Irvine Welsh: The beauty of failing

Irvine Welsh, the voice of a generation lost, stopped by Brussels recently to read an extract from his latest book "Skagboys", a prequel to Trainspotting that follows Renton and Sick Boy down the rabbit hole, and talk about the irresistible beauty of failure. 

Irvine Welsh is easily the most prominent voice (along with Chuck Palahniuk) that marked our adolescence, put us off heroine for life and introduced us to the London punk scene as well as the nightmarish hopelessness of council-flat England. 

A bitter sweet sardonic sense of humor, a charmingly strong Scottish accent reciting barely comprehensible extracts from his latest book written in Scots dialect and a man that "always had a sense of WANDERLUST", enjoy some of his words...

"As a writer and generally in life you should never be afraid to fail. Failure is interesting, success is boring. Failure comes in so many forms. Success is just a reward for perseverance in failure. Success just makes you arrogant and complacent." 

"I like looking at the way people fuck up. The devices whereby people fuck up. Mechanisms of self-sabotage due to fear of failure."

"It is very hard to re-read your own book. A book never finishes, you just get to a point where you don't want to deal with it anymore."

"What does a writer do, he stays locked up in a room with people that don't exist."

"As a writer you need to enjoy your own company and people who do so tend to be quite weird."

"Writing is about looking at the world in a fantastical, magical way, writing is like playing on the carpet with your toy soldiers."

"the 80's are all about disillusionment and individualism. There is no notion of constant progress or belief that every generation is going to be better off."

"Acting is like going for drugs, there is a lot of standing around, waiting for something to happen."

"When you write about a character you don't need to like him. You need to be able to empathize with him, you need to be able to love him. It's like family, it's not that you like them, but you have to love them."

When asked who his favorite character from his books is, he said it was misanthropic anti-hero Bruce Robertson from "Filth" who is played by James McAvoy in this years movie adaptation. Enjoy.

And a special treat 50 Songs I love by Irvine Welsh. ENJOY! 

1. Sunshine on Leith – Proclaimers. If you’re from the green half of Edinburgh, you’ve belted this out at football games and weddings and cried as it plays at funerals.

2. If There Is Something – Roxy Music. I love the epic changes in this song. The way Ferry playfully sings the opening line in mock country twang ill-preps you for the angsty ballad it becomes.

3. Station to Station – David Bowie. No song makes me want to take any drug like this one makes me want to take cocaine.

4. The Greatest Love of All – Kevin Rowland. I love his solo album My Beauty, this track makes me want to make Kev a mug of cocoa and sit him down in front of a roaring fire.

5. Hypo Full Of Love – Alabama 3. If you don’t want to party hearing this bad boy you’ve no pulse.

6. Going Underground – The Jam. Is this the greatest rock n roll song ever written?

7. Rise – PIL. Once Bowie has got you on the cocaine, stay there with that number.

8. Your Love – Frankie Knuckles/Jamie Principal. My nipples still get hard and I want to fondle everybody I see when this comes on.

9. Comeback Girl -Republic of Loose. I think of Dublin and rainy streets and heading to a nice warm boozer every time this plays.

10. Sexual Healing – Marvin Gaye. Don’t think I could live in a world without Marvin’s music.

11. What’s In Your Life – Smokey Robinson. This little known pathos-drenched track from the little known album ‘Warm Thoughts’ also happens to be Smokey’s finest moment. If you are falling for somebody, play them this record. If they don’t jump into bed with you straight afterwards, ditch them immediately, they aren’t for you.

12. Avenue B – Iggy Pop. Title track from the album of the same name is a cracker. Iggy plays the world-weary romantic hoping for love in a cold climate.

13. Seven Kinds of Wonderful – Brian Jonestown Massacre. The album Aufheben is a masterpiece, a journey of crazy, dense, complex psychedelic sound. Wrong to single out any track in such in a complete album, but I love this one.

14. Our House – Madness. This song is so brilliant and beautiful because it reminds everybody of where they came from.

15. The Repentant – Band of Holy Joy. A crazy, scary rant from the brilliant album How To Kill A Butterfly.

16. The Tyger – Billy Blake & The Vagabonds. If I told you a group of Chicago musicians, led by an English expat, had put William Blake’s poems to music you might think that’s mental. If I then told you that it was possibly the best album of the year you might think I am. But it’s true.

