’s one of the main reasons for keeping a diary at all.

Afternoon – shopping in Swiss Cottage and Tottenham Ct Road for replacement musical equipment. Somehow between the last Fosca gig (December 2003) and now, I managed to lose a few essential leads, adaptors and so on. Occupational hazard. In Bristol I once knew a heavy metal-playing Japanese boy whose entire gig-playing accessories – pedals, plectrums, leads, etc – consisted of lost property from other bands’ gigs.

Read the latest issue of Word Magazine on the Tube. Feel a bit embarrassed reading this in public. Silly old Mr Springsteen on the front. I’m not manly enough to be seen in public with this. I’m not one of the editor Mr Ellen’s so-called Fifty Pound Men. These are a new social group he’s identified and rants on about proudly, like Mr Simpson and his Metrosexuals. And I suppose I’ve got my Default Men.

As I understand it, Fifty Pound Men are entirely comfortable Nick Hornby boy-man types, aged 30 – 55 (and ageing), with enough disposable income to spend £50 at a time in HMV or Virgin, on a mixture of DVDs and CD albums, often delving into the shops’ now permanent 3 For 2 sales. It’s the fact they’re coming home with physical goods, rather than downloading the content on the Net. Satisfying the male hunter-gatherer instinct. Where once was bison and antelope, now it’s Coldplay and Aimee Mann. They’re meant to be quietly saving the music industry.

Evening – with Ms Silke and Mr Sam to the Phoenix to see the latest Todd Solondz film, Palindromes. His usual black comedy mix of non-monstrous paedophiles (2 this time), cold sex, suburban garden teeth and anti-Disney children. Utterly original and marvellous, despite what some reviewers think, wrongly. Definitely my favourite of his works so far. I never quite enjoyed Happiness as much as others seemed to. I felt the segments about the paedophile and the obscene phone caller far upstaged the other stories, and warranted whole films in their own right. With Palindromes, Mr S takes just one story and works his episodic sub-plots within. It’s the tragicomic odyssey of a 12 year old girl played by many different actors, all of whom are superb. She gets to be several different teenage girls, one beautiful floppy-haired JT LeRoy type boy (who I naturally feel is not given nearly enough screen time), one enormous black woman, one small under-12 black girl, and the more well-known Ms Jennifer Jason Leigh, who I suppose now counts as a veteran actress. Ms Leigh has arguably been playing sullen teenage girls all her career – even when she was Dorothy Parker.

Thinking about this multi-actor device, I recall that the other hip US indie filmmaker called Todd, ie Mr Haynes of Velvet Goldmine and Far From Heaven fame, was last heard planning a movie about the life of Mr Bob Dylan. The single character of Mr Dylan was to be played by a bevy of different actors of different age, race and gender. I wonder if great Indie Movie Todds think alike?

Ultimately, I feel it’s wonderful that Mr Solondz is even allowed to exist, and have the sense his real masterpiece is yet to come. It’s a shame this month’s movie publicity cake has been swallowed entirely by the new Star Wars, with people acting like the bullied sheep Mr Lucas wants them to be. Just ignore Star Wars, I say, and hopefully it will go away.

Besides, Mr Sam’s seen Episode 3: Revenge Of The Hoodies or whatever it is, and safely tells me it’s rubbish. So that’s that.

Sweden wants Fosca. First concerts in 18 months lined up: Malmo and Gothenburg, 3rd and 4th June.

3rd June: Malmo:
Club Crush, @ Deep, Amiralsgatan 20. Onstage around 1 a.m. 60 SEK. www.klubbcrush.se

4th June: Gothenburg:
Club Illojal @ Cronan, Norra Hamngatan 10. Onstage midnight. Supported by Compute (www.computopia.tk). 90 SEK.

A reader asks where to buy stylish but affordable mens’ suits in London.

It’s a Frequently Asked Question, so here’s a few favourite names:

Off-the-peg:
Cenci, now at 4 Nettlefold Place, West Norwood, London SE2. See www.cenci.co.uk for hours. No longer in Monmouth St.
Old Hat, 43a and 66 Fulham High Street, London SW6. As recommended by The Chap magazine.
Sahand, 243 Upper St, near Highbury Corner, N1.
Plus charity shops: Oxfam, Salvation Army, Scope, etc.

Tailors:
Paul Kitsaros, 66 Cleveland Street, near Warren St tube, W1T
David Saxby (associate of The Chap Magazine), 15 Princes Arcade, Jermyn St, SW1Y.

