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"Hello cutie. It’s Selton. Selton John. Listening darling,
a few of us are having a bit of a get-together for Freddie
at Wembley and we’d love it if you and your reprobate
friends could pop along for a bit of sing-song.
We’ll all sing some Queen numbers and raise shit-loads
of money for AIDS awareness. Dame Bowie is threatening
to say prayer, and legends like Seal, Paul Young, Extreme
and that lemon Stansfield have all already confirmed.
I was thinking maybe you and I could do a duet on ‘Rhapsody’.
Then we’ll finish by all singing a rousing rendition of ‘Champions’.
Then maybe afterwards we could all go out carousing together?
It’ll be a party! So call me back darling. It’s Selton. Selton John."
(Image by Sexton Ming)
A constant:
the same words
returning to
describe the empty
feelings of removal
that consume me
when faced with a
wailing walls of faces.
The vortex
the void
what I call
‘the big empty’
or sometimes
‘the death camp’
or maybe on a
good day
‘the devil’s
sports hall’,
where the sound is
a hollow echo
like the wind
whipping at a turret
of an abandoned
castle in a remote
and desolate place
or else the strangulated
cries of desperation
that must surely
soundtrack what we
commonly perceive
to be ‘hell’;
or maybe just that dividing line
between pain and pleasure
between life and death
between protest and celebration
state repression and
total abandonment
and/or emancipation.
Either way:
the sound is ice cold
like a nail in the spine
that instant feeling like
everything you’ve ever
known has slipped away
and left you stranded.
Like every regret you
have ever harboured
comes home to roost at once
like every wasted second
like every girl you ever loved
like every single salted tear
re-appears, to remind you
that this life – any life -
is a lonely life, and that
in the end, when the scores
are counted, and the tallies
noted we live and we exist
and we die alone.
Afterwards: as expected
- as is now customary -
the shrill layers
of human voices
in exultation and the
screams of expectation
and unadultered adoration
(or is it adulation?)
peel away like an onion
to reveal nothing at its core.
It is this nothingness
that consumes me each
night; the silence of
fifty thousand echoes,
deafening even when
they’re long gone;
it’s like the building
is haunted by the night,
like all those screams
are eternally trapped
inside to rebound off the walls
bouncing and colliding
like a phalanx of lost souls
caught between life
and that great celestial
otherness known as infinity,
resigned to a life sentence
in a chaotic, deafening limbo;
it is this that I fear
the most - the very real
possibility that nothing
- and I mean nothing –
means anything; love,
money, fame, success;
nothing: zip, zilch, nada
the big goose egg; all
for what? For nothing.
It is thoughts like these
that, out on tour, in the
spotlight, exposed, naked,
scrutinized and dissected
I have to deal with each day
in my own little way.
Lord only knows
where I will find
the strength to
keep on giving.
From the sky
it looks like an electric snake
undulating across the hot desert floor
the way it twinkles
and shimmers
I take over a floor at the Bellagio
and move my shit in.
I’m in total
‘ignore the band
at all costs’ mode
I just don’t
want to be around those assholes -
they sap my energy
misinterpret me
always want to party.
I seal the doors
order some food
run a bath,
meditate, but
the only mantra I can reach
is
fuckfuckfuck
in my head like a woodpecker
fuckfuckfuck
a drill deep inside.
Distracted
I drink some
honey tea
try and read some Hubbard.
That guy had
it going on, fucking started
a religion off of
his writing shit
(now there’s a
thought…ah, fuck it
rock ‘n’ roll is my racket
and I know it).
There’s
no place
else I can
go
fear, loathing
and so much more
fills me with anxiety.
On TV an infomercial plays
and I don’t know where
to put myself;
suppressing the urge to scream
even though my throat
is shot again
I lie back and make phone calls:
my management
my lawyer
my accountant
my realtor
no-one answers
I’m met by
a wall of voice-mail
to growl and snarl at
which I do
for an hour or so
fuckfuckfuck
in my head like a woodpecker
fuckfuckfuck
a drill deep inside
I take a bath
Vegas lies beneath me
sin city sanitised
fun for all the family
Disneyland with tits
and tips for
dawn brunch waitresses.
This place excited me once
but not any more
nothing excites me
the gamble is dead
the war can’t be won
Milestones become moments,
faded Polaroid pictures
to file away;
I find myself craving
some semblance of simplicity
in a life that is
inordinately complicated.
I guess I’m just burned
by night after night
of the fire fight
in the spotlight
fuckfuckfuck
in my head like a jackhammer
fuckfuckfuck
(just kill yourself,
silly).
It’s Vegas;
it steals your soul
at the entrance
and returns it at
the end-game
tattered and bloody
it fills your eyes
with dollar signs
as if they weren’t blinded already
it appeals to the basest appetite.
It’s sick
a cathedral for vulgarity
a celebration of obesity
a theme park for the living,
spending, farting,
dead.
I step out the bath
towel myself off
and wander naked
from pristine room
to pristine room,
four thousand of them
in all and I have
the best dozen.
I press my face to the
cool class of the window
and see nothing but casinos
cars and the thick black night
beyond the edge of town
fuckfuckfuck
in my head like a woodpecker
fuckfuckfuck
(just end it all,
asshole)
The desire to run into
the blackness engulfs me instantaneously,
the desire
to fill my nostrils with dust
to see the moon silent
and stars that weren’t glued
there by men
to escape The Strip,
the town, the tour
the trip
to run and just keep running
barefoot, wild like a coyote
out across the road
between headlights
down alley ways
through vacant lots
and beneath the
neon giants
that demarcate
the edge of town.
Soon they’ll
find me feral
unrecognisable and
hard-bitten from experiences
out there alone
in the night
they’ll find me snarling,
howling at the moon,
chasing my tail,
the gnarled leg of a lesser
animal wedged in my jaws,
my hair matted
my eyes a different shape
and colour.
I’ll no longer respond to
my birth name.
In order of preference:
Keith Richards
Jimmy Page
Joe Perry
Dave Navarro
John Frusciante
Ronnie Wood
Brian May
Lenny Kravitz
Wayne Kramer
Steve Jones
Sylvain Sylvain
Pat Smear
Rich Robinson
Brad Whitford
Andy McCoy
Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin
Gilby Clarke.
