A List of Things

- copying Felix White

A while ago, I saw Felix White post a list of things on Instagram. It wasn’t a schmaltzy list of good things or things to be thankful for or anything, just a list with the energy of something complied as you walk along, phone notes are good for this. I send myself messages. I have no idea why I don’t use notes. I love lists. I used to make one every day, it started with GET UP. SHOWER was next. I wrote this list to stop myself writing other lists. Lists of what I was allowed to eat, lists of what I did eat, lists of how big my wrists were, lists of how small I wanted them to be. Those kind of lists, they’ll eat you alive. For a time, I wrote lists of things I’d done at the end of the day, rather than the tyrannical lists of things I should do. They helped. I liked Felix’s list because it seemed like a list of things outside him, a way of turning towards the world. Sometimes it’s too easy to look inside. I am not a fan of introspection. Everything good that happens, happens outside yourself. Sometimes I think the hardest thing about making things is it means you have to let people see your mind. A list like this, it shows what you notice, what you don’t. It shows here your attention sits. I think of Louise Bourgeois and her Femme Maison series, spanning decades and mediums, a persistent preoccupation, and how she said (I paraphrase) that the problem occurs as soon as you are perceived, this is the point you run away. One of the best lists is in Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, when he lists what everything consists of. It’s a revealing list. I cried the first time i read it. I cry a lot more than I think I do. Before I run away, here’s a recent list of mine:

those fragments of conversations you hear on the Heath on a Sunday morning

Brassic, especially when Erin whispers in Vinnie’s ear and we don’t get to know what she said for ages

Pelicans in the park

When the conversation cuts out the tube and you pick it up on the exact word ten minutes later

Arriving back in Scotland at sunrise and the light making sense

Yellow take away coffee cups

When Vinnie smiles and looks like a goof

Mike Kelley and Lana Del Rey being the same person

Buying a shitty analogue camera and using it just because

Second hand Penguin paperbacks

How much Hastings loves Poirot

Pitching rom-coms

Crying at Mike Kelley cos you’ll never see it (or feel it) again

Bleachers Rollercoaster live version but not the studio one

The security man in the Glasgow botanics chasing the woman who’s stealing the tomatoes

Glaswegian accents when you’ve not heard them for too long

Friends who’re smaller than you insisting they take your suitcase even though it’s bigger than them

Nights when there’s no moon but the stars are out - how does that work

Edna O’Brien

Spring and how it smells. Suddenly

Perfect pop songs. 3.14 minutes of pure joy

how do they do that

Orange sunsets

can I write a 3 minute novel

Horses. No notes

When people laugh in songs

Babe used well in a song

realising you have no idea what a hobby is

even if you did you’d ruin it

occasionally wishing you could live forever but just in one moment but which to choose

wanting to cry because your favourite artists are dead and you can’t talk to them

suspecting talking to them would be a mistake

standing waiting for a lift in a London hotel and the air being exactly the same as it was in Paris when you were 18

the fact there is never new water

that time you took up tennis and took it too seriously

see also ceramics

should really finish this novel

when’s pancake day?

remembering your Melody Maker collection and wondering where it went

‘I have a bohemian girlfriend in Gourock’

Lucinda Williams' Blue but not Joni Mitchell’s

Nights when everyone’s in the same infectious mood and it’s not a bad one

How she stretches sky out for four seconds

‘I wasn’t there to pick holes. I was there to say yes’

Boredom is a verb. It makes you do things

Searching out the script for that Uber scene, just to see it written down

Sometimes being fine. Sometimes realising no film will ever seem as perfect as Prince of Thieves did

Wondering what your characters do when you’re not there

and there’s the sea. Finally.

The 4pm coffee is a mistake

‘and you will die, what are you going to do before you do?’

missing Sneaky’s on a Friday night and how alive we all felt, like something was happening

not knowing or caring what the something was

The drums on Love Buzz

Josh Tillman covering Leonard Cohen

Writing schmaltz and meaning it

Taking work seriously, nothing else

When pandas fall over and they just roll

Give Lana Del Rey the Nobel Prize

Celtic people

check the story about us being sheep (cattle?) rustlers

realising Whipping Boy used portholes twice in one song

getting better. at what and from what you’re not sure

white table cloths and crumpets and third coffees and wondering how you got here

not knowing or caring where here is

Railway arches

playlists of cover songs (and ones that sound accidentally ((?)) like other ones)

think about this more

wishing I could cover my own books. like rewrite them all over again

Bottle alley

I’d rewrite you if I could

Iris Murdoch

‘and doubts and love dig up the world.’

being able to sit in a church and not worry you’ll throw up

Tigons even though it’s bad for them

David Holmes

Knowing when to stop; use first 3.06 minutes of Wilco’s Reservations as an example

Being able to listen to Reservations again

Sometimes just thinking about Nick Laird being that good

using you as a substitute for I

Those days where everyone looks like someone you used to know

When you don’t wear heels and people realise you’re the height of a teacup pig

how do capybaras manage to jump?

the bubble man on the Southbank who clearly hates kids but keeps making the bubbles anyway

everything’s a short story really

daffodils, finally

when the graffiti you wanted as a tattoo is painted over and where’s the photo

‘what do you mean the Scottish animal’s a unicorn, I thought it was a sheep.’

red sandstone buildings

realising the union chapel doesn’t have windows in the steeple and that’s what the sky’s so blue all the way through

chatty taxi drivers

nearly crying cos Trullo’s shut on a Monday and you’re the monster aren’t you

everything is dialogue

would you move home?

second person future tense

Nothing Like You - Frightened Rabbit

ramen with the windows steamed up

painted over signs still showing