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Issue #16 January 31st - February 5th 2003
Sister Janice Saves The Universe
I can't lie to you. It probably IS pointless and empty, but perhaps you should come off the pills before you attempt the next chapter.
By Sister Janice Slejj
Black Beret
He reeked of familiar spices and body odor. I couldn't get close enough. We were both there to hear the live music. I was there to support my roommate, a singer in local coffee shops. Mr. Beret is one of her groupies.
By Emily Ann Potter
Why the Aislers Set are great - An interview with Amy Linton
So I suppose if we can make a group of people upset enough to sit around and complain all day on their computers there must be someone out there who sits around and listens to our records and smiles.
By Dimitra Daisy
What made the Smiths great
They talked about miserably damp flats and stagnating at work in a job you hate, or they talked about unfulfilled love in a way no one else in the history of popular music ever had, and when they wanted to get political, boy did they get political!
By Paul Williamson
Race for the prize
Many people find the attraction of football very tricky to grasp. It's just 22 grown men kicking a ball around for an hour & a half and running around.
By David Strange
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Sister Janice Saves The Universe
Stars
Stars
Stars
I used to think visiting the stars would be glamorous. I would lie on the roof of the convent, with my favourite records blaring through the windows, and I would stare into the sky, hoping that it held some sort of answer. I wasn't sure what the question was, just that the solution would make everything seem right.
The nuns never liked that sort of behaviour. Not the star-gazing, not the roof-climbing, and particularly not the extended version of 'Young Hearts Run Free'' flying out to the night sky and disturbing their 'contemplation' hour.
I never saw the point of that. All they ever contemplated was the one bloody Book. When you've read it from cover to cover a few times, there doesn't seem much point in nitpicking over the finer detail.
I heard the words they read, but I felt them more in those moments on my own, when the saxophone played its way into 'Summer Breeze' and something inside me flew into the sky, buffeted by the winds that blew in from the coast, pulled by those pin-pricks of light.
And I'd look at the stars, and believe in a God that lived there.
Now, I look at stars all day. I can see nothing else, from the window of this shed. But somehow, on these long days, they don't seem magical any more, just...distant. The way that God of the sky came to seem in the end.
Last week, I met a man who still believed in them. Ralph, his name was, though he signed his name with a Squiggle (he told me it was a rune of immense power and cosmic significance, but it looked like a squiggle to me). Ralph of The Raelians
I got a letter from Ralph last week. He was offering me cosmic enlightenment.
I've had that sort of offer before. You'd be surprised what a nun's habit does to people. But this one seemed real. I met him at the Showcase Cinema on the Red Spot of Jupiter. I'd picked the film carefully, something classy - 'One Horned Babes From Venus' - though I took my 'Mary Magdalene Stun Gun' just in case.
I don't know what I was expecting. Not a hot date, not really. Not with a religious type. But times get slow, though I'm very happy here, in space. I'm not bored at all. I wouldn't be writing for this publication if the editors hadn't begged and pleaded with me to lend them my wisdom.
No, I'm really really okay here. I just thought it might make a change from staring at bloody stars all the time.
So, I turn up, and I've allowed myself to build Squiggle up into... more than I should. My Space Boy. My Star Man. The old film...and Jeff Bridges without any clothes... of course I dreamed of these things. Look, I was locked up in a convent for fifteen years. You learn to fantasise, okay???
I get there, and straight away I know this isn't going to work. Perhaps its the symbol on his forehead. Perhaps its the sandals.
Perhaps its the way he tried to save me, from the minute he met me.
Poor guy. He believes that aliens populated the Earth. That they're waiting for everyone to believe in them, so they can come back and move the poor suffering population to a higher level.
And he meant it.
I've seen belief before, I had it once. You can see it in the eyes. This guy had it bad.
The date didn't go far. I told him my joke about Mary, mother of Jesus, a plumber, and a bowl of Instant Whip. He didn't smile. He asked me why I felt so bitter about life. I gave him the number of my convent.
I wrote the convent a note saying I thought what they believed was fundamentally similar and that they should get together and plan the alien return between them.
Oh they'll tut, and cast their eyes up to heaven, but at least one of them will be leaving Holy Orders for good in nine months or so..if you catch my drift..
