Hematoma

When i came back from India in January (see here), London was even greyer and grizzlier and danker than when i left. So i decided to fuck off to New Zealand for five weeks on my bicycle. While i was in mid-air esconced in the rather pleasant environs of an Emirates Airbus a380 (see here) my brother sent me an email. It was about a dream he'd had. But post dream-description he finished with an open plea to anybody i might meet on the road over the course of the next 36 days.

I've kept it on my desktop always meaning to do something with it, so seeing as this is a post about my brother i think it serves as a dope intro.

*

Carlito's Way has spent much of the last decade hovering expectantly and impatiently at the threshold to the front-room of my top 5 films of all time, without ever ultimately getting in. That door is locked from the inside. But it goes without saying, in the mediterranean bolthole of my all time top 10, Carlito's Way can be found relaxing on a piña colada flex at the edges of the infinity pool round back.

It's a story of decline and fall with a sprinkling of love and a cartload of bugle thrown in, one that an english teacher at school made us watch as a perfect example of a Shakespearian Tragedy. Sean Penn plays Carlito's lawyer Dave Kleinfeld, a brilliant Jew who gets sucked into his client's former life of drugs and crime, the life Carlito is trying so hard to leave behind. There's a phat exchange between the two that my man Alfie is particularly fond of. 

Carlito: You ripped him off, didn't you?

Kleinfeld: What?

Carlito: Tony T. You did take the million dollars, didn't you?

Kleinfeld: (guiltily) Yeah.

Carlito: You ain't a lawyer no more, Dave. You a gangster now. On the other side. A whole new ball game. You can't learn about it in school, and you can't have a late start.

*

Anyway, a couple of years ago i had a party for my 30th birthday. Dresscode Miami Vice. And my brother came as Kleinfeld. I think it's the best interpretation of a dresscode i've ever seen. I'm not being biased, if it was shit i'd be the first person to rinse him and blog about it. Pressed grey suit, starched white shirt with dangly golden collar pin, yellow tie, and a blonde afro wig. Like all the best art, it went over most people's heads. Those who did get it though, could hardly speak for half an hour.

Best of all he'd massively reddened the area around his nostrils above his upper lip and left sprinklings of flour there. To show the mountain Kleinfeld's nostrils were climbing on the daily to quench his penchant for the pesky gack, an affliction that gets completely out of control towards the end of the film. Miguel told me after that people kept coming up to him at the party, saying by the way mate, sick party, but you might want to sort your nose out. Funny thing is, my brother didn't touch the narcs all night. He doesn't do narcs. Hardly ever. 

What he does do is poems.

Which is a long-winded setup of the below. A poem of his called Hematoma, about his predilection for D&B, and whatever else you might want it to mean when you read it. It's one of my favourites.

Hematoma

The vinyl was bible-black, I traced all its lineages

Its lyrics, its incisions into what surrounded me, to the core

It would sing in its own language of praise to me

It made me feel alive, in its black haloes and its songs of happiness.

They played that vinyl at a rave

And someone took an overdose and died. 

All the charcoal coagulum in the world

Couldn't save that geezah

I sometimes take out the tapepack from that night 

And try and listen back, for the five minutes they spliced out 

When they upped the lights and switched off the PA.