Ruby Stark

Yesterday, after I got home, I deployed the dongle I’d bought and sucked down great lungfuls of internet. I did a ton of research about squats, queer stuff and volks (people’s kitchens that serve cheap, nutritious meals). Then, I discovered that my computer had started flaking out: the system preferences and terminal were fucked, and finally it would not boot up. Two complete erase and reinstalls later, I had a working computer and a strong suspicion that the dongle software was poisonous. Thus, I had no internet again.

Today was not great. I set out to buy some food and discovered that most shops in Germany are closed on Sundays. I then waited in for the landlords to come round and mend the internet. They arrived about seven p.m. and failed. They will return tomorrow to try again. I feel completely cut off without the internet. It’s hard to research Berlin, to talk to my friends and family in England.

I have planned out a walk that will take me from Kreuzkölln – the informal name for the area populated by exiles from Kreuzberg’s gentrification – to the Yellow Sunshine vegetarian cafe on Wienerstr. to the area between Kottlier Bhf. and the river Spree where there are reputedly lots of squats and punks.

I’ve been listening to Deerhoof, Des Ark and Dear and the Headlights.

» Nearly broke down in the supermarket while buying the delicious ginger and orange marmalade Matte and I had in Cornwall.

Today was my first day alone in Berlin. My Dad left early in the morning and then I went back to a half-sleep. I came really good as I thought about Cat and her alphaness and then I fell back to sleep.

When I woke again, it was eleven a.m. I had a shower, planned my route and set out into the cold. The guy I’m renting my apartment from had recommended two streets for the centre of Kreuzberg. I treked through the snow to Bergmannstr and found a few cafes, a beautiful graveyard, some bric-a-brac stalls and some graffiti. I saw some promisingly queer looking people, and wondering whether extra sensitivity explained why I felt like everyone was looking at me. Then, I walked way up Meringdamm and along Kochstr to centre number two: Orangienstr. This was better: some independent bookshops, sparse cafes and some clothes shops and a nicer feel. I bought zweitzen Lucky Strikes and then bought a very creamy kaffe latte from a pretty girl in one of the sparse cafes.

My auntie asked how things are going and I replied with the following:

“I’m not sure if I’ll get post because my flat is a big block without numbers. Things are going OK but feel pretty lonely and wondering if I’m doing the right thing. Constantly feel on the verge of finding the buzzing centre of Berlin. Thus far, it has eluded me. Lots of love to you, d, r and g xxx”

I checked the map and then went to the nearest U-Bahn station and got the train home.

I’m now writing this and trying to get the fucking internet working in my apartment. I’ve bought a backup 3G dongle, but it’s €5 a day.

Today, I moved to Berlin. And, as time went past, I asked myself, with more and more consternation, What the fuck am I doing here?

A couple of weeks ago, I emailed Theresa to ask her whether she wanted to meet up. She replied earlier this week and said she wasn’t sure, but if she decided she wanted to, she’d let me know. I found this funny at the time. And a little sliver of pride lodged itself in my brain: Wow, I’m such a heartbreaker.

Now, I’d do anything to see her familiar face.

I’ve arrived and left so many times.

There were always two parts: the bit I did with my parents, and a bit of my new/old life.

I arrived at Universitytown with my Mum and Dad. We went for a pub lunch where they calmed my nerves. Then, they settled me into my halls and then left. I can’t remember what I did once I was alone.

I can’t remember leaving.

I arrived at my first house in Universitytown with my Mum and Dad. They said it seemed like a lovely tree-lined avenue, and not like the red-light district at all. My new boy housemates helped me carry my stuff up to my room in two seconds. My Mum left Teddy standing on a cushion looking out of my bedroom window. I can’t remember what I did once I was alone.

The night before I left, we had our fourth or fifth big party. My current crush, Gina, came, and we stood on the red fire escape while she smoked weed. Everyone drank bucket-loads of the punch we made in a rain butt. Gina and I sat on the floor of my room amongst all the cardboard boxes of my stuff and ate Lebanese food she’d brought from the restaurant she waitressed at. I asked if I could kiss her and she said no. The next morning, my parents picked me up and my housemates waved me off.

