Recent Roundup: Had some poem-contributions published over the past few months. The opening of long-narrative poem Khayal in Blackbox Manifold Issue 31, a few poems in Prototype Issue 5, a reversioning of my pamphlet fragments of mutability for the Tripwire tribute to Sean Bonney, and a poem for Palestine in the latest Pilot Press. Another contribution out in the next Tentacular issue forthcoming imminently.
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I have been watching a lot of Peep Show, partly after finishing the masterful Succession and realising the show-writer was also involved in that British oddity several years previous. I had tried before, of course, but it always seemed to jar, it felt too tawdry and bland somehow. It certainly wasn't a Croydon I was interested in entertaining. Perhaps it is the passage of time, or the exoticisation of England I am trying to engender, but this time it all seemed to click. Guiltily laughing at the pathetic, anodyne anonymity of it all; its middle england sadness and neurotic incapability. The jam-packed reference-filled dialogue; a window into a world before, a world I know pretty well, a world that is being historicised as we speak. Blair multiculturalism, cultural stagnation, the coming crash… Race didn't seem to matter; masculinity is in crisis constantly failing in its virility; the promise of modern urban life constantly failing in its promise of conviviality.
Much of the social interactions of Mark and Jeremy are ultimately about a failure to be alone and a failure to be together, to commune. It is a schizoid model. One massively tied up with libidinality; each series follows a new love interest for Jeremy and effectively the same saga for Mark revolving around Sophie. Life is a bit shit, but it is not that bad right? Just the usual humdrum banality punctured with carnivalesque moments dripping with pathetic self-loathing and disembodiment; a post-bohemian Withnail & I, so to speak.
The POV-style, of course, heightens everything, in its exacting and chaotic throw of abandon. The self-consciously constructed social immersion and off-the-cuff allusions immediately point to a form of postmodernism in the self-avowed mode, wholly aware of the implosion of social and aesthetic form, meaning and sincerity.
Though being a pre-crash production, the show rides through the financial turmoil with a revealing sense of continuity. Mark's desk job is thrown into turmoil but apart from that the crisis is effectively already with us. The change for us now may be an even more heightened sense of financialisation, the compression of time and space, alongside the dual movement of irony-earnestness that has proliferated the digital mediation of our social interactions. Looking back at a pre-culture war time is interesting when clearly those same crises were occurring, but without the saturated discourse and overly-calculated responses.
Perhaps the double-header of the Christmas and New Years episodes of season 7 encapsulate everything laudable and redoubtable of this craven show in its ability to culturally critique. In the Christmas special “Seasonal Beatings”, gifts are unevenly reciprocated, disagreements over the cooking and strange family tensions are abundant while relationship troubles reach fever pitch. It is a climax of emotional intensity all too familiar to many, stuck cheek to jowl with close ones, food strewn all over the carpet insulating you from the outside world that no longer exists (it is the only episode set wholly in the flat); pure interiority. The New Years episode that follows consists of a trawl around gloomy, dark streets from one disappointing party to another letting ambivalent entanglements play out. Again, the awkwardness and anticlimactic frivolity create a potent picture of a culture failing to meet the social and emotional needs of its participants.
Returning back to Blighty from overseas for Crimbo, this was all too apparent to see, no doubt intensified by the interminable decay of the island, dubbed “cost of living crisis”, fanned by the insipid dregs of the tories. But, looking back at this show from my distant vantage – not something I necessarily encourage others to do lest you get sucked into its strange vortex – all the elements are already laid out: social alienation, mundane everydays punctuated by failed carnivalesque moments of self-actualisation, a life mediated through brands and off-beat cultural references.
For those two weeks in greying Croydon my beard stayed dry not once, kept perennially damp by the moist dank air. I bought cardboard-tasting coffee and ventured to worldly eateries through the city to feel something not of that land: you see the world, but are not really in it, such is the quiet, monastic nature that seemed to undergird the paved roads. A trip to the greasy spoon with my dad typically punctuated the stay, where we talked about the inability to really converse with most of the population, such is the lack of any collective experience or shared culture. I wandered with R one night, from country-like pub to small-town metal pub to paratha shop in a leisurely run-through of all the delights that CR0 has to offer. We talked about crisis and the cards laid out for us. Perhaps this is the authentic life being lived. It still begs the question: can’t we do better?
Brilliant! Peepshow to Succession - a small shift in POV 🤣