Honeybuzzard: October 2009

If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you. Yuz Asaf-Issa.

It finally ended when we smashed the place apart, piece-by-piece. There are few things more satisfying than physically destroying the place you used to work at with your own hands… whilst blind drunk. The place was The Workhouse bar, Leicester’s then premiere haven for underage drinkers and rug dealers, a real zesty, zeigisty sort of place. The year was 1992; I was 20, E’s were £15 each and you really did love everybody when you took one. Reality rent asunder, you saw a new dawn of possibilities for life. These things are impossible to explain to anyone now, especially in the current cultural climate.

The drug dealers stood in the back alley and the real underage drinkers were in the doorways of the closed/closed down buildings either side of the front. You could, of course still smoke inside in those heady days. Though the smoking of drugs always came after we closed, staff only fringe benefits. The only place in England I’ve ever know smoking dope to be acceptable was the back room of the St Johns pub in Hull. Enid the old Landlady would come into the windowless back room in her slippers and bark at us to get out come closing time, our weary eyelids drooping as we shuffled out after playing Little Red Rooster by the Stones too many times on the old jukebox.

The workhouse was rumoured to have a Kinky Gym. I never quite new what this was but I know that rumours abounded about the goings on in that place. I know first hand there was no Kinky Gym, only an old bench press down in the cellar, classic Chinese whispers. The owner, a fat grubby Uncle Monty character, would offer £50 to any of us boys to let him suck them off. I declined, though not everyone did. Not that I’m adverse to cock, you know my mantra, “I take my coffee sweet and black, like the first cock I sucked”. There was enough perks of the job to keep us happy; smokes and drinks after work, free entry into the best club around for what we were into and free drinks if we stood talking to the dirty old man. Every pump in the cellar was connected to a weaker cheaper barrel than indicated by the taps on the bar. Taps that we enjoyed smashing off with a wooden mallet. Knees on the bar and bash that cider tap off, watch the cider spurting from the now open-ended pipe arc-like behind the bar. Now its time for the mirrors and the wall lights. There were three of us lads (all ex-employees) and my girlfriend. A mate ended up fucking her that night; I’d ended up with recent ex of his just before, but couldn’t quite close the deal, I couldn’t fucking get it up. That happened to me so many times in my early days and still does, Viagra or being in love are the only cures I’ve found.

Before the bar was finally closed down, which lead us to be left with the keys to a now derelict bar that fateful night, it had been the jewel in Leicester’s crown. The police had been so inept at raiding the place it was funny. Plain clothed policemen, looking very like plain clothed policemen would come and loom over the bar at lunchtime (we did a good trade in working lunches for the offices near by) and ask for drugs. We would say, “what are you talking about” and carry on as usual. When the busts began to come at night (the real illicit time) the owner would always receive a tip off first and inform the dealers. The dealers disappeared into the night within seconds. One morning after an attempted bust I found a bag of trips (Bart Simpsons’ in case you were wondering) and a 8th of weed the dealers had dropped in their rush to leave. Perfect for my first of many trips to Glastonbury that weekend. That was a weekend that changed my life, the peak of the rave years, a holy ground for the left field mind. Another time after work I found a scrunched up newspaper that contained some weird dried mushrooms. I went to my boss who told me they were magic mushrooms and how to prepare them. We took them later on a trip to Hull and giggled for hours whilst listening to HP Lovecraft (the psychedelic 60’s band) and the Grateful Dead’s first two albums. If you’re going to take psychedelics, do it in style.

The end was closing in on the Workhouse. I had gone away to University and missed the final throws of the dice. Eventually it was just too illegal to live. A time and a place that none involved will ever forget. I was introduced to the rapier gay wit there. After work one night I stood back to back with another guy, seeing who was the taller. The difference was marked. “It’s a good three inches” someone proclaimed. “There’s no such thing as a good three inches!” came the reply. Indeed.

We blamed the wreckage on local bikers and hoped we wouldn’t go to prison for the many thousands pounds worth of damage. Nobody ever came knocking. I sit here now all these years later pondering this and other more pressing matters. Like the wisdom of Barak Obama receiving the Noble Peace prize. The end of meaning for the Nobel peace prize; the Nobel prize for perpetuating most war crimes on other sovereign states soil; for his steadfast work on devaluing the currency of human rights/the Geneva convention in relation to Iraq/Afghanistan, rivaled only by the Israelis genocide of the Palestinians. Those war crimes are of course funded/backed by the new Obama administration as well. And if you think Obama or his administration make the decisions you’ve got some research to be doing online. Try Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and Alex Jones’ Prison Planet (http://www.prisonplanet.com/) for starters. The Workhouses where the poor refuges of the industrial revolution were forced to eek out their pitiful existence have been with us in one form or another ever since; sometimes it’s more manifest, sometimes more subtle. We all work in a giant workhouse these days and only a few of us have been bothered/lucky enough to figure it out, thanks to the likes of Noam Chomsky. Noam was due to get this years Nobel peace prize, but he was sidestepped for Obama. Selah. Any artist in the broadest sense, who doesn’t put across in her art the core beliefs of the free soul, needs her fingers braking. One by one. Crow bar it in there if you have to, subtlety not a prerequisite. Nothing is prerequisite. Gene Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers in prison again and again as it was confiscated, on the bags he was made to sew. I thought I needed a Mac book to get anywhere.

Artists are generally right-minded individuals. Dark creativity isn’t aesthetically pleasing; it’s the craft of war, grey buildings and politics. The creativity of light is words, music, colours and art from the heart. Sure Charles Manson made an album, but it was shit and its rejection was part of his descent into evil. Sure the third Reich appreciated art, but nothing came out of it, other than what seeped out due to their crushing of souls. Messiaen’s wrote and premiered the Quartet For The End of time in Stalag VII-A as a prisoner of the Germans in WWII, played on a few broken down old instruments they gathered together. It changed my life, merely by listening to it. Here we see dark against light in action. The dark obeys the rules and follows the uncontrolled delusions of self-love and hatred of other. The light obeys no rules and seeks truth as beauty and above all enlivens emancipation.

I could sense an epiphany was approaching; as I listened to the quartet playing in front of me, the arches in the cathedral walls became translucent. Two vast edifices rose above me, one white, one black, out of space and time they loomed over, one gave me a sense of foreboding and fear, the other hope. Across town I felt the old places where they used to keep criminals, the pub cellar that used to be men’s Jail and the pub that used to house the women before their execution. The spirit within me ranted for redemption. Reality rent asunder, I staggered for the door. The sky was overcast. Like lost peoples souls. I finally knew my spirit would forever ascend. I am cast down by my actions or rise with my love, but nevertheless we are all saved, like Goethe’s Faust, for it is our destiny, our evolution, and our goal, to become the bright white wisdom light; it’s the inexorable evolution of the soul.

Now the summer days are ending
Leaves are falling, red and gold
Now the warmth of love is fading
And the nights are getting cold

From the east the wind is blowing
Now the sky's no longer blue
Overhead the clouds are growing
Summer's gone and so are you

You wanted to be free
Love was just a game to you
And you never meant to be
At this autumn rendezvous

All the happiness life gave me
Changed to emptiness today
Now that you no longer love me
Autumn's come, it's here to stay

Life seems empty now without you
It's not easy to forget
I may learn to live without you
But I'll always feel regret

I would cry but it's no good
Tears won't bring you back to me
Though I'd stop you if I could
I can't change what has to be

With the years I'll still remember
And in time the hurt will go
I'll forget this sad September
And be glad I loved you so