More shops in this recommended and regularly updated list (external link):
http://uk.geocities.com/esecular/Shops.htm

In writing for the public domain, I pride myself on resisting the urge to cheaply drop names for their own sake. As I said to Prince William this morning. He keeps stealing the sheets.

This week – brushes with the world of gossip reportage and tabloid newspapers. And it is A world. Not THE world. One story – entirely untrue, as it turns out – about a rock star apparently dating a person who once dated someone from the band Orlando. Described by The Sun as “a minor band”. Stop chuckling at the back. I’ll have you know I still get emails about Orlando lyrics from tender mixed-up souls in lands I’ve never been to.

And then a few days later I leaf through a tabloid in a café over breakfast, and see that a private event I was involved in has also been – incredibly – written about as a whole so-called story, just because it was attended by a few famous names.

My first thought on reading such stories is ‘Who on earth are their sources?’. Quickly replaced by ‘Why aren’t they writing about ME?’

I detest that whole world. And yet I want to be written about. Albeit on my own terms. And I suppose for that, one has to get a Good Agent. Well, it’s on the To Do list.

The stories in question were examples of a current media obsession. The seemingly desperate need to cover impossibly ordinary, even mundane events in the lives of those who happen to be famous. There exist – at a level seemingly exclusive to the English popular media – people whose entire income comes from the reporting of such ‘celebrity surveillance’ drivel, day in, day out.

It’s one thing to say to your friends in person or in correspondence, “Oh, we were at the same Finnish jazz concert as Eustace Thing from that famous band.” Even my mother, who brought me up to look down on tabloid newspapers (always reminding me of their single-figure reading age), happily mentioned the time she saw Dame Maggie Smith in the same restaurant the other day. But it’s another matter entirely to publicly report such utterly unedifying non-events. Or to make a living from their perpetuation. The only justification is if there’s a decent anecdote attached.

London Party Girl: Oh, guess what! We were at this club last night, and Samantha Morton was there!
Me: Aha. What did she say?
LPG: I don’t know. I didn’t speak to her or anything. She was just there. You’re meant to be impressed.
Me: Well, I’m not. That’s palpably not good enough for an anecdote. That’s only an illusion of an anecdote. A kind of Anecdote Vapour.
LPG: Well, tell that to Heat Magazine.

So, someone somewhere has given my mobile phone number to the News Of The World. It certainly wasn’t me.

I feel initially a little frightened, even violated. And then the fear gives way to drama-queen rants of narcissistic outrage. Why isn’t it ME they want to write about? How DARE they. Don’t they know who I AM? I’m not just ANYONE, you know. Despite what my therapist says. And so on.

My rule is, and I’d like to think this goes without saying, I’d never knowingly speak to a journalist about anyone other than myself. Unless it’s about the lives of dead authors. Partly because it’s grotesquely bad form, but mostly because I’d much rather talk entirely about myself. Or the life of E Nesbit. Or the brand new DVD that dropped through my letterbox that day: Patrick Keiller’s superb, unique films London and Robinson In Space. A typically gorgeous BFI package including a booklet with essays by Mike Hodges and Iain Sinclair. My eternal gratitude to a kind friend at the BFI press dept. Seek it out at once, Dear Reader. Your mind will thank you for it.

A certain amount of careful, polite side-stepping when it comes to the lives of others has to extend to this diary, too. In the past, I’ve been naive enough to think that any use of my diary as a source for another publication must be cleared with me first. It was a notion of the most staggering optimism. Hurtful parasites posing as human beings lurk at every corner. A depressing thought, but one that must be addressed.

There have been times when people have politely asked if I could I remove a reference to them in my diary. Fair enough – I’m happy to oblige quickly. As I said in my lecture on the art of public diary writing the other night, one must be one’s own editor, sub-editor and libel lawyer rolled into one. Indeed, rolling lawyers onto sub-editors would do both of them an awful lot of good. I really must make that suggestion to the Olympic committee.

Note to tabloid hacks and the people who contact them: the worse possible thing you can do when phoning a self-confessed narcissist is to ask them about Someone Else.

When the woman from the News Of The World phoned, I was Politely Unhelpful, and quite proud of myself for being so. I gave out no names, no details, and refused to confirm or deny that I may or may not know what she was on about. In order to quickly end this uneasy conversation, I asked for the hack’s name and phone number and said I may get back to her. I won’t, of course, but that seemed to be the well-mannered thing to do. One friend says you should just tell them to sod off, but for me that would be entirely out of character.

