by Laura Hird
He would never get on too well with the girls that were around. It wasn’t the specs or his missing front tooth; I think it was vegetarianism. He’d always be reminding me that, ounce for ounce peanuts had more protein than fillet steak. But the wash of peanut detritus past the missing tooth and into the wine glass disgust you if you weren’t used to it. He usually had some career girlfriend tucked away somewhere who was mostly issuing ultimatums to him to get his act together.
He had his phases. He’d come round and say, ‘Got the price of a pint?’ and I’d say no just out of not wanting to go out. We’d talk or he’d help with notes on Alexis St-Léger Léger’s Oiseaux. He had eight languages fully and was very handy for that sort of thing. He came round one day when Kelly was there. She and he were old mates from way back. So he outs with, ‘Got the price of …?’ to meet with honest denials. He goes and is back in half an hour with twelve bottles of assorted, good wines. Game on. He goes out later with an old broken typewriter of mine and is soon back with draw. The three of us have one tremendous high old time. Like out of nothing. The next again day Davie I cannot believe what she says, ‘That Michael Markovsky is a bad yin, you should pay him off (Kellyspeak for sling him a deafy, ignore or get rid of). What if he phones us up and asks for bail or something?’
I learned a little about wine from him. Like Rioja we never drank – C18th claret heads man! But this day we had a few expensive bottles with the gold wire round them. We go round to see Johnny Ram from Yorkshire who is an intense fellow. He is doing his Ph.D. on Wyndham Lewis and spends all day listening to Fall records. He had all these theories about how the Fall guy was the Wyndham Lewis of nowadays (thenadays); intricate theories, devious, unconvincing. Michael said that in Kathy Acker’s book she said she wanted to sleep with one of the Fall, so she needs the contact lenses right enough. Did you meet Johnny Ram Davie? He went missing not long after this.
I knew next to nothing about Logical Posivitism, but I’d heard it was an ‘uncool, cold war philosophy’. (This from a guy that taught Froggy lit’ crit’.) So when Michael told me Alfred Ayer, the father of Logical Posivitism, was coming to speak at the David Hume Tower and on David Hume, we decided to go. Michael and Alfred Ayer being both old Oxford men. Of his talk I remember little except that it was couched in a gentle, winning English. I’d’ve had to’ve been a philosopher of years’ study, just to define his terms (to this day I haven’t made a start on the study of Ethics Davie, perhaps I never shall). I do remember being deep into Non Aristotelean semantics, or I had a few of Korzybski’s books on the subject. I was thinking about these, lulled by Freddie’s honeyed tones. Suddenly I became aware of this embarrassing silence. The question and answer part of the lecture was producing not a word from the benches. I was embarrassed for Sir Freddie and it seemed we were being rude. Never mind, I thought, soon someone will speak. But it was going on and on. I became aware of my feet pressing inside my shoes, which I thought was toe-curling. But I was up, ‘Sir, what would you have to say about the Non Aristotelean semantics of Count Alfred Korzybski?’
‘What has this to do with my paper?’
Davie I wouldn’t have been bothered about telling him nowadays I couldn’t understand his fucking paper. ‘Eh sir it’s philosophy … em language.’ I sat down. I could’ve crawled in beside the matches in my pocket.
‘Korzybski, good heaven’s I haven’t heard his name since the 1930’s. Of course he was a good popular writer …’ I could tell that a popular writer was the ultimate put-down from a philosopher. But I had cracked the ice and he soon had questions from people who had heard him speak in the 1960’s. Fans; from when he was a popular writer. You couldn’t help but warm a bit to Sir Freddie when he asked, clearly looking for sport, ‘Any Tories in the assembled company?’ and not a peep.
The old Moral Philosophy chestnut of abortion came up. Sir Freddie states his view that it is the woman’s right to terminate up to 28 days. Instantly Michael is up to his feet. ‘Ah Korzybski’ says Sir Freddie. ‘No a colleague. Anyway how the fuck can you say that? 28 days? Naw, nae days. Nae abortions. Life’s sacred man. Life’s fucking sacred.’ Michael went purple. Sir Freddie unfazed, cut Michael and was answering another question smoothly as we left.
