Where’d you learn to kiss that way?
I don’t know from where that came
I won’t talk about it no more

‘Dickon Edwards’ is bad Swahili for ‘Connector Of Many Worlds’. Well, all right, it isn’t. But I do like it when little bits of worlds come together.

At the Upstate New York wedding, one of Fyodor and Kevin’s shared in-jokes was to express cartoon desire by bending their knees and rubbing their upper legs, while emitting a ‘Phwoar!’ sound at each other. This was a reference to Vic Reeves on the TV panel game Shooting Stars, invariably made to the pretty female contestant seated on his right (and he’s still doing it in the new series). That this very British, very surreally British TV reference should travel across the Atlantic and take root in the banter of a young Russian emigre AND his Ecuadorian Brooklyn school friend surprised and delighted me no end.

One wedding guest I was overjoyed to meet was Ms Patricia Charbonneau. She is a Crossover Cult Icon, having played Cay in the 1985 movie Desert Hearts, something of a cult classic, not least for students of queer cinema.  It was one of the first films with a lesbian theme which didn’t get bogged down with hand-wringing self-pity, or the inevitable tragic death of one or more of the deviants involved, implying otherness equals doom (archetypes which persist in the more recent yet comparatively old-fashioned Boys Don’t Cry and Brokeback Mountain).

No, Ms Charbonneau’s character represented the heart-stopping joy of romance as escape, lesbianism or no; how love can be a gateway to further adventures – enhanced when they’re adventures together. A happy ending, in other words. Sorry if that’s too much of a ‘spoiler’. The film has been out for nearly 25 years.

(‘He comes back to life after three days on the cross.’ ‘Oh, you’ve ruined it for me now!’)

The film also inspired the 1990 Field Mice song, ‘So Said Kay’. Often regarded as one of the best songs by the cult British indie group, and indeed by any band on the cult British indie label Sarah Records. The opening line became the title of the main Field Mice anthology, Where’d You Learn To Kiss That Way?

Ms Charbonneau is the aunt of Lawrence, one of the grooms. When I heard who she was – a couple of years ago when I was getting to know Lawrence in London – I got him to send her a CD of the Field Mice song. She’d not heard it before. All muses should be made aware of the works they inspire. I was happy to act as Muse Connector Incarnate.

For the wedding, she wore a dress once worn by Joan Crawford, taken from the MGM lot. It just gets better.

When I got back to London, I attended a party in Peckham, hosted by two ladies married to each other, Ms Lesley and Ms Caroline. When I mentioned I’d met Patricia Charbonneau, they rubbed their legs at each other and said ‘Phwoar!’

Ms Lesley went on to say she once took her former husband, another Mr Edwards in fact, to the cinema to see Desert Hearts when it came out. More than once. ‘I was hoping he’d get the message…’

How many connections do you want, Dear Reader?

I kissed her, of course. And doesn’t my garland look like a string of lights?

She reached in and placed a string of lights
Around this heart of mine

Link: The Field Mice – So Said Kay

Link: Desert Hearts – Trailer

Catching up with the diary after a break is always like starting a car on a winter morning. Photos are like pulling out the choke.

I don’t know about you (that would be strange), but I find it helps to ensure one’s tour guides in New York are amongst the most beautiful and stylish gentlemen the city has to offer.

Sunday August 23rd. Mr Tobi Haberstroh, at home with the works of art at the Chelsea (9th floor staircase):

Wednesday August 25th. Mr Cator Sparks, Dandy of Harlem. Showtime at the, oh, you know:

Thursday August 27th. Mr Kevin Tobar, Ecuador’s Master Of  Tongues. Sharing hair-of-the-dog cocktails at a pavement cafe in the East Village:

Right, off to the library to do some Proper Writing.

Am staying with Lawrence Gullo and his partner Fyodor at their home in Newburgh, upstate New York. Occasion: their wedding this Saturday Aug 22nd. They’re actually getting legally married in the state of Vermont next month, but this is the ceremony and reception for friends.

Arrive at Newark airport Thursday evening, having travelled with fellow wedding guest David Ryder-Prangley. Spend most of the journey working on a poem to read out at the reception.

Am reminded that poetry is by far the easiest medium to do badly. I do six drafts longhand, then run it by the happy couple on Saturday morning for approval, just in case they’d rather I plumped for the Shakespeare or Whitman I’d brought by way of back-up (Sonnet 116, and ‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’). My own effort is, after all, a little personal and political, linking respect for transgenderism with Ovid’s myth of Iphis.

