There is a pause. She ashes her cigarette. It falls on me. It seems like the birds have stopped too.
I'm sat out the front of a cafe in Hatton Garden. I've just eaten a brie and bacon panini, and I'm rolling a cigarette. Feeling very London. An old man comes up to me and asks for a roll-up. I oblige.
this is possible in mazelike research sprints on the internet
He was cast as the guy who gets picked up and thrown out of the poker game to set the scene before the main characters arrive. Out of Real London and into real London, a discarded prop, at this party, chatting to me.
a lot of what i've been doing has been some imaginary screenshot or recording of his website, something that could be found within it
i know a little bit of lacan which probably influences me in a way i cant articulate
my watchlater reached its limit years ago and now i have to create a playlist for each new topic im interested in but it is incredibly hard to create the taxonomy of knowledge because everything seems to be everything else because at the end it is what you get from it that matters not what is given
...
After I get away from the old racist failed actor, I go to see my Korean colleague. He's just arrived in London and I want to see how he's handling the party. We'd been invited as fresh meat for some of the older, gayer attendees. We aren't aware of that.
"No, it'll get cold!"
"Put a tut ahh put a-"
I'm getting bored and he can tell, so he shifts the topic towards me. He tells me he'd spotted me chatting to a girl earlier, a black girl, and asks what I thought of her, if I liked her. I mimed affirmatively.
We gather around the start of a causeway down to the Thames. It's a pretty cold night and there's a breeze coming off the river. I've found the girl, or she's found me, and we're smoking a cigarette while we watch the dim silhouettes of the French Raj and his fireworks bearer down on the bank. They're fucking around with the box. I ask her what people do with fireworks for so long before they're ready to light. She doesn't know.
it holds me to something (you, now). I love editing!
The Hatton geezer (fuck off) reminds me of this old failed actor who I'd met at a party a few years ago, another man out of time and out of place. This actor had scored a minor role in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and never really let go of it, had gone on to build his whole identity around it. I can't really blame him.
it exists in my head in some way that i'm trying to get out i lied on my story a little bit because i'm mostly feeling it and thinking about it. feeling something deeply doesn't necessitate any kind of deep relevance or whatever but the thinking is useful
I am below everything.
propensity within someone
you know who you are. no more time, not like
1
. way too specific.But seriously, thank you, Jack, for telling me that I could submit this to a high-level literary magazine or creative nonfiction outlet with some minor tweaks. I don't think I will do that.
that is unstable and lets me operate in that discovery mode that i can create within and also produce works from.