I’m taking a photograph of a bench [1], trying to line it up centre frame, and worrying about whether I should have the bench or the sloping pavement level in the viewfinder. Beyond the bench is a small tree, a road, an industrial estate and a factory. Behind me is a queue of traffic, crawling towards a roundabout. It’s a hot sunny day and windows are down.
“What is there to take a picture of there, mate?”
The passenger of a car right behind me is leaning out of the window trying to find out if there is something I can see that he can’t.
“Why has someone put a bench looking at the the view?” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” he says, as the car pulls away, “I’ll have to think about that…”
We [2] are travelling around England, researching a project about Englishness [3]. We are visiting places we have never been to before, and revisiting places we have been to, to look at them afresh. We are talking to people in the street, at bus stops, in chip shops, and taking photos of things that interest us [4].
I have begun to notice benches. Not park benches [5], or town square benches or any congregation of benches. Solo benches; individual benches placed in a specific position by someone [6].
How [7] are the positions for these benches decided? Some are clearly to look at a particular view. Others are in places where people might need to break their journey, to rest. Some are dedicated to someone who has passed away, who used to visit that spot. Occasionally [8] the positioning defies logic.
But what I particularly notice is that these [9] benches are always [10] empty. Again, not park benches, which are [11] often used as a lunch venue by people who work nearby, and are therefore locations that people choose to use to pass time.
No, these solitary benches, placed facing ‘a view’ [12], placed en route from one place to another, are always [10] empty. At first what bothers [13] me is that these benches have been placed to look at a view and no one ever [14] stops to see that view.
I start taking photos of [15] benches and their views.
But after a while [16] what begins to bother me more is that whilst park benches [5] are used at lunch times [17], solo benches aren’t used at all. No one justs sits on them. No one stops. No one stops, sits, thinks. No one rests. No one waits. No one does nothing. [18]
I decide to start putting instructions on benches [19].
[1] In Hexham
[2] Rachael and I
[3] www.pleasantland.org
[4] This is 2004
[5] Or ‘destination benches’, as I will come to think of them
[6] A town planner? An architect?
[7] I wonder
[8] It seems to me
[9] Solo
[10] Okay, nearly always
[11] As comes up in a discussion with friends
[12] Or rather, a nice view
[13] Intrigues
[14] Okay, hardly anyone
[15] Empty
[16] How long is a ‘while’? In Sheffield they don’t say 9 to 5, they say 9 while 5.
[17] To facilitate another activity: eating, reading, smoking, filling a lunch hour
[18] Alright, hardly anyone
[19] How to use this bench: Stop a moment and sit. Do nothing for a bit. Rest. Think. It’s okay. You have enough time.
We’ve been trying to understand songs.And Rachael wrote:
We’ve been trying to choose a song. Should that song mean something to either, or both, of us?
How do people write songs? Where do tunes come from? How come songs can be played on different instruments to the ones they were written on? How do you write a drum part when you’re writing a song on a guitar?
We’ve known each other a long time. We have bought each other music, played each other music, copied music from and for each other, been to hear music played live together.
But despite all that, or perhaps because of it, it’s been very difficult to choose one song.
How come some songs are verse chorus verse chorus, and others aren’t? If it isn’t verse chorus, does that mean that technically it isn’t a song?
I once saw a bloke on the bus writing music in a reporter’s notebook. He’d ruled a line in biro between two pairs of lines to make three lines into five – a stave. He looked like he was playing a tune in his head – or tuning in to one, like this, trying to catch it – then noting it down. At the time I couldn’t decide if he was being a pretentious twat or just open to inspiration. Although, I quite fancied a go. But I never got any further than ruling the extra lines in biro.
I’ve started drawing Songmaps – pictograms of the dramatis personae, the locations, the events of particular songs. Trying to pin them down, so I can better find my way around them.
People talk to me about what key certain songs are in, about key changes, minor chords; they talk about things being flat, or out of tune, that sort of thing. I don’t understand what they mean – well, I understand, but I can’t hear it, even after they’ve told me.
