London skyline at the Millennial Bridge. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
London, 4.44am. I used to catch minicabs to airports around this time. To Kabul, via Dubai, or a plane direct to New York. Back then, a quick blast of Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds or Public Image’s Rise. Golden Slumbers by The Beatles at nightfall. Nowadays, how about Adrianne Lenker’s song Anything? On this morning I am not going anywhere. (I am not listening to Anything either.) I am simply lying awake next to the artist, reading and writing through the quiet light of my phone while listening to the traffic’s rubber on tarmac outside.
We call for ceasefires in the Middle East but never Ukraine. The latest public Defence Intelligence report on Ukraine is no way to start the day but how I start mine. The average number of killed and wounded last month on the Russian side reached a new high of 1,271 a day. As I rise and make early breakfast, I read of an estimated 648,000 Russian casualties since Putin adjusted his cuffs like he always does and showed us he didn’t care what we in the West thought, though his three-day war is now almost three years long. In the meantime, 213,800 Ukrainians have arrived in this country. Our own impoverished local council here still outlines finance available for guests from there. We have provided £7.8 billion so far in military support. The head of MI5 Ken McCallum warns us that Russian spies are on ‘a sustained mission to generate mayhem in British streets.’ What are we supposed to do with all that? Controversial former MI6 man Christopher Steele in his new book says Trump took UK naval secrets—‘some of the most sensitive ones in our governmental system’—to Mar-a-Lago. Where can we go with any of that, too?
I pine for those days when song began each morning, when bread, like gas and electricity, was affordable. Today, I take toast and marmalade to the living room, barely able to watch on social media a Palestinian elder in the occupied West Bank trying to stop soldiers firing on youths, followed by claims the soldiers burst into the elder’s home and beat him to death. Replays from a year ago include footage of a young Israeli woman dragged bloodied and terrified from the back of a crammed black jeep. There is fear and loathing on the streets of our screens. How about the beautiful Lebanese family smiling to camera, all dead now? Not forgetting evidence doing the rounds of people opposing the regime in Iran hanged to death. Or fresh and forgotten re-runs in Sudan of the Darfur slaughters of two decades ago, fused with today’s growing famine there. ‘Where words fail, music speaks,’ said Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.
Gorgeous morning sunlight pouring into the living room makes the only true mockery of us all. Outside, a lone London parakeet sways on a glittering branch. Inside again, a rescued cactus plant seems happier now it is watered. The two tomato plants growing on the window ledge bear no fruit. For that we must turn to the musicians upstairs on the cusp of a record deal plus a sold out gig shared with two other bands in central London. There: there is music, like a haiku facing off an epic poem. They have promised themselves a kebab at the local kebab shop if the lawyers complete. They have perspective, the manners of the well informed. They hate war, as it happens.
Breakfast over and coffee all drunk, my eyes light up as I spot a reply from a former TV channel head. For all that, he tells me the world of observational documentaries often made on spec or based upon a simple notion and relying on trust in the director is, in his view, not only broken these days but largely no longer even there. ‘The broadcasters have simply stopped commissioning risky projects that rely on the auteur-director to supply the narrative through dint of, as it were, being there,’ he writes. Another producer friend in Jordan writes saying it felt as if we were living through the last days of journalism, as we know it, including documentary. I don’t know any truly independent writers, artists or filmmakers these days who are not in some way broke. (I am reminded briefly of Italo Calvino: ‘Literature has no choice but to raise the stakes and keep the betting going, following the logic of a situation that can only get worse.’) This is why CounterPunch is so important today. ‘We don’t run ads. We don’t compromise. We don’t pander to the establishment,’ it says in its latest fundraising drive. Stories that fit rich owners’ agendas are for the large part the only ones being told. As for film, it is often footage from people’s phones which penetrate the cracks and permeate the pores, misleading or true, these days. In Hungary, not so far from here, the opposition is hunted down and journalists kept under surveillance. I crawl under my metaphorical tree and hide among the leaves. Maybe I should just concentrate on my book.
I do most of my writing on my phone. I do it in bed, as at the beginning of this piece, on public transport, on the sofa, in the bath—everywhere. Last week, I was working on a brief section of my book which takes place in Rome in the Eighties, idly recalling warm airplane fumes mixed with the scent of pine trees. When I was a boy, I favoured small handwriting in tiny notebooks. Maybe this is why I don’t mind writing on the phone. At school I used to write endless amounts of poetry across many blank pages in large psalm and hymn books in the school chapel. This was during services, singing practice, or the odd organ voluntary. One friend, now dead, swore that after I left school at 16, the headmaster had all my writings ripped out and a fire made. I have no way of knowing this, or if rebel status remains. Talking of which, my English painter friend who designed the sets for my Off-Broadway play wrote last week, playing wonderfully with the fact he was alone among people who didn’t understand him and were cross with him. ‘I suppose it’s easier that way,’ he smiled through his words. With affection I replied with some Bowie: ‘Rebel Rebel, you’ve torn your dress / Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess / Rebel Rebel, how could they know? / Hot tramp, I love you so.’
The gig is close to where I once worked on 28 Days Later, 24 Hour Party People, Code 46, Millions, basically movies with numbers in their titles. The musicians’ contract awaits their signatures. There is a line of people outside the venue and we hear the soundcheck as we arrive. When the gig starts, a flood of music lovers pour into the basement. Some, including music business folk, cannot get in. The artist has spray-painted one of the outfits. All four on stage burn the house down, rock the casbah. Defiance. Joy. Edge. Release. Who said music was dead?