I arrived at my first flat in Northerncity with my Mum and Dad. My Mum made up my bed while my Dad and I carried in my stuff. When I was alone, I sat up in my first sitting room and smoked cigarettes with music on and felt like I had my own cosy fort.

I can’t remember leaving.

I arrived at my first house in Northerncity on my own, because I had a car. I spent the evening pottering about in my room in the attic, setting out my stuff and listening to Vessels That Sail in the Night.

On the night I left, I went for a night out with my friends to a crappy disco. Swede and Ann kissed me. After the disco, High School, Matte and I went to a shisha bar and ate houmous. Matte and I kissed when High School was in the loo. Matte and I went back to mine and made love as it got light. She was still there, and I still had hickeys on my neck, when my parents arrived to pick me up.

I can’t remember arriving in London. On my first evening there, I watched TV with my housemates and felt abnormally relaxed.

On the night I left, I had Peking duck, seaweed, sweet and sour chicken and cans of Red Stripe with my housemates and we talked about attraction. Curly enlightened me on how straight guys usually only make friends with girls they fancy. This was a bit of a revelation. The next day, my Dad arrived and we packed up the car and drove back to Birthtown.

The night before I left Birthtown, I hung out with my Mum and step-Dad and worried about my little sisters. They all hugged me goodbye and I cried as I walked to my Dad’s car. That evening, he and I ate steak, spinach, tzatziki and creme brulee and then I got a bad night’s sleep.

When he and I arrived in Berlin, we went for an appalling meal at a restaurant, then I moved into my temporary apartment. My Dad and I trudged out into the cold to buy some supplies, then ate Weetabix and drank orange juice back at my apartment.

When he left, I sat in my arm-chair and watched The Sopranos. Then I came into my kitchen and listened to The xx as I typed this in the dark with a cigarette and the window opened out onto the courtyard and the lit windows of the other apartments.

A few days ago, I spent the day baking bread and writing code and pottering. Cat, someone I knew a bit in previousnortherncity, buzzed up on Facebook. She is queer and older and went out with Dusk years ago. She is a damaged alpha in that she is confident and strong-willed and inspiring, rather than in the embarrassing faux-male way of Angelina Jolie.

She asked if I’d really died and I said I had and we talked about that a bit. We talked about her boyfriend and her son and her crush on this girl. We talked about Matte and Dusk other old lovers.

Over the next few days, I kept on thinking back to that conversation. Today, she sent me a message: “in fact, talking of candid, i might have to sleep with you sometime, cos then i can casually drop into conversation that i have slept with someone after they died. that should be a conversation stopper.”

I woke up on Saturday and went downstairs and bade Dusk goodbye. He had a meeting in London. About twelve pm, Archigram, his girlfriend and Jordan arrived. They, Emma and I ate goat’s cheese, Parma ham, home-made bread and sun-dried tomatoes, and drank orange juice and cups of tea. After lunch, we played a game of Cranium with much hilarity. One all-play round had Archigram and Cyp both having to whistle us Say a Little Prayer, and they both started on the same bit of tune in the same key and produced an eerie, impromptu duet and then they couldn’t whistle anymore because they were laughing so much.

We went to the shops to get some last-minute supplies and then spent the rest of the afternoon talking.

In the early evening, Richard, Haz, Dusk, Grain, my Dad, my brother, and my Mum’s friends Sue and Vince arrived. My brother began cooking like a hero and everyone milled around in the kitchen and drank a lot and talked. It made my heart glad to see my friends and family together, and to see my friends who didn’t know each other getting on. I think pretty much everyone talked to pretty much everyone.

Dusk seemed a little withdrawn, but I’m not sure why. My Mum thinks it was because he was older than most of my friends, but I’m not so sure. I think maybe he was tired and maybe he was distracted by his meeting and maybe he was phased by meeting lots of confident friends of mine. He said he has a theory that middle-class families are, fundamentally, articulate and discuss abstract concepts, whereas working-class families don’t talk about things outside their direct experience. He said this results in a higher ability of the middle classes to adapt and aspire.

We did an informal survey, and found that, of the people who identified as a person with a working class background, he, Grain and Cyp thought their families supported the theory. Archigram’s girlfriend felt her family did not.

