serendipity swiftly grabbed us as it righteously careened up King. Street. We saw .... of free falling as Kittinger â
k e r o w a c k
T o u c h p a p e r L i t . c o m
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P r e a m b l e I first met Jack not long after I started university... Donny and Smith said I'd like him. He, Jack, would go on to tell me, Jack, about the 40s and 50s, the benny and the Beat, and I went on to see his decline in archive footage. He wasn't like the others I'd known. Here was a guy who talked about shambling after the mad ones, and yet, what I saw of him – or at least what he let us see of him – he was just as far out as any of them. And then I tried to cast him off. His books were nothing like his scrolls and they were hardly like his reality. He was a drunkard and a bastard and nothing like me. I wanted to be like him and then I wanted nothing to do with him. All the while though my writing seemed not my own and everywhere I went I was gifted Jack – I've a shelf of On the Roads if you need a copy – and painted as Jack. This, then, is not a parody of the man or his life, rather an acknowledgement – homage – from one Jack to another. 'will you come travel with me?'
T h e G r e a t G a t s b y 1
G r e a t
I felt like exploding on the way home. I felt happy like I've never felt happy before. I felt like I was flying and didn't need to look down to avoid the sick of the night on the floor. The can clang clung till it was flat flattened by rushing car tires; the morning threat threatening to burn my retinas but not quite catching me in time. I wanted to write but felt too excited – still don't know if typing will capture everything. I served, I backed, I flew, I drank with people I've never known nor can I say I probably will get to the point where I knew them, I was just with them and we'll all be different when we wake up. I drank smoked lived and burned – I burned and yearned and spoke in another tongue hearing other tongues lick the air with their thoughts and views on matters I didn't expect to be just as well versed in – I might not know 1
This night was first written about under the handle Rafferty, a pseudonym thru university.
alcohol like they do but I certainly know the associated experiences they were all proffering – I thought I was a veritable young'un but they've only got years on me, and Joe doesn't even have that. I'm here and I'm not leaving until my heart stops and then I won't leave until I've had Dan make me a Hemingway Daiquiri as he did – and then the rum and the Jamaican lady! whose tastes were formed by her nurture, just as ours were, whose views were hers and great for Not Being Ours because they gave us something to talk about and think upon and riff upon and rap upon and be upon and we were all upon – apart from Alan who is the dormouse from Wonderland. I want to describe elation without ever using the word and the only way I could do that is by typing all these words because these are the words that form it and I love it and feel it and want it and I never want it to leave and yet if it did at least I had it. At least we had it, S. At least we had it. Like two foxes supping on last night's wine we whined and whinnied down streets and alleys exhaling sheer yes and feeling sheer yes and
sheer was all we could expect because this was the closest we came to it – sheer and then some, sheer and then more – sheer it sheer yes and sheer – you won't make me say delight – sheer ah! Sheer here we are. Sheer here I am. Sheer what's next? I don't know but I don't need to – I don't need to know anything – the sun's coming up.
E x c e r p t s K o n g
o f
H o n g
Her English name is 'Elena’ and we are sat side-by-side on the MTR – we both got on at Kowloon Tong – and she has on a long cream dress that she catches at every stop as the train and platform exchange spent commuters for new ones. When we get off at University the sun will have set – the metal whimper of slowing wheels reminds me I've dim sum to cook – or fry, or boil – I'll figure it out. She notices my grey and seasalt-yellowed goggles wrapped around my rucksack's pullcord and mentions a student trip to Lamma in the week, but confesses she's not a good swimmer – and if I were a Japhy or a Dean, or another Jack, I'd offer to improve her breaststroke, but I'm not, and I didn't – I tell her I'm leaving tomorrow. A Chinese girl scribbles on yellow paper notes on Lamarckian evolution and the desk she's sat at has the only working computer in this e-café. She is serene, she is bliss, she is completely unaware – in this moment she knows only anachronistic progressive concepts – unfortunately, I can't
pull her up on her conduct, I don't know any Lamarck. Matt's couch is 11 floors up from the markets of Marble Road and one floor up from that is the Wan Chai skyline strung out on washing lines as far as I can see. Matt's shirt sleeves are rolled to his elbows and his forearms are dark tanned – for an Englishman. He's smoking Marlboro, which are windingly cheap here – get them hooked then drive the prices up – and tells me that from 6pm there's talk of a party even higher somewhere near Admirality. I use his lighter to open my second sweating bottle of Tsing Tao and breathe in the setting sweating sun and his neighbour's steamy stir-fry and the dry chalky smoke and the crisp communist beer and dig the city as it swaps day for night. My not-yetseasoned arms reflect the neon from the 7/11 and glow next to Matt's, brown and glistening, hanging over that rooftop railing.
