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A PERSONAL HISTORY OF APATHY
Richard Barrett
from
A PERSONAL HISTORY OF APATHY Richard Barrett
swirl editions 2015
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I don’t know the dictionary definition of APATHY There is a dictionary on the bookshelves to the right, over there second shelf up GOOGLE via my phone is even closer at hand what’s always been conveyed to me by the word though is a I DON’T CARE and a I CANT BE ARSED attitude to the world And the things and people in it But not necessarily everything nor all of the people
KEITH, principal male character in Amis’ THE PREGNANT WIDOW That I am reading currently you shame me as I know Not only would you know the precise definition of APATHY you would know also What its etymology was
[digression: why do I feel an obscure shame at SUCH an elusive subject APATHY reading and enjoying Amis as though I should be doing The moment you start to write about it neither of those things? You lose hold of its essence. Especially if Its precise meaning is being only guessed at is it the teeth issue? [digression: why is Amis so fond of the name Keith?] This is the second time I’ve had a go at APATHY where are you when I need a joke? Two times too many
dear DAN from work:
The things the Barrett’s are known for, historically are NUMEROUS Incorporating lists in poems being just one of those things A practice going back generations to Richard’s great great great great great grandfather Firmly of the belief that the longer the poem the better Regardless, totally, of the content of that poem Here is another list Over the page there will be A list the like of before has never been seen VERY INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT
[PAGE MISSING] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------5 In relation to politix APATHY in relation to As APATHY exists these days mainly As the Negative shadow of Politix
ANTI-POLITIX
At a performance-writing event called WORDS, WORK at &gallery in Leeds, Tuesday April 28 th, during part of her set the poet Nat Raha uttered the phrase THE 2015 GENERAL RESIGNATION. UTOPIAN FANTASY and description of things AS THEY REALLY ARE. We are resigned to the events of next Thursday. Over 200 years of parliamentary history have taught us this resignation that all that will be on television for that day will be election BLAH and that some people will mark their crosses whilst others won’t bother and when the whole thing is over NOT ONE THING AT ALL WILL HAVE CHANGED Turn this ANTI-POLITIX When else does APATHY ever get a mention?
into
its
opposite
Eh GARETH? Eh RACHEL?
Notes on GRUNGE Don’t try and jam everything into one poem (or song); there will probably be other poems (or songs) The world at large is not interested in what qualifications you might have or what dues you might have paid Roller-blading may or may not be something that people are still into (but BEN STILLER beginning a sentence “when I was BLADING in . . . “ will always be funny) Music probably matters less these days than it used to Sometimes an incomplete PARENTHESIS is just that remember. Nothing more nor nothing less The fracturing of HISTORY into HISTORIES occurred at different times in different places (which should be surprising to no one) Hans, I think it’s not that musicians have got less inventive rather that the economics of the music scene have changed All the serious young poet dudes should absolutely have an opinion on X-FACTOR and the like. The notion of PAYING YOUR DUES now seems laughably antiquated The world is lit by the expectant, optimistic faces of young people arrived fresh in town for UNIVERSITY
Waiting for GREGGS to open at 7.25AM on ECCLES PRECINCT one is forced to confront more reality that can easily be dealt with For a long time there was WINONA RYDER What we project onto our cultural icons is usually as confused as that which we project onto our friends lovers and family The list of musicians who died aged 27. Which I daresay GOOGLE could present in moments if the search term 27 CLUB was entered HUGGY BEAR and their collision with THE WORD WORK and THE WORLD’S complaints of the same One must always shoot the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. If this poem were a ROOM the ELEPHANT in it would be KURT COBAIN Language is problematic and frequently disappointing Try to care neither too much nor too little. Try to care, always, exactly the RIGHT AMOUNT
‘life’ should be capitalized or rather turn the assertion into a question perhaps my generation’s greatest minds may have carried some weight less so CONSIDERABLY get it right, oh yes, repeat that thing about getting it right
years ago but now
alternatively
get it wrong, you know isn’t it funny how
we don’t make plans
Talking Heads emerged from the NYC late 70s CBGBs scene – They were alright I like NAÏVE MELODY ONCE IN A LIFETIME & PSYCHO KILLER
how did I get How did I get here?
