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Last night, I e-mailed Nancy.
>I’m very taken with a nut, I said.
And she e-mailed back
>It’s a newbie phase, sweetie. Bob was just the same.
I found a small part of myself hating her for that, but I woke up this morning with the usual pangs, missing America and wishing we were walking through Muir Woods together.
Observation: Why is it that technology designed to be used by women is white, while technology designed to be used by men is black? The washing machine vs the VCR. The tumble dryer vs the remote control. Computers, on the other hand, are grey, which must be one of the reasons they’re so intriguing.
SATURDAY
I appear to have given up on the real world. At least, I am spending less and less time in it and as a result I find that it has transformed into a drab waystation for the satisfaction of what Mac calls ‘meat needs’. Food, a bed, a shower.
The most valued part of my day begins around six in the evening, which is morning in California, of course. And also, conveniently enough, when telephone charges fall. It ends at dawn. In between Mac and I compose our e-mail, argue through the finer points of this and that, draw our secret conclusions. We don’t talk about our lives, what we eat for breakfast. We don’t have lives as such to talk about right now, we only have survival tactics: sleep, drink, eat, shit. We don’t go in for revelation. We’re already far too intimate. We chew over the things that matter. The issues.
For example, is the real world binary or analogue? According to Mac, the binary world of 1s and 0s that the computer understands isn’t necessarily a description of real reality because real reality deals more in degrees of grey than in black and white. But then light grey is not-dark grey just as much as black is not-white. Which makes it binary. We considered this conundrum at our respective screens six thousand miles apart and came to the conclusion that we’d got ourselves into a loop. So I called it a day, which it was actually becoming, and fell asleep with sunlight beginning to warm my eyelids.
SUNDAY
I mention binary vs analogue to Nancy. She mails back:
> I’d check that off your list of concerns. It’s one of those typically recursive analytical things that nerdy types get all steamed up over.
That ‘been there done that’ edge to all her messages pips my wick. Plus, Macadamia is not ‘a nerdy type.’
The real world seems more lonely than before. Sitting here at my screen in England, I feel like a one-woman species.
MONDAY
Discovery! I am not a one-woman species. A home-grown electronic scene has been going on quite nicely without me all this time.
iD magazine runs a piece about a seventeen-year-old electronic musician, techno’s latest wunderkind. Eyes skulk out from the page in imitation menace. Puffa jacket expands the frame. I make a note to track him down.
SUNDAY, NEARLY A WEEK LATER
A suburban train trundling west. Daniel the wunderkind meets me at the station, dressed in an outsized hip-hop hooded coat. The same uncertain flicker on the face. The same aura of indifference.
‘Hello Daniel.’ I meet his eye.
‘Yeah, hahaha,’ he roars, refusing to hold my gaze, ‘let’s go.’ And with that, he marches through the station, strides across the road, speeds along a genteel street filled with cheap antiques shops and mock Parisian cafés, and swings into a long residential road, dragging me panting behind him.
We are standing in an Aladdin’s cave posing as a kitchen. The room is strangled in stuff: papers, envelopes, posters, pictures, milk bottles, flower pots, tins of floor polish, spare curtains, photos, books, ancient magazines, biscuits, scissors, drainers, pans, packets of crisps, flowers, fruit, memo pads, wine bottles, telephones, pencils on string, children’s drawings, hairbrushes, highchairs, napkins, drying cloths, fridge magnets, a bath sponge, the whole finished off by the smell of a warming oven and roasted garlic. Daniel’s mother appears, looking far away and harassed.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘That’s OK,’ I smile, ‘I’m sure Daniel can make it.’
‘No, actually, I can’t.’ Daniel contradicts me with an awkward sort of playfulness. ‘I broke the cappuccino machine, hahaha.’
‘I’ll have instant coffee then.’ Daniel reaches for the jar, tips it towards me for inspection and adopts a helpless air. ‘Uh, haha, Mum uses it to dye fabrics.’ The thin black crust clings to the bottom. A young woman walks into the kitchen, takes note of Daniel’s lost-boy look, says:
‘I’ll make the coffee, OK?’
‘OK,’ says Daniel.
Later, we’re sitting at the kitchen table cupping our coffee mugs. I ask:
‘Was that the au pair?’
Daniel throws me a strange look, catches my eye fleetingly, and, pretending he thinks the whole thing a joke, blusters: ‘Hahaha, that was my younger sister.’ Daniel has four younger sisters and no brothers. I guess that can’t be easy.
You wouldn’t believe the Daniel household existed unless you’d seen it for yourself. On the ground floor oak chests crammed into every corner, dolls, toys, rocking horses pressed against the windows, paintings, prints, posters on the walls, walls thick with layered paint and images, Turkish kelims fighting for space with knotted Persian rugs, cushions everywhere, never-watered plants clinging on to life, books, magazines from the seventies, goldfish in lime green aquaria. One storey up, angelic-looking toddler twins chasing from room to room followed closely by a six-year-old throwing dolls about, phones ringing, the sound of ascendant violins from the father’s study, more oak chests spewing bits of paper and embroidery from their stuffed drawers, a dust crust lying over everything.
We climb to Daniel’s bedroom on the third floor. Bed unmade, smell of skin, magazines in piles fanning out from every horizontal surface, posters of Orbital, snowboarding and computer games on the wall, in the centre of the room a home-made horseshoe consisting in keyboard, four-track and Atari computer.