17. Atrocity Exhibition – Joy Division. I love this song. I throb and shiver when I hear it.

18. Hypnosis – Les Gray & Mud. Probably the best lyrics in any pop song ever.

19. I Feel Love – Donna Summer (Patrick Cowley remix). Jesus fuck this a fucking amazing track.

20. Burning Wheel – Primal Scream. If Hibs won the league I’d love this to be the song they played in celebration.

21. Street Hassle – Lou Reed. An epic walk on the wild side from Lou.

22. Superstition – Stevie Wonder. I remember on night at Edinburgh’s Pure, they played this when the lights came up and nobody would leave till it was over.

23. Lost In Music – Sister Sledge. Has there ever been a better homage to music?

24. Good Times – Chic. Nile Rogers. Genius. Enough said.

25. Europe Endless – Kraftwerk. A terrific tune. Sung in a parody of boredom that can only be rivaled by Tottenham fans singing When The Spurs Go Marching In.

26. Love Is Like Oxygen – Sweet. The version with the long acoustic guitar solo.

27. SOS – Abba. I remember being in a pub in Motherwell after a Hibs game and the biggest bar room brawl i’ve seen broke out while this was playing on the juke box.

28. Love Song – Simple Minds. I go crazy when the opening bars of this song kick in. What a fucking band the Minds.

29. Dressed For Success- Roxette. I am. I do.

30. The Killing Moon – Echo and the Bunnymen. This I associate with getting a knee trembler up the railway line off a lassie I fancied for donks. As the moon was bright I went home and played this track to celebrate.

31. Story of the Blues – Wah! This song always makes my spine tingle.

32. Mind Games – John Lennon. I would love to hear this sung by a Japanese person on karaoke.

33. Part-Time Love – Elton John. Once sang it on the Bakerloo Line off my nut and covered in every bodily fluid known to man. Cringe…

34. Dance Floor Collision Course With Love – Hibee Nation. Needsie, Henry and I’s finest hour in a year of cocaine, lager and curry at the sadly now defunct Punishment Farm studios in Brick Lane.

35. Avenues and Alleyways -Tony Christie. I love this song. It could make a Tory cabinet minister want a medallion, a hairy chest and a place on the sex offenders register.

36. A Day In The Life – Beatles. This song to me represents the end of the British post-war dream.

37. Cole’s Corner – Richard Hawley. A genius song, about Sheffield’s KB corner. We’ve all been there, I once had a deckchair under the clock at Binn’s in Edinburgh’s West End.

38. Glory, Glory to the Hibees – Hector Nicol. Fucked if I can remember the b-side to this old classic.

39. Vambo Marble Eye – SAHB. Possibly the greatest rock n’ roll band of all time.

40. Squeeze Box – Who. I was playing this track as a spotty adolescent, and my dad snuck up on me and squeezed a prominent pluke on my face. ‘That’s you pal, squeeze box.’ The scheme could be cruel. So cruel.

41. Dancing Days – Led Zeppelin. Always associate this with getting dressed up on the first warm day of the year and going out on the pull.

42. Time For Action -Secret Affair. One of my fave bands.

43. Sandstorm – Cast. Another band I love, should have been bigger.

44. Lucky Man – The Verve. Ashcroft is a genius and I love this sweeping epic. It’s been on TWO movies of my books, Acid House and Ecstasy.

45. Jackie Wilson Says – Dexys Midnight Runners. Jocky on TOTP, great humour from Kev R.

46. Roll With It – Oasis. This song is about suddenly getting mega famous, and I don’t think I’ve seen anybody handle that better, anywhere, than Noel.

47. Country House – Blur. This song is about suddenly getting mega famous and I don’t think I’ve seen anybody handle that better, anywhere, than Damon.

48. Lazy Sunday Afternoon – Small Faces. This song is about sitting on the fence and I don’t think I’ve seen anybody handle that better, anywhere, than me.

49. The Fairytale of New York – Pogues. I never get sick of this tune, even at Christmas.

50. Reason To Believe -Rod Stewart. My second Japanese karaoke favourite. Rod Stewart is the greatest soul singer Britain has produced.

ps 51. Overkill – Colin Hay. The acoustic version shits all the over the Men at Work Original.

Salman Rushdie: a literary superstar!

Salman Rushdie, a literary superstar and one of the most controversial figures in the world of arts during the end of the 20th century came to Brussels for an interview and book reading a few weeks ago on the occasion of the publication of his latest book "Joseph Anton". A memoir giving the world a glimpse of what his 10 years in hiding, after the publication of "Satanic Verses" and the various death threats that were made against him, including a fatwā issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989, were like. A small rather unattractive and arrogant yet brilliant man with an enormous personality, a hilarious sense of humor and an ample dose of wit! Needless to say it was a thoroughly enjoyable 2 hours! I felt like a bit of a fraud being there as I have not read a single book by Mr Rushdie but I already have 2 on my reading list. Enjoy a slight paraphrase of some of the things he said that stayed with me after that night... 

