B-side

things have changed since the days of progressive rock,
the whole idea of the concept album...
i once owned this copy of a music magazine: MOJO...
when magazines were still in print...
that's the thing with me -

three passions in my life, three great loves in my life...
cycling, music and philosophy:
if i said that i loved poetry i'd be lying...
since i imagine myself as writing it -
with this little beast there's a love-hate relationship -
it's hardly a love: it's a medium where my three loves come together...

but a lot has changed since the progressive rock days of the concept album...
what album topped the MOJO top 50 albums from
the progressive rock genre?
Pink Floyd's dark side of the moon...
who was second? ah...
YES' close to the edge:
personally i preferred the yes album...
Jethro Tull's Aqualung was way down the list...
Radiohead's OK computer wasn't unsurprisingly high...

but i would have topped the list with
King Crimson's in the court of the crimson king...
never mind...
i'd love to start a petition for all
the Red Hot Chilli Pepper albums to be released...
only upon hearing some of the B-sides from By the Way...

then moving to the B-sides of Blood, Sugar, ***, Magik...
i'm not sieving through the B-sides of Californication...
i'd want to start a petition for
all the Red Hot Chilli Pepper albums to be released
like Stadium Arcadium was released...
as a double-album... ****'s sake...
the artistry of this band is inexhaustible!

ALL RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS' ALBUMS SHOULD BE RELEASED AS DOUBLE-ALBUMS...
that would be ****** innovative:
a natural progression from progressive rock...
all other mentions of progression the spheres of politics and

sociology blah blah ought to begin with... this...
i'm just surprised "they" only figured it out with Stadium Arcadium...

i mean: this B-side of the band is like:
i remember the days when bands would have
INSTRUMENTAL tracks, most notably Iron Maiden and
Metallica... take for example the Teatro Jam...

vocals brought to a bare minimum or nothing at all...
yes... i feel privileged to get a sneak peek into
the potential for the "concept" of the double album...
oh... sly technicalities...

i'm seriously not the type of a Matthew Arnold type...
crying myself to sleep after seeing Liszt play and swoon
the ladies...

i stopped caring about the "lady department" of my life...
that's how the story goes...
Matthew Arnold went to a Liszt concert
and he went back home and cried about how Liszt:
the virtuoso managed to swoon the ladies...
it helped that i was working those two gigs
and i wasn't just a fan...
because watching the women watching
these guys on stage helped with
the required attire of the security services...

perhaps i wasn't jumping up and down...
but i was "secretly" tapping my feet...
i chose the wrong instrument:
like any boy does when he has no band mates...
tried my chances on the guitar...
i should have been a drummer...
envy of the world could not topple what i'm interested
in / with anyway...

my solitary existence is enough
for whatever is not enough for others...
beside the double-album fixation,
i have a more potent "fixation": it's an analogy...
the Matthew Arnold vs.
                 Matthew Conrad (that's me) analogy...

poor M. Arnold went home weeping
at his inadequacies, poets are never favoured by women...
poor sod... how could he cushion himself against
the onslaught of Liszt? he couldn't...
back in the day you went to see a composer play...
you just bought a ticket... even today...
you go to an opera... what can you scavenge?
merely the ******* programme... but moi?
i was working... sure...
but i was probably the only person working
that double shift who ended his shift buying
a T-shirt of the band... that's a nice cushion to have...

it sort of distanced me from envy...
from utter despair... i didn't want to be on the stage...
i didn't want to be those guys...
i was just happy buying the band's T-shirt...
i switched off in that moment...
moments prior i was worried about crowd
safety intrusions into my psyche...
the next... after all was said and sang...
i emerged like i just went and saw my
"new" favorite band for "free": well...
i got paid to see them... that's also crucial...
i was paid to see them overseeing the crowd seeing them...

