Good Friends, You And Me.

My entire head space has been really messed up for about two weeks. I feel like I’ve done nothing and I’ve done everything. I was/still am sick from some sort of virus and I think the crazy has got into my brain.

I was in Stirling two weeks ago to drop off a painting I had finished for RR Angela. As soon as I got it completed, I thought I would be done with painting for a while; but I have wanted to start another one from the final stroke. I realised lastnight that I had finished using all the canvases I bought a year ago on the day I met one of my close friends Adam.

I met him lastnight for a drink and we were talking about how both of us is messed up in the head. It was strange that we were both in the same messed up headspace and we were trying to figure out if we were crazy, or if it was just everyone else around us who was. People throw that phrase around often without really thinking about what it means, but I think in this instance, for both Adam and me, it was used completely truthfully. It’s quite a powerful statement.

We were also talking about how we see other people. I don’t think I could actually be with someone again in a relationship. I don’t think I’m suited for it and there is noone who really means that much to me to make any sort of sacrifice for. I don’t know what I’d be looking for and I only feel very marginal internal pressure to be with someone. I think there is an expectation for me to care more about these things and that’s the problem: internal pressure caused by external expectations from pointless, unrealistic social constructs. I think it has been made worse because of the crazy brain virus that has made me less able to connect to people and things, but has made me much more aware of being lonely at the same time. Maxwell calls it stir-craziness – I think I need to look into this.

Also, in trying to find some sort of solution to my craziness, I shaved pretty much all my head. Just thought you should know.

I quite like the painting finished – I hated it for a long time, since it was simplistic and the colours were very plain. I changed it from a realistic style into a more abstract realistic style; with more vivid, meaningful colours, as well as changing elements of the composition. The most obvious addition I think is the addition of the design of my tattoo along the entire left side. The two figures are my two best friends, so there is now a visual representation of myself along with them too.

Good Friends, You And Me.

This is the completed painting itself, based on this picture below.

New Years Eve, 2007.

LOL WE IS IN RONG VIDEO!

Since, like, a week before everyone else had heard of her and the UK charts fell at Lady GaGa’s knees, Easy Realism has been a total believer in her cause.

Sure, she hasn’t a clue how to create an original rhyming couplet, but her first two singles – Just Dance and Poker Face – were slick slices of genius pop which totally hit the mark; with excellent videos and tabloid PR kicking them right up the charts.

Third single Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say), on the other hand, is as awkwardly written as its title suggests; and sounds like she has lifted the backing track to some hideous j-pop and applied her own insipid lyrics.

After that whole episode about Aguilera stealing GaGa’s image – to EPIC FAIL proportions – Easy Realism would expect GaGa to go all out in cashing in on her own visuals – like she did with her two single release videos plus numerous other promos.

However, the video features a Christina-Aguilera/Gwen-Stefani-pastiche GaGa paying needless homage to her Italian ancestry; as opposed to the haute couture underwear and not a lot else style that fans love and boils the Daily Mail’s blood. There is not a drop of originality in either the song or the video – I am very disappointed.

Christina GaGuilera

Obviously incenced by Aguilera’s recent blocky-fringe theft, GaGa has opted to hit her back two-fold. Not only has she created a ridiculous pastiche of Aguilera’s ridiculous pastiche of the entire 1930s from when she released that album of unconvincing blues tunes…

…but she has also made an allusion to Aguilera’s Dirrrrrty period – presumably by turning up to this day’s shooting without shampooing her hair extensions.

Gwen Stefani Germanotta

Not content on hijacking the career and image of Aguilera alone, GaGa has taken on the persona and Eastern slave trading ways of Gwen Stefani.

Did someone say Harajuku girls?

However, even with the crap music and uninspired video; there is still potential for this guff to be a hit. Not only are there a hundred million worse songs that have not only done well in the charts but been contenders for the top spot, this video includes allusions to hardcore porn and those creepy dogs that showed up in her Poker Face video like diabolical signatures; which will surely seal this release as a mainstream hit.

Looks like she’s finally made a bad – but nowhere near devestating – move. Though a duet with Paris could spell career suicide. Watch this space.

Songs Are Like Tattoos: a retrospective of what I did five days ago.

Easy Realism would like to report that after getting a tattoo last Wednesday, Easy Realism is finding it incredibly difficult not to pick at the itchy scabs. It is healing very nicely though, and Easy Realism staff love it.

I think I am one of those people you see who has spent thousands of pounds on modifying their body, just because they like the feel of it. After one tattoo, sure, I am still about 98% original skin tone; but I seriously enjoyed being tattooed and think there is potential for this new-found hobby to become a massive drain on resources.

I pride myself on being a journalist, writer, blogger and all round wordsmith, yet struggle to put into words how it felt being tattooed.

