I listen
and nothing is true:
Nothing genuine,
no thing true,
nothing believable.
Bang Bang;
Too much reverb,
skeleton toms,
Sissing snares.
Give me something genuine
with imperfections:
with chords not quite there.
Give me the real
were we scream
For our lives.
Pretend,
we’re off our faces
like back in the day.
Grin,
From ear to ear
those days have gone.
Lend me your ear:
Don’t bother!
Golden days-
gone forever.
Just one more glass
Then maybe I’ll sleep
A cigarette;
an update,
get back in sync?
You want to see a dead body?
Say son, stop that talk.
You don’t
understand
what I can’t start to explain.
Be a man,
use your hands
be a useful individual.
Fuck you-
Tried to please you
I’m an individual.
Want to cut myself
with an audience.
Fuck you up.
Fuck you up.
Fuck you up.
Look down at me
with Daily Mail eyes.
I despise
everything about you.
Too true:
all too true.
Want to cut myself
with an audience.
Fuck you up.
Fuck you up.
Fuck you up.
Nobody wins this time:
the only time is now.
I’m scared to be alone,
I know you feel the same.
Never to be a citizen:
house off the avenue.
Time begets time,
late Sunday afternoon:
pork and crabapple,
shaking of the laic.
Grab a time uneven
perched on the green stools:
heard but not seen.
Think through but not do.
The time is upon us,
the daylight shines through you.
Trick a head folded;
contorted regression,
no faith in our vision
or sign of intelligence.
So blindly we drink
from cup and from teat.
To you a black rose,
to me the unthinkable.
We danced for our lives
and time effervescent.
Time standing still:
our last swimming lesson.
It’s hot in London. It’s really fucking hot in London. It would be illegal to transport cattle in these conditions yet I am on a train in the bowls of London on way to my idea of hell: The West. I hate west London, but maybe we will address this later. I can’t stand the heat and the stench of stale sweat. I exit at London Bridge for some fresh air and a cigarette. I have no cigarettes so I go to the nearest store and am informed that I will have to part with twenty pence short of ten quid for my Marlboro reds. You can guess what I said. I reboarded with renewed anger and extreme dehydration.
Once I finally found the meeting place, a rather grubby looking boozer masquerading as a gastro-pub, I ordered two large G and T’s and a lager. I downed the gins and took my pint into the beer garden. Scanning the threadbare grass, my eyes went past the stereotypical examples of bad parenting and came to rest on a couple of uncomfortable looking creatures in the far corner, Joel and Prof.
I think I may have been a bit on the aggressive side to begin with but I calmed down: there was a good reason why I had traveled to the ‘Heart of Darkness’. The reason being that MUTHURSHIP were the first truly exciting and original bands I had heard in a very long time. I nailed half the pint and we started to talk.
I know it’s a very obvious question to ask ( but I asked it anyway), What inspires you?
Joel: I am inspired by things around me. I will be walking home from the market and see a wall with plants hanging over it, suddenly I am somewhere else feeling different feelings or I will see a building that really catches my eye and It will start to tell a story, whether the story comes from inside the building or out in the grounds.
Prof: .Life, here and now, .good or bad and sex of course. I mean everything that we [humans] do revolves around sex in one way or another
The sun and a week of booze and pills took its toll and I was not my usual self. My mind was blank and I struggled to come up with a follow up question. What music influences you?
Prof: Fucking Capital radio!? I don’t know know. I don’t really listen to music. Joel will ask me to check this band out or that band but its all little bits of sound bites you hear from anything and anywhere……..I love Kate Bush. She is just a Beautiful alien. Love that woman.
Joel: There are so many that I feel are an influence, Bowie, Depeche Mode, Led Zep, Mew, Incubus, Faith no More, NIN, White Lies, I could go on and on and on
I remember we talked about Faith No More for a bit as I am a huge Mike Patton fan and he can do no wrong as I far as I am concerned. When I first heard MUTHURSHIP’S debut album I thought that a couple of the songs reminded me of Patton’s work. But to compare MUTHURSHIP to anything that has gone before would be a huge injustice.
Now I know what you are thinking, “how can he follow up the previous deep reaching questions?” Well I’m not one to disappoint: Why MUTHURSHIP?
Prof: I’m a funkadelic fan theres no way around that. The attitude the I don’t give a shit, It’s like Prince before he went all god. He had a punk ethos of I do what I want. Same as Radiohead. Be brave with music but learn how to play. So the little sweaty studio I have it’s the Muthurship and that’s it.
Joel: When me and Ray (prof) communicate via email he would always sign off with ‘from the Muthurship’ and stuff like that so when we were thinking band names it made a great deal of sense and meant a great deal to us.
I can’t remember a lot more. Someone produced some kind of blue substance. All the world became linear: everything became ordered and the world made complete sense. Made the bus in seconds flat. Found my way upstairs and had a smoke, and Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.
Check out MUTHURSHIP – http://www.reverbnation.com/Muthurshipband
Valium and alcohol
Do not mx!
Drowning
On the underground:
The tube blurred.
Where were you supposed to be?
Not here
Not now.
I’m in trouble
Cant see why,
I can talk
If I focus I can see.
What about a new
Reality show? –
‘A Bridge too far?’
Fat contestants
Enter an island
With a moat,
Inhabited by hungry alligators.
They have the choice:
Their usual diet,
Or
A heathy option.
After a predetermined time
They cross the bridge
To freedom.
The bridge has
a weight limit.
The limit is set
at a weight
They can realistically
hope to achieve.
If the Bridge gives way:
contestants are eaten.
“Where are you?”
I don’t know.
“What time do you call this?”
I don’t know
“What are you playing at?”
I don’t know.
I’m not playing.
I can’t speak to my family
Got friends?
