Following on from my last entry about the comic book Phonogram, I’m now informed that Warren Ellis is indeed a comic creator, but that his stuff probably isn’t to my taste. On top of which, there is a different Warren Ellis who is in bands I’ve heard of: The Dirty Three and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds.

When I saw the kind description of Orlando in the book’s Glossary, I think I said ‘Gosh!’ out aloud. If you’re going to say ‘Gosh!’ out aloud in any shop in London, it might as well be in Gosh Comics.

***
That pop video I mentioned, by Rhodri Marsden / The Schema is now online here

I’m impressive it was finished so quickly; there must have been hours of editing involved. I’m in it very briefly, twice. As ever, I’m the one who looks like a New Romantic Mormon.

Am slightly concerned that the director Alex di Campi may have been wearing her beret purely because she was acting on camera as The Director, and wouldn’t do so for her other shoots. I hope not, though.

Given the extras in it are all wearing their own clothes, I’m wondering if the video could be used as a snapshot of internet-using, Independent-reading types in August 2007. Or at least, the sort of people who live in London and follow Rhodri’s blog. How many years need to pass before the video becomes a sartorial period piece? None of the men have Pete Doherty hats, and none of the women have orange skin, but one never knows what the trends of the future will be:

‘What WERE they wearing in those days? Yuck, women who haven’t shaved their heads! And men who haven’t been neutered!’

***
In the British Library. After a while, the occasional coughs and sneezes bouncing around the huge, two-storey Reading Room become a kind of birdsong.

‘Achoo!’ cheeps a lesser-spotted PHD to my left.

‘Blurgh-hew!’ trills another, from the storey below.

These two sounds are so perfectly timed, they sound like a deliberate call and response. They could be coded signals from spies, assassins, or lovers.

‘Achoo!’ (Translation: ‘Fancy it? Disabled loo, third floor?’)

‘Blurgh-hew!’ (‘Oh all right. Don’t forget the appliance this time.’)

***
It’s now been a couple of weeks on the wagon. But it’s also been months since I last bought cigarettes, meat or fish. And I’ve now cut out starchy foods, takeways, sugar in tea and coffee, and sweets. Instead, I’ve become addicted to things like tidying up and throwing out piles of dusty possessions. With the books, it was one shelf-height’s worth a day, then two, then three. Then on Sunday I took four such piles down to Oxfam. The first goal has been reached, and I’m down to properly-shelved books only, for the first time in years. Which is still too many. But at least I can actually see every one of them. I must have jettisoned over 400 books over the last ten days.

Before I stopped drinking, I found it hard to throw away even Christmas cards. Now, I can’t stop. I’m hooked.

Next step: Cassette Apocalypse.

I haven’t played an audio cassette for years. I don’t think I’ll ever play one again. They’re just taking up space. And they have to go.

Many are compilations made for me over the years by friends – some go back to 1988. There’s dozens and dozens and dozens of them. I feel the tapes are private, yet I can’t hang on to them forever. Like the books, I have to be brutal.

So I bless each one, give thanks for those times, and say goodbye.

Some cassettes are past demos. VERY rough demos. The very first Orlando rehearsal, 1992, my Bristol bedsit. Just me and Simon Kehoe. That sounds like it’s of massive personal importance, but it’s just guitar instrumentals, attempts to cover other songs, excruciating derivative dabblings. Orlando live at St John’s Tavern, Archway, 1993. Who recorded that? Doesn’t matter. It’s hardly the Beatles in Hamburg. Terrible, poorly-recorded, unlistenable tosh… and the Orlando stuff’s not perfect, either. Ho ho.

I will keep some stuff, but what? How much can one be one’s own museum curator? Lines must be drawn, rules must be made. Limits must be stuck to. There’s just so much of it. And I actually can’t bear to sit down and listen to every minute of every tape – it would take forever. I want to throw the lot out and move on. It’s weighing me down.

Keeping such ultra-rough demo cassettes would be like an architect keeping the scaffolding of his dream home, after it was built. Or a novelist keeping his first, awful draft. I’m such an all-or-nothing person, so it’s hard to choose what has to go.

Actually, the Passive Soul album, with its montage of school reports and childhood photos on the CD booklet, handily contains all the nostalgia I need for one lifetime. The rest… well, that’s what myths and mysteries are for.

I suppose I have to go through all the old letters at some point.

Thirty-sixth birthday soon. Old skin must be shed.

It’s an unusually cold and blustery night for August. The windows are rattling.