SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP by Mark Lanegan (White Rabbit, 2020)
‘Men Should Weep’ was the title of a 1947 play by Ena Lamont Stewart I saw performed in London in 1982 by Glasgow’s 7:84 theatre company (named from the statistical information that 7% of the people own 84% of the wealth).
I liked the title of this play because it conjured up the image of men weeping en masse . I imagined this as a universal shedding of tears for the patriarchal pain men have inflicted on humankind. Some hope!
Sadly, the macho stereotype is still alive, kicking and oppressing as Mark Lanegan’s relentlessly bleak memoir confirms. Despite the title (a line from his song ‘Fix’ from the solo album ‘Field Songs’) , Lanegan is not much given to weeping or displaying his feelings. It’s therefore a surreal moment when he relates how one huge tear formed after hearing of the death of his friend and mentor Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club. He writes about this with amazement as if it’s going to be submerged in a pool of tears like Alice In Wonderland.
‘I Wanna Be Yours’ a memoir by John Cooper Clarke (Picador, 2020)
John Cooper Clarke is now officially viewed in the UK as a national treasure by virtue of staying alive against all odds and by being a consummate, albeit erratic, entertainer for the good part of half a century.
For the majority of his life he has been a heroin addict and this fact inevitably dominates this autobiography. You won’t learn much on how to write or perform poetry but you will find out how he managed to smuggle drugs through customs in the days before sniffer dogs and terrorist level security.
JCC admits that getting a daily fix has always been a necessity rather than a leisure activity and openly declares that “My entire life was more or less taken up with the junkie routine.” There is no hint of self-pity in this admission and he takes no moral line. In other words, he’s not one of those addicts who wants to warn others of the dangers of drugs; on the contrary he seems to believe that he would have become so successful without this artificial stimulus.
However, from an objective perspective it is obvious that his dependency has had a negative impact on his ability to write consistently over the years. After bursting triumphantly onto the scene during the British punk explosion, the first flush of success proved impossible to maintain. He recognizes that “Enslavement ain’t too big a word for opiate addiction”.
He only got clean in his early 50s at the insistence of his second wife, Evie. If it hadn’t been for her, you imagine he’d be living an arm to syringe existence somewhere or else pushing up daisies. He has already ‘died’ three times and been fortunate enough to have someone around to resuscitate him. In the title poem from his latest collection – The Luckiest Man Alive – there an acknowledgement that the fates are on his side: “I’m the luckiest guy alive/ I got a facial tattoo saying please revive.”
A lot of details he relates in his memoir are fairly squalid and become repetitive. Of poetry he has nothing truly insightful to impart beyond saying banalities like: “The main consideration is what a poem sounds like. If it doesn’t sound any good, it’s because it isn’t any good.”
He sums up his distinctive appearance by referring to “the perilous post-tubercular state of my physique” and judges others as much on how they dress as on their actions. There’s a long check list of famous people he has met or encountered including un-alternative comedian Bernard Manning, Joy Division producer Martin Hammett, Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry, The Fall’s Mark E Smith, Richard Hell, DJ Mark Radcliffe and Nico. There’s anecdotal stuff about each of these but it’s all on a fairly superficial level. He is not settling any scores in the pages of this book so, for instance, we don’t find out who the blistering diatribe of the poem ‘Twat’ is dedicated to. Pity!
For someone who initially set his sights quite low he has done pretty well. A thick vein of Northern pragmatism has evidently stood him in good stead : “I quickly learned that the pursuit of happiness is largely pointless, happiness being the only target one merely has to aim at in order to miss.” What has driven him over the years is a desire to be on the receiving end of “carefully considered adulation” and the likeability factor is in no way harmed by this self-indulgent but highly readable version of his life so far.
THE ADDICTION directed by Abel Ferrara (USA, 1995)
I wanted to see this movie since, according to the Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, it is the best film ever made.
I like Bradshaw’s reviews and more often than not agree with his opinions. I especially like the fact that he doesn’t take an elitist position; he is as likely praise the merits of Toy Story as the works of Tarkovsky.
The Addiction is a vampire movie like no other. Actually it is better to see it as an intense existential drama with theological overtones rather than as a straight horror film.
The cause of addiction is that the drugs work all too well when you first take them.
The euphoria and mind expanding potential is not glossed over in in Darren Aronofsky‘s 2000 movie Requiem For A Dream but neither are the gruesome tales of misery and despair that follow.
The film is based on a novel by Hubert (Last Exit To Brooklyn) Selby Jr, a man who knows all about the whys and wherefores of getting hooked as he was dependent on painkillers and heroine for the early part of his life.
Selby kicked his habit before he was 40 but the notion that addiction is something that goes with youthful delusion and naivety is dispelled in this novel/movie.
The most heartbreaking character is that of Sara Goldfarb (played brilliantly by Ellen Burstyn) as the widowed mother of Harry. In her lonely existence, daytime television is her only comfort and when a cold caller says she has won a place a game show her life takes on a new purpose. Continue reading →
I wanted to see this movie since, according to the Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, it is the best film ever made.
The cause of addiction is that the drugs work all too well when you first take them.