I remember a conversation in a Chinese Restaurant Karaoke Bar about the Dark Heart of Karaoke, about how it is one of the last socially acceptable refuges of the bully. Of the delight some people who can sing, or at least who don’t mind getting up singing in front of people, which is of course a different thing entirely, the delight these people exhibit when they talk about making people who can’t sing, or who perhaps are not comfortable getting up and singing in front of other people, which is a different thing entirely, about making these people get up in front of others to sing so they (the singers) can enjoy their (the non-singers) discomfort. We’d had a bit of wine by that point.
So what about this song?
It’s a horrible thing, not to be a listener of music. Actually, that’s not factually correct. It makes it sound like I’m deaf. Which I’m not. I’m a passive listener.
Sound happens to me more often than not. It imposes itself on me and at times attempts to persuade me to change my state of mind.
But it’s not my passion. It’s not the thing that defines me. I do not have a collection of "my" or "our" songs on a series of carefully hand illustrated mix tapes.
It makes you feel like an outsider at first. A social inadequate. I cannot make small talk about the various albums of Bob Dylan. I can’t name a single song by the Fall; I do not know the name of the lead singer of Massive Attack – if they have a lead singer.
I have tried to keep up. I would tape things off the radio as a kid, despising those older than me who thought the top twenty unimportant and laughed in the face of adults who couldn’t name the current number one. But then the first album I owned - was bought - was Cliff Richard's Silver, so I guess I never really had a fighting chance.
When I was sixteen I quite liked Phil Collins, but pretended it was really Genesis I liked. I even bought one of their earlier albums from an older boy, but I never played it and would struggle to recognise an early hit, and the Peter Gabriel days are definitely out of the window.
And so it went on. There is a catalogue of artists I’ve dabbled with, but to list them would be for purely sentimental and very selfish and boring reasons.
My world is not silent. I like to dance – on my own mainly and not really at parties. I hear songs and sing the same few lyrics – often just ever so slightly wrong - over and over again.
I’m feeling quite upset about this whole thing now. I feel vulnerable, naked in my admission. I feel you will think there is something not quite right about me. I shouldn’t have said anything. You are going to feel sorry for me now, you are going to pity the fact I can’t name a single Smiths album.
I do not own an I pod.
I do not now how an MP3 player works or really what it is.
I have not bought any music for at least five years.
I threw my old tapes away.
I do not own a kitsch, slightly cool vinyl collection.
I can’t listen to music and concentrate.
It’s ok and I bob along to stuff, but it’s not everything, not really something, to me.
Lots of the dice and miniature figures that feature in the "It Starts With The Dice" section of Words & Pictures are up on our Flickr pages now. There's also some new stuff in the On The Road set, too.
I'll post more Words & Pictures stuff in the next week or so.
I once had a temping job at a council. My mornings were spent wrestling with an archaic printing machine churning out huge rolls of concertina-folded paper that had something to do with tax. These were later "processed" by others in the department whilst I scanned hand-written documents into a computer. In the afternoon I was given back the day's printouts along with printouts of the documents I'd been scanning all morning. I then took these mountains of paper up to the third floor and filed them into cardboard boxes. A whole room was dedicated to these boxes, and I was told to be meticulous about the filing. At the end of every week I was tasked to remove the oldest of the cardboard boxes, and unceremoniously bin them. This surprised me at first and I asked a colleague if the files had ever been used, ever been accessed. I was told not. I asked why. I was told that there hadn't been an audit. I asked when the last audit was. I was told there hadn't been one before, and that there were no plans for one in the future.
Some new photos on our Flickr photostream. These are test shots for the "It Started With The Dice" section of our new piece Words & Pictures, that were used in Edinburgh at the Forest Fringe work-in-progress showings. Next outing for Words & Pictures is at FIX 09 next week - which will probably include the dice...