I went Infinite Ink in Hamilton on time – really, really early on Wednesday morning, for some reason – and the design they had drawn up from my incredibly dodgy sketches was better than I could have imagined; or indeed could have drawn. I was actually really nervous for the whole month the tattoo had been booked, incase they drew it up badly; my feverishly conservative conscience telling me not to do it, to just not turn up on the day.

The design itself was based on the soundhole design from 1970s Eko 12-string models, like my mum’s guitar. She got it at 16 and learned to play on it; then taught me to play on it when I was 16. It is, essentially, a pejorative-gay tribute to Big Kathy.

The tattoo artist – deserving of his title, might I add – knew it was my first tattoo, so he was prepared for me going into shock; talking me through every step of the process.

When the needle actually touched my arm – this is where it gets hard to describe – I was totally fine. I was lying down, so I realised there was no chance I could faint like a complete dandy; but the actual feeling on my arm was hardly noticable. It’s not that I couldn’t feel anything, because there was definitely a sensation; just not one that was wholly unpleasant. It was strange to have something which I was conscious of causing permanent change to an area of skin, but not feeling anything dramatic or akin to religious experience. I just lay there chatting and making crap jokes through the two hour session.

The whole thing was even more enjoyable since I had guilt-tripped RR Angela into coming. That would be a three hour trip from Stirling, at 7.00 in the morning. She deserved it.

She has a tendency to talk, loudly and at an impressively rapid pace. As soon as she left the room, the tattoo artist looked up at me and said: “How does she do that…? It’s a gift… I felt like I was breathing for her!”. There was fear in his eyes.

Of particular excellence was when Angie asked to see the tattoo an hour after its completion – still under cling film wrap. I cannot express my delight as she held back the vomit, brought on by my haemorrhaging arm. I never even knew she was freaked out by blood! Beautiful.

The point is: I enjoyed it too much, and will probably end up covered in tattoos; akin to Cat Man. In fact I am still enjoying it. The weird feeling of it on my upper forearm during the healing process has made me feel somehow more alive. I knew there was something of the self abuser about me.

Easy Realism went out on Wednesday night and got piso mojado, even though Easy Realism knew better; what with the brand new, unhealed tattoo.

Somewhere amid the anthropological mission that was going to a club full of idiots with some messed-up-on-love-and-substances friends in the city centre, I lost all the people I was originally with. Or maybe they lost themselves. I ended up at a party full of people I didn’t know. And cats. Lots and lots of cats.

Last thing I remember was holding a tumbler of straight vodka to my lips before being transported to another room and standing in front of the unfamiliar bathroom mirror; looking at myself and a hundred swirling lights. I found, next to – presumably – the toothpaste, a chain exactly like mine; with beautiful, disembodied bird wings.

I picked it up for closer inspection, and considered nicking it, for the lulz. However, against the will of my inner kleptomaniac – who only wakes up when I drink far too much – I managed to hold back; my conscience stepping in like a Tory Godmother to say: “No! It’s not right! Leave that chain for its rightful owners: those who paid for it (plus you are totally wearing one and don’t need two of them, duh).”

[Scene missing]

The next morning, I went to meet one of the friends who had disappeared the previous night for a pizza and beer breakfast. During mutual psychoanalysis, the trading of big words in convoluted sentence constructions and the frightful discovery of the letters “ROFL” written on my left hand – which I totally thought was a clandestine, second tattoo I had picked up at the party – I realised my chain was missing. I realised then that my conscience was totally wrong to suggest I don’t steal from strangers. I realised then that I would not even have been stealing, since the supposed theft would have in actual fact just been me lifting my own chain from a stranger’s bathroom. The same damn conscience which told me not to get a tattoo in the first place!

It’s just like abortion: I’ve always been a pro-choice liberal. I realise now that my whole life is a struggle between the endless internal dialogue of my conservative super-ego conscience and my free-love-friendly ego. I am never going to listen to the sober voice again! Viva La Piso Mojado!!

My friend and I parted ways on the beautiful, oft repeated line of:

“I do love you, Davie”

“Cheers, you too; can I have a double?”

And then, the contradiction in the conclusion…

Ok, so, then on the early hours of Sunday morning, I was coming home from another party, piso’d and mojado’d. I was rooting around in my rather fetching manbag for change to pay the rudest taxi driver ever, when I found the chain I thought I had lost.

Surely this detail SHOULD be some sort of moral victory for my conservative and sober side. It was correct: I had my chain at all times, and I managed not to hurt anyone by stealing their possessions; but I have decided not to let this information permeate my brain just yet. I’ll be living it up, carefree and without barriers; if only until this information manages to work its way through my grey matter as doublethink.