Not caring about these people though caring might follow not caring tomorrow Not caring about these people though you do and I care about you Not caring about these people though why should I after having only just met them Not caring about hummous though maybe I will come to care about them Not caring about these people Or their middle class guilt Or their lifetimes old impenetrable Methods of communication, oh no I mean
oh yeah I walked here From your flat
As an example of one occasion when I haven’t cared aka One occasion when I’ve told myself I haven’t cared to disguise [a] pessimism [b] hyper-criticality [c] the need to seek approval [d] fear of abandonment or [e]all of the above The real basis of this
PERSONAL HISTORY OF APATHY
An experiment now . . . Can everybody please shut their eyes for a moment and imagine every single place in the world, past present and future, which could possibly act as a setting in which someone could be apathetic . . . I don’t wish to sound patronising now but CONGRATULATIONS I have been apathetic in all those places and You have each of you just written a poem. Or part of a poem And by so doing saved me the bother And allowed me time to reapply my deodorant
[PAGES 13-17 ON LOAN TO THE UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------18 FOUND POEM (fragment) ‘I SAY YES TO THE MEGAPLEX’ “ . . . as Godzilla progresses – and I am really trying to concentrate intently on it; trying hard to find in it whatever Tiplady might have found (even though he didn’t tell me what exactly he did find; telling me, only, that he’d seen it) – I am starting to feel more and more dissatisfied with my selfconscious feelings of coolness at being sat there in front of that particular screen. Yes, my concentration on the film now is totally wavering. My self-consciousness feels like some stupid uptight soul-shrivelled English disease. Stuff is just stuff. For a couple of years I’ve been trying to explain to people why Ariana Reines is just so fucking good; why the other poets I’ve read published by Fence are equally as good. All I’ve been able to come up with is ‘well they mix high and low culture in their work’. A sentence I’ve often ended up shouting at people as they’ve been walking away bored (as I myself would walk away bored if someone, in an attempt to explain to me why I should read a particular poet, was only able to offer up that tired old line). As the monster battles the other monster or whatever up there in front of me on the big screen though I feel like I’m having some sort of light bulb above the head moment. I think of Reines’ breathtaking ‘Save the World’ – the trip to the cinema to see Watchmen; then I think of her Coeur de Lion – all the critical theorists and philosophers who are mentioned in there; and I try and remember one self-conscious line of hers; one line which is
either trumpeting her cool at being able to shift seamlessly from Alain Badiou, for example, to a blockbuster movie; or one line which feels the need to apologise for her enthusiasm for pop culture. I can’t recall a single one. And that’s when I realise the next time I’m trying to explain to someone about Reines, or any of the other US poets that I love, what I need to say is that they treat stuff just as stuff; there’s a complete absence of self-consciousness, and rightly so, at crossing the hi-lo culture divide. This realisation complicates my understanding of the meaning of cool. I feel like perhaps, in the past, I may have given the appearance of cool without though, sadly, coming close to touching its essence. I understand now that coolness cannot co-exist alongside selfconsciousness . . . “
Study politics in the academy Get a 2.1 get All interest in politics knocked out of your system apparently was Recently said by someone / I forget who Maybe Alexander Armstrong Edmund Wilson Wrote Marxism plus Other stuff a man, also, given to Utterances of debatable value ie When I speak English and write English already Why on earth would I choose to study it at the university? So upon my majority, aged 21 Orwell, Tressell and Karl My sole companions I Fulfilled my HISTORICAL DESTINY as decreed by that bloke off POINTLESS off the TV. As well I hung around a lot in the library extending my friend ship
group to include VIRGINIA WOOLF and such like noting changes in the uses of language to describe mental illness I got depressed For a very long time * [still depressed]
music journalism in the UK mattered once apparently last night we watched that doc I REMEMBER 1976 on YESTERDAY w HELEN & JOHN that was the year I was born I wanted to say But didn’t Thinking, saying that would be COCK-ISH There was PAUL MORLEY of Music-writing’s GOLDEN AGE He spoke In a way which was, of course Entirely predictable PRINCIPALS, yes I remember those Relicks frm YE OLDEN DAYS Oh How the assembled company did laugh MELODY MAKER, RECORD MIRROR SOUNDS & the NME
lol
Sought to construct from developments in music An easily followable HISTORY PRE THE INTERNET which (after SIMON REYNOLDS) has proper Fucked time right-up SUB-POP Then BRIT-POP The grubby nationalism of the latter Seeking to Erase from history The wild radicalism of the former Echoing the oft-noted phenomenon of the Young radical’s embrace of Conservatism, later in life learning politics from musician’s interviews being Preferable much more to learning politics in a lecture theatre
BACK IN THE FIRST ROOM ONCE AGAIN, HAVING EXITED THE OTHER ROOM GARETH, this poem has taken me to some unsuspected places in pursuit of a thing we must come to expect find that thing’s opposite I reckon [Alan Hallsall, you’re probably lovely but the character you play is a right nob]
to
Alan Hallsall’s erection. or – after CLOVER – a bottle of COCA COLA empty of COCA COLA filled with, instead gasoline a fuse burning down. Do you recognise, GARETH just how imbued with purpose Alan Hallsall’s erect cock is, also a petrol bomb . . .
