A Mouth Full of Song

10 Questions

Moose Allain

Moose Allain is an artist and an essential ingredient in my daily bread. It is a pleasure to watch his mind unfold on Twitter; his interest in language, the robot son, the random punnery and abstract expression of a man who regards life from the edge of the crowd. No soapboxes, no heckling just warmth, humour and the right amount of low self esteem.

World Of Moose

Moosechoons

1. Where are you? Describe your surroundings.

I am in a small room at the top of the big old Victorian house we live in on the edge of Exmouth in Devon. I can see down the coast as far as Berry Head in Brixham and across the Exe estuary to the Haldon hills. This will mean nothing to you, but a good window affords you exciting walls. I spend a lot of time in this room but quite often I become unaware of it as I disappear off into words or pictures. In some ways these splendid views are wasted on me. I haven’t really made this room my own because it’s a springboard rather than a place to indwell.

2. ‘Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.’ So begins Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Break, break, break’. Do you find it easy to express your emotions or do they manifest themselves in your art? Or both? Or neither?

I like to express my emotions. I am an emotional person and like people who are passionate. I don’t like cool, I like hot. With my art I am trying to put a bit of joy into the world. This can sound a bit trite or banal, but I see it as political act against the miserablism of the Daily Mail mentality. I think most people are decent and are trying to get on with their lives as best they can. So I think it is incumbent upon us to think well of people and to put good, positive thoughts out into the world. I am trying to do that in my own small way. Having said that I don’t mind making people feel sad sometimes, or just a bit peculiar. That’s all good too.

3. I’ve just eaten a family tub of Tesco Soft Scoop Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream to myself. As well as temporarily losing the sight in my left eye it has left me feeling depressed and filled with a cold, minty, self loathing. Do you have any habits or behaviour that you wish you could lose?

Oh god. Too many. I am greedy, selfish, quick to anger, inconsiderate, a prevaricator, terribly ineffectual in just about all practical matters, naïve about how to behave as a grown up, a political ninny. I have no appreciation of wine, I prefer a Bacardi Breezer or other children’s boozes. I am slow to reach for my wallet in a pub – I’m not mean, just slow to reach for my wallet. I eat too much, I don’t drink enough, I’m quite antisocial. I don’t get in touch with my family enough. And I’m full of self-pity. I’m loathsome, but probably no more than most people and at least I have enough self-awareness to combat these tendencies. Occasionally. If I can be bothered. (NB this paragraph has been severely abridged. I can supply Appendix A if you wish for more failings).

4. I once walked into a crowded church and saw myself as an older man, another time I found a talking spider on the way home from school. Anything weird happen to you during childhood?

Ok, this isn’t particularly weird, but I’d like to tell this story. One day – I must have been about 7 – I was alone in our living room and took it into my head to make a nice surprise for my family. I decided to scratch the words A Wish For You into various bits of furniture in the belief that those who found them would be delighted and make a wish. So I worked away with a pin and the results were quite subtle, I thought, and neatly scratched. Well, I think it is was one of my sister’s that found one of them and told my mum and contrary to my expectations my mum was not delighted and probably didn’t make a wish. She did however line all five of us up and grill us about what had happened. She was so furious that I naturally enough denied it completely. She believed me, she believed all of us. So it was that the provenance of A Wish For You settled on our family as an unsolved mystery. In fact ‘we’ did arrive at a solution. The obvious answer was that it had been written by a poltergeist. This became the explanation, and for years afterwards I would become extremely anxious if I saw conversations turning to the subject of the supernatural, knowing that it would inevitably lead to the tale of our poltergeist. This was genuinely a horrible experience for me but as a child you don’t see the easy solution: to own up and take the punishment. I finally admitted the truth years later, I can’t remember when exactly, probably in my early to mid-teens. The irony was that none of my family believed me for ages, so entrenched was our poltergeist. I had to work hard to convince them and I’m not sure even to this day that they really believed me. There is one slightly odd little coda. My eldest sister’s boyfriend lived in the village too, on his family’s small holding. One day they were moving some furniture about and pulled out an old chest of drawers. The words A Wish For You were scratched into the dark wood on the back.

5. Who, what, where inspired you to start drawing?

None of the above. At least, that’s a bit like asking me who, what, where inspired me to start walking because I can’t remember not doing it and I can’t remember a time when it was not a very big part of who I am. That’s a bit unfair because my mum and my late Grandma is/was both very artistic so I was obviously encouraged. The thing is I suppose I always thought of myself as an artist and it’s only really been as I have failed to stick at anything else in my life that that is what I have become.