maybe that's why... my focus was split...
splintered in half...
i was of a conscious akin
to a lightning bolt splitting a tree in half...
i forgot despair... i thought about seeing
them live back in circa 2004 when
the London Arena in the Docklands was still viable...
with Chad Smith pre-warming before the gig...
walking in the crowd seemingly unnoticed
in a cowboy hat... hell...
i was almost an optometrist
when Frank Bruno brushed shoulders
with me coming back from ring-side
at that Tyson fury match-up... patient little me...

i've landed the perfect job...
i remember the days when my former school-friends
would joke about me not having a job...
being misdiagnosed as a "schizophrenic"...
what the **** did they do? oh... right...
one worked in a pub... another worked in Homebase...
this general DIY wholesaler...
i was cycling past where he worked...
it's getting torn down...
i only laugh at things that other people
don't find funny: most notably my own thoughts:
or thereby a lack of them... and to think...

all it took: to be in the position
i'm in now was being "nice" to my next-door neighbour...
the same "******" story: it's not what you know...
it's who you know... no...
i couldn't possibly be the next Matthew Arnold
bemoaning whatever successes Liszt had with women...
i got a Red Hot Chilli Pepper T-shirt...

there is healthy consumerism and
there's unhealthy consumerism...
the healthy type of consumerism is akin to:
             buying a memento...
some sort of memorabilia...
i love that sort of consumerism...
since i was working i couldn't take pictures of the events...
but it has become apparent...
the T-shirt saved me from the agony
akin to Matthew Arnold's agony...
i rather think i know what i'm doing...
it's not exactly ontologically based with a bias...
it's what i've acquired...
of course i'm seeking fame...
but it's not fame associated with being alive...
it's more a fame centered with: when i am gone...

when i satiate all that's mortal about me...
that's why i reject the motives for employing
the tactics of: fake it until you make it i.e. CREDIT...
i work on a debit allowance...
i spend what i earn rather than borrow in order to spend...
sure... i'll miss out on... wait... wait...
what am i going to be missing out on?
i love the company of my coworkers...
sure... i'm not a brain surgeon...
my mother is currently watching this ****** show:

the good doctor... no! that's why doctors are not walking encyclopedias...

that's why they specialize...
no chance in hell is there a "god" in the medical profession... PLATE OF BROWN... sweet instrumental...
progressive instrumental...
bourbon is the sweeter version of whiskey...
probably the greatest "thing" to come out of H'america...
prior to the blues and jazz...
and i get told: white man bad... slavery bad...
sure...

until the original slavery emerged as introducing
the black man to musical instruments that gave
the poor white boy prune an escape from classical music...
i don't see what the "*******" problem is...
talentless people drowning gripping to razor blades...
sure... i'm sort of jealous... but i'm not envious...
i allocated myself a company of Ovid and Horace...
Milton is not going to be replicated...
i want to write something:
i will write something that's properly
resembling the sort of life worth living
at the turn of the 21st century... oh ****...
i forgot to mention my 4th love...

drinking... i mean...
whether it's bourbon or whether it's whiskey...
you can't really love something unless you bring it
to the altar of excesses... and i do just that...
perhaps i have room for a fifth... but?
seeing how my father behaves around my mother?
i hardly "think" that's a viable choice for me... ergo...
i can spare myself the unnecessary details
and go straight after the prostitutes:
i don't mind sharing... after all...
i'm not sharing alimony guilt / no guilt...
i figured out a way to avoid making "profile-contact":
eye-contact i can stomach...
but all this a priori modulations of man...
no wonder dates are so boring: dating...

i don't want to know anything about
another person: PRIOR...
i want to find out... gain knowledge...
but if i'm about to be served something on a:
precursor basis? that's... ******* boring...
no wonder i'm not interested... and never will be...
it like... you either get given a fish...
or you're given a fishing rod... and some maggots...
people have their fiddly bits...
but if people expose their fiddly bits...
the stereotype is that man is the "hunter"...
what the **** am i hunting?

i don't like hunting: i like scouting...
that's the entire problem
with Darwinism mingling with "humanism":
too much is borrowed from the natural world....
and when that happens?
imposing the natural world
on the technical world of man rarely helps anyone...