[this week I read Joshua Clover’s RED EPIC and understood clearly how a book of poems could constitute a political act]
Leave a FACEBOOK comment “GREAT CONCEPT” I HATE YOU
W/th the EMOTIONAL CONNECTION meaning more to me than Politics or poetry [though I know binaries, of course are bollocks EITHER / OR is not even half the story for example see PAUL principal character in FERRIS’ TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR CUNT GRIPPED, in his words, he sacrifices All that he is; ie his essential CORE until his partner turning round sees just her own reflection PAUL gone So of course the less important shit carries on Alongside the important shit darling you hear me?
[Sal,
addressed to you but also to anyone else who might be reading or hearing this poem now o why am I even writing this? When I could be reading SIGHT + SOUND or MAYAKOVSKY or STONER or watching BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT
or
a million and one other things, yeah try to sing of APATHY
FAIL
[[[[my girlfriend is in LEEDS currently and in my head, right now I’m with her thinking of our shared future not politics or poetry Sal two days you know
won’t seem like two days weirdly, it never does
[& RACHEL I do apologise, really In this bit, yr role Was silent, yes, but not I hope you realise UNEXPRESSIVE Maybe you’ll appear again later, if it matters. I don’t know Im just making all this shit up
A YAWN IS Halfway between a laugh and a hiccup [don’t get hiccups when you’re drunk Inviting for flies [there was an old woman who swallowed a fly A warm greeting in some parts of the world [I don’t know which ones The only response appropriate to that email I sent you yesterday Hans [soz dude How SEAL catches fish [like a kiss from a rose The name of that BLOG I used to write [are people blogging still? *THIS LIST IS EXHAUSTINGVE* What im doing now [and not coz im tired
NOTES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN APATHY AND COOL How come we love and are loved by some people but not others? Shouldn’t everybody just love everybody else? A gold sequinned shirt or an M+S office wear shirt is a good example of a false dichotomy The central heating is only ever put on as a last resort. Unless guests are present. And they’ve seemed unwilling to take their coats off I never smoked as a teenager. My second childhood should be beginning soon and I might possibly start then So far no university library has made a substantial cash bid for my teenage journals The things that have never occurred to me are things I cannot know SAVOY BOOKS. And the bookshop on PETER STREET, Manchester. I AM STILL THE GREATEST, SAYS JOHNNY ANGELO A personality formed, unconsciously, in opposition to popular tastes There comes a point in everybody’s life when it is imperative to put away childish things (MORRISSEY and THE SMITHS)
If I had a denim jacket I would wear it with the collars UP. For sure An overwhelming fascination with WHAT ONE IS NOT (what SAID was going on about in ORIENTALISM?) The signs that say PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR FEET UP ON THE SEATS. That I ignore. Lol Attendance on the CORONATION STREET tour has never, will never and should never be considered a relationship dealbreaker Making the rules up as we go along Panicking when under stress does not in any way negate a person’s claim of being cool Those green and white hoops of my favourite shirt Just because someone works it doesn’t mean that person must automatically be considered WORKING CLASS. Likewise, wearing a jumper in summer (yes Cheralyn, there you go, I’ve mentioned jumpers again) Spending far too much time thinking about things that objectively DO NOT MATTER Caring neither TOO MUCH nor EXACTLY THE RIGHT AMOUNT rather caring TOO LITTLE UNSELFCONSCIOUSNESS as an aim
Remember that Mayakovsky collection darling the one I bought in Headingley, in the Oxfam I’ve been reading it . . . which, yes, you do know of course, as I was reading it Saturday, on the bus And Saturday, in bed both times when ------ you were with me . . . oh poetry! you great fabricator no word remaining pure, in sight of you least of all, that ‘remember’ above this being all, just, shit I’ve made up bits which are true
‘cept for those
Every read word of mayakovsky Reminding me of his populariser Bonney love so much whereas now I love it less who changed? We all changed Change is Impossible To still
whose work I once used to
& frequent marks of exclamation do exist in the text YES! perhaps, though that was just the times
which is, forever, against us expelled into a cruel, uncaring week like a spitball shot from the mouth of someone who spits a lot, to be trod beneath the feet of work and geography you there in Leeds with me well, it’s Manchester for me with time not enough to do all that we want to do. Next weekend, please -get here soon! & re time: why on earth do I waste mine composing this poem likely to be read by no one other than those who read it to my right, the mayakovsky volume to my left, my phone, fanzines and the television each a far more pleasurable occupation, easily than filling this Word.doc up with poesy If I was APATHETIC truly would I be writing this?