6 I can’t draw or do accents but still they won’t give me a disabled sticker for the van. What essential life skills do you feel you are missing?

Well, I really believe being able to draw is only a matter of degrees. Everyone can draw as well as David Shrigley or Modern Toss who I admire greatly. I wish I could draw much much better than I can, but I am happy to express myself within my abilities. But I’m with you on the accents. I have elucidated at some length in section 3.1 many of my life skills shortcomings. I said to my wife Karen the other day that whatever else our boys do when they leave school they should train as a plumber and an electrician, that way they could always earn a living and look after themselves. God, I wish I was handy around the house (fuck knows how I became an architect, I totally hate DIY, even the thought of B&Q makes me feel all stingy behind the eyes). I sometimes wish I had a bit more blokey charm and was able to bang on about sports, beer and tits – the usual stuff men seem to be interested in.

7. “jjjjjjjjjjjjjbrumbapppppppBAOBAPABAPABAOmjdbcyck!!!!!!” is my favourite Aphex Twin lyric. I also like the music that you make. When did you start getting into electronica?

There are two parts to my answer and I shall deal with them in turn. I remember before I went to school listening to Eugene Ormandy with John Williams (Rodrigo and Castelnuovo-Tedesco Guitar Concertos – I’ve googled it, 1965 so my parents must have bought it when it came out) on our old mono gramophone. I can still remember the dusty smell of its electrics. (Actually, I think I scratched A Wish For You into its beautiful wood). Anyway, the music broke my heart and elevated me in equal measure and I have loved music passionately ever since. I am very sensitive to music, in so far as I am extremely intolerant of music I don’t like. I really can’t bear being in places where there is music playing that offends me. You might say: get over yourself, but I would counter with: what, really, is the difference between a bad sound and a bad smell? I would like, if I could, to waft it away from my ears or at least open a window. As a teenager I wanted a guitar and I got one, and then an electric guitar. Sadly I was, and always have been, crap at playing the guitar. This didn’t stop me from getting into various bands – in fact I met Karen when we played together in a student band in Exeter in the 1980s. Eventually we left all that behind, but one of the best presents she ever gave me was Cubase Lite which I used to make little tunes on our Mac Performa. I have made music for my own pleasure ever since. I used to play it at work when I worked in an office, some people quite liked it. Then my audience dwindled to not-even-my-wife-any-more, until I discovered twitter and subsequently Soundcloud. (Is this terribly boring? I found myself staring patiently at the words appearing as I was typing – god knows what it’s like to read!). I’m very un-nerdy about music, I seldom know who stuff is by. The internet has been fantastic for constantly bringing new sounds to my ears. I don’t care where it comes from or how it’s made, I just want to keep discovering more. I feel sorry for people whose ears are stuck at some perceived golden age in their past.

8. If you left your house and kept on walking, where would your secret heart take you?

I wrote a story on twitter you may have seen about finding a piece of string and following it, and it takes me all across the land, back through the journeys that have brought me here all the way to the house where I was born. There is a part of me that yearns for that past. Not a foreign country, but one so familiar, the fields and woods that I played in as a child, the meadows I ran through bare foot with the buttercups and clover catching between my toes, skipping round the thistles and the cow pats. Maybe it’s having little boys of my own, it can’t help but stir up those memories, and you want them to have a happy childhood too. The alternative answer to this question is that I’d never reveal where my secret heart would take me because it would probably be a bit rude.

9. Best guitar solo ever?

Oh this is hard to answer. Don’t think less of me, but I don’t really think about guitar solos. Before I turned to punk I was very into Led Zeppelin. It would probably be a Jimmy Page guitar solo, but it might only a be a few notes, I don’t have much of a stomach for long rambling solos. Probably a bit in the live version of Dazed and Confused from The Song Remains The Same. Or the guitar solo in Fledgling Circus by Colourblind James Experience. I haven’t heard that song for about 15 years but I can picture it in my mind’s ear. Yes, let’s have that one. Especially as it has completely eluded me on the internet, which I think makes it a little more precious.

10. Now that I have kids and I spend my days shouting and cleaning up shit, the thing I miss most is daydreaming. Lying on the floor, listening to the sounds of the city floating in on the breeze for hours, days even, drifting, just drifting.. What do you miss most?