I know what the real problem was. He still had something to believe in. I couldn't offer him anything more, and I couldn't change what he had. I couldn't destroy that. I could never destroy that.
Never, because I remember those nights, on the convent roof, when the stars were unreachable. When they held possibility.
When they held my dreams.
Enough of all this sentimental crap. On to the letters:
Well, I'm glad somebody bothered to write to me this week.
'Dear Sister Janice
I am a best-selling novelist and stylish international-woman-of-repute. I have spent the last couple of years hard at work on my latest instalment in a highly-successful series, and I just can't do it any more.
It all seems so pointless, and empty. I don't know if I still possess the will to write.
Yours
oh... why do people sign themselves so I can't read it? There's some crap about King's Cross train station, and a platform between platforms, on the back there's a picture of a boy in specs and a little green creature... I don't know. She's probably on drugs.'
Anyway:
Dear Drug-Woman,
I can't lie to you. It probably IS pointless and empty, but perhaps you should come off the pills before you attempt the next chapter. What's all this talk of secret chambers? Sweetie, all that Freudian crap was done to death by the Victorians. Read some Edgar Allan Poe, or get a grip. Preferably both.'
Remember if you're really stuck, you can always write about yourself. You know the subject intimately, you'll please at least one person and if you can get some poor sucker to read it to the end, that's a bonus.
I'm enclosing a copy of a Classic Work Of Fiction in the hope that it will inspire you. Note how the author's seemingly banal insights into his own life come together to form a coherent, devastating whole.
Yours
Sister Janice'.
I sent her my Adrian Mole book. The only reading material I had, until a copy of 'For Women' mysteriously found its way under the shed door one night when I was orbiting Venus. I hope she finds it useful, and appreciates it. I now have nothing to prop up my hi-fi with.
Be beautiful, my little asteroids of amazement, and may God..
May God do whatever it is he does.
Sister Janice Slejj
If you have a problem that you would like Sister Janice to help you with then mail her here!
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BLACK BERET
When you walk into a cafe' wearing a black beret, you'll have to take
responsibility for anything that happens.
This city allows you to own your titles.
Without hesitations, and any without proof. Say it, and you can own it. Just say
the words, "I'm a musician." And it's yours.
My new black-beret friend smelled of good conversation. And he reeked of
familiar spices and body odor. I couldn't get close enough. We were both there
to hear the live music. I was there to support my roommate, a singer in local
coffee shops. Mr. Beret is one of her groupies.
"Are you a musician too?" I asked him. "Well, I... um, I own five instruments.
Does that count?"
I've been in this town for only a day now. I have only breathed twice. Once to
smell the art in the air. And once to become part of the painting. Invigorated
by both breaths, I lightly scolded him,
"Own it. Don't make humble apologies. Own your title. Are you a musician?"
"Yes," he said, "I'm a musician." I felt confident at that moment that this city
was going to be very good for me, and now and then I might even try giving some
of its energy back to the locals for their own good as well.
We continued with usual conversation... starting with the explosive worshipping
power of mountains, and ended with Kentucky firefly miracles. He paused for a
moment and then asked me the one question that has forced me to take such a long
refuge with you this night, "So you're a musician, too?"
I must have stuttered something incomprehensible as I watched everyone in the
cafe' freeze and turn to me, waiting for my answer. I looked around at them all,
trying to explain to this inquisitive crowd the urgency of why I suddenly had to
meet my friend, um, Irma, yes that's right, and if you would please excuse me,
I...
At the same time I heard my soul knock on the walls of my chest. Her voice
echoed, as she attempted to use my throat pipe as a primitive loudspeaker to
have her voice reach past the very top of his beret and spread to all the
corners of the room.
"YES! YES! Hey you beret man! The answer is YES! She is a musician! Hey! (clink
clink clink) Look down here! She won't say it, but here I am! I'm her musician!"
But I simply could not own it. I just stuttered something, then cunningly
changed the subject. With every uh huh, and oh really?, I was desperately racing
inside.
"Yes, I'm teaching myself to play the guitar. Does that count?
And yes, recently I stayed up until the early parts of morning vibrating,
pulsing with music and words that demanded to be placed together within the arms
of a first and second verse, a chorus, and five guitar chords. The next morning
to please my hovering task master, I wrote another song.