I had been nervous about showing Dusk where I grew up, because my Mum’s house is big and has a big garden and she and my step-Dad are rich. (At the same time, I was excited to show him off to my family and other friends.) I asked him whether meeting my family and seeing our house illuminated anything about me. He said another piece had slotted into the jigsaw puzzle: the articulate and well-to-do environment I grew up in explains why I can move to a country without speaking the language or knowing anyone there. He might be right.

I wore my red clingy American Apparel dress and Cyp said, “Ruby, if you weren’t a lesbian [his word for me being queer]…” He’s so damn handsome, but I just don’t fancy him.

Three thirty a.m. came and most of us staggered off to bed. Richard and my brother stayed up and sat at the kitchen table and drank a bottle of Amaretto.

I went to bed with Grain. He kissed me on the mouth and said, Goodnight, Ruby, and he asked if I’d like to spoon and I said yes and he wrapped me up in his arms and curled terribly close around me and said I am good to snuggle because I am petite.

I didn’t really sleep that well because I preferred being snuggled to moving so I could relieve my cramp or undead a limb. So, most of the night passed in a strange half-wake half-sleep where I listened to Grain breathe and thought how nice it was to snuggle after such a long time spent with Matte’s dislike of nighttime snuggles.

We slept in lots of different positions: me with my head on Grain’s chest, turned together with legs entwined, me on my back and Grain with a knee around my hips and and our hand together and Grain’s breath on my cheek. I slowly got more and more turned on. He kissed me all over my neck. I kissed his cheek slowly and delicately.

Thing is, though, we’re friends. I feel something very deep in my heartt for Grain. But, whatever it is, my feelings about our friendship and his relationship prohibit further exploration. When I came to the next morning, my desire faded into the deepness.

We got up and I fetched Grain a bowl of Wheetos and a cup of tea. Then, we saw that everyone else was already up and had started building an igloo in the garden. We went out to help. For the next three hours, a few of us gathered snow, heaped it in a sledge, took it to the igloo and shaped it into flat blocks. Then, the others sawed it up into bricks and built the structure. Mum brought us out cups of tea and we drank those. Richard brought out beers and we drank those (I felt fantastic for twenty minutes, then rather ill, then OK). At last, Archigram, his girlfriend, Richard and my brother had a beautifully-curved structure mostly complete. We spent an hour doing the almost and then horizontal roof, and then it was done. We got candles and my Mum took a photo of all eight of us inside. It was utterly joyous: the hard work, the euphoric warmth, the beer, my family, my close friends and the utterly pointless but oh so beautiful house.

I leave for Berlin in a week. This weekend, I’m having some friends to stay at my Mum’s house. There will be Alice, Richard, Grain, Jordan, Dusk, Cyp, my brother, Archigram and his girlfriend.

Last night, Cyp and Dusk arrived and we ate home-made lasagne, home-made garlic bread and salad with Coronas, Erdingers and Staropramens with my mum and little sister. We talked a lot about the climate and discussed Copenhagen and the different approaches of activists and mainstream politics. It was so nice bringing my friends and family together.

Years ago, I revealed to Dusk that I had considered being a policeman after I left University. He had been alarmingly disquieted by this revelation, and a few years later he revealed that he had almost not gone home with me that night.

He, Cyp and I had a long conversation about the role of police in society and I sensed Dusk and I not getting along because he took a more hard line attitude on his relationship with policemen as people. This kind of debate-but-it-means-something type of disagreement has only really happened twice before, and we recovered. But, it’s such a strange feeling to not be in love with someone you are normally in love with.

Later, as I lay in bed, I thought about how dynamic friendships are. And I realised that some of my friendships are on the down escalator: Whip, Frost, Jordan maybe.

» At my Mum’s. Just watched The Fugitive. Julianne Moore drives me wild with desire.

Yesterday, I went to see the Dieter Rams exhibition at the Design Museum. I walked through London in the freezing cold and my new leather jacket and all I got was memories: booking a table at a former-squat cafe in Vauxhall for my old girlfriend, Cassette, and I; Matte telling me that she’d slept with that guy; sitting with Matte on some steps opposite Liberty’s on the first weekend she came to visit me in London, when she was head-over-heels in love with me; running with Matte along the south bank, through the rain, to the Design Museum to see the Jonathan Barnbrooke exhibition.

