The dog we rented for christmas looks like Chrissie Hynde and weighs less than my foot. It makes the sound of a small abbatoir, or of a dog of similar weight being quashed into the end of a giant, revolving drill bit, with the verve of a coke-stropped chef squeezing a lemon. Or like a castrati Ewok. Or like a congregation of black mass skaters using a huge blackboard as an ice rink. One of those dogs whose hair constitutes more bodyweight than its actual body, which when held, feels alarmingly like a freshly dead quail might to one who'd never encountered one.
We imported my grandmother for the dining ceremony. This eighty-six year-old shrunken creature, sage as a mandarin, has been growing exponentially deaf over the last decade. On Christmas Eve, my mother woke hoarse, her voice an oscillating squeak'n'crone, her projection limited. To witness the interactions of these two generations of women over Christmas dinner today was to glimpse a microcosm of global miscommunication.
...................................
'So I phoned Marjorie.'
'You made what?'
'I phoned Marjorie'.
'You made kedgerie?'
'I pHoNeD mAjOrIe'.
'You put marjoram in your kedgerie?!'
'i PhOnEd MaRjOrIe!!!'
(ad infinatum, at least...until father's interjection, directly into Grandma Yoda's ear):
'SHE PHONED MARJORIE.'
'Oh right, that's good...'
(Collective and silent 'phew'.)
'...Who's Marjorie?'
..............................................
Reflecting, whilst taking a brief cop-out in bed after dinner, it occured to me that my spoken vernacular is disgusting - every other word derived from either 'fuck' or 'cunt', and yet further still, it dawned that this is probably a fifty-percent expansion upon my vocabulary of last year (which is not to suggest that I've only recently learned the word 'cunt', more that, perhaps even last year, my language was less infused with vile, gurgling profanity.) I.e. I'm basically a bit of a fucking cunt.
I find myself conducting everyday interactions under a veil of espionage - politely wafting between Christmas visitors, my winning smile a badge of disarmament, wrapped up in a black suit, hair asymmetric, in a suspended lift-off noisette, as befitting a composer in his late twenties, all the hallmarks of a respectable, wholesome, casually debonnair fucking cunt - all the while, the throbbing leitmotif in the ticker-tape of my thoughtfall, is a vision of the violent consummation/deconsecration of my childhood bed, that occured two evenings before Christmas Eve, and consisting of a brutal, intense and relentless arsefucking, whilst gagged and bound, in the name of true love. Genuinely the climax to one of the most romantic nights of my life so far. Happy Christmas, rendered in semaphore, and muffled groans and shrieks.
This year, things of lasting significance:
I completed a record, 'TERRitORies of disSENT' that I feel constitutes some of my best musical work so far. It also represents a landmark in collaboration for my working practice - the ten-or-so musicians with whom I worked on the record, I have continued to perform, record, rehearse and write with in various capacities. My creative practice is no longer the privilege of solitude.
I participated in a show on a run of twelve consecutive nights at the Edinburgh Festival, which, in addition to proving a genuine test, physically, psychologically, financially and otherwise, saw me through the conclusive processing of awkward tensions between my best friend and I - the boy I shared romance with for eight months, and whose ending of said relationship on 1st June this year, signalled the commencement of work on 'TERRitORies...' in addition to two months of abysmal wallowing as I chemically and romantically extracted myself from the throes of love gone horribly awry. The body is most readily, and above all things, a junkie. Edinburgh entailed that he and I would spend two weeks in each others constant company. Although we'd gotten over the worst of any lingering tension prior to starting the run, the conclusion of our spell in Edinburgh for me coincides with the final vanquishing of any longing or desire for anything more than to be in his exquisite friendship for the rest of my life, and I salute us for both the Edinburgh endurance, and for the strength of our friendship through some of the most potentially taxing and strained relations.
En route back from Edinburgh, I met a boy.
