I have a little background voice in my head that constantly mutters ‘you’re a failure, you’re useless, you can’t write, you can’t earn a living, you’re ugly, you’re a waste of skin, no one likes you, you’ll never find love, just occasional toleration, it serves you right, it’s your own fault, give up, die, die, die’ and so on.
Thankfully I don’t believe the little voice. Particularly when for some reason it sounds frankly like Dick Dastardly from the kids’ cartoon show Wacky Races.
It’s just that it can be rather draining having to battle it all the time, particularly in the middle of the night. It’s 2.15AM as I type this, I can’t sleep, and I’m worried about all the writing I keep putting off. At this point, negative thoughts seize their chance.
So it’s a nice surprise when little positive things like this appear, not so much head-swelling as self-pity-demon-slaying. From last Friday’s Guardian, an evocative piece by Laura Barton that mentions my old band and quotes my lyrics:
Around that time, my friend Joe made me a compilation tape, full of Kenickie and the Pastels and Felt, and on it an Orlando song that seemed to sum up all that I wanted to leave: “This life that is measured out in bus stops and rain”.
The Orlando song in question is ‘Contained’.
Weirdly, that comforting Jonathan Richman song she mentions, ‘The Morning of Our Lives’ (from Modern Lovers Live), popped into in my head over the last week, for the first time in years.
Similarly, I’ve mentioned before that Swedish author Martina Lowden quotes me in her novel Allt, but I can’t resist mentioning this flattering detail, from her first email to me:
I quote your lyrics and your internet diary a lot in my book (actually more than I quote Philip Larkin).
I’m truly not worthy. However, if we must be compared, I would say (and I want this in my obituary), that if nothing else, I definitely have nicer hair than Philip Larkin.
‘And a nicer attitude towards your parents,’ says my mother.
Which reminds me of Roger McGough’s reply to that most notorious Larkin poem, ‘This Be The Verse’:
They tuck you up, your mum and dad.
[Erratum: the above is actually by Adrian Mitchell, not Roger McGough. Mitchell’s parody is called ‘This Be The Worse’.
Confusingly, his chum Mr McGough also wrote a Larkin pastiche, ‘This Be Another Verse’. But it’s a rather more serious response, and begins: ‘They don’t f— you up, your mum and dad / Despite what Larkin says…’]
***
Dear Dickon… just a short hello from me as i was impressed by what i read about you in a Dutch literary section of a national newspaper over the weekend. I’d say that the world would be better if everybody would know who they are and what they do, such as yourself.
Why, thank you. I presume this must be to do with the interview on New Dandyism that I gave the other week.
***
Someone from the Guardian Guide (London only edition, with local listings) emailed me, seeking a few quotes for their section on the city’s New Year’s Eve events. They’re including the Last Tuesday Society’s bash at the Arts Theatre, which I’m DJ-ing at.
Specifically, they wanted to know which song I’m most likely to play at the stroke of midnight. So I told them. I’ll tell the diary once it appears in the Guide, in the vague interests of suspense. But those who have witnessed my DJ sets in the past can make a pretty good guess.