This one was exact. Precise. "Yes, this is what I feel, with every chord, with
every phrase. This... is my moment's everything."
Any guitar would agree. Regardless of skill, talent, or situation... such a
precision, such a delicate exactness, such an overwhelming "ah, yesss...." is
really what their musician-owner is looking for.
So why, within these black beret hours could I not own my musician title?
I went home.
That's it.
I want it.
I symbolically closed the door to my room. My new room in this new city is
ceremoniously empty. It has only a window, and a heater vent. The floor is a
hard wooden one. I have no bed, just a sleeping bag.
I sat on my hard floor. I stared at my empty walls.
No.
I want it. I want it all.
"Full is my room, for I am in it."
And slowly, radiantly, stubbornly, I began to paint the walls with my mind. I
splashed colors everywhere. My floor was suddenly decorated with a most
enchanting Persian rug. I want it. I want to own it.
An hour later I got up and found construction paper and that fascinating sticky
tack stuff, and I carefully hung these colors side by side on the wall near the
floor where I lay my pillow.
"These Colors: Reserved for Words."
I found out on this day, first and most holy, what I want to own. And now, for
the first time in my life, and forever to fly from this page to every corner of
every universe,
it
is
mine.
Read me personally, for it is mine. Read it sacredly, for I share it with YOU.
Read it loudly, for it is declared.
I am a poet.
I am a poet.
I am a poet.
I cannot deny the existence of words in my universe any longer.
I cannot pretend that runs of words do not marathon in my veins daily.
I cannot suffocate their plea for air with my careless indifference.
I will not deny them the necessity of weeping out loud. I know my own far too
well.
Somehow I have done the world a great injustice. I have thought all this time
that for my poems to exist outloud they needed to be good. So I hushed my
rustling pages under resisting journal locks for years, like children who are
forced to play the quiet game on family vacations.
And, to you dear Mr. Beret Man, I AM a musician! In this city, I need not prove
this to you with my own favorite maroon beret or with my guitar. However, my
clanging, un-inhibited musician will have to wait in her place behind my rib
cage for the time being.
I am a poet first.
Oh, friends, I own it. It is mine. Like how it must feel to take a ride in your
brand new dream car. And then, to put those keys in YOUR pocket.
Whether my words are worth your time or not is of such a meaningless
consequence. But um, wait... before you go, come here with me.
Just,
just look at her for a moment.
Oh, here she comes.....
(isn't she simply radiant?)
"Hello, world.
Wow, what an introduction I received. Thanks for coming. I'm so happy to be
here. So, yeah, here I am."
Emily Ann Potter
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Why the Aislers Set are Great -
An Interview with Amy Linton
I believe it has been made quite obvious that the editors of this site think the Aislers Set are great. It was, thus, just a matter of time before they got round to interviewing their unsuspecting godmother, Amy Linton. Here's what happened:
1. Do you mind that we nicked the name of your song? What is the song about anyway?
No I certainly do not mind. Now, it seems completely fictitious and a bit nonsensical to me when I listen to it. Some lines are just words that sound good. But mainly I guess it was, for me, about taking control of and having a confidence in sexual desire. Not necessarily about "outing" a sexuality but rather a sexualness. The hero was the object of my wantings but the friends turned out to be far more sexy. I guess I veiled that pretty well.
2. Why "terrible things happen"? How do you mean that?
Actually the title just came about while Mike Schulman and the group were laying out the album cover. I spilled beer on the photographic proof of the final image, a very expensive little photograph. The picture smeared and got all sticky and I was oh so sorry, and Mike, a wonderfully understanding guy, consoled me with a simple "well, terrible things happen." And then we decided, since we were in a bit of a time crunch for a name anyway, that it would suit the record just fine.
3. What inspired you to making the Aislers Set?
I was in a band before called Henry's Dress. I started writing songs that didn't quite fit in with the noisy garagy sound of that band and the other players weren't too keen on playing slowish less riffy music. That was the excuse anyway as I think Been Mistreated is pretty riffy. So that band split up and I just decided to record the songs on my own. The Aislers Set as a group of people didn't actually form until later on. We came together just as I was finishing the record. We re-recorded a song or two so they could be represented on the LP. And Wyatt wrote Why Baby Why.