"There are two kinds of people in this world, those with a sense of humor and those without. It's kind of sad cause the second kind just never gets the joke. "

A lot of things that happened during those 10 years, though quite sad also had an element of hilarity to them. For example the leader of the protests against the "Satanic Verses" in London, when the whole controversy and book burning started, was asked whether he had actually read the "Satanic Verses" and he said well no, then when asked whether he had ready any of the other books Mr Rushdie had written (5 were published by then if I am not mistaken)  he actually said no as books were not really his thing(!).

"There are three traps and dangers in life, fear, anger and the need to be loved." 

He received a letter from Julian Barnes saying "don't let this define who you are." And that is exactly what he tried to do, he continued to write the books he had always wanted to write instead of short angry books or fearful apologetic ones. An author embarks on a journey and has a story to tell, an absolute truth if you have it, and that is the freedom that comes with literature, if an audience follows, well all the better. Rushdie had to wait 10 years after that turbulent period of his life and though he took detailed notes during that time a certain amount of distance was necessary before he could start writing "Joseph Anton". 

As expected he touched a lot upon the right of freedom of speech. "There are a lot of books I don't like either, I just choose not to read them" He mentioned 50 Shades of Grey as an example of one of those books ;) "I don't understand how people could be turned on by this book, didn't the grammar and terrible writing get in the way? Its cool to offer sadomasochism but you should at least be able to spell it!" 

Also related to freedom of speech: "If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he would be dead by now". 

When in hiding with MI6 a lot of people criticized him of exaggerating the extent of the threat and costing tones of money to the Brits in order to ensure his security in luxuriously comfortable hideouts. Well, not quite. He had to  come up with and pay for all his places of hiding, that in fact had to meet certain criteria, such as the capacity to host 4 secret agents and the ability to enter and exit the building undetected, which made them particularly expensive. Lucky thing he already was a literary superstar! He also let us know that a Judy Dench look-a-like lady was indeed the head of MI6, though she was referred to as C. not M. 

I must admit that after looking Mr Rushdie up I was rather put off by all the photos of him and gorgeous, significantly younger and taller women. Couldn't help but wonder what this supposed man of spirit and thought is doing with these bombshell models/tv presenters. Oh well each to their own and expect more comments to come as I discover more of his world of fantasy....

All my friends are superheroes!

On the train back from Londontown yesterday I started and finished reading one of the quirkiest love stories Andrew Kaufman's  "All my friends are superheroes" and needless to say I loved it! 

The story is set in Toronto, "there are 249 superheroes in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. None of them have secrete identities. Very few wear costumes. Most of their powers don't result in material gain." One of these superheroes is the Perfectionist, this is the story of her lover Tom. On their wedding night The Perfectionist was hypnotized by her evil ex-boyfriend Hypno and since then Tom has been invisible to her. Six months later the Perfectionist is sure that Tom has abandoned her, so she’s moving to Vancouver. She’ll use her superpowers to leave all the heartbreak behind and make her new life in Vancouver perfect! With no idea that Tom’s beside her, she boards the plane. Now Tom has until landing to convince her that he’s there or he’ll lose her forever...
 

Enjoy one of my favorite excerpts 

"The Perfectionist pushed Tom onto her bed. She took off his shirt. She took off his shoes and his socks. She took off his pants. She took off his boxers. 

With most guys the Perfectionist would stop there. She didn't. She was still feeling reckless. She took off his skin. She took off his nervous system. She lifted up his rib cage. His heart beat in her hand. And there, underneath it, she found a jewelled golden box. She opened it. Inside she found his hopes, his dreams and his fears. She stared at them. She was surprised to find them there and surprised at how beautiful they were. 

At that exact moment, the Perfectionist fell in love with Tom. 

She put back the box and his skin and his clothes. She held him. 

The Perfectionist remembered that moment as they approached her bedroom door. Tom slowed down. The Perfectionist didn't. She walked past her bedroom. She kept walking.

There was a room at the very end of the hallway. tom hadn't noticed it before. The door was closed. The Perfectionist let go of his hand. She opened the door and flicked on the light. Inside, the carpet was worn and grey. Finishing nails stuck out of white drywall. In the centre of the room were two giant cardboard boxes, the kind refrigerators come packed in.