A Newburgh water tower, as seen on Friday when out with Lawrence and Fyodor shopping for the wedding:

The weather is absolutely sweltering, even plantation-like. Crickets outside my window sound like serenading eletric razors; the sheer volume of the creatures calls for earplugs at night. It’s not a constant, even sound, either: some crickets get nearer and louder from time to time, with all varieties of whirring and buzzing imaginable.

Tepid rain showers punctuate the days. Lawrence’s house is full of electric fans on full-pelt. Drinking water constantly is par for the course. When I get out of Lawrence’s car to walk to a local diner for breakfast – the car being a  hybrid-fuel Prius with perfect air-conditioning, my glasses steam up.

Inside the diner (more perfect fridge-like air conditioning), I have pancakes with syrup, and am attended by a waitress who walks among the tables with a top-up jug asking, ‘Coffee, hon?’ Just like in the movies. The diner has an amazing mural:

More guests arrive at the house for Friday evening, when there’s something of an alternative batchelor party (for both grooms). Various turns include burlesque – an Aussie lady morris dancer who disrobes levels of vintage costume made by her seamstress girlfriend  – and a beautiful be-wigged Brooklyn drag queen. One turn is a hilarious lecture on How To Dance Goth.

On Saturday morning, the marriage ceremony takes place in the nearby park. The grooms declare their vows:

Then they join their hands and present them for binding by the guests. Each guest adds a ribbon to the union:

And I get to wear a garland of frangipani. I smell wonderful, frankly (photo taken by Eileen, Lawrence’s mother):

Monday: meet Dad as he returns from the Caption convention in Oxford. Because his train gets into Paddington, I do what all Londoners should do at that station when meeting out-of-towners. I show him the statue of Paddington Bear. Along with the character’s merchandise stall, covered in books, soft toys and toddler-sized duffel coats.

We go to the Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury, only to discover it’s closed on Mondays. I get a sense of deja vu from this time last year, when I was in New York and traipsed across most of Central Park in order to visit the Met. It was a Monday, and the Met – despite being the size of a football stadium – was closed that day.

I’m off to New York again this Thursday coming, for seven days. This time, I’ll ensure my museum stints avoid the first day of the working week.

***

In Gosh Comics, I pick up Issue 5 of Pride & Prejudice. It’s not a parody or homage but an entirely straight – and beautifully drawn – comic strip adaptation of the Jane Austen book. What really delights me is that it’s published by Marvel as a proper serialised A5 colour comic, and that it’s displayed alongside the latest issue of Spider-Man, X-Men, the Hulk and so on. So a novel that famously enticed readers despite a lack of any real heroes or villains is now translated into the one medium most accustomed to them. The Austen effect still triumphs: the staff at Gosh tell me it’s been flying off the shelf.

***

Walking along Royal College Street today, I pass a couple of elderly Irish men sitting outside a pub. As I approach, one calls out at me.

‘Walk straight!’

And then, after I’ve passed by:

‘Can I shag you?’

In the evening I recount this to Ms L, who works behind the bar at the Boogaloo. I do so hoping she’ll be amused. In fact, she takes a physical step back and stares at me, unnerved.

I’m reminded of Ms D telling me about someone she met recently.

‘This person asked me, “Do you know Dickon Edwards? I’m his nemesis.” And they weren’t smiling.’

I found this incredibly funny. But Ms D was appalled, verging on upset.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone’s nemesis before,’ she said. ‘I wondered if I should call the police.’

(‘Are you Jesus?’ I had at Latitude from two young men in the woods, when I was walking around in my white suit. ‘I forgive you,’ I shouted back.)

I suppose I do attract a certain… oddness from some people – as opposed to odd people per se  – from time to time. But they soon tire of me: I’m too busy stalking myself inside my own head, trying to nail my thoughts down, preoccupied with controlling my own madness, never mind anyone else’s.  There’s always an angle, a tilt, which part of me is at and which the rest is not; and it’s never by the same degree for more than a moment. So this predicament is a two-way barrier, for better or worse. I’ve said it before, but one ambition of mine is to have a syndrome named after me.

To act weirdly around an already weird person isn’t stalking, after all: it’s tautology.

Charlotte Mew’s favourite joke, as quoted by Penelope Fitzgerald in an old copy of the London Review of Books:

A hearse driver runs over a man and kills him. A passer-by shouts, ‘Greedy!’

Ms Mew was also known as Lotti. I hadn’t realised until now the connection between the two names: Lotti being short for Charlotte. Similarly, when DJ-ing at the club Decline & Fall, one of the organisers, Beth, told me she now prefers to be called Lily. I thought this was a full name change until she pointed out that both are derivatives of Elizabeth. What with Betty, Bess, Liz and so on, it’s a pretty good value name. Dickon comes from Richard, but that surprises some people too.