4. What was the best moment of being in them?
Probably the first shows we played. Real fun parties. Playing parties is the best.
What was the worst?
Right now is probably the worst. Seems there's lots of "business" to do. What with the new record coming out and all.
What does being in them mean to you?
It really means everything because I need it. The outlet. I figure I could be "in" the Aislers set forever. As long as I'm writing and recording. Whether or not anyone else in the world gets to hear it or not. When I first started recording these songs it was not a priority to release them. And though I know it is pop music I feel like what we have documented thus far has been eclectic enough to allow room for anything. Which makes me feel like it, the Aislers set, doesn't have to end ever, no matter what kinds of songs I'm writing.
5. Who are your heroes? Who do you admire, want to be like, who inspires you?
I'm so into my friends right now.
I'm surrounded by people doings wonderfully inspiring things all the time. It's always moving and something is always created worth looking at or listening to or getting involved in. I'm lucky to be involved with a group of artists activists and musicians that consistently support one another. So as typical as it may sound, heroes inspirations and admirations are rooted in my "scene", for lack of a better word. I've certainly idolised historical movements, political musical etc., but right now it's the people around me that affect me the most. Community is ones biggest asset. No, I'm not a hippy.
6. Is the world magical? What do you have faith in?
I did some canning this Christmas. My first time. Apple butter and marmalade. The two-week jellying process was quite magical. I'm obsessed with it actually. And though I do, I would figure no one else has faith in my canning abilities. Though not one case of botulism thus far.
7. Do you think your music has the power to change the world in any way? At least make people happier?
Sure, I guess. I recently read a thread devoted to Aislers set bashing. So I suppose if we can make a group of people upset enough to sit around and complain all day on their computers there must be someone out there who sits around and listens to our records and smiles. About changing the world, I think not. Who knows.
8. What's your favourite place in the world?
Right now, it's late Sunday mornings in my boyfriend's bed.
9. Where would you most like to travel, and, more importantly, how?
I have some friends in a travelling circus in Eastern Europe. That sounds good to me at the moment. I'm homeless right now and for ease of getting to friends' couches I've recently become reacquainted with my skateboard. It's a lovely way to travel probably even in Poland. A bit noisy though.
10. Where would your ideal house be and what would it be like?
This is an interesting question due to my current situation. I've been thinking and thinking about it and still don't know. Part of me wants a one-room cabin with a fireplace and a nearby lake for skipping stones and another part of me wants a flat in a big American city with a vacant basement meant for making music. Sorry about the lack of details. I'd take any private place at the moment. I'll get back to you when I figure my shit out.
11. Could you share with us a dream of yours you'd really, really like to come true?
That people didn't have to be miserable or fuck other people over.
12. What's your favourite album and what's your favourite 7"s, right now?
I haven't had a record player around to use in months and have been listening to a lot of r and b radio so I can't really say but my favourite song from the radio is "hey ma" by cam-ron.
13. And what would your ideal Christmas present be?
A plane ticket to New York.
14. Finally, is there any other question you would like to answer?
Erm, no. Is that the wrong answer?
Dimitra Daisy
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What Made The Smiths Great
There was the occasionally muted guffaw, along with the slightly exasperated
tones of bewilderment, when The Smiths were proclaimed by the NME as the
most influential band ever. That's EVER, folks. The Rolling Stones? Pah! The
Beatles? Not even close, bud! T'Pau? Now there's a thought...
Indeed, for a lot of people, the slightly absurd possibility that
Shropshire's finest could top a poll of the most influential bands was only
slightly more absurd than the fact that a defunct Manchester 4 (and
occasional 5) piece from the 1980's could rest their firm buttocks a-top a
pile of their more illustrious compatriots. Pretty soon, the knives were out
and the sneering amongst the musical establishment had begun. "The Smiths?
Don't make me laugh. They never had a number 1." And 'Bob The Builder' did.
Number 1 singles are hardly a barometer of greatness, are they? If that were
the case, we'd all revere the hallowed tones of Westlife. And, as far as I'm
aware, most of us don't.