I liked Rams’s designs, especially the hi-fi equipment. He seemed to be a designer who thought appliances deserved their space in the home, rather than having to apologetically blend in with the furniture. However, you could see that even he would adorn old designs with his current pre-occupations: note the change from straight to curved record player arms.

I walked around in the cold for an hour and then went to meet Archigram, and his housemate and girlfriend at a Vietnamese. We troughed down some tasty food and then sat and talked in the corner of an underpopulated pub next to an expired log fire.

We then moved to a gay bar in Dalston that seemed to have a surprisingly number of straight people in it, and no hot lesbians. But, it was great to sit at a table, surrounded by friends who are all in the same moment and level of drunk and mood of party, laughing and pouring back beer as the bar raged around us.

We went back to Archigram’s and sat in his kitchen and drank a disgusting concoction called chai latte and then went to bed. I caught some sleep on a mattress in the living room, woke, went down and talked to Archigram’s other housemate about Australia and then ate toast with everyone.

I just went outside for a cigarette. I smoked and thought about the coming weekend where I’ll have some close friends come and stay with me at the Mom’s. I was imagining picking Dusk up from the station, and introducing him to my Mum, looking down and not really seeing and taking quick pulls on my cigarette, and then I looked out onto the street and felt a moment of sheer panic. I felt like I wasn’t in the real world – the bars of the gate and the sodium light on the pavement and the bike in our yard all seemed separate from me. It was a horrible sensation. I used to get it when I had anxiety attacks in my second year of University. I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly through my nose and opened my eyes and the world was back.

I went to the London Ambulance Service with the Moms. As I was standing at reception waiting for the PR guy, a policeman came in and asked for Ruby Stark and I said I’m Ruby and put out my hand and then realised he was going for a hug and we embraced. I took him to meet my Mum in the waiting room and they hugged, too. We got talking and N, the policeman, told his part of the story. He said he was going past with his partner on their motorbikes and he saw a crowd on the pavement. He went to investigate and found me on the floor in the recovery position. He said I had gone blue. A passerby was on the phone with the emergency services and tried to pass the phone, but N shoved him aside and began mouth-to-mouth and chest-compressions. After four and a half minutes, I coughed in his face.

At that moment, he started crying, my Mum started crying and I started crying. Mum and N hugged again. My Dad arrived and we retold the story and he nearly cried.

The PR guy arrived and we went to the coffee room. The paramedics arrived and seemed kind of detached and professionally dutiful. A photographer chap took some photos of us in the back of an ambulance, and then we all shared doughnuts and cookies. One of the paramedics asked me what my plans were and I said I was moving to Berlin. I explained that I’d applied in May and got a phone interview, but then I died and Mum had to explain to them that I was indisposed. Everyone laughed, and I think the ice broke. My sister arrived.

We took some more photos with me astride a paramedic motorbike in my dress and tights and schoolgirl shoes. And N asked if I wanted to take a photo with his Police hat on and I politely agreed and my Mum took a photo that will never ever see the light of day.

One of the paramedics said that the first five minutes after a cardiac arrest are crucial and it became clear that N had saved my life.

We all hugged goodbye and my Mum and Dad agreed to go on an ambulance shift as observers.

Afterwards, my Mum, Dad, sister and I went for supper. I remember when I saw Touching the Void with my Mum and her friend and her friend’s son. We all came out and felt like we’d been through the emotional wringer, but we just couldn’t stop talking and we were all on such a high. Supper felt like that. I felt tired, but very special and loved.

I can’t stop watching this video of Des Ark:

So, I went to see Matte in Leeds. The train from Cambridge to London was delayed, so I missed the train to Leeds, and then the one I got broke down. Train rage welled up. I watched Jim Jarmusch’s film, Stranger Than Paradise. It’s in black and white and each scene is filmed in one static shot and nothing really happens, but not in a good way.

I arrived and Matte and I were deferential and danced around each other. We went for some Japanese food and she told me about being in the forest. It sounds like she is happy: she is exactly where she wants to be. She mentioned that she is hardly seeing Abel anymore. Apparently, things kind of fell apart after they started spending extended periods of time together.

