The New Quarter.

I've had one of those emails. I get them every now and again. Asking me to affiliate with some 'creative' collective, to join the nights I run up to the network. I'm (perhaps irrationally) afraid of that network. Here's the beef. Maybe it is totally logical. In fact, it is. Listen. They're building this horrible complex down on the seafront. They're once again talking about regenerating the old pier, this time quite possibly into some kind of bastard health spa - holiday houses and executive suites, long corridors with water coolers and touch cards and fire doors leading into board rooms and small tidy bars full of vintage paraphernalia, the kind of thing we like - jukeboxes and stuff. They're going to put that in the sea right in front of the town staring right across at its mirror. Behind it, over it, there's going to be a tower that will be four hundred meters high and provide the whole tiny town with taxed wireless Internet. Under the tower there's going to be this strip of arches filled with little people and their little things. They're going to call this the 'creative quarter'. The arches will be shops run by Makers selling jewelery, driftwood, steampunk accessories - all of it up-cycled. It's going to be pretty good to be honest. Loads of young people with aspirations.

That's the language of catalogs. Those are the people who will live full and happy lives. They've done well, they can make money out of what they love and they will stay there under the tower by the conference centre. I've tried replying to people's requests for some kind of artistic solidarity, this guy asks us all to read at galleries in London. He wants us all to collaborate. I want that too. I want us to stay up together forever until no one can put us to sleep but ourselves. He won't even pay your transport, funded and all. You get to read for five minutes. We need to stretch time till we can see back into it from a huge distance, move around the space that time operates on, operate in it. I'm really happy with these letters on Yage. They seem to be asking for no antidotes at all. That's what they're doing with this tower. Can you actually believe it will be four hundred metres high? It might even touch the bellies of planes and curlews. Anyway, there will be auditions for the Creative quarter. The reason that word and everyone who uses it scares the living shit out of me, so I'm crying and scratching the ground, is because it's that siphoning off, a solution to all your problems, a briefness; a place for exploration and hope. It's so conceited and ruthless. When what we do is no longer necessary, just healthy. You are not alone. God is with you. 

There's a lot going on in this town. I love it here. I've lived here nearly thirty years now, and every time I set out for food my friends are there smiling, offering to pay for dinner, tucking napkins into my stocking tops. We run this place. It used to be a shit hole. People would stare at you if you wanted to make anything of yourself. I had a great education thanks very much. It's unfortunate I have to change your attitudes to make ends meet. There's a building just like this new development near the station. I had an interview there the other day. It's absolutely true that the social connotations of a tiny snippet of music coming out of the door of a cafe can be disseminated according to their injunction against everyone else. I'm going to play some music. I'm going back to bed. I'm going to dress up. Good.