          by proxy or default... or perhaps by simply
the spiral in control of ad hoc...
i write... after all writing is an extension of thinking...
it's not an invitation to speak...
people complain about their internet access...
leverages of the comment section...
maybe i just figured a way to bypass unwarranted
"attention".... writing that's not to be sung...
lyricism: as much as i love it
i abhor it...
           because i'm not even close to singing it...
i'm also not even close to speaking
it... best left in the vaults of thought...
after all: i'm measuring my steps for a posthumous
fame...

           i couldn't rob an entertainer from his
today: our daily bread...
and there's always one member in the band
that's going to be grounded in:
a focus of creativiy:
grounded in not allowing all the caveats of fame
that come with it (fame):
the crab bucket principle...
me? i was lucky to watch both of their shows
in London...
                  while actually watching the crowd...
Matthew Arnold would have felt so much
better if he managed to get a Liszt T-shirt...
a consumer statement akin to:
i was there...
       i saw them live... look how happy i am
to be alive... i got the mother-******* T-shirt...
who gives a rat's *** about their private lives...
i too have a private life... i write scribbles that do not rhyme
and i'm juggling the idea of counter to
Nietzsche and poet-philosopher... philosophy is in
the background... but it's more a case of poet-journalist...
and i like the forest in the winter at night...
and i adore aloneness... which is a quality of being
that's un-reflective / restrictive of the expressions:
being alone or being lonely...
it's dissociative... not associative...

and i adore writing as a way to create constrains...
constraints...
                           because if i were to jump the fame
bandwagon of: "fame ruined my mortality"...
i'd be making videos... exposing myself to the world
of bad people with even more bad ideas...
**** me: filter in place...
all are welcome who seek to be served...
the rest can snuggle in a crab-bucket elsewhere...
by just consolation:
"being there" will pass me by...
i will have no concern for the world...
instead: the world will have concern for me
having past through it... that's how Heidegger's
idea is inverted:
   i have no concern for the world... for "being there":
i'm already "here"...
           for me the world is: there's being...
i can't pnpoint a "there" and couple it to "being"
to create Heidegger's bad grammar...
there's being: der welt... the world...
but there's also the self-being: selbst-sein...
                as much as there's the selbst-sein-im-der-welt...
there's also the selbst-sein-im-die-sein...
contrast: selbst-sein-im-die-selbst...

ha ha... me and a "girlfriend"? captain complications
"autistic"? no wonder i spend most of my time
around animals... this one time in the supermarket
a boy in a buggy started pointing at me...
see! that's the problem! the creatures that least understand
the complications of language: man can arrive at...
understand me best... we communicate on the focus
of onomatopoeias... syllables... vowels-alone...
finger-pointing: ooh! ooh! beard! tall man! beard!      

mein gott!
the idea of me being married is a bit like thinking
either Nietzsche or Kierkegaard being married...
or for that matter Kant...
i just kept focusing on the voyeurism presented
by pigeons... how many times they get rejected:
Darwinism is a fake:
it's not about the survival of the fittest...
it's about the survival of those who are subdue
about making the most mistakes...
i opted out... i like my comforts...
i'm not a social animal... i'm not a political animal...
ego: non animal-sociale...
   non animal-politica...
       ego-ergo: creatura-ex-solatium!
i'm a creature of comfort...
          
         i don't need complications
of womens' exfoliations...
"expectastions"...
                       bye bye... wave goodbye
the would be sinking Titanic...
       ice is a new hello!
         "women and children first"...
sink the ship... count the *****...
no... because this "****" doesn't end... unless it ends
with the DRILL FABRIC OF A MARCH...

not since it was so easy for the Islamic
Conquistadors to be made so easy
and for us "remainers" to have it made to "hard"...
then again... eh?! keep what?!
leap over what burp of a frog?!
            i'm pretty sure the Slavic world
imploded when they heard about the antics
of the "west"... i'm pretty sure the Russians were
like: before... we reach that summit of insanity...
i... a Russian... will sooner ****-fiddle an Ukrainian
with war... before the cancer spreads...
and so it happened...
                         west: my ungovernable wet ***!
"west"...
                       i might speak the language:
but churning through the outliers i'm ANTI...

  any deficiency in the orthodoxy use of language is:
HERESY...
           i have LIMITS...
**** it... i'm siding with the Russians...
i don't care...
              **** Ukraine: for Chernobyl!
we might as well find our nearest sacrifice...