2
R o s s ' s
B r a s s h o l e s
His smile is warm and crooked – symptomatic cigarette – and he says he's cold – he is shivering – but his neck is red
Friday night was a continuation of birthday celebrations begun the day before and Arthur and I were exhausted: hour 41 of no sleep saw us stumble from Sambuca shots towards not-needed karaoke at Kelly’s, where, outside, bebop serendipity swiftly grabbed us as it righteously careened up King Street. We saw sweat-soaked street corner and the stars and eyes of Martin Luther King, Jr. shine like some Fitzgeraldian phantasm, and we heard sizzling snare and taps and stomps of mad feet keeping time with boisterous blasts of rapped voice and horn, and we skanked to the resultant spiralling uplift as it stroked the sticky Sydney nighttime. Our Friday night hustlers were a frenetic sextet – their incendiary instruments five brass and one four-piece drumkit – grinding out pitch-perfect hot jazz covers in exchange for the contents of Newtown’s writhing
My brother – who I've not yet met – was arrested – ah – for carrying less and so I just couldn't be caught – this is the third time we've reached this part of the story – so I just took all of them – I feel great – and he does look surprisingly conscious – and I decide to just start writing and he watches and then he asks what I'm writing and I tell him I'm writing him and his eyes try to follow the lines but he has to apologise – they're not working too well – and asks if I can read it to him. That's incredible, he says – that's so good – you've written it, but it's me – that's me – I'm so good – and you can do that – you can make me sound like that – because that's how you sound, bud – and he reaches for a hug and I gladly oblige. Ross is absolutely fucked and he couldn't be any higher.
2
06/12/2013, originally for BBM Magazine.
pockets. They were confident and sonically adept, deft at keeping the crowd engaged and growing. From Arrested Development to Bobby McFerrin to DJ Kool to Taylor Swift, their tune selection remained so euphonious that the only disappointment of the night came from the dissonance of one saxophonist more terror than troubadour in his quest for coppers. This minor aside, the key struck with the crowd was a winner, and Lorde knows if these young cats should appear in an alleyway near you – bold as brass tacks – that my advice is simply to let yourself slip and slide right into their irreverent rap and rhythm.
A c r o s s
t h e
N i g h t
Another day, another month, another year. My year? And I’m sat with Camilla – long, lithe and learned – who is reading Men’s Health and the advert she has flicked to is the same Nick Cage Mont Blanc wristwatch one that Matt and I photographed near Scotty's dad's flat in Kwai Fong with the strapline ‘Time is on my side’. I don’t know if you can hear it, but trains chop overhead – over the Harbour Bridge – chopping like helicopters, chopping the noise of cicada and children that sing sweetly in the sea's breeze. We can’t quite see the Opera House – a stanchion of the Bridge obstructs it – but we’re facing the other way anyway reading and writing in the great oak dappled light of the ozoneless sun above. I can taste tobacco and double freeze cut vodka mixed with flat pepsi with a suggestion of water from the hostel tap, and I feel an ebbing frustration at the inane and lazy crowd shaken with the contentment of our making it in to the park – past the admittedly ramshackle security – no problem with all of the above.