Oh, I am lucky because now I can drift, I drift in my work and that is a great luxury. I did miss it terribly and it’s such a relief when it comes back. Our children are of an an age now where we get together with friends and the kids just run around and we get slowly pissed and it’s wonderful. It’s good to have those days back again. I can remember having a phrase that would go round and round in my head that my mind was being colonised by these tiny people, and I resented it, so I know exactly what you mean, the first years are really hard. I miss the spontaneity we had as a couple, obviously, that we could just do what we wanted when we wanted. We don’t go to the pictures much any more and I miss that (it’s kind of expensive to have a baby sitter AND go the cinema). And I miss the pub life to some extent. There was a blissful period when we used to go the Canonbury Tavern in Highbury every weekend. Our friends would know that we would be there and different people would turn up. It was a big, airy pub and it was quiet so you could talk and laugh all night and wobble home happy, all laughed out. But then they turned it into a young people’s pub and they ruined everything so in anger and frustration we started a family and gave up the pub, just to show them.

10 Questions

Shaun Usher

Shaun Usher runs the websites

Letters of Note

Lists of Note

and

Letterheady

Letters of Note is one of my favourite websites of all time. It’s a window into the heart of humanity, the sadness, the humour, the cruelty and kindness. Some of the letters have made me laugh for days, some have had me sobbing into my keyboard and all are nothing less than interesting and contain some or other insight into what makes us who and what we are.

1. Where are you now? Describe your immediate surroundings.

I’m in my office. To my left is an empty cup, a half-eaten baguette (ham and cheese (cheddar)), and a pen (Paper Mate InkJoy 100). To my right is a pile of 28 books, all of which relate in some way to correspondence. It’s cold. I’ve had the most unproductive day in the history of my days. I’m tired.

2. The Band, Beatles, Beach Boys, Boards of Canada, Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Beastie Boys, Burial, Kate Bush, Boom Bip, John Barry, Bkraftwerk… B is the most popular letter in my record collection. What’s yours?

If we discount the numerous bands and artists I’m ashamed of, the most popular letter in my collection is S, the most-listened of which (lately at least) are: Saxon Shore, School of Seven Bells, Sigur Rós, The Smiths, St. Vincent, The Staves, Stevie Wonder, and Swanton Bombs.

3. “And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There is stored up, whatsoever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried.” Wrote St Augustine in ‘The Confessions of St Augustine’. To remember something can be a very physical process, triggering some or all of our senses. What is your most intense childhood memory?

It’s certainly not a memory I treasure, but it’s easily one of the most intense and one which I’ll never shake. I think I was 10. We — me, my mum, dad, sister, and brother — were in Turkey for a few weeks on our annual holiday; a ferociously hot resort called Altinkum, most of which, we discovered upon arrival, was only half-built. In fact the whole place was a shambles. A sweaty, dusty, shambles. I ate some chicken in a restaurant one evening which, as luck would have it, was half-raw due to a power-cut while it was being cooked. I ended up with a ruptured intestine. As the (hideous) symptoms of that kicked in the next day, I also got sunstroke. I genuinely felt like I was dying. More bad luck soon arrived in the form of an inept, syringe-happy Turkish doctor who decided to give me an injection in my left buttock which, we were later told, he really shouldn’t have given me. My body just packed up. I can vividly remember my dad hurriedly slinging me over his shoulder as my feet gave way, pouring cold water over my head with his free hand to try and cool me down whilst simultaneously screaming, “DON’T SWALLOW THE WATER.” We flew back home straight away — doctors said I was close to death. The whole episode was just horrific. Thinking about it 20+ years later brings me out in a heat rash.

4. It’s the Academy Awards tonight. Who’s your favourite Oscar and why? I think I would go with the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, his Museum of Contemporary Art in Rio De Janeiro is a beautiful, beach side, neoteric, flying saucer with a walkway of red oozing down to welcome visitors. I could eat it.

I was about to nominate the great Oscar Wilde, but then I remembered Oscar the Grouch. So, Oscar the Grouch. He’s green, he’s furry, he’s filthy, and he lives in a bin — proudly. He was even ginger at one point. Most importantly though, he’s a Muppet, and Muppets trump pretty much anything in life, including Brazilian starchitects and deceased poets. He’s also performed by Caroll Spinney, a legendary “Muppeteer” (he operates Big Bird too) who responds to all fan mail with delightful, hand-written — and sometimes illustrated — letters. He’s essentially the pinnacle of human evolution.