BUT I KNOW THAT I'M ALREADY DEAD!
i'm just waiting for the "PAUSE" buttonz...

yeah... like that joke...
an Olaf... a Lothar and a Conrad walk into
a bar...
    only Conrad walks out...
why? because he didn't make any Hebrew jokes...
and he drank more whiskey than both
Olaf and Lothar...
i know i'm not funny...
i'm not supposed to be: ******* funny!
i'm supposed to be imitation-cannibal!

A-side

i'm truly lucky to be alive...
at least in my generation...
i was 13 when Californication came out,
i spent one afternoon
with my now estranged uncle
listening to the record while
he was working on his Porsche
eating take-away Kentucky fried
chicken...
                     talking about music and life
and *** and what not...
mostly girls...
            
my sympathy for Ukraine? none...
maybe Ukraine was part of the Soviet
Union maybe not (obviously)
but: yeah... thanks for Chernobyl...
my mother's premature chronic pain...
i might be the last drinker in the family
lineage who takes drinking
seriously: as a way to progress intellectually
but my mother's on opiates...
i was born with a "mark of Cain"...
whatever the hell it was...

it was a ******* nuclear REACTOR...
it wasn't a nuclear BOMB...
a bomb EXPLODES... a reactor IMPLODES...
who know what the ****** difference
is... but give it enough time
and you'll find out...

well... it must be bad... since how many *******
tests did the Americans the Russians
and the French carry out with bombs?
Godzilla blah blah...
       but it only took ONE bad reactor to make
people look all-crazy-at-each-other...
******* KARMA... oh yeah...
it wasn't enough to do both Hiroshima
and Nagasaki... more tests required!

and all those cases of freakish premature
cancers in eastern Europe... hell... elsewhere too...
last time i heard an imploding nuclear
reactor is like detonating 400 Hiroshima type
bombs...
and the effects were immediately apparent
in the botanical kingdom...
effects which even reached the region
where i was born...
   it was a case of Spring-Autumn...
     oh yeah... you had streaks of trees that
were autumn like: perhaps even past autumn...
sort of dead-ish... and streaks of trees
that were: spring-esque...

by then, no one knew...
                             the crescendo of the collapse
of the Soviet union...
a bit like the crescendo of the end of the second
world war and the all great h'american hard-on:

but let's face it... no other culture was so
good as the late 20th century American culture...
the Beatniks,
Charles Olson - the only post-modernist i have
any respect for... if i can call him that...
then again... i'm jumping hoops and conclusions
that that non-verbatim...

and you have to admit...
    no no... it wasn't because i was working both
the shifts for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig at
the London stadium: but let me tell you what...
i would have been completely ****** (OFF)
if i didn't buy tickets for both days...

day 1: opened with CAN'T STOP
day 2: opened with ALL AROUND THE WORLD
day 1: played UNDER THE BRIDGE for the encore
day 2: didn't play UNDER THE BRIDGE for the encore...

proper old-school...
that other shift i did where Weezer, Fall Out Boy
and Green Day played...
even the guys i was working with were like:
they (i.e. Green Day) 'these guys don't know when to
shut up'... i was like... oh... right, this song?
they'll finish on that one:
   it's one of those sentimental closure songs...
one of the girls sang that song
in an assembly when we were leaving school:
(have the) time of your life...

i was sure of it... oops... a ******* Dawid Bovie cover!
sure... people are at a gig... we're too,
but we also want to: ******* go home...
and we can't until all these ******* leave first!
ugh!