Which leads me neatly onto another point often cited in criticism, that
"most people haven't even heard The Smiths." The genreal public? The ones
who buy the records, right? Is that who you mean? Well if it is, then you
couldn't be further from the truth. You hear the Smiths in the Stone Roses,
you hear The Smiths in Oasis, you hear The Smiths in Coldplay, you hear The
Smiths in Radiohead, you hear the Smiths in REM- in short, you hear the
sound and the attitude of The Smiths seeping through every single important
band since the eighties. Have a look at that list again. These are just the
biggies. Ian Brown has talked about the influence that The Smiths had on the
first (and best) Stone Roses record. Noel Gallagher has recently extolled
the virtues of Morrissey, and has talked about how The Smiths changed things
in music, made people believe in music at a time when music was swamped in
synths and synthetics. Ditto Thom Yorke, and Chris from Coldplay. Christ,
even Marilyn Manson has proclaimed their greatness! A veritable barrage of
gushing rhetoric about a band who never had a number 1 single and existed
for only 5 years. 5 years! 4 (proper) albums! And not a dud amongst them.
The Smiths made music matter when one glance at any of the charts in the
sorry eighties told you it didn't. They said SOMETHING. Not in the
pseudo-politicising way of your U2's or your Simple Minds, but with the
brute force of the personal-political. They talked about miserably damp
flats and stagnating at work in a job you hate, or they talked about
unfulfilled love in a way no one else in the history of popular music ever
had, and when they wanted to get political, boy did they get political! Try
'Barbarism Begins at Home', or 'Meat is Murder', or listen to Morrissey talk
about the IRA attack on a Brighton hotel where the then-Prime Minister of
the country was staying: "The only sorrow of the Brighton bombing is that
(Margaret) Thatcher escaped unscathed." It caused outrage at the time, but
it was this type of single-minded conviction that typified not only
Morrissey but also the spirit of The Smiths. They refused to tow the line,
refused to conform to the puerile agenda of the day and, whilst loathed by
many, were loved by others for precisely these reasons.
And that's
the thing. There was no inbetween with The Smiths. You can't just 'like' The
Smiths, in the same way that one can 'like' The Beatles- that would be
impossible. And there, implicitly I think, lies their greatness; that they
can conjure up such incredibly lucid emotions in us all is something that
many bands never get close to. Sure, we can sit and hum along to dear old
Elton John, we can dance and boogie all night to The Rolling Stones, or we
can moonwalk to Michael Jackson, but what we can't do is look into
ourselves, to question our place in society, or find complete and utter
empathy with oneself as we can with The Smiths.
So if greatness, or influence, lies in the legacy one leaves behind, then
The Smiths' are etched in stone, or on the stereo as we insert the new
Coldplay or Radiohead CD.
Paul Williamson
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Race for the prize
Many people find the attraction of football very tricky to grasp. It's just 22 grown men kicking a ball around for an hour & a half and running around. Occasionally they will score a goal and this moment will send their team-mates and fans into wild fits of ecstasy. And nowhere is this ecstasy, this joy, replete with passion and heartbreak, more prominent than in the FA cup.
The FA cup is the oldest domestic cup contest in football and is bound in its own mythology and history. Everyone remembers who their favourite team was knocked out by, and people remember if a huge team is beaten by a smaller team.
The belief that these small clubs manage to conjure up during the cup is a constant source of wonder to me; their players must have total faith that they can beat their mighty opposition. And their players believe it so much that they go out on the pitch and play their proverbial hearts out, and in 90 minutes show the bigger teams that football below the top divisions isn't all bad. Or rather it is the magic, faith and mythology associated with the FA cup, that makes them believe that they are as good as, if not better than, their illustrious opponents. I know which theory I'd like to believe...
One of my earliest footballing memories is from the 1990 semi final of the FAcup, between Arsenal and Spurs, two big London rivals. The match was finely balanced and up steps a young Paul Gasgoigne and hits a free kick of such otherworldly greatness that it certainly wont be rivalled until a young man called Beckham makes it onto the scene. Many times I practised hitting such free kicks in the playground at school and every time the ball went over the fence into an old mans garden. It's such moments of unparalleled greatness that also make this competition sparkle. How many of us recall that late winning goal that's the margin between one team's delight and joy and the other teams utter desolation and misery?
This is why the FA cup is so magical and important to me and millions of other football fans. It invokes such a reaction that it's impossible not to feel connected to what is happening on the pitch.
Even if it is just 22 men kicking a ball around.
David Strange
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