On Saturday I left the parlour window closed all day. When I came home from work in the evening the temperature in the room was stifling. On Sunday I left the parlour window wide open throughout the afternoon whilst I went to watch the football on my sister’s big TV. When I came home in the evening my room was filled with flies. On Monday I left the parlour window very slightly open. When I came from work my room was stifling and filled with flies.
Tomorrow promises to be another black day.
The old man never liked poetry
or words, for that matter.
Yet you chose to recite Rilke at the wake;
coughing punctuated the verse like
bullets at a broken television.
Shocking blue strangers into prayer.
Clapped shoulders and dribbled whisky onto
chicken legs,
pretend uncles hugging the cleaner.
A boy dancing in the car park has chalked the words “bye bye then”
onto the back of his own suit jacket.
He’s stripped the skin from a
birch tree and shaped it into a happy face;
the wind blows it into a yawn
before it finally scatters.
My Grandma and Granddad were initially very worried about the installation of lights around the base of Bamburgh Castle (they lived in its shadow). All of their fears were quickly allayed upon the occasion of it’s first illumination.
Other examples of when my Grandparents were happy are:
1. The time we all went to an expensive restaurant and you really could taste the difference.
2. When blue-tits nested in the bird-box.
3. Young Doctors ( “Young Quacks” ).
My Grandparents are buried in the churchyard overlooking the sea.
From his debut album Goin’ Off, you could say this track sparked the inception of this project when our first priority was to agree upon a title.
‘Old School’ jambuster Biz Markie (Marcel Hall), MC, DJ, and comedian, really summed up the mediator’s relationship with his public when he famously expounded:
“[...] Nobody want to be down when you’re down and out [...]“
This—as Biz sucinctly puts it—is the meaning of this song. And here we are, The Vapours (a fledgling blog with high aspirations of serialization in the third dimension) recontextualising Biz Markie’s lyric descibing his experience of the cult of celebrity on his debut—a phenomenon we are now all too familiar with—to locate a viewing of these words through the quantum spectacles of space and time: reveals the temporal, somewhat transitory nature of fame and—pardon my boldness—life itself. An apt title for a publication whose main priority is time I would say! Hence The Times, or the suffix Times, or indeed the prefix The Daily… enjoying ubiquitous use for any serious news medium with a firm grasp of news’s priority as a durational. We’ve all heard the contradictory expression ‘old news,’ yes?
I suggest that the important information (ie. news) is not necessarily what is current but what is in fact important and relevant to us. Let’s be honest, who actually reads all the papers all the time unless it’s their job?
The Vapours (as a title for a publication) is an equivalent to titles like The Times but suggests either an interest in the wake left by the latest ‘news’ or being the object or person who has left the wake in space time which has now become ‘the news.’ This is of course a medium specific issue. As The Vapours is not a news channel, there are no live links to events as they unravel per se.
“Stop and think about one thing at a time, and don’t just walk around consuming loads of crap and then not have a opinion on the crap, or indeed an awareness of how you are influenced by it.” Jurgen Habermas*
There is only this moment, this moment: is right now. As you read this your mind is spinning in many ways not directly related to the text. We perceive time one moment after another but only now, in this moment can we effect the future. Let’s create a wake in the wake of those whose vapours we have caught. Forward to the past.
Bottom line: The Vapours = history.
*Just kidding.
