The Ballads Of Mister Rhodes

“The problem with computers Is that there is not enough Africa in them.” - Brian Eno   I don’t have long. I’m running a bath. It’s the first time in about three months I’ve had hot water, and I’m sick. Nothing to concern yourselves with, just my body over-reacting to a shift in the weather. I also said that I’d be away for some time, but we need to talk.  Now, I imagine most of you will have absolutely no idea what I’m about to waffle on about, and less of you will care, but bear with me, the anecdote fares well here. Grimes is a well-known celebrity. I’m sure she’d implore that I use terms such as ‘musician’ or ‘sonic engineer,’ but quite frankly she can get fucked. Grimes is a well-known celebrity amidst a world of well-known celebrities playing musician. Well, Grimes decided she was going to be a DJ. It’s a common thing for people who like music to decide. I, myself, did it back in my 20s.  See, there I am right there all the way back in 2007, being a DJ. It’s cool to ...

 How to begin? By explaining the lapse of time between these two sentences? What a bore. Or perhaps, how beautiful the sky looks tonight. An imperfect kind of charm. Warts and all. The sky looks as if it has been painted there. By a young woman, top of her art class. She painted it from the words given to her by Van Gough as he described a sky that had once been described to him by a middle-aged woman with a severe learning disability, and a big heart. That sky up there... It is something special this evening, and I have no interest in what goes on below it. Everything down here is the same, on repeat. Insipid and unmoving. The second hand of a dying clock fighting against gravity between forty and forty-one seconds. Outside, the dismembered parts of chicken rotate on the spit, from raw to well-done, their own culinary metaphor for the passers by. There are birds in cages hanging from trees, but you cannot hear birdsong, not now the portable speakers have been wheeled into the cour...

 The devil is tugging ever so gently on my coattails. I am not particularly interested in whatever it is he might want, so I will just sit here until he tires from lack of recognition. If I hold my breath I can hear their world, so I must keep breathing along with the gentle whirring of the AC. Finding my own rhythm, despite how clearly their electronic bass drums thud from molecule to molecule in the open air. Funny how we call it that: Open air. It has never felt particularly open, or airy. I find the outside world rather prison-like. It is imposing. Much like wandering around a zoo, but flipped on its head. Their captivity is freedom as some of us wander around taking note of what is going on in those metaphorical cages. The more we learn, the more we wonder which side of the cages we are on. Artwork by   Müge Olçum In this moment, I make a promise to myself: To not mention any item from the static list of gripes I have. I refuse to give any of it precise explanation. No mo...

  "If one is to dream, it is no use being too adverse   to nightmares." I’ve been steering clear of blank pages. All that space for more space. An invitation for time spent homing in on aches and pains. Wondering what parts of the body don’t work as they used to. What pieces of information have departed entirely? Names, promises, important dates, the minutes that have passed since I poured oil into the frying pan that grows increasingly angry about my neglect on the stove. More often than not, the bath water is tepid by the time I get around to testing the water temperature with my foot. It’s not that I am particularly busy, I am merely distracted. I am interested in how all of this feels ten or twenty years from now. In my sixties, a relaxing warm sensation reminding me that I was meant to piss. Empty hands at a close friend’s birthday celebration and I have no idea who I’m standing next to or how we got there. Things escape me until they can no longer be escaped.  The...

 "The tigers have found me and I do not care." - Bukowski Three Vietnamese children are playing in a large puddle that has formed on the slip road. Caused by the heavy rain earlier today, yesterday, and the day before that, going back for as long as I can remember. I can’t remember the last time the sea was calm enough to swim in. They are all wearing red Manchester United shirts, they must be cheap here. Everything is cheap here unless you have that strange, but all too common desire to make it expensive. The youngest of my two dogs, Cohen, is on the lead. You have to catch him when you can, the trick is not to give up. Don’t allow that nagging sense of failure to seep too deep. He’s young and relatively stupid, eventually he will blunder. If you don’t get him on the lead then he won’t come home, and if he doesn’t come home he’ll wander the courtyard barking at everyone that walks by. His bark is much older than he is. The three boys take turns to say hello to me in English....

Have you ever found yourself trapped in a downcast loop because you made the mistake of asking yourself if everything is okay and you can’t find an answer? I am finding it increasingly difficult to see myself as a part of the world around me. Of course, it is possible to bend to its expectations, but there’s only so much contortionism I can do. It feels like my opinions on how we should live are growing further and further away from how people are living. What I consider indecent seems to be settling around the current norm. I cannot sleep. I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing or taken yet another chunk out of myself. There has come a point in which I am thinking a lot about how much of me there is going to be left if I continue as I am. It would all be easier if a doctor just pulled me to the side and announced to me that I was mad. (Artwork by  Müge Olçum) I do not understand this place anymore. At first, you could talk about the way things could have been different and you...

"Be a voice, not an echo." -Cornwell West- (Artwork by  Müge Olçum) So here we are, the grand sum of however many years of being. All that rich tapestry to look out upon. Men and women who have overcome unimaginable hardships and displayed feats of bravery and heart. An entire animal kingdom to learn from. Authors, lyricists, and teachers. An open source world where our shortcomings are pointed out to us. Endless streaming of news events that highlight how deep psychological flaws manifest themselves in our society. Warning after warning after warning. Yet there still seems to be some question about how it might be some intellectual privilege to be able to look out at the world and see all of this. Somehow life is too burdensome to have the time to consider your own becoming. Somehow the average human brain can’t compute what is good for it. Is there so much chaos spanning the multiple dimensions of existence that we simply can’t find a good starting point? Have our pasts thr...