We wandered around in the cold and then went to a pub that had a fake fire. We talked about how things felt a bit weird. I figured it was because we were seeing each other for the first time where there was no romance. It was so fucking different from when we last saw each other again after we broke up the first time and we couldn’t stop touching. I said something, and I can’t remember what it was, and tears welled up. Later, I said I missed her so much, and that I was really worried about meeting the paramedics who saved me, and that I was totally discombobulated by the thought of moving to Berlin. And then I got even closer to crying so I went to the loo to do that in private.

The thing that became clear, and that made me cry repeatedly over the next few days: she has basically moved on.

I wanted to tell her about this scene in Stone Butch Blues where Jess takes two children to the zoo. It’s snowing and freezing cold and the animals are forlorn. One of the children asks her whether she’s leaving and she says, Yes because I have to, and the children cry. And the whole scene is suffused with that strange hopeless sadness of childhood that comes when something bad happens that is completely beyond your control. My Mum said that when my Dad left home, she told me, Daddy’s leaving, and I cried and said, No, and, though I don’t remember that moment, when I think of it now I get the same feeling as that scene.

So, I wanted to tell Matte, but I kind of knew in advance that, like some of the other really strong things in my head, she just wouldn’t get it. Very few people do.

We wandered around in the snow by the canal. She showed me where she used to smoke weed and snog her friends, and her favourite bridge to stand on and look at the old factories (now all office buildings). At last, we went to the station and hugged and kissed once on the lips and then I got on the train and cried most of the way home.

I listened to the recording I made of Efterklang’s Cutting Ice To Snow, and thought about how tears rolled down my cheeks as they played, and that the lyrics, which I heard as, “You’ve gone too far, despite my city walls”, were, for me, about Matte becoming a person I was no longer compatible with, who existed outside my borders: in the wild, away from big cities, polyamorous.

» Circle Takes The Square, Foster Wallace on Lynch, on the train to see Matte, then back to London, then Berlin soon. Tremulous.

Last night, I dreamt of Allure. She was throwing a big party in a breaking down old ramshackle tall house like out of cartoons. All I remember is that she wasn’t interested in me and then I left and she ran out into the dusty yard and brought me back and kissed me and we made love. I woke with an incongruous sad scary dream feeling.

You know how sometimes when you dream of someone you’re in love with them for the rest of the day? Do you think that if you dream of someone often enough you could just be in love with them all the time?

Anyway, so I watched Annie Hall today and I think Diane Keaton’s upper lip is like Julianne Moore’s and like Allure’s.

On Monday, I will go to Leeds to visit Matte for the day. I rang her and suggested it on the spur of the moment, a notion that occurred to me at the beginning of Christmas dinner and was cemented by the end. I suggested either coming for the day, or staying the night. She thought it over and said she could come to London and stay over, then decided it should just be a day thing. I felt very disappointed and kind of rejected.

Fuck it.

I drove with my Dad to the house owned by his friend, Sapphire, whose lovely and diffident and funny husband died ten years ago and the house was built by Lytton Strachey and frequented by members of the Bloomsbury group (she has photos of Virginia Woolf in the garden). Sapphire’s grown-up children arrived in the evening. Gina is thirty and very beautiful and flamboyant, but caring. Sam is diffident and funny and warm like his father, but slower and more softly handsome. My nascent crush developed into a gentle yearning. I thought quite a lot about having sex with him, and about wrapping myself up in his quiet attentions and feeling him stand behind me with his hands on my shoulders. In true life, we traded quips and smiled at each other. His girlfriend, Heather, also with us, was very nice.

Christmas passed with a walk, drinks, a stubbornly uncooperative log fire, lots of food, a game of Cranium and easy conversations.

Now, I am back at the Mom’s house sitting on the sofa with my little sisters and cousin. Em is being fucked around by her dicksuck of a boyfriend.

Last Monday, I went to see my favourite noise boy play. Snow and ice still covered the pavements in London and the traffic outside my house was standing still. The weekend before, my sister had told me she is pregnant. I was so pleased I could barely contain it. I felt close to crying: crying with joy, crying with excitement, crying that she was doing something I never can. I rang her to check she was OK and gave up waiting for the bus and walked down the hill to the tube. I didn’t slip, which was a miracle.