[try to avoid rhetoric, remember, as rhetoric sucks] is found
wherever APATHY its sibling ANTI-APATHY is usually not
too far behind
so read over this poem again please with that in mind the reading [ongoing still]
also, restage in
light of what I’ve just told you
WHO? WHO-THE FUCK-EVER
pushing on through time all the time & through all time . . . aiming for an end of this as soon as hopefully tonight!
achievable, humanly
Wanting to spend other nights working on other poems other writings the long-planned and long held in abeyance cinema-theory piece ARAKI / COPPOLA (SOFIA) / KORINE Plus the NEW YORK school influenced look at the state that I am in not just first and second gen NEW YORK but
those poets of today, also whose names, yet, I don’t even know but MARCUS SLEASE does, so it’s him I’ll ask that state being LOVE Poems exploring that Its meaning & how beautiful your body looks in our bed early morning JESUS! Too, the LOVELIFE! Mss . . . before any of those THIS! this poem of APATHY that I’m so desperate to finish . . . which’d feature a lot of politics I promised all ive been really trying to say is every THING implies its opposite therefore APATHY towards the democratic process
needn’t mean a lack of politics to which there’s much more of course than just Westminster &parliament where fat cunts sit on over-fed asses kill the upper classes
APPENDIX #1 Work the night shift order-picking at Debenhams. Become friends with a slightly older chap recently returned from eighteen months in Australia and New Zealand. Think that eighteen months abroad sounds like a terrific alternative to working the night shift at Debenhams. Dislike work. Make all the arrangements to spend eighteen months abroad in a country where it’ll be so cheap you won’t need to work. Fly to that country. Fly back home two weeks later. Get used to unemployment. Read the collected works of GEORGE ORWELL. Realise just how radical you have always been. Apply to study politics as a MATURE STUDENT at the local university. Very quickly have misgivings about your choice of degree. Think, perhaps, you should have opted to study ENGLISH LITERATURE. Do no work WHATSOEVER towards your degree, instead spend all your time in the university library reading your way through the MODERNIST canon. And the NME. Struggle to make sense of how interesting politics seems in music paper interviews with the likes of PRIMAL SCREAM et al as compared to how deadly dull politics seems in the university lecture theatres. Lose all interest in politics in any practical sense. At the same time as continuing to read a lot of politics. And to talk and think a lot about politics. Let years pass
APPENDIX #2 Nearly two years in therapy. Currently on my third therapist. Prompted, initially, to seek help due to mood-swings causing problems for me at work. That issue immediately supplanted, however, after the death of my father whereupon grief and how to move forward with my life, post his death, became the primary focus of the therapeutic process. That issue, itself, becoming gradually supplanted after the first of the two disastrously unsuitable relationships began which I got myself involved in after his death – whereupon therapy became all about how I negotiated my affair with married lady #1. I was halfway through the second of those relationships towards the end of last year when, for various reasons, suicide started to seem to me a very realistic possibility – hence, therapy, from that point onwards, shifting focus yet again – on to why my thoughts rushed always so readily to suicide as a solution. There is no one alive who couldn’t benefit from therapy is my view. Of course, a person has to want to be in therapy for therapy to stand a chance and probably the majority of people would rather not be in it than be in it. Whatever though. I told my first therapist, whose services I paid for, that I found the process useful and beneficial and very interesting. I said, if there were a TV programme centred around the appointments a person like me was having with their therapist I would most likely find that programme gripping. Perhaps that might be just because I’m incredibly self-obsessed though. The sessions I’m having with my current therapist are ones which have been paid for by the National Health Service. A couple of weeks ago she asked me if I cared about what she thought of me and if I thought she
cared about what I thought of her. I said I want you to know that I’m sincere. And I want you to know that I’m sincere as well. Capable of sincerity. Which is to say I have more modes of communication besides detached irony. I mention this with reference to the poem that you’ve just read, at least, anyway, with reference to certain parts of it. Over the past two years I’ve learnt a lot. Both specifically about myself and stuff in general. I don’t propose, here, to try and run through everything that I think I’ve learnt. Because it’s A LOT, see. I guess I might say though, facetiously and flippantly, that, in general, therapy has taught me that the REALITY of a situation, usually, turns out to be the opposite of your perception of the situation. And as per above: I mention this with reference to the poem that you’ve just read, at least, anyway, with reference to certain parts of it. But why should anyone be interested in this self-indulgent bullshit? There is absolutely no reason whatsoever. Perhaps this APPENDIX becomes interesting if you’ve read all of the preceding? I don’t know. I guess I was interested. Though I feel less so now.
