unwanted pregnimitivism by Simon Aulman

It's a bit of a mess - but whether it's a mess that is also a work of genius, or just a mess that's a horrible mess, I think that yet again we must leave that for the history books to decide. In the meantime all we have are our ears and our prejudices and our feelings and right now all three (or four, if you count both ears) are telling me that this is more the former than the latter. I'm just in a mood for mess at the moment.

It's obviously got a lot to do with that stuff about how you just care less and less as you get older, and I think I took a big lurch at the end of last year when I did that thing of falling down my staircase and busting my right knee and thinking that I'd need to use a stick forevermore and that I'd never again go on any of my long walks again. The whole thought of that shit was so awful that I couldn't really accept it, and didn't - and maybe just as well, because it doesn't seem to be turning out as awful as I feared.

When a friend asked me Why I had fallen down stairs, I knew she didn't mean it in the sense of Why did I stand at the top of my staircase and decide to just collapse and roll down the stairs - she meant What were the circumstances etc etc - and I said the simple truth, that I fell down stairs because I am old, and falling down stairs and falls-about-the-house-in-general are the sorts of things you do when yr old. You think it'll never happen to you. Till it does.

Being a lifelong alkie, falling-down is something that I've done quite often all through my adult life - so the blow of being old isn't such a jolt. And another sad symptom of being old is that I've started painting. I'm lucky in that I like bright colours and simplicity and childlike paintings. I even quite like the painting I did for the cover for this thing - yes it is meant to be Prospect Cottage on Dungeness, where Derek Jarman lived - though it feels like I'm going backwards, and I'd thought that I'd started with my back against the wall - how could I've gone backwards ? But I have.

But the primitivism of the painting and of the music and the near-nothingness of my life are more and more what I want to do and what I want to be and what I am anyway. I'd hate to be a proper painter or a proper musician. I like "working" so quickly that I don't have time to think, I like using the cheapest/freest things around, it's good to churn stuff out so fast that you don't dwell on anything you've ever done, only the next thing, and not even that, not after the full stop at the end of this sentence.

And after the next thing there'll be a lifetime-minus-most-of-my-life of caring less and less, wanting almost nothing, just the sunshine and to be able to walk and get out and hopefully not be too boring or be cursed by too many people around me who are boring - it seems so little to ask, and then you stop near the end of it all and realise that not only is it difficult here at the end, but it never really happened much at the start or in the middle. That's how life will feel when it all comes crashing down - like it should've been even cheaper and more careless.

(apologies for releasing this on one of those Bandcamp Friday things - I usually try to avoid them - but right now it'd feel even worse if I deliberately held fire on anything)