What you have to understand is that this was not my
idea. I am sitting here, and I am thinking about how this chair could be comfortable
were it not for a little tangible gnarl somewhere under my right thigh, and
I am thinking about cubic equations and I am thinking about Diablo II, which
I would be playing right now, if I were at home and not here. The gnarl is
a kind of irregular rhumboid shape, further complicated by a slight ridge
heading left to right, although it is possible that this last observation
is not unconnected to the back pocket of the jeans I am wearing. The stitching
on the pocket would coincide almost perfectly with my projected location for
the gnarl, it occurs to me. It is mid afternoon but it is winter, and the
light that's coming through the window of the pavilion is a shade of greyish
yellow that looks somehow dirty. Shards of it twist almost imperceptibly in
the air, the result no doubt of another gnarl, this time on the window. To
look at the window would require me to turn my head by around 35 to 40 degrees,
which would be impolite at the present moment. This is a social situation.
The man in front of me is in his late fifties. The song I am humming to myself
was the b-side to the second proper Bowie single.
Where I am is in a florist's shop, and this is all my mother's
idea. Apparently, what I need is a holiday job. I did try to explain that
I wanted particularly neither "experience" nor money, but I could not make
myself understood. I am not good with words. This man whose single roadside
pavilion grandiosely proclaims itself 'The Birmingham Flower Company' is a
family friend, I was told this morning, and my best prospect for gainful employment.
This meeting, I was told over a bowl of cornflakes, is solely a formality
- more a briefing of my new responsibilities than a serious interview. I believe
the perfect cornflake to be only lightly sugared, and suspended in semi-skimmed
milk with just the tiniest dab of salt. The florist, whose name I was also
told but have since forgotten, wears a striped cricket sweater in a variety
of unflattering colours, and sports a moustache that falls just short of the
truly comedic. Somehow, the overall effect is so cliché as to be almost poignant.
The brand of milk used is largely immaterial, though UHT is of course unimaginable.
Still, I am to be asked questions, quizzed, tested. I must be calm, assured.
Social and adjusted. Articulate and perhaps eloquent, but never ranty. I must
be likeable and, if I can, charming.
And I will be. In a minute. But first, there are more important things. Like
pop music, and in particular, Strawberry Switchblade. How they grew up with
the artpunk scene, how they took their name from a fanzine that came with
an Orange Juice record, how they released a debut single about agoraphobia.
How they wrote a perfect pop song called 'Since Yesterday', all bittersweet
regrets and a glorious swooning chorus, and how they saw it get to number
one with next to no publicity, only the airplay that was right and fair for
a tune that even today makes me want to clap my hands and grin like an idiot,
and just smile enigmatically at all the Stereophonics fans who don't know
what they're missing. I do some instant calculations, based on my knowledge
of conversational forms and the geographical position of Andy Fawcett, the
florist whose name I can now suddenly recall. I give myself three to four
seconds of socially acceptable silence before any real speech is required,
and this is ample time. Here is a history lesson: Strawberry Switchblade never
fitted in. They were faces of the year in 1985, before disappearing into the
obscurity they had emerged from; a peculiar punctuation to what seems now
to have been a peculiar pop decade. .
And his lips have begun slowly to rise, and soon they will reach a peak, then
descend. The result will be words, and these I will have to listen to. The
four-second grace period I had decided on is hurtling towards an end. Now
is the time to tear myself away from my head, to prove I can engage this world
when I choose, but it isn't as easy as that. And I know what he'll be saying
anyway, because it's always the same, the greeting first, the small talk I
find so treacherously difficult to navigate through. And it'll be the same
questions, too, when he comes to ask questions, the questions about maths
and computers and the Scottish post-rock scene, the things he's heard I'm
interested in. And he'll make an effort too, and there'll be triumph on his
face as he torturously yanks out another nugget from his memory, and presents
it before me, a horrible deformed stain of a question. How much RAM do I connect
to the internet with? How did they prove that guy's last theorem, in the end?
And worse than that will be the conversational questions, the ones where he'll
show an interest that's so clearly fake and ask me what's so good about these
groups from Glasgow, and what's wrong with Birmingham bands? What do I say?
Do I tell the truth, and say that some of the best music is coming from here
too, that our very own Warp records are putting out classic after classic
but that doesn't change the fact most of the bands here want to sound like
Led Zeppelin? Honesty will only serve to insult him, he who probably got his
first snog to 'Stairway to Heaven' at some school disco. And worst of all
will be the jokes, the jokes without punchlines or purpose. "Well, me I can
hardly count without using my fingers, ha ha", or "I have get my daughter
to teach me how to use my computer, I get it wrong all the time.", and then
a laugh like a stone scraped against a rusty sabre. I cannot cope with the
jokes.
The gnarl continues to cause problems. I've shifted
my leg once or twice, trying to get it out of the way, but it seems to get
sharper and more prominent every time I squirm. The back pocket had nothing
to do with anything, it would seem. I'm also terribly afraid that if I move
my leg a third time it'll be seen as some kind of nervous twitch, and that
he might feel it appropriate ask me if I'm alright. I look up and am faced
with a casually expectant face, a face that will soon turn to confused expectation
unless I can work out what he's just said. I am hopeless. David Foster Wallace
calls this 'Marijuana thinking' - to be trapped in a web of thoughts about
thoughts about thoughts about actions, a web that only gains another layer
when you think about escape. My name is Timothy Constance, and I am trapped
in my head. I have a memory of a candle, spinning through the air to some
unknown destination as if hurled by an offscreen hand, but it is without context,
void. Everything becomes numbers. My age can be expressed in the form 2^n,
where n is itself a multiple of two - I am younger than 64, and older than
four. I live in a house with a number equal to the sum of the factors of twenty
four, Ridgemont Drive, Birmingham. I am 5'9" tall. There is nothing more to
say. I stand up, and prepare to leave. I see by the look in his eyes that
he understands.