Today, Tuesday, two days will merge into one and two months and two years will hang on an imminent midnight.
S t u n t e d
G r o w t h
An English teacher told me that you cannot do family trees in Hartlepool because there are kids in the same class who might never know they have the same dads.
G o !
# 8
fuck acceptance and interdependence i just lost my ramones badge – this whole trip has turned to shit – i never even needed some long haired buddhist to tell me what's god
T h e
R o b i n ' s
N e s t
Everything drips – drip drop jazz stop and piano back in the backing drums and bass drum incessant – didn’t get it when I were young now I realise what the crowd are clapping – nobody’s looking for a full perfect section – for that stanza – they’re looking for the phrase where the three four five nineteen headstrong independents click and find the bastard it – brass blown homegrown valve depress talent impress on the crowd who know what they’re looking for only once they’ve found it – horn belts blasts eyes closed feels the most in this moment as he breathes jazz exhaling inhaling accommodating it.
S o m e t i m e
i n
M a r c h
Let me sit with you and pinch you like good poetry – forefinger and thumb.
T w o
D r e a m s
One of them is to fall from a great height backwards – as in looking up not down – looking up at whatever it is I’ve fallen from – cliff, building, plane – with the twilight/astral Pollockesque smattering above becoming less and less tangible with every metre and minute. I want to feel that sensation of free falling as Kittinger – before Baumgartner – did, just not knowing if he’d make the ground alive and what it would mean if he did but more generally just not knowing and being caught up in the sensation that everything – even the chute (though I never land in my dream) – is and could be out of my hands and letting go to it. I want to feel the whip of frozen water and the bite of those icy heights on the back of my neck and legs and its attempt to limit the speed of descent. I want to see the moon and hear nothing but air and my breathing and smell the cold and my heartbeat – blood rush and mouth drying – I want to taste absolute passivity. The second dream is to burst into an effusion of stars – not
dissimilar from, but dreamt a while before, Jack’s roman candles across the night – when I die. No organs or bloody sticky body parts just a celestial whoosh and gone. The two could even combine, but I’ve a lifetime ahead of me yet.
I t ' s n o t j o u r n e y
a b o u t
I know Stevenson said that it’s not about the destination, but I think that that’s an awfully dismissive approach to living: I say it’s not about the journey because I’m here now. I’m sat by myself in my cold, quiet flat – Charlie’s ringing his girlfriend – well he’s speaking to her now – I’m here in this cold, quiet flat after a night of working Giulio’s shift – a night where I didn’t make a single mistake and all the orders went through and the glasswash broke down and I did it all alright. I made The J.K. Julep3 for an American boy looking to try something new – I need to get that grapefruit purée from Clare’s fridge… – and I got it spot on and he told me it was the best drink he’d ever had. He didn’t give me a tip and he might not have been wholly objective but those were his words and, in that moment, he seemed to mean them. I’ve spent a lot of time bigging Giulio up – ‘now the lad 3 See further: i. JK's Julep.
t h e
who taught me’ I’ve said numerous times – but Giulio didn’t come up with that drink or the story or my interaction with the couple – although I gladly concede I’ve probably learnt a minimum of 60% of my drinks knowledge from him – it was me and the couple and those ingredients. And those Korean girls from the 4th didn’t need to compliment me but they did. I guess my point – sitting here alone in this ice-cold flat 10,000 miles from home – is that the journey is interesting and the things I’ve seen and am yet to see are and have been and could be great, but me, latent Jack, is already arrived. I am not a waiter or a barman or a wood-stainer or a poet or a writer or a cheater or a winner or an athlete or an arsehole or academic, but all of these things I can be. None of this defines me. I define me. I choose to define me. I am not a cigarette-flappingin-mouth-whiskey-drinking-Beat. I am destructive. I am demonstrative. I am judgmental, stingy, kind, bright, handsome, well-built, knowledgeable,
capable, always-learning, dumb, ignorant, resilient, weak, strong, mean, funny, caring, compassionate, conscientious, laconic, lazy, lachrymose – ha! – full of it, humble, unsure, decisive, qualified, alive, dying, sick and well. I am my love of words, my love of companionship and camaraderie, an absolute misanthrope, a creator, a dreamer, a thinker – I am Jack’s cirrhotic liver – I am everything I chose to write and everything that those words in spite of their pertinences could never express. I am everything that I choose to be and everything that I am not, but right here, right now, I am. I have arrived at my destination.
