Annotations - This Is How It Feels

So here we are again with the astounding Inspiral Carpets. This is how it feels to be lonely, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your world means nothing at all. (although I'm sure there are verses where he sings work instead of world, they're both equally valid here). The subtitle, An Investigation, fits with the main title as it's quite an unflattering look at Sciliton, his physical and mental shape, and also with the fact that he's the cop investigating Marg's disappearance.

This piece was started on Saturday the 11th of August, the day I learned that Tony Wilson was dead. Considering how northwest-centric and pop-tastic DW is shaping up to be, I thought it only fitting to commemorate his passing with a cameo appearance which tops and tails this piece. Granada Upfront was the late night discussion show he presented with Lucy Meacock, where a semi inebriated bunch of students, agitators and stooges got their chance to harangue selected special guests on key topics of the day. Back before TV went 24 hour, this was about the only thing worth watching after 11 on a weeknight, and I'm sure it would have covered the disappearances.

Professor Stanley Unwin was a true English eccentric, inventing his own language which was put to great use on Ogden's Nut Gone Flake and in films and TV shows like Gerry Anderson's Secret Service and Carry On Cleaning.

Her mother was a basket case - As mentioned in Factory Wall, Mrs Cornell is not coping well with the modern world.

Sightings in Liverpool and Manchester - Again, we appear to be about halfway between the homes of Merseybeat and Madchester.

Roger Cook - Fat, punchy investigative reporter, famous for almost getting beaten up in the course of every single story he ever covered. Seriously mining some early 90s vibes here., with shit that even I had forgotten about...

Dennis Nilsen - Another great English eccentric who kept his dead boyfriends under the floorboards of his London home.

Schrodingers Cat - A famous thought experiment intended to show the effect an observer has on events at the quantum level. Basically, a cat, a vial of acid, a gieger counter and a tiny piece of radioactive matter are all sealed in a solid box. The radioactive matter is decaying and may or may not break down within an hour. The geiger counter is set to recognise this break down, whenever it occurs, and respond by breaking the vial. The acid contained gives off a gas which is immediately fatal to cats in even the tiniest of doses. We know that the breakdown will occur, the glass will shatter and the gas will escape, but unless we open the box to check, we don't know if it's happened yet. In our minds we hold two opposing views of the cat, alive and dead, with no way to check except opening the box and changing the nature of the experient. For Sciliton and everyone else, Marg is in that same state for now.

Gregor Samsa - Awoke one morning to find that he had been transformed into a giant insect, according to Kafka's Metamorphosis (probably a key work for DW, with good and bad changes occuring constantly). The tiny, transmogrified Marg's put me more in mind of the tiny shrieking victim at the end of the original 1950s The Fly. Help me! Help meeee!

Twin Peaks again - Because everyone was watching it, and Sciliton probably identifies with the unconventional Cooper.

And here's where it got away from me, with the sudden introduction of Sciliton2, 3 & 4. The basic idea of this piece was to introduce the cop and move on, but I didn't just want him to be a stereotypical detective. Little did I realize that he would be quite this fucked up. If you look closely, you might see that his story here echoes/prefigures xxxx in xxxxxx. His desk in the centre of the room, covered in documents that map out a life, the numb, dead right arm (although in Sciliton's case it's only temporary), the scars on his body that will later be revealed as the result of a car crash when he was a beat cop... None of that means anything at the moment, but with some of this stuff, I'm layering in plot points which will only make sense once you've read the whole thing through once, then start all over again, spotting stuff that didn't register the first time round.

Very few references from here to the end of the chapter. Man at C&A should help to fix us in the 90s again, just in case anyone forgets where we're up to, while the Ajna Chakra is the supposed resting point of the third eye, between the eyebrows. In this case, it sees past the solid, physical reality of Sciliton and the romanticised version created by his self image, Sciliton2, which is harsh in its criticisms of the man but still stops short of examining his motives. Sciliton3 has no such qualms, pulling up something rather nasty from his past, with the unspoken implication that he's yet another abandoned child, with his search for Mummy sublimated into the cycle of praise and rejection from other women who will never match up to his needs.

I don't know what the pills are, but they sound like good ones. He drifts back into the lounge in time to hear the chapter being wound down with a typically portentous Wilsonism, in the form of a quotation from The Times They Are A-Changing by Bob Dylan. For reference, the full quote is

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'

Which is probably also going to have greater signifigance as time goes by.