The way to settle this, when people unhelpfully say ‘Oh I don’t mind, call me any of my fifteen nicknames’, is to find out people’s Coma Name. As in the name paramedics need to know when trying to bring round an unconscious patient. They haven’t got time to try all the permutations (‘Mr Edwards?’ Dick? Rick? Ricardo?’)  – they need to know the one most likely to break through in those crucial ebbing moments. Dickon is very much my Coma Name, even though Richard is on my passport. I should really attach a note there, in case I pass out while alone in a foreign land. No Richard to resuscitate here.

***

The first page of the longhand draft of Angela Carter’s Nights At The Circus is on display in the British Library’s permanent ‘Treasures’ exhibition. It’s the final item in a long chronological line-up of literary artefacts, which take in Lewis Carroll’s original notebook of Alice In Wonderland, the one he gave Alice Liddell. Out of all the works on display, Ms Carter has by far the neatest handwriting: ‘clear, upright and not quite flowing’, as Susannah Clapp put it on Radio 3 recently. She was presenting a series about Author’s Postcards. I love Radio 3.

On publication in 1984, Nights At The Circus failed to win the Booker, or to even make the shortlist. Now it’s rubbing shoulders with the Magna Carta and the First Folio.

Also on display, temporarily, are a couple of letters from 1933, as part of the library’s Codex Sinaiticus Bible show. They illustrate the UK Government’s public subscription campaign to raise £100,000, in order to buy the ancient Bible from the Soviets. One letter is from a 7-year-old boy in Durham, enclosing 2/6. ‘Dear Director of the British Museum…’ The other accompanies a postal order for six shillings, from an unemployed miner in Tonypandy, Rhondda. The miner adds, in beautiful handwriting: ‘The destiny of our own Nation is certainly safe because of the place it gives to the word of God.’

These days it’d be all PayPal and online donations. I miss the world of letters. Emails in museum cases seems unlikely: there’s no such thing as The Original Email. Hearing about the late John Hughes becoming a pen pal with one of his fans in the 80s was the final straw for me. Getting messages via the Internet is not the same. So this past week I’ve written at least one Proper Letter a day, to friends and family. I feel better for it. The physical acts: the pen or pencil pushed across the paper, the folding, the stamp, the posting. It’s anchoring me to the world just that little bit more.

Douglas Adams once said at the Dawn of the Internet Age that he preferred email to letters because it was cheaper, faster, and involved less licking.

I like the licking.

A mention of me in Kieron Gillen’s blog, recounting his time manning a stall at the San Diego Comic-Con. He refers to the Phonogram tribute zine for which I wrote a short story:

A particularly broken period happened when we were slumped on the table, talking about the Zine and how much we liked Dickon’s contribution. This turned to how well he rocked a suit. A woman passing the table thinks we’re talking to her. We say we’re actually talking about Dickon, then proceed to explain to this clearly bemused and uncaring woman exactly who Dickon is. As she headed away from the table towards the Top Cow booth, we were shouting facts about Dickon after her (‘HE HAS NICE HAIR!’ ‘HE WAS IN A BAND CALLED ORLANDO!’). This reaches an apex when I inform her ‘I ONCE SAT ON THE SAME SEAT AS HIM’ – pause – ‘AFTER HE HAD STOOD UP’. Because right then, it seemed possible that she would think that I was sitting on the same chair as him whilst he was sitting on it, and wanted to make things perfectly clear.

==

I was lightly interviewed the other day in The Guardian, as part of an article by Dave Simpson on music scenes, specifically scenes that tried and failed. I was initially wary about contributing, as Mr S had featured Orlando once before in a piece on Bands That Were Hyped But Failed, an unflattering label which one hardly wants to reinforce. He’d also written an entire book about tracking down all the umpteen members of The Fall who were sacked (or forced to quit) by Mark E Smith. So I can’t help thinking of a quote by his cartoon namesake:

Homer: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. So the lesson is, never try.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a piece about How Dickon Edwards Tried And Failed To Be A Pop Star, The Hubristic Booby, Now Let’s All Have A Good Laugh. It was more about the scenes Mr Simpson had selected, of which Romo was one, and could I talk about that. This time I was feeling Happy To Be Of Use, whatever the agenda, and did my utmost over the phone to stress the positive aspects of Romo, along with being realistic and honest about its shortcomings. And especially, on how 1996 really was the wrong time for it: the singer of La Roux is very much a glorious Romo child of Tilda Swinton in my eyes. May she pout long and prosper.