I took the tube to Liverpool Street and then walked up to the venue. I went inside, bought a glass of lager at the bar and asked where the gig was. The guy told me upstairs and I went up the spiral staircase to find dusty wooden floor boards, twenty people, someone doing a painting and a guy setting up. I leaned against the wall, the cold, exciting feeling of the beer creeping up the back of my neck. The guy played a droney, guitar and reverberated-screams set with unintelligible images playing against the wall behind him. I relaxed into another secret-life night, feeling anonymous and lovely and alone.

Then, the guy who had just played came up to me said, “Hi Ruby”, and it was an old acquaintance I met in Leeds who also has a solo acoustic project and numerous punk bands. We swapped our bands’ CDs and talked about making music.

Noise boy got stuck on the motorway and didn’t turn up, so I set off home in the snow, reading David Foster Wallace’s essay about David Lynch and getting that nervous, opening-up-of-intellectual-possibilities excitement.

Last weekend, I went to the Butlins in Minehead for ATP with an old friend from Leeds, Min, his girlfriend, Flaxen and my friend from work, Creak (cool + geeky, but held up on squeaky scaffolding).

We arrived about nine p.m. on Friday after a four hour car journey, a lot of Haribo and a lot of Tesco value crisps. We saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs play in the big top area, and though they played Fever To Tell – by far their best album – they just weren’t that exciting. If you saw them in a low-down pub, they’d beat you senseless, but they can’t do stadium rock.

I began to drink rather a lot with my old friend, Archigram. Then, Creak and I saw Fuck Buttons play and I realised they are really a hypno band and I really got into them. We drank some more and then Archigram, three of his friends and I went to the on-site Irish pub and danced like loons to Battles, Daft Punk and Johnny Cash. We went back to Archigram’s chalet and drank more and had a really unpopulated party where we cracked jokes and talked about girls. We were in bed by five a.m.

The next day, Creak and I woke late and Min and Flaxen went swimming. When they came back, we all watched a documentary, Sherman’s March, about a guy travelling the route that Sherman took across America and about the girls he meets and falls in love with. He meets these crazy actress women and talks with them about deep feelings with a camera against his eye.

We finally left the chalet to go and watch some bands. I got crushed by Om and bailed on the Dirty Three to go and see Shellac. They did another great version of The End Of Radio, Steve Albini barking, “Can you hear me now!” Someone asked Bob Weston whether he masturbated over how good they were. Albini gave away a bottle of Chicago-distilled liquor that someone had requested he bring.

Later, I met up with Creak again and we stood right at the front for Battles. It was super cool to see Ian Williams and Tyondai Braxton each simultaneously play guitar and keyboard, and their music worked mostly on an intellectual level, and made me dance a lot towards the end.

Modest Mouse were mostly boring, bar a lovely version of Trailer Trash. Archigram, his friends and I went with Creak to a party being thrown by one of his friends. The friend was this weirdly sexy, mustachioed American guy with a weird American name who had a sexy girlfriend. He was skinny and proper and she looked like a flowery Shoreditchbitch. It was all a bit sexy, basically. Unfortunately, most of the party seemed to be on coke, so the conversations were unsatisfactory. We left to go and watch more bands.

The For Carnation (ex. guy from Slint) were extremely boring. And they didn’t play Being Held, their only great song. Beak> were fun to dance to.

Afterwards, we disco danced for ages and drank really disgusting Carlsberg. There were a few cute girls around, but all appeared to have boyfriends. We went to another bar on the site and danced more and Creak struck out with the girl he’d been following around for a while. We went back to Archigram’s chalet again for more drinks and Nutella on bread. In bed by five a.m., again.

Sunday morning was super lazy. Everyone went out and I started watching Burden of Dreams, a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo. It is a searing indictment of the sort of life I lead that I was sorely torn between watching a documentary about an art film and going to watch a difficult noise rock band. After a brief internal struggle, I went to watch Shellac for the second time. They played less well, but Albini related an amusing anecdote about the couple having sex in the room next to his: “I don’t so much admire your stamina as your persistence. I’m not sure if you ever reached the summit, but you just kept climbing that mountain. Five times, actually, between two a.m. and seven a.m.”

Josh T. Pearson was mostly a misguided wash of overdrive, but some beauty emerged in the quiet bits towards the end. Then, Deerhoof fucking killed it: so tight, so fun, and the sexy drummer is such a great player. The audience were really into it, and dancing about, and I loved it when the guitarist pretended to be a jungle animal, stalking amongst the amps. Someone overheard the barman say they were the worst band in the world. Someone else overheard a member of staff say that they fucking hate ATP.

