Metaphorazine

a poem by Jeff Noon

Johnny takes Metaphorazine. Every clockwork day. Says it burns his house down, with a haircut made of wings. You could say he eats a problem. You could say he stokes his thrill. Every clingfilm evening, climb inside a little pill. Intoxicate the feelings. Play those skull-piano blues. Johnny takes Metaphorazine.

He's a dog.

Lucy takes Simileum. That's not half as bad. She's only like a moon goose gone slithering, upside-down the sky. Like a tidal wave of perfume, like a spillage in the heart. With eyes stuck tight like envelopes, and posted like a teardrop. Like a syringe, of teardrops. Like a dripfeed aphrodesiac, swallowed like a Cadillac, Lucy takes Simileum.

She's like a dog.

Graham takes Litotezol. Brain the size of particles, that cloud inside of parasites, that live inside the paradise of a pair of lice. He's a surge of melted ice cream, when he makes love like a ghost. Sparkles like a graveyard, but never gets the urge, and then sings Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! like a turgid flatfoot dirge. Graham takes Litotezol.

He's a small dog.

Josie takes Hyperbolehyde. Ten thousand every second. See her face go touch the sky, when she climbs that rollercoaster high. That mouth! Such bliss! All the planets and the satellites make their home inside her lips. It's a four-minute warning! Atomic tongue! Nitrokisserene! Josie takes Hyberbolehyde.

She's a big dog.

Alanis takes Alliterene. It drags a deeper ditch. And all her dirty dealings display a debonair disdain. Her dynamo is dangerous, ditto her dusky dreams. Dummies devise diverse deluxe débâcles down dingy  darkened detox driveways. Alanis takes Alliterene.

She's a dead dog, ya dig?

Desmond takes Onamatopiates.

He's a woof woof.

Sylvia takes oxymorox. She's got the teenage menopause. Gets her winter-sugar somersaults from sniffing non-stick glue. She wears the V-necked trousers, in the blind-eye looking-glass. Does the amputated tango, and then finds herself quite lost, in the new old English style!. Sylvia takes Oxymorox.

She's a cat dog.

But Johnny takes Metaphorazine. Look at those busted street lamp eyes, that midnight clockface of a smile. That corrugated tinflesh roof of a brow. The knife, fork and spoon of his fingers, the sheer umbrella of the man's hairdo! the coldwater bedsit of his brain. He's a fanfare of atoms, I tell you! And you know that last, exquisite mathematical formula rubbed off the blackboard before the long summer holidays begin? Well, that's him. Speeding language through the veins, Johnny takes Metaphorazine.

He's a real dog.

Country Funk

Country funk. I have to say I am pretty thrilled by this. I love the idea of making something out of nothing. I did some research and I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as country funk. At the same time, the words conjure up a very possible sound, and if the fruits of that unholy merger sound weird, it is more through cultural prejudice than musical impossibility. Take the rhythm section of a funk band and marry it to the small-town narratives and thick, smoke-heavy vocals of country and you get something very exciting. Add a bit of gospel here and there to keep it all together.

But mostly I love the idea of collecting these stand-out tracks by artists who did not seem to form a specific scene, who were not known as country funk artists - or even either country or funk, for that matter - and making something cohesive and seemingly sensible out of it.

If you're curious, just check out this track of Bobby Darin. And yes that is the same guy who did one of the best-known versions of Mack the Knife. I never expected him to do something like this:

For everything on this compilation, check out the label's website:

Light in the Attic: Country Funk 1969 - 1975

It's just our heads are butterflies

What makes this so great is the sense of imperfection. Electrelane are a Stereolab without the breadth of genre-bending, a riot-grrl group without the punch, letting their songs linger on for too long. The comment on the enclosed YouTube video accurately picks out the best part of the song - done in perfect imperfect-pitch:

I'm tearing down the walls THE WALLS THE WALLS THE WALLS.

Down-hearted

This has to be one of the best one-off pop singles ever recorded. A beautiful title, the Moby avant-la-lettre beat and sampling, the late-night bar piano in the middle part. They make B.B. King fit so well, surprisingly so in a 90s pop song. One-hit wonders will never cease to amaze me, I have not heard any other tracks by this band, but they are - supposedly - notoriously out of step with this song. I don't think I will ever want to spoil the magic.

Small Talk

In my sociolinguistics class I have learned that Finnish people, among other cultures, can stop talking about something dead in the middle of a conversation and then pick up the thread without introduction a day later. This pickled my fancy. It is how I communicate with some of my friends digitally, and I really like these asynchronous conversations. You just talk when you have something to say, and you don't have to obligatorily keep up a conversation and plug it with comments about the weather or describing people walking by. Then again I have always been notoriously bad at small talk. I think I'd subscribe to the Carlos Ruiz Zafón view that "humans aren't descended from monkeys, they come from parrots."

Also, starting conversations with some random statement or inquiry is so much more fun! I think David Byrne summarized it very adequately in Psycho Killer:

You start a conversation you can't even finish it.
You're talkin' a lot, but you're not sayin' anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?

It also ties in with my fondness for writer Don DeLillo. A lot of people criticise him for the way people talk in his books, that it is unnatural and that no real person will ever talk this way(!) I do not dispute this, even if these critics do go out of their way to pick four quotes out of a 600-page novel to prove their point. Quotes that are, of course, easily made to sound ridiculous when taken out of context like that. Anyway, there is some truth to it, but I would love for the universe to be more like a DeLillo novel. Where people can be awkwardly silent without actually being considered awkward, can launch into a difficult topic without being considered difficult, and can altogether do away with small talk. I image everyone would be carrying around a dusty paperback to turn to when conversation stalls. I would like that.