Most of all, I tried not to sound like those aging ex-band members who speak as if they were going through some silly little phase, stressing that they’re all right now, they’ve grown a beard and got a proper job and, yes, aren’t bands stupid. Those who feel it’s far better to point and sneer and feel superior and no longer be creative.

Matt Everitt, once the drummer from Menswear, is a BBC 6 Music news reporter these days. His biography on the station’s website mentions Menswear as ‘a third division Britpop band of no fixed ability – which paid the bills until a chronic lack of ability caught up with them.’

This gets me so annoyed. Why editorialise? Why not just mention the band, and leave the judgement side to others? Menswear had fans. They even had fanzines. Whatever the received opinion is these days, and I admit they were hardly the most innovative group around, they did inspire passion, devotion, love, and they sold out Shepherd’s Bush Empire. That’s an achievement, not a silly youthful phase to play down for the rest of one’s ever-greying life, just so one can feel timidly superior with the try-nothing crowd.

Between creating original primary material (however derivative, forgettable or juvenile) and safely mocking the creativity of others; between trying and sneering at those who try, I’ll always side with the former. God knows there’s so many truly awful bands out there, but I still support them for trying and sticking their heads above the parapet.

Unless they were that band in the adjoining room who were going through ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ over and over again during one particular Fosca rehearsal in Camden a few years ago. They can, well, go to hell.

Further to my previous entry slightly mocking EM Forster for predicting a world of ‘pneumatic mail’, I’m now told this was indeed what many thought the future would be like in 1909. This Wikipedia entry on the subject points out that more than a few cities not only adopted a pneumatic postal system in the 19th century, but some kept using their systems long into the era of fax and email. Prague’s pneumatic post lasted until 2002, and only stopped then because of the floods.

I love this Italian P-Post stamp from 1945:

***

To the Curzon Soho to see the film Moon. A somewhat sleepy, low-key sci-fi tale in the vein of Silent Running, Solaris, 2001 et al. Not that much happens: a lone astronaut on a moonbase finds something odd has happened. He works out what it is, and decides what to do about it, and it takes him about 97 minutes, all in.

Much as I like quiet, slowburning indie films – Red Road springs to mind – I’m surprised here to find myself hankering after more biff-bang-pow fare, such as the recent Star Trek film. In that, a life-or-death sword fight on a vertiginous mining platform is immediately followed by a life-or-death race to teleport two people before they fall to the ground, right before a life-or-death race to save Young Spock’s parents as their home planet explodes. The whole film is like that, and yet it never feels ‘dumbed-down’, or banal: just proper, unabashed value-for-minutes plot. Pure, 100% What Happens Next. The new Doctor Who is similar – 45 minute adventures compressing the same amount of plot as the old 4-part, 100-minute tales.

Maybe it’s because sci-fi is all about on the ability to DO so much more, that one expects the principle to apply to the amount of story as well. Or perhaps it’s because Moon feels more suited to a 30-minute episode of a series like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits rather than a movie.

Still, 97 minutes essentially staring at the face of Sam Rockwell isn’t so bad: he has the kind of existential hangdog canvas highly suited for the purpose, much like Paddy Considine’s.

What’s most unexpected is that the film makes entirely logical use of the song ‘The One And Only’ by Mr Chesney Hawkes. Really! Given the director is Mr Bowie Jr, who presumably has easy access to any of his father’s many space-themed popular hits, his choice to eschew the likes of ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Life On Mars’, ‘Ashes To Ashes’ and ‘Hello Spaceboy’ in favour of Mr Hawkes’s less artistically acceptable 1991 opus is entirely commendable.

***

I watch the film with Charley S and her friends Pam and Tristan. Always nice to meet brand new people, or so I think. Pam says she met me at the club Stay Beautiful some years ago, and Tristan tells me he met me 13 years ago when Orlando played a gig in Cambridge. One vain part of me wonders (as ever), how can I convert this so-called ability to be held in the minds of so many for so long into a modest income, while another thinks, well, you just have a silly name and silly hair. That’s all. Now get on with that book.

The first properly hot, dry day in town after so much rain, so the insects are out in force. Walking down Dartmouth Park Hill today, the pavements are crawling with ants, flies, and indeed flying ants.