Finally, Archigram and I fought our way to the front for The Mars Volta. Cedric’s voice was weak, and Omar didn’t look that into it, and they had a new, poorer drummer, but it was still great. The whole front section danced like crazy and sang along, and Omar looked sexy in his white shirt and jerkin.

After that, we had to leave to get home. Flaxen, like a trooper, drove us all the way back in the dark. We arrived home about two a.m. and I fell into bed and woke up a few hours later and set off for work, a shadow of my former self.

I hadn’t really thought very much for forty-eight hours, and it was a lovely feeling. ATP is all about the scheduled life and simple choices and the alternate universe. You go into a playpark for a few days and leave everything behind. There isn’t even much sex to distract you: it’s mostly guys who are in their secret club, and the few girls are with their boyfriends.

And it’s the small moments. Creak and I slumped against the barrier waiting for Battles, drinking beer and kicking balloons. Standing outside a chalet in the nose-wetting air, waiting to be let into a party. Eating a Burger King veggie burger while Explosions In The Sky drone on in the background and we wait for The Mars Volta to start. Smoking cigarettes at each loo-stop on the way there, plumes of white coming out of my mouth in the headlights. My neck warm in Archigram’s scarf. Cramming down cheese and bread before the next band.

This evening, I walked along the road between my work and the bus stop with my coat zipped high and my collar around my cheeks and my hands in my front jacket pockets. I hadn’t slept properly for three days, and I felt blank and very cold. I felt like Richard Papen walking home from the supper where his friends had been plotting his friend’s murder in The Secret History.

I don’t know why, but I decided to put on Bruce Sterling’s Webstock talk. I fell asleep one night in hospital whilst listening to my iPhone, then awoke from a dream about being on a secret mission with some friends, and killing a policeman, and stuffing myself into a dumb waiter, and Bruce Sterling’s talk was going and I still had the dream feeling and that mixed with Sterling’s revolutionary words and him alternating his delivery from sombre Lee Marvin to the soaring music in that Godspeed You! Black Emperor song. When I think back to that moment of lying in bed, I get the same feeling of possibility that, unlike most nostalgia, comes from the associative trigger itself, rather than the time, and I think it’s the same for that Des Ark song and Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex and L’Auberge Espagnole.

Last week, I went to a memorial/celebration for a poet, AM, who died about a year ago. The Moms puts on poetry events for the council and, growing up, we would sometimes have poets staying at our house. Some of them became family friends. The poet we were celebrating was a sort of kind, mucking-in influence around the house. He joined in with our family activities – our friend’s gig, my Mum and step-Dad’s drunken supper parties – and spoke to us kids like we were adults. He was the poet mentioned in this post.

The event itself was a horrendous disappointment. I got no sense of AM at all. It was just all other poets and musicians reinterpreting his work. There were a few successful performances, but they simply succeeded on their own merit, rather than because they were “celebrations”. My Mum and our family friend and my Auntie seemed to love the whole evening, and I was baffled by their choices of favourite performances. My Mum asked me after the interval what I thought of the performance, I forced out a vacant, “Wonderful”, so I didn’t hurt her feelings.

Just as I was leaving the loos, I thought I saw Allure (1, 2). When I returned to my seat, I scanned the audience, but couldn’t see her.

On the tube home, I realised she was sitting opposite me. Fuck, man, this girl just keeps on turning up. A condensed history: we met via friend Hardcore Boy who fancied her, we kissed in front of him (what a dick), we met at least a year later at HB’s party, she pursued me, I had that amazing night at her party, she cut off contact, we somehow got in touch in London, she travelled the world for a year, and so it goes.

We had a great conversation, parted in Brixton and she said she’d Facebook me. We’ll see.

» Feels so good to have a weekend being carried by a river of events. I’m hardly thinking #atp

» Watching sexy music boy at ATP.

» Where are the queers at ATP?

» Just bumped into an old flame.

I went to a “queer” bar with Frost on Tuesday. It was my second time there and just as gay. There were a few interesting looking trans people, but mostly just ugly lesbians and gay gay men. A woman read poetry and emoted for forty five minutes on stage. A cute trans boy asked for clothes for their trans swimming group. A hip hop band from Manchester were super heartfelt and good. I got kind of drunk and then we left.