On the box to the left, in the Perfectionist's handwriting, was the word 'FRIEND'. On the box to the right, also in the Perfectionist's handwriting, was the word 'LOVER'. These two boxes were the only objects in the room.

Tom looked at the Perfectionist. The Perfectionist looked at him. Tom looked back to the boxes and then back at the Perfectionist. He scratched his head. 

'Well?' the Perfectionist asked.

Tom looked at her,looked at the boxes and looked back at the Perfectionist. He still didn't understand.

'Which one?' She demanded. She moved her arms, suggesting he should get in one. 

Tom walked into the room and stood between the two boxes. He looked at the one marked 'LOVER' and he looked at the one marked 'FRIEND'. He made his decision quickly. With sharp steps he moved in front of the box marked 'FRIEND'. Picking it up, he lifted it over his head and put it inside the box marked 'LOVER'. Then he turned around, picked up the Perfectionist, and lifted her inside the boxes. Her climber in with her. In the morning, there wasn't much left of either box."

And the perfect soundtrack for odd love-stories:

"You're a part time lover and a full time friend
The monkey on your back is the latest trend
I don't see what anyone can see in anyone else but you.
I kiss you on the brain in the shadow of a train
I kiss you all starry eyed my body swinging from side to side
I don't see what anyone can see in anyone else but you."

INTIMACY

As matters of the heart seem to be at the forefront and the past few months have been turbulent with winds of change blowing us away in various unexpected directions I thought of a book I read 3-4 years ago "Intimacy" by Hanif Kureishi. It's  the story of the end of a relationship, the end of a 10 year marriage as seen through the eyes of the restless male about to leave his wife and never return. A heartbreakingly brutal dissection of sexuality, love and INTIMACY. Enjoy some of my favorite excerpts that years since I first read them still seem so true. 

"I am not sure that I can touch someone as I used to - frivolously. After a certain age sex can never be casual. I couldn't ask for so little. To lay your hand on another's body, or to put your mouth against another's - what a commitment that is! To choose someone is to uncover a whole life. And it is to invite them to uncover you!"

"People don't want you to have too much pleasure; they think it's bad for you. You might start wanting it all the time. How unsettling is desire! That devil never sleeps or keeps still. Desire is naughty and doesn't conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavor and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent - no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we've got desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all. Still, rather a fool than a fascist." 

"The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting make it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You can only see what you are inclined ti see, and no more. We have to make the new."

"I have been trying to convince myself that leaving someone isn't the worst thing you can do to them.Sombre as it may be, but it doesn't have to be a tragedy. If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an infidelity - to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. Perhaps every day should contain at least one essential infidelity or necessary betrayal. It would be an optimistic, hopeful act, guaranteeing belief in the future -  a declaration that things can be not only different but better."

"Art is easy for those who can do it, and impossible for those who can't."

"If living is an art it is a strange one, an art of everything, and particularly of spirited pleasure. Its developed form would involve a number of qualities sewn together: intelligence, charm, good fortune, unforced virtue, along with wisdom, taste, knowledge, understanding and the recognition of anguish and conflict as part of life. Wealth wouldn't be essential, but the intelligence to accumulate it where necessary might be."

 

Photo taken in Londontown, me and Felix

PS: Some fun trivia:  Kureishi started his career in the '70s as a pornography writer,under the pseudonyms Antonia French and Karim. 

As Intimacy revolves around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons, this created some controversy as Kureishi himself had recently left his own partner (the editor and producer Tracey Scoffield) and two young sons.

Never repress anything - A Dangerous Method

A "Dangerous Method" is finally coming to a cinema near me and I can't wait! David Cronenberg on Freud, Jung, psychoanalysis and the kinky relationship between Jung and his psychotic, beautiful Russian patient-turned-psychoanalyst Sabrina Spielrein, sounds irresistible! A movie on our darkest desires, passions and most basic human instincts. It offers a snapshot of a moment in history when a select group of men set the framework through which the Western world came to think about darker human impulses, such as the role of sexuality in personality development and which lead the development of a seductive relationship between doctor and patient known as transference, a key aspect of psychoanalysis.







This is the third time that the incredible Viggo Mortensen, starring in the role of Sigmund Freud, collaborates with Cronenberg after "Eastern Promises" and "A History of Violence" (I loved both!) and the hottest man of the moment Michael Fassbender is starring as Jung. You probably know him from "Inglorious Basterds" or "X-Men: First Class" but he took my breath away with his haunting, intense performance as an IRA inmate on a hunger strike in Steve McQueens' spectacular "Hunger" (I must admit I have a weakness for skinny hairy men so I actually found him gorgeous in at least the first half of the movie) and he also caught my eye as the seducer of a 15 year old girl in "Fish Tank", a little British gem! I am also really looking forward to his second collaboration with Steve McQueen in the upcoming "Shame"!