I pass by the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, currently hosting Anthony Gormley’s hourly parade of Britons. The woman up there at this hour is an entirely ordinary-looking thirty-ish lady dressed in casual summer clothes, smiling while chatting on her mobile phone. I guess she’s calling her mates (‘I’m on the plinth’). In contrast to those who make big statements, raise worthy awareness, hire wacky costumes or treat the plinth like Britain’s Got Talent, I realise she is closest to the spirit of Mr Gormley’s idea: an unfussy celebration of everyday contentment, simply taken out of the crowd and put on display. It’s surreal in its sheer real-ness.

I read EM Forster’s sci-fi novella from 1909, The Machine Stops. Startling to think that the author of Howard’s End and Room With A View predicted virtual reality and the internet era, albeit as a warning against dependency on technology. He doesn’t quite get email right, though: letters have been replaced by ‘the pneumatic post’. The lady on the Plinth is the counter-argument to Mr Forster’s story: she clearly has a  certain amount of dependency on her mobile phone, but it facilitates her first-hand life, rather than replaces it. One assumes she will meet the people she calls at some point.

(All of which says rather more about me than it does her. I do have a mobile phone, and it’s something of a lifeline when away from home. But when back in London I rarely use it, even switching it off for days on end. I realise it is me that is the strange one.)

Quick announcement before it gets any later, for anyone attending the mighty San Diego Comic-Con this weekend. I’m not, but my words are.

The fanzine Phonogram vs The Fans, which was made especially for SDCC and includes the Phonogram-inspired short story I’ve mentioned earlier, is on sale at the convention. Worth getting for the cover alone: a Jamie McKelvie pastiche of that striking Jenny Saville painting which adorns the latest Manics CD. You really do have to see it in print to properly appreciate it, I think.

It’ll be at the Image Comics booth (#2729). More info at curator Matthew Sheret’s blog:

http://matthewsheret.com/2009/07/17/sdcc/

The comic Phonogram itself – highly recommended – is in the middle of its 7-issue second series, The Singles Club. Each issue comes with ‘B-side’ stories drawn by guest artists. Inspired stuff indeed. Latest info on the comic is at:

http://www.phonogramcomic.com/blog/

I can’t think of San Diego without hearing the superb 6ths song ‘San Diego Zoo’ in my head.

Thurs afternoon: Meet Rachel Stevenson in St James’s, so she can borrow a rare novel from the London Library via my card. The book she’s after is ‘Rain On The Pavements’ by Roland Camberton, a first edition from 1951. It’s London-based, and eponymously enough we get caught up in one of the current sporadic showers while walking to the Tube. I also take Ms S on a tour of the Library, something I love doing ever since I found out members are allowed to bring in visitors.

In the members’ suggestions book, someone has remarked that the British Library now has a summer dress code, and that the LL should follow suit.

‘It may be hot but there is no need for singlets (sic), shorts, and all that goes with them.’

The Library’s reply on the page opposite is ‘We prefer to trust the general sense of forbearance of members.’

While walking through Waterstones Piccadilly, Rachel notices that the in-store music is one of Keith Girdler’s later jazzy bands – Beaumont or Arabesque. I check later on – it’s actually ‘Chadwick’ by Blueboy, from their last album on Shinkansen. In Waterstones, it’s followed by the Cocteau Twins’ ‘Blue Bell Knoll’. We take guesses at which staffer on the tills must be the resident indie kid.

Perhaps the band name triggers something on my inner London To Do list, because walking back through Leicester Square, I impulsively decide to finally visit the Jean Cocteau mural in the French Catholic church, Notre Dame De France. The church is next to the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Place, mere steps away from the noise and chaos of the square: those eternal Bob Marley caricature pavement artists and the seemingly daily red carpet movie premieres (security barriers and crowds tonight assembling for the new Tarantino with Brad Pitt).

But then, Cocteau was a film star too. According to the church guide, when he painted the mural in situ over a single week in 1959 he was so famous that the church had to set up anti-paparazzi scaffolding so he could work in peace. The mural’s in a side chapel and comprises a gaggle of figures from the Crucifixion and Ascension, all rendered in that unmistakable naive line style.

The artist even gives himself a cameo:

Quite why an original Cocteau mural remains relegated to ‘Secret London’ guidebooks is beyond me. More people really should see it, along with the striking altar tapestry by Robert De Chaunac, where the Virgin resembles a Disney princess:

By of contrast to all this Franco-Catholic colour and noise, I stop off to catch the evening Quaker meeting at the Friends’ House in Euston. No murals or tapestries there, needless to say. Just a modern meeting room with chairs arranged in a circle. In fact, given the building is a warren of similar rooms available to hire, I have to double check to make sure I’ve not stepped into Alcoholics Anonymous.