Last night, my Mum and I went out to supper. We ended up talking about relationships: how my sister, Jess, is settling for her boyfriend because she thinks she can’t find someone who challenges her, about how I could have fallen in love with Grain but somehow never did, about how Jess tried to make make up for her own Mum’s detachment by adopting my Mum and how my Mum had to push her away so she could focus on me, about how I would put Matte down by using my superior intelligence to prevail in discussions with her, about how my Grandpa pushed my Mum and Auntie away so he didn’t feel the guilt of betraying them by having affairs.

I’m not sure I want to move, anymore. I keep on having fantasies of running away to Rio De Janiro or Mexico City, and I’m pretty sure that having fantasies about running away from running away is a bad sign.

What, before, was a secret city with hardly anyone in it now feels desolate. There are few people on the streets. Many roads feel like Milton Keynes: wide, bare and unadorned by anything other than blocks of flats.

Mitte feels like a provincial large town, mostly small outposts of large chains.

Kreuzberg was a huge relief: broken down buildings, graffiti, cafes, weird shops, squats and parks.

All my Mum and I really did was walk around a lot, visit a market and a gallery, drink coffee and shelter as often as possible from the bitter cold. Therefore, I’m hoping that living here will be more rewarding and more like my times visiting Theresa: fun gigs, weird cafes, playing music, drinking in bars + helping out at squats and doing political stuff.

» Gay people make me want to kill myself.

I remember feeling really cold and trying to pull my wooly blanket over me, but not being able to because it was tucked under the end of the bed.

I remember there was a woman in the bed opposite who used to groan and cry out. She had flushed red cheeks and wild, curly hair and a huge card by her bed that said Spring. I judged that she’d been in a while. However, given that no one else remembers her, perhaps my judgement of that time is questionable.

I remember reading an article in one of the London free papers about Mr Christmas, the man who celebrates Christmas every day of the year.

I remember my Dad asking me how I felt and me saying, Terrific. Apparently, that was the first thing I’d said since I was admitted.

As I waited for the bus last night on my epic journey home from The Black Heart Procession, I looked at the blue-lit entrance to a club. It brought me back to intensive care and some wild, extended dream or hallucination I had that I was in a club. I remember a lot of blue wall-lighting and that there was pretty much no one else there. I just wandered about with a faint feeling of unease, kind of lost in the sense that I didn’t know what I should be doing. Lights low, distant nurses moving about, not being in danger but not feeling safe, and alone alone alone.

On Wednesday, I went out for drinks with some work people. I talked to Suede about Berlin and tried to keep my gaze at eye-level. Afterwards, I went home on the bus, slightly drunk, laid my head against the window and listened to The Paper Chase, my mind in a happy fog, and wondered why I don’t get drunk every night.

Last night, I killed time (ack ack ack) at work before heading to Kings Cross. I wasn’t particularly interested in the other bands, so I went to see Twilight: New Moon at the cinema nearby. It was sold out, so I saw 2012, instead. That sucked. I left half way through and got to the venue about ten p.m.

The Black Heart Procession came on and played the best song of their set: one of the creepy, slow, wavery ones they specialise in with the main guy on saw and vocals, the second guy on piano and the third on violin. The middle section was a disappointment: straight-up southern blues. But they brought it back with some faster songs that added lots of screeching and howling guitars.

I went to get a drink and drank it as I waited for Shit and Shine to come on. They spent forty-five minutes setting up their five drum kits. Just before the last tube left, they came on, two of them in bunny masks, two dressed like chavs, two normal, one transformed from librarian-type to bizarrely sexy maybe it was her prominent lips face-painted buttons for eyes like Coraline girl, and they started playing.

First, some tapping on cymbals, second, an overdriven synth came in, third, they exploded into a du-du du-du– drum riff. A rabbit and a chav talked garble into effected mics and the synth went on. It was all kind of funny and head-noddy at the same time. The closest I can think of is Swans’s hypnotism.

After they finished, I set off home. I missed the last buses from Kings Cross and eventually shared a cab to Brixton with a nice girl and an annoying Australian girl who spent the journey fantasising about snowboarding off buildings.