 A still from "Hunger"

And a sneak preview of "Shame"

As an extra little something the beautiful Keira Knightley and the always surprising Vincent Cassel also star in "A Dangerous Method".

When I watched the trailer I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite books from when I was a teenager "When Nietzsche Wept" by Irvin D. Yalom. (Though while researching to write this post I also found out that "When Nietzsche Wept" was indeed made into a movie in 2007). "When Nietzsche Wept" takes place in 19th century Vienna on the eve of the birth of psychoanalysis. Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis accepts the plea of a mysterious and unattainable woman, Lou Solome and agrees to treat Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, for his suicidal despair using his experimental "talking cure. Sigmund Freud also features in the story as a young medical intern.

Enjoy some of the quotes that made an impression on me 10 years ago and still do...

"One must have chaos and frenzy within oneself to give birth to a dancing star."

"You will find that no one has ever done anything wholly for others. All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving"

"Time is infinite, and force (the basic stuff if the universe) is finite. Given a finite number of potential states of the world and an infinite amount of time that has passed, it follows, Nietzsche claimed, that all possible states must have already occurred; and that the present state must be a repetition...eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever...I teach that life should never be modified, or squelched, because of the promise of some other kind of life in the future. What is immortal is this life, this moment. There is no afterlife, no goal toward which this life points, no apocalyptic tribunal or judgement. This moment exists forever, and you, alone, are your only audience."

Shall I, throughout all eternity, live a life I regret?

"It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong to seek immortality be spewing one's germ into the future-as though a germ contains your consciousness."

"Your goodness, your duty, your faithfulness-these are the bars of your prison. You will perish from such small virtues. You must learn to know your wickedness. You cannot be partially free: your instincts, too, thirst for freedom; your wild dogs in the cellar-they bark for freedom. Listen harder, can;t you hear them?"
 "But I cannot be free",Breuer implored. "I have made sacred marriage vows. I have a duty to my children, my students, my patients."
"To build children you must first be built yourself. Otherwise you'll seek children out of animal needs, or loneliness, or to patch the holes in yourself. Your task as a parent is to produce not another self, another Josef, but something higher. It's to produce a creator."

The Sense of an Ending

I just finished reading "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes, a beutiful, densely written study on time, memory and remorse that won the Man Booker Prize 2011. "The Sense of an Ending" is a 150 page novel divided into two distinct parts (it is the second-shortest book to win the prize, the shortest, though only by a few lines, being Penelope Fitzgerald’s "Offshore"). "The Sense of an Ending" follows the memories of Tonny Webster, a 60 year old, middle-class retired man in modern day Britain who takes us through an emotional rollercoaster of his adolescence in the 60s, his "book-hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchistic" existence, his best childhood friends, his thrurst for adventure, Eros and Thanatos, his first love and his first taste of betrayal, this is part 1. Part 2 follows a retired, divorced Tony in his quest for the hidden truth of the past and his struggle with a series of regrets that ends with a plot twisting punch in the stomach. Needless to say I loved this incredibly strong short book and definately recommend reading it! Enjoy some of my favourite excerpts.  

"I remember a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness. This is how it will be when I grow up. I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her, and then her and her and her. I shall live as people in novels live and have lived. Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger, ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance. However...who said that thing about 'the littleness of life that art exaggerates'? There was a moment in my late twenties when I admitted that my adventurousness had long since petered out. I would never do those things adolescence had dreamt about. Instead, I mowed my lawn, I took holidays, I had my life. But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but we were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical"

"Another detail I remember: the three of us, as a symbol of our bond, used to wear our watches with the face on the inside of the wrist. It was an affectation, of course, but perhaps something more. It made time feel like a personal, even a secret, thing."

"I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where your pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory. So when this strange thing happened - when these new memories suddenly came upon me - it was as if, for that moment, time had been placed in reverse. As if, for that moment, the river ran upstream."

"...that mental states can be inferred from actions. That's in history...Whereas in the private life, I think the converse is true: that you can infer past actions from current mental states. I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further dmage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of."


"-What is history? Any thoughts?
-'History is the lies of the vistors', I replied, a little too quickly.
-'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.'
...-"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation""