"I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out"

"Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world."

Taken from Mary Shelley’s Author’s Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

They were wearing headsets.

They were wearing headsets, they arrived at dawn, they erected the crosses that stand on my lawn. They searched the rafters for guns and ammunition as they recited the bible and outlined their mission. “The manifesto” they screamed, “is broadcast live” so there is no need to form a crowd outside.

They shackled the young, they shackled the old, we shuffled our feet and wept in the cold. They marched us to the sound of cracking bones, warping metal and mobile phones. The Flag flew high and we all saluted, our new boss is here, undisputed.

The rumble of trucks sang into the black as I curled in a ball and prayed at the back and I remembered watching the challenger crash and fall to earth in flames and ash and some fell at a crossroads and we began to slow so they started to punish us blow by blow until each head was scarlet and bruising black and one girl stumbled and we were pushed to go back till she was trampled beneath us and lay in the sun but we carried on walking for fear of the gun.

I didn’t say anything I was afraid. We dare not speak in the final parade no singing in the line as we followed in sync we looked straight ahead and tried not to think but I thought of the sea and I longed for the sand and I dreamt of your voice and I ached for your hand to lift me up each time I stumbled as the black smoke rose and the trucks still rumbled.

There was nothing now just the road all planned out and we walked forever and I began to doubt the life I’d led before they came so safe so warm so blank so tame. Like wolves we tread into the fields and in naked envy of what the river feels as it defies command and snakes away regardless of what kings and madmen say.

The sky is toxic the ground decayed the special announcement has been delayed so nobody was sure were to go we just fixed our gaze on the dirt below.

Will the real UK Citizen please stand up?

Is it getting harder to be you everyday? Can’t take the workouts or the dressing downs, the slow resentful meals in stylish rooms in expensive, now depreciating homes? Mr and Mrs B.N.P, C.J.D, O.C.D the silent white minority, who are you? Are you terror struck in commuter town, or fearing the black face in the white hoody bluetoothing broken dreams via mobile data streams with no time to look where he is going? Who is tending your bloodstained flag that once screamed Empire but now whispers “spare change please” to the iPoded and zoned out passers by; a rag wrenched up by a threadbare monarchy to a lukewarm reception, a tired crowd, vaguely nostalgic, twitchy and bored?

Are you the Khakis hordes on their way to purchase LCD wide screens and potter vacantly through miles of car parking and bright Muzak convenience? Who is your team? Who do you support? Are your dreams in full colour featuring lip gloss sticky girls from the pages of the Sunday Sport spread out and sensual, almost too young, almost nude? Almost yours, but not really there. Do you rejoice in your St Cheryl X factor morality knowing that your X tube secrets could catch up with you - who’s that dogging in Grantham serenaded by a wet and miserable Sunday evening, just another way to spice things up and now you can’t look her in the eyes.


Where is your truth? It’s written in a language you won’t recognise, talked about in rooms you don’t know and you’ll never have access to, it is mahogany panelled, suited and titled, a secret ceremony of boys club control. Do you sit sweating in the dark waiting for a grimy hand to break your window locks, whilst the white-collar criminal has your password, confidence and handshake? Are you stopped and searched, tagged and DNA tested, young, black and suspect? Are you that loathsome single mum, benefits cheat, immigrant, all gold teeth and grabbing hands scourge of the Daily Mail outraged, we fought the war, we pay our taxes! Are you dreadlocked and dropped out, drugged up and dead-eyed, angry and on the frontline of a culture war you’ll never win; this is not your society, you can’t afford a voice Swampy. This is your Nation, humane, but confused, ailing but growing. Centre of an old world, a relic, broke, rebranding and channel changing, afraid but with eyes fixed on the future.

Isolated exotica.

Disembodied Lovers.

Seven year old girl's bedroom. Leicester.

Mass production/Mass seduction.

The building looms, it is boxlike, rigid, the structure is reassuring and bland. The supermarket dominates the landscape, not so much with size but by its uniformity. The surrounding urban expanse is submissive in its chaotic uncertainty; the tower blocks nearby talk in a plethora of voices about lives and priorities unknown, indistinct. The tarmac plains of the car park define a place of singular and dedicated thought. A triumphantly illuminated corporate logo makes silent but confident promises about the world within. I am funnelled through taxis and full, swaggering trolleys to the white and obediently swooshing automatic doors.

Everything important happens in that initial explosion of perception; the eyes, nose, ears assaulted, caressed, soothed, enticed. The colours are bold, supernatural, the muted tones of nature misplaced by the fantastical, heightened and artificial. Art-i-ficial. Man Made. Brilliance. Mountains of sale produce compete for my attention, banks of confectionary swoop down and dazzle to my right. The tills buzz and beep encouragingly, translating the digital and mediating the ritual of purchase. The climax. I don’t want to think about the tills just yet. The odour is unreal, by this I mean literally unreal. Fresh bread isn’t really baking; biochemists blend together chemical perfumes to create the illusion that it is, nor is coffee being ground, the real coffee is sealed up in a vacuum beyond corruption. The air is full of delicious fantasy, scents pumped in to cause arousal, a calculated attempt to seduce the senses into steering my desires. Faint strains of music can be heard above the low and oddly reverent murmur of the other consumers; a pleasant voice is singing something between tannoy announcements. I’m not hurried. The rhythm is aquatic, ebbing and flowing. The frenetic movements of young mothers and their children are balanced by the stoicism of the slower and older shopper. There is a homeostasis in effect, a fragile, but perfect harmony of movement.

On the surface everything is clean. Food can’t happen in chaos, even apples are isolated by a bubble of plastic; people contaminate, they touch things and they spoil. The fresh produce aisles are perpetual ripeness, purity, I never have to experience decay, or death, total stasis; the food no longer conforms to the effects of time. Animals are packaged in parts, divorced from the whole in a pleasing abstraction. The canned goods are just words. Logos and pictures replace the offensive reality, ideas and representations of food are incorruptible, the perfect Hegemony. I’m told what is inside each convenient cylinder; I’ve got the brands I like and I know that they know what they are doing. I’m cruising typefaces and illustrations of experience. On mass. They don’t grow. I couldn’t make them happen. I trust them. I’m not alone. Hundreds of us swarm stunned in the aisles, grabbing something for themselves from the rows and rows of repetitious, shining, brazen labels. I am a voyeur, attracted to the contents of the other people’s shopping trolleys; fascinated by the type and quantity of food that is being selected. I am myself enthralled by the allure of the produce, but my neurotic nature reminds me of all the things I perhaps shouldn’t consume. The supersweet, the iced and additive laden, the oily. I live vicariously through those sensual shoppers who give in to the power of such delights. To watch them stack in piles of the forbidden and most instantly gratifying goods; is to witness the actualisation of the most rewarding supermarket experience; consumption as orgiastic indulgence. Never say no. I observe the dangerous ease with which appetites are provoked then quelled; it happens here and few other places in our modern life. Supermarket aspirations are simple and attainable; every facet of the experience and environment is fashioned for human need to be sated. If there is a transcendence it is the revelation of the cake counter, the secret ecstasy of being a happier person because you can buy the things you want, you are finally in control. As I idle past them the chill cabinets whirr ghoulishly into life.

Somebody nudges a bottle from the shelf and it smashes upon the hard tiled floor; ketchup bleeds across the ground in a thick incriminating red puddle. Shop assistants appear from nowhere with yellow caution signs and buckets, it is like watching the body heal itself. I want to pity them, in their matching tunics with their matching expressions of vacant concern, but I can’t. They are perfectly in tune with the environment; I have never had such a clear role in my existence. I want to pity, but instead I feel a fleeting but powerful envy. I understand at that moment that this building is ALL about control, about taking the world and crafting it to our collective will. It is a guilty truth that we crave that disassociation, the process that turns food into commodity and people into employees. This autonomy over our environment makes some of us profoundly uneasy. We’d perhaps prefer to deny responsibility for the creation of our convenient, safe and clean lives. This refusal to accept our new reality pushes us into a schizoid state of self-loathing, a belief that real life goes on somewhere else, because this life is lacking tangible danger or mystery. Here in the supermarket IS the potential for Nirvana just as you’d seek on the mountain top; only it comes with a more obvious price tag. Perception is the key.

With a full basket I edge toward the till. I think about leaving. The syrupy heavy feeling you get when you try to escape in a nightmare; that is the sensation that pervades as I make the purchase. Hands won’t work. The queue coughs and grumbles behind me. I’m wholly intoxicated by the odours, the bleaching light, the bleeps and steady hum of the supermarket. My wallet comes apart in my hand, fumbling, I shower a raffle of receipts. I can’t abandon the detritus of the impulse purchaser, the nostalgic literature of a previous consumer journeys; I have to snatch them all back up. Find plastic. The checkout girl eyes me, beautifully bored in a tight, bright uniform. She has no need to rush me; we are both stupefied, her thoughts happen somewhere beyond that electronic tone. My thoughts are in the white spaces between our stunted dialogue; we are working to our own time frame. I extend the card. She swipes. The conveyor belt stutters the next customers produce along, bottles and packets tumble and are righted. I lift my bags and head toward the exit, the handles cut satisfyingly into my flesh. The pain is atonement.

Book of the Watchers.

SHE'S GOT POTENTIAL.

Original found 80s amateur soft-core snapshots, off a market stall, South London.

Too much make-up.  She mumbles as her hands twist slowly in her lap.  She is Aways On Time and very directional.  “and turn”.  This is the shot.  Ford Cortina, faux tan leather interior, radio chart rundown, sweat, grease, blood spots.  She’s up on the balcony smiling down to you - then she is the 40 foot wide grin on a billboard, her glossy lips don’t complain and they won’t ask for a second helping.  Always in the distance. “Yes, they looked at your portfolio” – not sure whether to put it straight in the bin or on the notice board for a laugh.  Expectant eyes, his hands are her loving restraints, I’m crying in the night did I let you down again.  There she is, laughing this time – a little bit older and who’s that in the background?  “Can you keep your head still love, don’t smile like that it makes your eyes wrinkle” A moment of grotesque clarity that cannot be made sweet.  Look at her arch upwards, a natural, big full breasts.  He still thinks I’m a good girl.  I am a good girl aren’t I?  I want to grab her by the hair and pull her down, force her to take it.  “Could you lift up your arm and toss back your hair”.  I keep looking at her, someone else’s daughter and wondering if this is right.  She’s asking if I can open the window, she’s not my problem, don’t want her number anyway she’s just a slag.  It’s not right, its ok, she’s got potential.

THE FEMALE ENCLOSURE (What she thought she wanted)

THE GAMESHOW: EVERYBODY IS A CONTESTANT BUT IS ANYBODY WINNING?

Dark times in the compound: the converts wait in silence, the bad news sinks in, the messiah was a fake. Dark times on the street corner, hustlers wait in the cold to jump on the messengers, the messengers have chased the jesters from the court, the king has deserted and the kingdom is starting to crumble. 

The same shows run on every screen, volume muted, a bland parade of human fear and greed; the Gameshow that never ends. The prizes are all gone, just the doughy faced, puffy eyed contestants remain, dreaming of easy money and the glow of transient celebrity. Nobody wants to be here. Everybody is watching the exit, waiting for God, the devil, anything. Anything other than this, the grey dormancy of a motorway snaking to nothing, the screaming neon that promises things that cannot be sold, the words that fall hollow but with enough weight to bruise.  

This city is now fuller than ever but there is no heart, just a relentless pulse. What can you believe in now, 6^th generation consumer, child of Nietzsche and Wal-Mart, watching CNN and sweating in the night, two World Wars later and our tears could fill a reservoir, our dreams make the atom split. Truce?