We go right into The Pear Tree. I’m wondering: How can I have had Michael for such a David Hume man. Then he ups and gets so worked up about the archaic edicts of Rome? Davie it must’ve been that genetic rocket fuel I mentioned above. We have a few vodkas and black coffees, which Michael calls Polish coffees. Soon he is proposing a toast: Long live Poland. Viva Polska. Fuck Jaruzelski. Tanks back to the Volga! I’m not perplexed by any contradiction in people nowadays, but I was that day.
Soon after this Michael went away to Portugal. It was a language he knew and he made off with some grant or other.
After London I came back north and I lived with Paul O’Brien in Tollcross. The Chinatown of Edinburgh. He lived in a tenement, not far from the local primary school. What a din the kids made in the playground practising for Chinese new year, running around with the big lion’s head on, banging drums and cymbals.
Paul O’Brien went out with Kelly’s cousin Sheila. Sheila was one trendy miss at all times. She worked in clothes shops and the fashionable Bertie’s – a restaurant in the west end where Paul was a waiter. I remember the night Harry, Paul’s boss, brought back the first crate of mescal seen in Scotland. I remember the desk sergeant the next again day saying to us, ‘Mind ae callin me a poof last night?’ Kelly told me about making it with Harry and his piles bursting.
There was a TV at Tollcross but no one watched it. We’d get up and have breakfast in the Chequers cafe; always sitting in the back seat with all the names scored in the wood. This was around the beginning of the cappuccino days. I would trot out what I’d say every day, ‘I have a date at Parnassus,’ and along the road to George IV Bridge and the National Library. Kelly was off at college most of the time.
We’d rendezvous back at Tollcross for tea-time and eat something bought out Brattisanni’s. In the evenings we’d go wherever the theatre with concessions was at, either to the hard seats of the old Traverse or the Theatre Workshop in Stockbridge. There was always the pictures. The film Diva had a big effect on Kelly. I thought it was pretentious French shite. One weekend we saw Gone With the Wind on a Saturday and All the President’s Men (the Watergate story with Hoffman and Redford as Woodward and Bernstein) the next night. Kelly decided that all along she’d wanted to be a journalist, a crusader. And inspired by Vivien Leigh in the fields, she wasn’t going to be ‘poor’ anymore. Davie were you sure I was to spare you nothing? I’d forgotten about all of this. Soon I was being dragged to The Opera. ‘You’ve got to get a new jacket. A designer jacket.’ I made do with some second hand affair (still smart like). I’m sure the keen eye would’ve been able to tell, but to me it looked the same as that scarecrow-style Kath Hamnett.
Some opera I must confess was all right. Five acts with three intervals scuppered me a bit though. We had a row before the fifth act of Aida, ‘No fuck it. I’m staying at the bar.’ You could still see and hear from there. Lovely pyramid sets and that. My favourite was The Magic Flute though, and Weber’s Oberon I liked – just because Anthony Burgess was the librettist. Your Zucchinis and Tortellinis you could keep.
To be nearer college, Kelly took a flat at Windsor Street. She was deep in hero-worship of some guy Bob who ran the journalism course. ‘Bob said … Bob said …’ Bob said that in reporting, the reporter must bring the bear directly onto the stage. Nice one Bob. I rented a TV and video for the flat and moved in. I checked with the course books: Power without Responsibility, Teeline – had a bash at trying to learn the shorthand and then thought, What am I doing? Also lying around were; A History of Obscenity Trials (old hat to us remember), Index on Censorship, New Internationalist, Police Review, and heaven help us, a subscription to Granta.
Round this time I was in with a very handy boy called Max Jarvie. Maxie. The Man The Booki
es Fear. He looked after difficult teenagers at this time. But had been previously living on the Isle of Man, organising god knows what, all to do with horse racing, an off-shore concern. I was nearly in love with Maxie and god bless anyone that can take money off the bookmakers. Anyway bookies know it’s good for business if occasionally, someone is seen going out the shop with money. Even though Maxie kept his hand in a little horses, money was not his god. ‘I hate these race-track Johnnies,’ he’d say. ‘Race trackers with their “holding and folding – that’s what it’s all about” arseholes.’ If Maxie knew a horse, he’d tell me and it’d win. Funny thing 6/1 always seemed to be the magic price, not too greedy but still more than worthwhile. Maxie’s wife was Alison. She was great. Her and Maxie were back from this holiday in Paris and she said to me like this, ‘You know, Maxie this is right though eh, it was that cold at the top of the Eiffel Tower, that cold, that I had to wear two jerseys.’
