Sunday 26 September 2004

On repeat: No One Seems To Know. An unreleased Neil Young song I have on the 2003 European bootleg that Will got for me.

So don't say you lose
And no one else will know...
Once I was in love
Now it seems that time is better spent
In searching and in finding

2152hrs. Have just got off the phone to Ed. Hadn't spoken to him in a while. He was in his garden nr Bury St Edmonds, with a full moon standing next to the pond. Unfortunately the sweet country air was also matched with a lack of phone signal. He was in good spirits.

Went to the City Council's jobs day. It was held at the council office in Victoria Square - probably the most stately place in the city. What a place. It was gorgeous inside. Went to a seminar in the chamber where they obviously hold votes etc. On the 'desk' in front of you there was a microphone and 'yes', 'no' and 'abstain' buttons. Learnt that it is the largest council in the UK, serving over 1m people and employing 53000 people. Also learnt that my applications I had filled in up to now were useless and almost laughable. In one way that's good because I won't ever fill an application form the same way again.

Bukowski's Women gets better and better although the yearning for beer, wine, whiskey, whatever is slightly disconcerting . Here are some snippets:

There is a problem with writers. If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold a medium number of copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold very few copies, the writer thought he was great. If what the writer wrote never was published and he didn't have enough the money to publish it himself, then he thought he was truly great. The truth, however, was there was very little greatness. It was almost nonexistent, invisible. But you could be sure that the worst writers had the most confidence, the least self-doubt....

I foresaw future problems: as a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply dislike people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.