In fact, I felt a little sorry I couldn’t help her with her story, and resisted the urge to ask her how it feels to ruin the lives of people like Mr Deayton. I’m sure even tabloid journalists have feelings. They’re just temporarily mislaid.

So, in case such newspapers are reading this – or worse, people who contact such rags for profit (and who really should stop and take a good long look at their own lives), I can officially confirm that I am not the mystery blond in Eustace Thing’s life.

Marc from the band Massive Ego has just reported the death of his friend and collaborator, the visually striking artist and musician known as Steady.

I first saw him onstage in the mid 90s, when he played guitar for the band Minty, caked in make-up, floppy side-parting, red soldier’s jacket. Later I witnessed him performing with Sexton Ming, on the same bill as Fosca, his face and body covered in bandages. He was also in the equally colourful bands Elizabeth Bunny and Sweetie. Certainly one of London’s Leigh-Bowery-esqe Nu-Superstars. Though I never properly got to know him, I thoroughly approved of him.

Full obituary from Marc, featuring Steady’s artwork, at http://www.massiveego.co.uk

NOTICE:

I am doing a spot of guest DJ-ing at The Boogaloo tomorrow night. The night is called Interzone. Here’s the details:

================

Friday 13/05/05, 9pm-1.30am, free b4 10.30pm then £5.
Interzone at The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, N6.
“Ros, Dickon and Shanthi playing the best post punk and new wave on offer:
Clash, Pistols, Blondie, Television, Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Cure, Devo, Echo & the Bunnymen,The Fall, Gang of Four, Joy Division, New Order, Pere Ubu, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Suicide, Talking Heads, Wire, Adam Ant, Bauhaus, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, Magazine, Mission of Burma, Public Image Ltd, Kraftwerk. Gary Numan, Smiths, Altered Images, Human League, GoGos, B52s, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Jon Spencer, P J Harvey, Breeders, Pulp, Beck, 4AD, Creation, Interpol, Tom Vek, Maximo Park, Arcade Fire, LCD, Rapture, Le Tigre, Rakes….”

=================

Oh dear. I’ve never even heard of some of the above, let alone know their music. Tom Vek? Rakes?

For my part, I’ll bring some Orange Juice, Monochrome Set, Scritti Politti, Modern Lovers, Stereolab, Aztec Camera, late 70s Bowie and do my best. And I shall insist the music isn’t too loud.

I’ve taken the Comments function off this diary after some thought. Feedback is always useful, but I now am convinced I don’t want my diary to host discussions or – that dreaded phrase – Internet Chat. The danger of living mostly on the Net, rather than using it to augment real life. Like many people live on their mobile phones. A little backing off from the world is no bad thing for me, I think. This diary started off as secret yet public, and I rather want to return to that.

Wake up under the third Labour term and sigh heavily at the predicatability of English voters. The Greens once again failed to get a single seat, but at least my own MP here in the Hornsey & Wood Green constituency is no longer the pro-war Barbara Roche. The rabid axe-grinder George Galloway has gotten in, and that will make Westminster life more interesting. Anything for a slightly more interesting life I say.

Currently struggling with creating my own website at www.dickon-edwards.co.uk. DIY culture indeed. I fear the site may do strange things on different computers with different browsers, screen resolutions and so forth, but working out how to address that side of affairs baffles me. It would look a lot better and be created a lot quicker if someone else was doing it, but I simply can’t afford to pay a third party for what is, after all, skilled labour.

I know I could always ask a kind friend, but experience has taught me there’s a point where the friend says “sorry, too busy…”, and then disappears from my life entirely, leaving an out-of-date site I don’t know how to access. Fair enough that other people have their Dickon Edwards Phases. I have a Dickon Edwards Phase too. It’s just lifelong. My therapist would doubtless link this to my fear of relationships of any kind.

Favours can only go so far, and website maintenance is an ongoing job. So here I am, banging my head against the desk and generally getting upset. It’s as if I’m learning a foreign language from scratch, which is of course exactly what I’m doing. The site is so basic, yet getting to grips with ‘tables’, font sizes that won’t act strangely when viewed at different resolutions and generally understanding the Dreamweaver program, is for me the stuff of science fiction. I feel I need a life-jacket while the rest of the world is swimming past at high speed. Not uploading but drowning.

It’s a common theme in my life – watching the rest of the world and thinking ‘how do they do it, and why can’t I do it? What’s wrong with me?’ I’ve met many people – usually younger people – who take to computers and site design so naturally it’s as if they were performing simple arithmetic. Mind you, I also have certain friends who have been known to phone me up when they need a light bulb changing.