- thank god (casually expressed, eat dog doog...
yes - intentional, FELA'S **** is the *******
groove party - food)
i'm not one of those people forming a cliche
opinion about whether i'm a fan of the Beatles
or whether the Rolling Stones...
ask me again... James Brown yes...
and Red Hot Chilli Peppers' A-sides
or Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides...

now... that's a tough one...

mind you: what gave birth to the Communist project?
pan-Slavism...
there were plenty of Hebrews living in Russia
and in Poland... i guess those people were
like... sure... let's try...
if we **** up: we'll **** up SPECTACULARILY...
and "we" did... but... the current reiteration
of "communism" in the VEST?
hmm... all this post-grammatical-mystique...
oh look! adjective, verbs, nouns,
the indefinite article and a definite article
are being neglected by the hyper-focus on pronouns...

it's like a second imaginary Chernobyl imploded
and fried people's intellectual capacity
for formal / casual conversation talking
about the weather and buses being late...

i'm only saying that Red Hot Chilli Peppers is
a band of / for my generation because...
i've already come across younglings
that haven't heard of them...
YES!                             and the band too...
but finally! i've reached the cut-off point
where i'm part of a zeitgeist that is reaching its
zenith-nadir...
                       the equilibrium akin to the Olympic
passing of the torch... although:
there's not much of a fire left...
       just an unlit torch... instead of fire: ambers
of a once fire...

but that's what happens... i understand the paranoid
Russians all too well...
back in 2007 they were such welcoming people:
i still don't understand why the western media
narrative about McDonald's being shut down
in Russia suddenly turned into a new fast food
chain under a different name serving the same food...
when i was in Russia: i swear to god...
i didn't see a single McDonald's... so... twinkle toes...
hum hum hmm...

were "my" people paid reparations
for the **** invasions? i know the Hebrews were...
oh yeah: we had that glorious task of being
invaded and then told to stack 'em bricks
for the crematorium CHIMNEYS...
well... it could have been worse...
we could have been told to ***** the NECROPHILIC
architecture of ancient Egypt in the guise
of the pyramids...

and because being under the Soviet yoke
of influence... and then... oh god! they gave "us" a
******* first non-Italian POPE!
one hand washes the other
but neither hand knows what the other hand
is doing... from ultra-atheism to ultra-catholic
conservatism...
"our" capital shouldn't be called Warsaw...
(no jokes about that, unlike Bangkok)
                                it should be called Seesaw...

backwards and forwards... as Norman Davis pointed
out: god's playground...
which it is... mind you: i'm sort of bad tempered
when it comes to being a Siamese-twin with
my Deutsche neighbours...
lucky that some of those Schwabs or Saxons
migrated... settled on some ****** weather island
and mingled with the Velsh and the Picts and
whatever other Celtic remains were left
in Europe...

oh but yesterday... that old man made me lose my
cool... i was already sweating it out for over
an hour and he exclaims in the street like
those manic street Apocalypse preachers:
where are you lights!
if i stopped i would have properly explained
than merely pointing at my rear-light glowing
red and telling to *******...
BUT YOU WOULDN'T SAY JUST AS MUCH
IF IT WAS ONE OF THOSE INDIAN
DELIVEROO ELECTRIC BICYCLE GUYS?!
would you, old man?
mind you: old man... you give a rat's *******
about one cyclist... then tell me...
who does your council employ... shouldn't
the street lights already be switched on?!
    hmm.. already be...
shouldn't the street lights be already switched on?
that sounds... eerie...

shouldn't the street lights already be switched on
shouldn't the street lights be already switched on...
i honestly can't decide upon the correct
grammar... let's be trans-grammatical about that one...
after all... it's all trans-biology anyway...
a bit like Plato telling Sisyphus that the gods
forgot about him and that he can stop his pointless
toiling... or what Plato mentioned about
being punished and being reincarnated
as a woman if one begins as a man...
well: to hell with reincarnation: time's up for
theology now that science speeds things up...

scary world... even scarier people...
THIS DOOR NEEDS HINGES!
bring in the unhinged experts in not-doors!
yesss... we need a house with enough of
BREEZE!
me? i'm just complementing their insanity with
my own special strain that prostitutes call:
GOOD-CRAZY.