f u r t h e r i. JK's Julep ii. The Mad Ones
J K ' S
J u l e p
On the 25th January 2014, after a night filled with frenzied visions, I decided I had to make a cocktail for Kerouac, and, on the 31st January, with help beatific from my brother and hero, Giulio, I cracked it. I told him I'd had a dream where I made a drink for Jack – he didn't laugh so I carried on – and it was made using the watermelon that Jack and his Mexican girlfriend and the Mexican girlfriend's brother and the Mexican girlfriend's brother's friend squabbled over with a farmer. It needed raw sugar because this was in the south, but otherwise would riff on a traditional Julep cocktail. I envisaged the whisky as the earth, the lush green of the mint as the crop and the fading warmth of the day in the diffusing watermelon.
JK’s Julep/The J.K. Julep Served in a chilled tin or jam jar 8-12 mint leaves (clapped) Chipped ice 2oz bourbon (orig. Jack Daniels, tho Jack drank 'Old Grandfather' in On the Road) 2-3 barspoons raw sugar 3 dashes bitters (Angostura) 3-5oz watermelon purée (add this last, and let it sit on top)
Jack Kerouac’s Julep made originally with Jack Daniels by Jack Mann is JK’s Julep. It has Jack all over it.
T h e
M a d
O n e s
4
Tonight I was fucked. I want to be fucked like that all day and all of the night. He said: there is nothing in you that I can live with ... you're television incarnate ... you're madness ... virulent madness ... but not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain, (whispered) and love. The subtitles, in German, picked up on the final breath my ears missed – in German all was subtitled and subtitled at the same volume – and I doubted my hearing; and I doubted technology; but how could I doubt the word. 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!' But I'm not. I'm me and I'm sane and I'm clear, and Howard affirmed that for me. Howard, a construct conceptualised for a script like no other, for a script that told the truth about us, about our condition; a script that was bought 4
Rafferty again – originally wrote this on the 6 March 2013, directly after watching the 1976 classic film The Network.
and sold and passed among many and funded by Exxon and ATT and CBS. I was bought and sold by a script that spoke the truth and did so for a profit. A prophet for a profit, I understand all of this, and yet this truth was somehow given me in a rare moment of none exchange. A friend gave it to me in faith that I might understand it: she hoped to give and only give. And more than a script, a film, a quiet night in, she gave me belief. Let me clear my throat. I have something to say. I do not want a person to be dependent on my word; I want to be a manifestation of moments enjoyed, loathed, loved and rebuked in a moment and be all of that each moment I live. I want to enjoy, loathe, love and rebuke each moment I live. I want to be a cubist expression; I am a cubist expression; Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky. I am my self and all of my selves in a moment and we will not be any other way. I will scream out of the window when I need to and I will scream into myself when I need to. I will scream at you when I need
to and I expect you to scream right back. I, as a relic of my pen – Donny said that; I don't ask any questions of you because I don't expect any answers – well Dylan said that; I want to be connected, not sublimated – now I said that.
To everyone that I've ever met: cheers! To the people that housed, fed and watered me when I was on t' road: cheers! To Jack: cheers, you auld bastard.
Titles – Bebas neue http://www.dafont.com/bebas-neue.font Body – Draconian Typewriter http://www.dafont.com/draconiantypewriter.font