Anyway, I’ve set up a mailing list on the site, to announce events and projects so those interested don’t have to keep checking this diary. And today I have an event to announce:

====================
Wed 11 May, 7.30pm
The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1
Spoken word appearance at the launch for “DIY: The Rise Of Lo-fi Culture“, a new book by Amy Spencer. Event includes Online Journal Readings curated by Amy Prior. Dickon Edwards, one of the first online diarists in the U.K., reads excerpts from his diaries. Frances May Morgan, editor of music magazine Plan B, reads from her weblog. Amy Prior reads her new fictional story based on texts by a live journal community. 7.30pm. Free entry.
=====================

Calling me ‘one of the first online diarists in the UK’ was Ms Prior’s flattering idea. I have no idea of the history of Internet Diaries, but I do recall that when I started this journal in 1997, before the word ‘blog’ started to appear, it was considered a very strange thing to do indeed.

Question is, as ever, how to convert this so-called achievement, and indeed my so-called talent per se into some kind of regular income. I heard that the inventor of the Web, an Englishman called Tim, didn’t make a penny from his creation. No surprises there. He did, however, manage to carve out a lucrative career on the lecture and talks circuit. I suppose I could try that – give lectures on my experiences as a public diarist, and on the Philosophy of Dickon Edwards. We’ll see.

I badly want to get on with Life, get off state benefits, and get on with some kind of career. I don’t want riches, just enough of an income to live on. I don’t want to get on the Property Ladder – I’m content living alone in a rented furnished bedsit for the rest of my life. This ambition must be pretty modest in comparison with what most people in the developed world want from life, and typically I think this alone means I ‘deserve’ a living. As if it’s a pact – I agree to take up as little space as possible in return for a career. Ridiculous.

The dreaded question is: what exactly am I good at? And good for? It’s an old concern, but I’m sick to the back, front and middle teeth coming back to it all the time. Am I sick of Being Dickon Edwards? No, just riddled with spiralling frustration.

A recent conversation with one of my many non-registered-to-vote associates:

Her: I would vote Lib Dem. If I was registered.
Me: You approve of Charles Kennedy, then?
Her: Who?
Me: He’s the leader.
Her: Oh, I thought it was Paddy Ashdown.
Me: I am entirely appalled at you.
Her: Well. But, then, you don’t know who the lead singer of the Zutons is.
Me: That’s true. But The Zutons are not affecting the way this country is run.
Her: But my life is arranged around gigs and music. The Zutons affect the way MY life is run. So what’s the difference?

I no longer wonder how Germany let the Nazis get in.

Had a Damascan conversion last week – I joined a political party for the first time in my wretched, fence-sitting life. The Green Party. I’ve been pounding the streets of Camden and Kings Cross this week, putting Green Party leaflets through doors.

I thought about who I wanted to get in on Friday morning. And then realised that whether Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem gets in, I won’t feel any different.

I understand why some people vote ‘tactically’, but I can’t do it myself. Ye Gods, there must be more to democracy than voting for Least Evil. I feel physically sick about the deaths in Iraq, and wish I could take back my vote for Labour in 2001.

I can’t vote Lib Dem, because I don’t believe in them. I believe in voting with my heart, and my heart does not belong to Mr Kennedy. His glassy stare doesn’t convince me one iota. And I believe in voting for a party you believe in, rather than the Least Worst of, here we go, Who Could Actually Get In. Oh, that dreaded phrase.

I feel sick, sick, sick, sick, sick about all three of the hypocritical opportunistic whelks. The last Labour campaign simply said, “Vote Labour, or wake up on Friday with Michael Howard.” Is that really what it’s come down to?

So, yes, after voting Labour for years, I’m now a Green voter and indeed a Green member. Apart from anything else, it’s criminal that the Greens don’t even have a single MP in Westminster yet, after thirty years of existing. An imbalance that badly needs correcting. I want to shake things up. I want things to be different. To be interesting. So that’s another reason why I refuse to vote for one of the Big Three parties.

I speak to my friends, and it turns out most of them aren’t voting at this election. For the most part, they’re just not registered. It’s shocking. Some of these friends go on protest marches against the war in Iraq, yet won’t sort out getting on the electoral roll. What a waste of time. March all you like, but politicians only really understand the ballot box – ask Mr Blair.

Voting Green is not a ‘wasted vote’. All votes are counted, and recorded. All votes that are counted are votes that count. There has to be a way forward. But not with any of the current top three.