The Peace I Want

Alasdair Gray, from a photo used

in his obituary in the Paris Review.

I haven't drawn much this month.I haven't written much. I haven't updated this blog. I haven't done much of anything. Early in the month I had to go through a brutal two-hour telephone interrogation as part of my

PIP application. Then less than a week later I learned that a fellow poet had taken their own life. This stirred a whole bunch of complicated feelings, not least around my own almost constant desire to do the

same. In the past few weeks my sleep has been all over the place - long nights lying awake looking at abstracts of overdose autopsies, dropping off midafternoon, sleeping either too much or too little.

Then this weekend I got my decision letter -shockingly early, given how long I was advised to wait, but the reason for that became clear when I realised it was a refusal apparently written to be as insulting as possible. Not a rational surprise - they almost always refuse initially- but still an emotional blow. And all this against the background of the Starmerite regime's ongoing war against trans and disabled people, and the fact I need to find somewhere new to live by July.

I've been rereading Gray's 'Lanark' lately. Gray is forensic and unstinting in showing what a horrible place this world can be for those on the wrong end of it-how utterly and unrelentingly it destroys, body and soul, those of us who can't mutilate ourselves into something adapted to mesh with its cogs, and who instead wind up being slowly, painfully ground down. That's been on my mind a lot this month.

'Stay alive out of spite!' they say, and it's true that part of me, knowing full well that there are people out there who would happily see me dead, wants to keep going to cheat them of that victory. But it keeps getting harder. And increasingly I just want it to be over. I want the peace of knowing there's no more of it to come.

Our Revolution... (video)

 

Our Revolution Will Not Be Illegalised

I am not a TV,

a CD, a TS, a TG,

a scam, a trap, a troon,

a 'huge problem for a sane world'

(though I may be a problem for you);

I am a biological woman

and my bloods will show you that's true,

but long before I got on hormones,

and long before you ruled,

I knew just who and what I was.

I knew it when I sang the words

to Jackie's Strength on my own in my room,

refusing the pull of my diaphragm,

sanctioning breath to my throat,

awake and alive and aligned with myself

in ways outside the scope of your court. 

I knew it in moments of pushing my body

so hard I could throw it aside: knew

when other girls threw me, knew in the honesty

miles forced upon me, the oneness I felt

with the play of a sword, and in dancing,

and dancing, and dancing, and dancing,

I knew it in the way I felt suits fit me,

knew it on my wedding day

when we both joked that I looked like a lesbian, 

knew it in the things we did for years before our marriage;

knew when my first girlfriend held my hands

in her much bigger hands;

knew on my back in a dozen beds where

other bodies helped mine understand.

What I know that I am remains constant

whatever the laws of this land

which beggars itself for the bucks of rich bigots,

where a judge, as a boon to his neighbour the litigant,

can make thousands of people no longer legitimate

with one lazy stroke of his doddering hand

- an absolute bargain for seventy grand,

but meaningless. I've always known what I am

and no bent court can change that. I'm not a KC,

I'm something more worthwhile, that I fought to be,

and I assure you that silk looks much better on me:

an all-natural trans woman, already free. 

A Post about Daredevil

 

If Matt Murdock is serious about getting New York back from the Kingpin, he is going to have to start acting a lot more like Frank Castle. 

Because you cannot run a successful insurgency and respect the rule of law. The goal of an insurgency is not to knock out perps and leave them tied-up for the cops with a cheeky note from your friendly neighbourhood vigilante. The goal of an insurgency is to kill the fucking cops. 

The goal of an insurgency is to bleed the enemy, to impose a cost on them in terms of loss of manpower, loss of resources, and loss of civilian morale which destroys their will to continue. If you want to conduct a successful insurgency, you have to start thinking like a terrorist, and using the tactics of the terrorist. 

Insurgency is not getting in the ring and duking it out mano e mano. It's sneaking up on the enemy and slitting their throats. It's seducing troops, getting them drunk, and taking them to the woods where your buddies can shoot them. It's poisoning food. It's sniping. It's planting IEDs. 

It is, in every way, about punishing the occupying force. Of course Frank would be better at it. Hell, we see that in the post-credits scene. 

This is, of course, just a post about a superhero show. 

Spy Wednesday (video)

 

Spy Wednesday

 

Spy Wednesday

This Spy Wednesday

Judas wears a three-piece suit

cut like post-Tin Machine Bowie

and curates her socials:

shares a poster for a gig,

a time-lapse of her signing,

some positive quotes;

but says nothing to antagonize 

The Guardian. After all, 

she has work to promote,

and it took so much

to get them on-side.

No sense in risking that now. 

There’s no profit

in broadcasting virtue.

In posting a pink and blue flag.

Solidarity lived in the old world.

They don’t give out prizes for that.

Play this right and she might win the Orwell:

Why risk that by rocking the boat?

So she chases two Nexium with Chivas Regal

and worries the knot at her throat.

Run Like A Rumour

 Been working on stuff in response to the disgraceful ruling yesterday by our illegitimate so-called Supreme Court. This sound piece, Run Like A Rumour, is my first. It's based on a text by John Berger and features music I cooked up while Endlesss was still a thing.