recording above is d.a. levy : roses that bloom
from 1967 recording with Kent Taylor, Admissible Evidence (Random Sightings) published by Kirpan Press (2003)
GOOD CLICHES, GOOD DRIVING, GOOD DELIVERY DRIVERS
dedicated to the taxi driver that moved the cone from the road-closed
I wanted to make this as a film but I thought how problematic it would be to make because of how much disturbance it would cause, tip-toe, tip-toe. and I didn’t want to get arrested for causing a societal interuption on a mildly busy back street in Glasgow between Finneston and Govanhill.
but i imagine myself in a car waiting at a cone that says on it “road closed” and I want to get there and over there, over where, over here. Obviously the cone suggests I turn the car around, there are no divisions because it’s only a back street. What if I don’t want to go back? look back. backing into the alluscape of how I saw myself once. What if I only felt in never-the-same in this moment, and in that moment, all I wanted was to drive forward, but I can’t because this road is closed. Who was making me and why is it making me go back, turns around? So I stay at the cone that says “road closed” and I wait for something, because nothing is still something. In this waiting, I stay in my car and I remember the red boots that used to be hung in my mums car and when the car got written off, she forgot to go pick them up from the garage. But thats going back into the alluscape, living in hope that my perception will change. It won’t change, what’s happened, has happened and I am here waiting outside a “road closed” cone, in the midst of the throw i threw, and I will stay here staring at something, because nothing is still something. There is always a vanishing point. Always a speed into that vanishing point, and I feel very aware of this backstreet, where the roads move in L-shapes, so it’s hard to see the vanishing point. There are no vanishing points down this backstreet, only L-shapes and “maybe more cones, who knows” says the eternal cliche.
in the distractive mind of “eternal cliche”, I looked into the rear-view mirror and I saw a car behind me. It also stopped. Road blocked. It got impatient and turned around and left. I was once again alone in the-something, the alluscape in my rear-view mirror. Another car came shortly after and did the same. This happened for a few days. It was the same story, over and over again. it wasn’t until this huge lorry came, some sort of delivery lorry, probably Amazon or DPD, and he waited for a few minutes until he began to beep and beep and beep and I thought this beeping might go on eternally, next to the cliche, but it stopped. But then I got out of his lorry to talk to me, and he first asked nicely, until I was unresponsive, but then he started shouting, his breakfast spat out on to my window. He shouted and shouting, telling me to get the fuck out of the way so he can move and make his delivieries because people, all those parcel hungry people are waiting, salvating at their front doors for more and more and more. He is needed. and I kept the window up. I carried on looking ahead, I didn’t want to think about the boots, or the delivery man.
(FEBRUARY 2020, THE EDITOR)