On 14th September, said ex-boyfriend/best friend and I saw realized a project we'd been developing for two months prior to the date - the 'TERRitORies of disSENT' album launch, where we presented the entire record in sequence, unamplifed, by candlelight, utilizing a ten-piece chamber orchestra, to enormous success and considerable acclaim from those who attended. The preparations involved us rehearsing a large groups of musicians from diverse backgrounds, in small, related groups, and ultimately, as a whole ensemble, as I recovered from swine flu, my voice crippled with a weakened chest, exacerbating horribly my mounting pre-performance anxiety... On the night, we more than delivered - evidence at www.youtube.com/nickhudsonmusic - and I've since had convene a shitkicking, worldbeating band of musicians, largely drawn from the ensemble formed for this concert, with whom I rehearse on a weekly basis, and who are fully capable of helping to realize the musick I've long-desired to create. The album launch stands as one of the best nights of my life so far, and has served as a launch pad for so many exciting developments in both my musick and in my life generally.
En route back from Edinburgh, I met a boy. His name's Joe, and as of 14th September, we've been going out for three months. We're gonna spend the rest of our lives together. I've never been so excitable, optimistic, relaxed, insane, ambitious, content, sexual, creative, inspired. And I've never been so in love, or felt so loved. He's very, very good for and to me, and I hope and suspect that I am to he.
Earlier this year, I created the score for a film called 'Godland' by my friend Aspen Michael Taylor. I've seen an early cut of the film and it's brilliant. I think the music I contrbuted is pretty exciting, and more importantly, that it converses aptly with Michael's sublime images. With him I anticipate a lifelong collaborative friendship, and this is really quite fucking, cunting, exciting.
Otherwise, my year has involved being attacked by a crazed-middle-aged-dyke-live-in-landlady, who, having had me by my neck up against my bedroom wardrobe, hollering, bug-eyed, shrieking, 'She's the abuser.', quickly drove me from the house and cemented my vague vow to never dwell with others unless in a romantic-domestic context. Mad bitch. Genuinely - police would frequently intercept her, frenziedly dancing in the road, a skirt of rain lashing down on her foaming, stupid body. Most mornings she'd wake in a cell. Two years earlier she'd been released from a prominent local mental institution. And over breakfast one morning, shitfaced, she boomed forth a soliloquy on how her cunt was stretched to shit from her years as a playbunny crack whore, bemoaning that her long-suffering girlfriend had deemed her vagina 'ugly'. I figured she was a nano-shift in the folds of reality from unfurling said chasmic gash as I gingerly chopped at my, um, ginger. Poor bunny.
I had my bike stolen on new years day, and the year started with me dressed as Oscar Wilde's Bosie - only having been drugfucked and solidly drinking for three days, my green carnation resembled a brussel sprout, my top hat a linen roadkill, my complexion the whitest sheet bleached and run over.
I've left two jobs this year - both in vegan cafes - and I suspect that my high-flying career in the beige nutrition industry is done. Never again will I look upon chickpeas with the disdain of a Himmler on a gay Jew. I may even grow to like the fucking cunts.*
* - he means chickpeas, not gay Jews - he already adores gay jews.
This year I intend to spend further time abroad - having not left the country in two years, and the last being centered around an existential pilgrimage to the Auschwitz site, it feels like time to take a holiday, albeit something more culturally-motivated than two weeks of self-oiling on the Costa Del Soul-less. I'm thinking Berlin, whatcha reckon, Joe?
By the end of 2010 i intend to have quit work to the extent that musick and my other creative practices generate sufficient income for Joe and I to no longer struggle for decent food or an amenable place to live. I also intend to make some of the greatest musick I've ever made, but hey, that's an over-riding and constant impulse. I also intend to be the best boyfriend I can, and to redefine the parameters of possibility, at least in the case of myself, in this endeavour. And I intend to have a lot of fun, this year, and extensively into the future, with all of my friends and loved ones.
En route back from Edinburgh, I met a boy. And what a boy. And a review of the year of this nature is, by its own dictation, gonna be self-reflective and glowing with a hum of narcissism, or at least, a wedge of peacockery. So I'll say it again, I met a boy, and what a boy. I feel, for the first time, that I'm allowed to be happy. For the first time I feel like the words 'fucking' and 'cunt' may factor less and less in my everday demotic, as my anger (necessarily) dissipates...
'And what can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
Yet what can I give him? - Give him my heart.'
Thank-you for reading. Thank-you for listening. Thank-you for your continued support of Nick Hudson Industries.
Yours, eternally,
N.xoo
