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.

Annotations - The Girl On The Factory Wall

Finally, after almost 20 years, Marg Cornell lives and breathes the rarified air of Doubtless Wonder. Marg was the original star of the show, created by Phil in a late 80s/early 90s maths lesson, in between discussions about the meaning of Twin Peaks, arguments about the relative merits of A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and 3 and attempts to sing the songs of JRR Tolkien without being beaten up every single day of our school lives.
Lots of references, both real world and DW. Obviously, music plays a huge part in Marg's life, so plenty of bands named here, with the chemical plant referred to as a Factory right at the head of the page to start things off.
"Cool As" ...Fuck - The slogan of Clint Boon's stoner cartoon cow (I always wanted an Inspiral Carpets tee shirt but didn't think I'd get away with it. Marg clearly has a rather more relaxed mother than I do...)
Lovecraft - The original incarnation who wrote the songs Bow Down and Lady Fliss.
Floyd, Morrison, Marley and the Sex Pistols, through to "the current crop of Madchester bands." So we're in mid 1990, when baggy ruled the world, George Dubbya's daddy had his finger on the button and the poll tax rioters decimated Trafalgar Square and huge chunks of Brixton.
Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Northside. Good God, Northside! Shall we take a trip?
Hawkwind, Doctor and The Medics, Velvet Underground and Primal Scream; All have their places on the DW soundtrack, and I'm pleased with their inclusion here. The connections? Besides covering Spirit In The Sky, D&TMs also covered Hawkwind's Silver Machine (while Hawkwind themselves frequently collaborated with SF's beardiest wierdy, Michael Moorcock, on tracks inspired by his Eternal Champion stories). Meanwhile, the Velvet Underground (the original Factory band) had an album called Loaded, which was the title of Primal Scream's biggest single from 1991's Screamadelica (but released over 18 months ahead of the album, in March 1990).
A worn out husk full of brittle glass and rusty nails that squealed and scraped as it fought to stay alive - Somehow, Sarah goes from the bright young thing of Another Girl to this broken down robot. The description echoes PKDs ersatz human psychotic and the animatronic creatures which appear in Little Boy Blue.
With her weekend job in Woollies, Marg earned enough to bring home two or three new albums every week - If we ever decide on a fixed running order then this will be the opening story, meaning that this would prefigure the similar description of a young Sarah in Another Girl, rushing home with her LPs stuffed under her coat so old man Schnitzler won't find them. Again, music is massive in the lives of these women.
And a big shout out for Simms Cross Curios where, in 1990/91, I bought my first ever Neil Young LPs.
Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
And here's the Inspiral Carpets tee shirt.
And then there are a couple of boy geniuses, wandering aimlessly round the post industrial wasteland, discussing the possible meaning of Gandalf's horse appearing in Laura Palmer's bedroom and sniffing solvents from a shirtcuff. Well, if Hitchcock can have a walk-on role in his movies then why can't we?