Larry and the other guy.
Written by simonindelicate on September 1, 2011 – 8:31 pm -
Me, much younger, poeting
Anyway, back then, I had a friend called Larry. He was old – I don’t know how old, but old enough to be rheumy eyed and to look like he might have a barnacle problem somewhere about his person. He was mad, too, in a brilliantly creative way. He had a thousand poems in his flat in a filing cabinet and each one had been typed out, decorated with whatever attractive litter he’d picked up – the wire top from a champagne bottle, clippings, detritus – and then photocopied. Once he came up to me in the street to ask me if I’d stand behind him at a poetry night while he recited verse wearing an army helmet upon which I could play a drum beat. He was mad like that. He was also brilliant. There wasn’t a hint of greetings card mawk in his poetry, it was Brut, sure, but he had a genuine ear and an incisve turn of phrase and he could write poems that arrested you and cut you to the quick. I thought he was awesome.
At the poetry slams, Larry would always compete. He had a few crowd pleasers that he could pull out if he was worried that the audience weren’t up for anything serious – as time went on he pulled them out more than he needed to – and they would see him succeed. He’d get through to finals and people would laugh and clap and that pleased him.
But then there was this other guy. Also old, though younger than Larry. Also mad, though not interestingly so. He would turn up in a filthy jumper and look weird. His poems weren’t brilliant – they were mumbled inaudibly and what got through was rubbish not worth hearing.
The thing was, Larry hated this other guy. If you were sat with Larry and this other guy walked in, Larry would roll his eyes and fidget and let out audible sighs. See, when the other guy got up to shitly read his shit poems the crowd reacted exactly the same as they did to Larry. To them, there was an old mad guy and wasn’t that charming and look there’s another mad old guy and he’s charming too, hurrah! To the audience – who didn’t care that much because they were just out for a fun, slightly edgy, slightly offbeat evening – there was no difference between Larry and this other guy – they were just the two mad old men who did the mad old man thing. Mad old man one and mad old man two. The mad old men.
Larry knew that it didn’t matter to anyone else, he was self-aware enough to know that the audience were just temporal, amorphous sources of laughter and applause behind the lights. They had different, alien concerns. But it offended him. It was offensive that someone could use the same skin to gain the rewards that were owed to his innards. They looked alike but they were not alike; and people should have known better.
I heard Larry died. I don’t know what happened to his filing cabinet.
Anyway, that was that, I don’t know what made me think of it.
http://www.thecatalystmagazine.com/
Tags: indelicates, interviews, poetry, rants
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New Stuff Available!
Written by simonindelicate on November 27, 2010 – 8:11 pm -Hello you.
We have new T-Shirts for sale in the shop, they say: Be Afraid of Your Parents and they look like this:
They will be available to buy from us on tour, and are also now up in the General Store:
http://corporaterecords.co.uk/Indelicates_Store/apparel.html
We have also opened a cafepress store, for these here reasons:
When we make a new product, we tend to order them in bulk to reduce costs – in turn we can then offer them at a lower price to you. However, our ability to make new bulk orders depends on having the funds available to place the order in the first place, consequently, we can’t re-order old designs in bulk. As we’ve had lots of people asking to buy old designs – we’ve set up a store on cafepress where you can buy T-shirts and so on on a pricier, but more flexible, ‘print-on-demand’ basis.
As we were doing that anyway – we have also made some products available that might be considered too ‘niche’ to bulk order 300 of – Pink David Koresh Superstar Iphone 4 Case anyone? yeah? yeah!
We hope this is the kind of thing that will make you happy.
Also, if you would like to request any item or for ANY indelicates related design to be placed on an item and sold to you – we can probably sort that out for you if you email us:
To see the full range of Print-On-Demand Merch, visit our cafepress store here:
http://www.cafepress.co.uk/indelicatesrange
(it looks like a pig at the minute because we don’t know if it’s worth paying to upgrade it yet)
Seriously, if you’ve ever thought: wow, that paint tin from the American Demo cover would look amazing on the chest of a novelty Teddy Bear and I for one would be glad to see such an item for sale – then tell us. WE CAN DO THAT.
In addition, you can now buy our poetry book ‘WORDS by SIMON&JULIA Indelicate’ print-on-demand from lulu.com, here:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/words-by-simon-julia-indelicate/5060007
Ain’t the internet swell?
Anyway, the point is that you can buy new stuff from us. What could be better, in this time of Jesus inspired consumption, than to order a gift for that special indelicates fan in your life? Or for the special, broadly-indifferent-to-music friend who just might like a little something to point her at us? Or for that guy who hates us who you, in turn, hate and whose name you’ve just pulled from the secret santa?
So, TL;DR – STUFF. BUY IT. KTHNXBAI.
Tags: be afraid of your parents, indelicates, merch, merchandise, poetry, product, record insutry, releases, shop, words
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