5. I had to go into my three year old son’s room early this morning to comfort him after a nightmare. As I crouched beside him stroking his hair, his face in the half-light morphed from his to mine to my sister’s to Mary’s brothers to my Grandmother.. Have you climbed down your family tree? How far did you get?

I’ve hardly climbed at all. Shameful really. I know my parents’ names, and I know that my great-great-grandmother was a Russian Jew, but that’s about it. Actually, when we were kids my dad was forever half-jokingly harping on about us being descendents of a “Lord Templeton,” as if it was something to cherish, but curiously he could never offer any more info when pressed. My granddad would sometimes “verify” the story by telling exactly the same tale, with the same wry grin and lack of sources. No doubt I’ll continue the tradition when my son’s old enough to understand and, more importantly, be duped. Based on this “fact,” my dad even called me “Little Lord Shaunygoo” until I was about 15. (Don’t judge me.)

6. I’m sitting in a French Cafe in Cardiff, drinking strong black French coffee and listening to non-stop French pop. What one thing have the French given us that you couldn’t be without?

The guillotine.

7. Lollapalooza, San Francisco 1993. I’ve just drunk two bottles of Vodka, lost my favourite blue linen jacket and been run over. I stumble into a game of basketball, the ball rolls towards me and I do a couple of keepy-ups and fall flat on my face. The people playing basketball are the Beastie Boys. Have you ever made a fool of yourself in the presence of greatness?

Kind of. In 2002, at which point we were 23 and clearly too immature for the task at hand, my best mate and I found ourselves running one of Manchester’s most refined bar/restaurants (he somehow fluked a job as the general manager and then foolishly hired me as his assistant). A few months in, Disney booked the entire venue for a Beauty and the Beast party and hundreds of “important” people arrived, many of whom were celebrities. Within an hour we realised we had completely underprepared, and pretty soon we ran out of drink, glasses, food, and capable staff. I’ve never blushed or apologised so frequently and the temptation to flee the building was overwhelming. The very professional lady from Disney soon broke down in tears in front of my friend and I, and then all the disappointed guests began to leave the venue en masse. But they needed their coats. At that point we realised that the “cloakroom” we had set-up for the night was hilariously inadequate and that, in fact, almost everyone’s expensive coats were actually just sitting in an enormous pile behind the stairs, without identifying tags of any sort. It literally took hours to match them with their seething owners. Everyone hated us, and with good reason. You know you’ve gone too far when someone as mild-mannered as Gary Wilmot wants to beat you to death.

8. I’m still waiting for a reply to a letter I wrote to The Stray Cats in 1982. Keep an eye out for that one please, I know it’s out there somewhere. What was the last letter you wrote? (letters to the bank, Santa etc don’t count).

The last letter I wrote was to the Renault head office in response to one of their dealerships’ truly despicable customer service. Utter cretins. Possibly the most satisfying letter I’ve ever penned actually, and it worked: they reluctantly carried out their part of the contract and I received a telephoned apology from a man so emotionless that I can’t be sure he wasn’t battery-powered. As for real human beings — people with hearts — I’m currently writing a letter to Moose Allain, a lovely, talented man who basically makes Twitter worthwhile and who sent me a really nice letter the other week. It was like receiving the Ultimate Direct Message from someone I admire. Maybe that’s how we should rebrand letters, for future generations.

9. Baked beans and peas on the same plate?

Is that a thing? Good grief. What does a pea in baked bean juice taste like? The thought turns my stomach. Regardless, I’m strongly opposed to the idea of them sharing a plate and can think of nothing good coming from such an arrangement. In fact I think we should segregate legumes at every opportunity, not just at dinner. What if they evolve into peans? Let’s think about future generations before mixing it up at the dinner table.

10. What is the biggest threat to productivity in your working day? Your favourite waste of time?

The Internet, by far. I have never become bored on the Intertubes; I’ve never run out of things to click on. This is a major problem for me, as my job — editing blogs — is online. It’s not as if I can disconnect from the Internet in order to get some work done on the Internet. Constantly fighting that urge is mentally exhausting. Another threat to productivity in my working day is the unending need to re-write everything. I’m never, ever content with anything I’ve written and have to repeatedly reshape every single sentence I put down, to the point where it can literally take me half an hour to write just a few unimportant words.