‘No one in Fleet St. will be able to collect a pay packet under the name Mickey Mouse anymore.’ I’m having explained to me the terrible abuses perpetrated by the print-workers. That and New Technology, Eddie Shah’s Today, Wapping, and hey, colour pictures. ‘Two detectives came to check the toilets in the afternoon. You know when Margaret Thatcher eats a baked potato, she only eats the skin and leaves the rest.’ A scoop. Kelly’s hanging round a lot of restaurants at this time.
I taped this TV programme, At the Edge of the Union, a documentary about Northern Ireland. It showed the day to day lives of Peter Robinson and Martin McGuiness. The BBC banned its showing until they could restore ‘balance’ to it by adding ten seconds of a parked car being blown up. Their tampering sticks out like a sore thumb. Kelly took the tape to college. It’s still part of the course materials.
She had another boyfriend at this time. Some law student. He broke into her house one night. He was there when she came in. He’d made himself a joint. She wanted him to go home. She managed this because, she said, ‘It’s easy to manipulate people when they’re stoned.’
In your last there Davie you were asking what drugs am I into nowadays? Well a few weeks ago I was going along Albert St. (mind it used to be called ‘scag alley’). This young boy comes up to me and says ‘Wantin’ any dee effs? A pound.’
‘No man I’m just into Ecky and blaw.’
‘Aye, for the come down then?’
‘No man. They do yer guts in. Cheers.’ And that was it. Albert St. though. Allan Ramsey, he’s got a ground floor flat in Albert St. Came in from his work one day and christ his house has been robbed. He was devastated, he went right away into The Clan for a drink. He was having his pint and trying to straighten himself out when a guy tried to sell him his duvet cover.
Me and Cicely have been doing some taping. You’ve never met her Davie, but if it wasn’t for her and well, you (don’t get embarrassed) I’d think there were no warm-blooded people left in the world. A transcription of the tape was going to be in Jock’s magazine, but it never appeared. John Berryman was a great poet and was a best mate of Delmore Schwartz. You’ll know his name from your shitey old Velvets’ records.
TAPE ON
CICELY: I’m interested in John Berryman; you were talking about Berryman there.
ME: Well I just like Berryman y’know separate from those other Middle Poets he gets lumped in with eh Lowell, Stevens and all that Boston confession/depression thing. What’s Berryman’s line, I can’t remember it all, ‘De dum de dum de dum … Voice of a lost soul moving …’ That’s great. (pause) He has to mark a poem by one of his students about a guy that throws himself off a bridge in St Paul’s, Minneapolis. This exact bridge is walking distance from where Berryman is teaching. Berryman jumps off the bridge to his death the next again day, like suggested by his student’s poem. Maybe that’s not such a big deal though. It seems depressives are in a highly suggestible state as Styron says in his book about his depression – he couldn’t look at a tree without seeing a noose hanging from it. So maybe …
CICELY: William Styron would be depressed because he’s such a fuckin shite writer.
ME: Hey now.
CICELY: Well, Sophie’s Choice – I ask you. Anyway, Berryman; he was very well thought of in the ’sixties right?
ME: I think it was 1974 he topped himself. Of course he wasn’t a great counter-culture man, didn’t think much of Bob Dylan or Ginsberg who certainly took from him … Yea, like his diary tells of a lecture tour he did all over the states in 1969, ‘Tonight after my lecture I was offered three different kinds of marijuana by students, these I refused …’ Well.
CICELY: He ought to’ve taken the draw right?
ME: Well, yea, rather than the whisky and barbiturates.
CICELY: Three different kinds?
ME: Aye. In these dry times it makes your lips stick together to think of it eh … Ye gums and resinous woods thereof! The real Cedars of Lebanon! (pause) I don’t like opiates, barbiturates, prescribed drugs generally and fucking especially I don’t like cocaine.