APPENDIX #3 I am still the greatest says Johnny Angelo, is a line from the poem you’ve just read. It exists. You can, if you like, return to the line and run your finger along it. You’ll think you’re running your finger over a piece of paper or along a screen and you will be doing but also you won’t be doing that – you’ll be running your finger along a line of poetry. Which came to me as I was at work. Trying to get on with my poem on my employer’s time. The sections of the poem seemingly bearing more in common with prose than poetry were actually all written at work. The distractions and disturbances of the place apparently no bar to the composition of poetry. I am still the greatest says Johnny Angelo. Earning its position in the text due to its oblique referring to Manchester at a certain point in time (ie the precise point when I was discovering the city for myself and making it my own); due to its referring to my book-loving childhood and the variety of COOL that flowed therefrom; due to it’s fictional pop-star hero resonating with a central theme of the poem; and due to – well – simply how bloody cool assertions of greatness always seem to be. I am still the greatest says Johnny Angelo. Was, Gareth said, his favourite line of that section, after I’d shown it him not long after it had been written. That being so, I assumed, because he knew the reference (that it was a novel written by Nik Cohn); but no, he said, he just thought Johnny Angelo was a cool name. And Gareth wasn’t wrong. Nor is he wrong now. Him admiring Nik Cohn’s work in coming up with the name rather than my work in appropriating the name does, however, IRK slightly. Shouldn’t I have come up with the name rather than just nicked it? My head says no. My head says that the use of real names and such like, heavy with reference, is how poetry and
writing and art works now; no one thinks up new stuff these days. And this is not a worse technique than previous ones it’s just different and, really, the only one imaginable at this precise moment under capitalism. The problem [for me at least] is that my head says, also, yep, I should have come up with my own name capable of affecting Gareth in the same way that ‘Johnny Angelo’ did and that I didn’t means I’m less of a writer than Nik Cohn. And I believe im not wrong in thinking that – though of course any such new name would have carried none of the personal weight that Johnny Angelo does. So you either win or you lose. Or you win and you win. Or some other combination of the two. Having mentioned what I wanted the name to reveal, or if reveal is too strong a word, what I wanted the name to at least suggest, what, then, does the name obscure? Well, to a certain extent, the placing of the name Johnny Angelo in the text obscures the author – me. As that place in my poem is filled with Cohn’s work – as Gareth’s comment led me to realise – that means it can’t be filled with my work. I have this vague idea that I should feel bad about my absence from the poem at that point but I don’t. After all I still am in the poem – as the ‘remembering author’; I am remembering the Cohn book. How many ‘greatest’s’ is it possible to have though, I wonder? Well, Jonty Tiplady, you are still the greatest. Poet. Not a fictional pop-star dreamed up by Nik Cohn. It was Tiplady who told me, once, about an idea called SUICIDAL REFERENTIALITY. Where an over-abundance of references results in nearly a complete erasure of the author. Which is bad. Because . . . well im not sure why. I just know that it is as Tiplady told me once. Or sent me a link to something he’d
written or something like that. Absence of author means absence of intentionality in the poem? That might be it. Yep, perhaps it is. In which case, please hold that thought and read back over everything you’ve just read. I’m laughing. Not at you. Honestly. Just at my own halfassedness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Amis, M. The Pregnant Widow Britain’s Got Talent Carpenter, J. R. Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl Coronation Street Clover, J. Red Epic Cohn, N. I Am Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo Ferris, J. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour Ginsberg, A. Howl Godzilla I Remember 1976 Mayakovsky, V. the Bedbug and Selected Poetry Pointless Reines, A. Mercury and Coeur de Lion Reynolds, S. Retromania Said, E. Orientalism Seal, ‘A Kiss from a Rose’ SIGHT + SOUND Talking Heads, Greatest Hits While We Were Young Williams, J. Stoner Wilson, E. Axel’s Castle The Word X-Factor