Yes
Confide in?
No
No sympathy, please
Need someone
Who knows
This feeling
No
Someone who will talk minutiae
Small talk.
BIPOLAR: THE IN-BETWEEN TIMES
The brain is made with the grey matter (the processor) on the exterior and the white matter (the wiring) to the centre. There are 40 billion neurones in the brain (many more than the population of the world) and they are constantly making connections with each other. There is the slightest imbalance in my brain, but it affects me in quite extreme ways.
We think in words and hence remember in words. We do not remember when we are very young because we can not speak and we do not have words. Most people’s first memories are from the age of three plus: when we first learn words. Vocabulary is essential for memory. Due to my disorder (and I think ‘disorder’ is a succinct description) I have a very different thought structure as my mood changes: a different vocabulary. I can’t remember what I was feeling at a specific time if I am not in the same ‘frame of mind’ as that period. Maybe it is too simplistic to put it down to a different vocabulary at different mood points that makes it impossible to know how I was feeling at a time when I am in the same mood: seeing a hazy memory as a spectator looking over the experience. Mood, or ‘frame of mind’, do not really do my extreme alterations of mood (perception of reality) justice but I lack the vocabulary to express myself as I wish. I am not at my sharpest at present.
I am in one of those in-between times. I could probably give this a name and categorise it if I kept a mood diary (as many have suggested). I haven’t had the time to fill in a diary when on a high, and on a low I can not get myself a glass of water (sometime, when I have managed to make it to the toilet I have not wiped myself properly: it is not important).
I feel in a more primitive stage of my cycle of late. I feel a great deal of anger. When I say, “I know where you live” I don’t mean it as a threat: I mean it as a call to arms. I will cut you up. I will cut you to pieces. I will turn you into dog food: not even your close family will recognise you. I, with my mental problems, will spend a year or two between quilted wall reading whatever I desire. Within two I will have convinced them that I am fit, and ready, to return to society: full of compassion and remorse!
You will still be undergoing reconstructive surgery. I will make sure that you are aware of my release. You will install a state of the art security system on your home and every time a cat walks through your back garden it will light-up like Wembley. This will not help you.
You will have to leave your house from time-to-time and your family will still have their daily chores; school and the like. I have no problem with them but I can get to you through them: I won’t give it a second thought.
TWO
Sorry for the rant. I feel better now. I have a problem with my anger when I am having trouble focusing and I am feeling more assertive. This period comes before the high. During this period I need one thing to focus on, obsessively. I was focusing on a idea for a film at the time and that was the only thing I could think of. When in a period of focused, deep thought I can not have my thoughts interrupted. It is a similar feeling to being woken from a dream in which you have almost reached a conclusion: confusion and annoyance. At the beginning of this period I am less assertive and I am unable to converse with others: I am very timid and self conscious, often not leaving the house for days-on-end. The transition between this period and the second stage of the mood is signified by restless nights full of vivid dreams. The dreams merge with reality and I can not differentiate the two. It is a strange period of metamorphosis and snowballs until there are no boundaries between; dream, reality, television, television, memories, literature, etc. I have a couple of nights, maybe more, when I rock in the chair and question everything I think I knew previously: tears and musical loops. Eventually I reach the second stage and I feel cleansed, in a fashion, and I have direction (although often misconceived).
I forgot to say that the first part of this stage follows the low: not directly but soon afterwards. There is a epoch before this stage. It is another period of searching for myself and trying to get a handle on my core beliefs. I am not going to try and explain the highs and lows hear. It is impossible to explain the depressed times to someone how has not experienced it. The closest thing to depression, although not the same, is the grief you feel when someone close to you dies. The strange thing about depression when you are bipolar is that there is no reason. It often descends when everything is going well in your life (I have felt manically happy at the time of a close friend’s death, or when homeless). My mood have no relation to what is happening in my life. I sometimes think of it as a film with the wrong soundtrack.
“I’m fine”. Sometime you just can’t pretend. Making pleasantries doesn’t come naturally and a smile is out of the question. At these times, not always ‘down’ times, the lines don’t come out. It is like stage fright. Everybody has a role and the lines that you have worked out as your stock answers do not come to mind and you see them for what they are: fake. You can not bring yourself to utter them. What has made you the person others perceive you as are nothing but rehashed rebuts. On the ‘up’ times my mind works faster than everyone else’s and I am surprised by the wit and speed of thought. I am often shocked by that emitted from my own mouth. In the second part of the in-between stage I am often surprised by the words I say, but rarely in a good way. I think there is maybe one or two different stages before I get to the high and firing on all cylinders, but I haven’t mapped these out, and probably never will. I think of these periods as transitional turbulence or no-man’s land.
All I am trying to say is that it is not all ‘manic-depesive’, with no in-between (I much prefer the term manic depression to bipolar). It is a very complex thing that I still can’t quite get to grips with but writing this out has made it a bit easier for me to understand, even if it hasn’t made it any clearer for you. I know this sound, and probably is, very self-indulgent but fuck you. I originally started writing this to try and explain myself to my brother. I won’t send it to him because he will criticise me for being self obsessed. Maybe I am but I have spent too long lying about my illness: pretending to have stomach problems for years to disguise my true ailment. Now I am free, mad and proud!
I have recently returned to film/video production and it would be great great to work with you on this project. I am willing to take any role but I am organised and best suited to the production side. I am now 37 years old and I am a great problem solver. I love working in a fast moving environment and under pressure. In the past I have worked on the production of professional music videos and short films. For the last few years I have worked on my own projects in my spare time but I have not worked in the industry due to falling into a good job in an unrelated field of work. I am a film graduate and I have more energy and dedication then those younger than myself. I hope to hear from you soon.
Billy Brown 