CICELY: I’ll tell you – cocaine people are really dripping with money to the point it’s mad. I baby-sat once for this girl who was right into coke. She came round and offered me £50 and a lump of draw like a cricket-ball to baby-sit for her so I said eh all right. So it’s me, Val and this girl in her big house all blowing away, and the idea is that I sit tight while Val and the girl go to a club – except it’s getting later and later and they’re not going anywhere. I start to get drowsy and the last thing I remember is being asked if I want anything to eat. Next thing I know I’m coming round and here’s this smell coming from boxes stacked up and the girl says, ‘We didn’t want to wake you up to find out what sort of pizza you wanted, so we got you these.’ Fucking eight different kinds of pizza. Picked the pineapple off of one for dessert. Crazy. Never saw a kid …
ME: Well, regardless of the people around it, coke’s a horrible drug though. I remember in an Italian restaurant, after shutting, we were playing cards for lines, and I remember the chef winning all the lines. He takes out this little hard cock, rubs coke all over the end of it and running at the wall, he goes, ‘Look! I am so stoned! I fuck the wall!’ He was an’ all – making dents in the hessian. Christ’s sake.
CICELY: Enough of that … So Berryman, he was altogether more with the juicers, Dylan Thomas and that?
ME: See that’s just the thing though. When you look into it, Berryman’s two most loved poets, the ones who influenced him the most were Baudelaire and Yeats right. Now Baudelaire wrote a great piece, ‘Poème du Hashish’ which is like more like an essay where he describes a young Parisian 1850’s style, who, determined to take hashish for the first time, goes to an Arab cafe. It seems you dropped your bit wrapped in a vine leaf and downed it with coffee. So the young guy does this and … Baudelaire goes to great lengths describing the guy’s queasiness and creeping terror in the streets. Eventually he goes into a pharmacy and explains to the pharmacist he’s been taking hashish and must have a cure. The pharmacist offers to shout for the gendarmes right away if he doesn’t get out of his shop. It’s very funny, a totally ad absurdum piece like De Quincey’s ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’.
CICELY: Like a shaggy dog story?
ME: Yea, even. Baudelaire wrote a great deal on hashish; I mean on and about. That whole artificial paradise thing and a collection with Gautier, Hashish, Wine, Opium, a thorough study of all three. It’s just … you’d’ve thought Berryman could’ve demonstrated a bit more curiosity.
CICELY: What about Yeats though?
ME: Well we know that Yeats was blowing away in Paris with followers of the C18th mystic Saint-Martin, about 40 years after Baudelaire. It’s in ‘The Trembling of the Veil’. He’s taking it at ‘One in the morning and some are dancing.’
CICELY: Yea that’s a good title, ‘… and some are dancing’.
ME: So even Yeats there. If he’d moved to Paris and cultivated sticky lips from the 1890’s onwards, maybe his eyes wouldn’t have got so bad.<
br />
CICELY: ‘Dear Ms Gonne too stoned to write you last month …’ (laughs).
ME: (laughs) Poor cunt Berryman though. When I think of it.
CICELY: Thinking! Now ye start!
ME: No no. When I think of it, Berryman, his father committing suicide and all, it’s like … The bonfire was always waiting at the end of the road. His particular bonfire. What he connected with in Baudelaire was suffering, guilt.
CICELY: And rather than mysticism or hashish, from Yeats he got what? … lyricism?
ME: Aye, the wind blowing in the reeds, nae doubt.
CICELY: So you told me you’re not into this and that drug. What about Ecky?
ME: Well I think I’ve only had it the once that was really, really good; at a club in Glasgow, Jesus Christ I thought I was in a cathedral made out of glacier mints. Somehow this cool, blue European thing was blasting through me. I thought I was in Iceland and Berlin at the same time. Nothing like that since. What about your Cis?
CICELY: I just cannot take anything hallucinogenic at all now. Know what I mean, Quelle barbe! what a bore. It was … I just heard too much shit talked around me. The slightest profundity made me sick. I like a blow and maybe a glass of wine.
ME: And good sounds right?
CICELY: Right. Some of us are dancing!
ME: I sort of see what you mean about the acid though. I’ve seen people take acid too young, too much too young, and they develop … what can I tell you … a taste for introspection that might not’ve been in their character.
CICELY: Did you read Marcuse?