‘So,’ says Daniel, fitting himself into a chair behind the horseshoe, ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to hear Bedroom.’
Bedroom is Daniel’s first and recently released album, the thing that got him written up in iD. He was sixteen when he made it. In his bedroom. He takes a copy from its jewel box, hands me the CD cover.
‘See that?’ He points to a red smear on the cover. ‘That’s my shit robot I had like when I was six, and that bit’s a piece of wall, hahaha, you’ll probably think it’s crap and yeah, so this is the first track, I like this bit where it goes …’
A resonant boom fills the bedroom. Daniel reaches down for the track skip button.
‘And then this is one, which I think’s shit, really, although Morris likes it, hahaha and listen to this track, “Underwater”, which has this wicked noise I taped in the toilets at school, and here’s …’ Each track in turn a throb, a series of sound pictures. Nothing you’d call a tune, quite. Daniel races through the tracks, two seconds per track, talking at ten to the dozen. He moves along his CD collection, extracting jewel cases, flinging them in the player. ‘So this one’s Wagon Christ,’ pulling them out again. ‘Yeah, listen to this MLO track, it’s really cool,’ casting them aside and moving onto the next. ‘And this bit by the Aphex Twin, wicked, better than some of his other stuff, hahaha, although I like him and this is David Toop who I’m gonna do some work with, but hahaha you’ll probably think it’s crap …’
‘Daniel,’ I say, looking up from the magazine I’m leafing through. ‘Why aren’t there any pictures of supermodels in your bedroom?’
‘I am not gay,’ says Daniel emphatically, his face developing a reddish glow which makes me feel as mean as a scalded dog. ‘Although I’m not saying it would matter if I was, except to my dad.’
‘Who’s Morris?’ I change tack while Daniel fights off his embarrassment, but at this he looks up momentarily, decides it’s a joke and giggles.
‘No, really,’ I pursue, ‘Who is Morris?’
Daniel is stunned. Uncomprehending. Speechless. I don’t know who Morris is? Mixmaster Morris? Morris of the mixdesk? Morris of the music scene? DJ Morris, top bloke Morris? Ambient techno’s own Mixmaster?
‘Not Morris as in dancing, then?’
Daniel ignores the jibe, or maybe just pretends he hasn’t heard it.
‘So,’ he says, blustery once more, ‘you’ll probably be wanting to see this really crap Yamaha keyboard, which my parents bought me for my birthday when I was like a kid, hahaha, and then this is the four-track, and this really cool keyboard, which is a Korg Wavestation and …’
‘Daniel,’ I say, ‘can we go and have some lunch now?’
Lunch turns out to be a benign chaos of toddler demands and counter-demands, mother organizing, au pair sister rushing about, curly haired six-year-old banging her spoon on the table, oven timer going off, kids wanting gravy, no potatoes, or potatoes and no carrots, more carrots, fewer potatoes, more orange juice, less meat. Daniel and his father sit in the midst of it all, unbowed. Phone ringing again, Daniel answering it, shouting through toddler cries:
‘Hahaha, yeah, can I ring you back? Thanks.’
‘Daniel doesn’t like my cooking,’ says the mother.
‘Yes I do,’ says Daniel.
After lunch Daniel makes a bold attempt to play me a few more selections from his CD collection, but I cut him short. I want to know where he made the money to buy his kit, which leads to a safari through Daniel’s magazine collection, featuring articles by … Daniel. Aged twelve he pesters his way to a job writing computer games reviews for Zero magazine, then moves on to a more serious role compiling a tips column in GameZone. At fifteen he’s making a mint.
‘In fact,’ he rallies, ‘I designed some games myself. They’re crap, but I s’pose you’re gonna want to see them, hahaha …’
I emerge from Daniel’s bedroom about two hours later, battered but unbloodied.
Whatever aching tangle or peaceful blue lagoon exists beyond the bloom in Daniel’s eyes he keeps hidden beneath a whirl of talk and action. Nothing of the real Daniel, whatever that may be, is available for public view save for a few minute and unconscious inflexions of his voice and body. Nonetheless, I have a sense that Daniel is about to become an important part of my little project. I request another meeting. ‘What?’ He exudes an air of puppyish hurt. I shake my head by way of reply, faintly bemused. Some small shutter closes over the chink in Daniel’s armoury.
‘I’m DJing at the Big Chill in a couple of weeks. If you want to go on the guest list, you’d better speak to my manager and say you’re from one of the papers, and thank you very much,’ says Daniel, cold as January wind.
I ring the manager and mention I’ve been round to lunch.
‘What a cacophony,’ I remark, in what I hope is an indulgent tone. The manager takes it differently.
‘Well how d’ya think I felt?’ he replies, sounding plaintive. ‘Sitting down to roast lamb and mint sauce with my client’s mum and dad? I’m a rock’n’roll manager for chrissakes.’
MONDAY
Early morning, wind hammering on the windows and the cat curling through my legs to remind me I haven’t yet got round to feeding it.
Thinking about Daniel, or maybe the electronic scene, I e-mail Mac:
>Hey, Mac, do you think it’s possible to make generational statements, or are generations created by the statements made about them?
He mails back:
>What do you have in mind?
I scribble down on a piece of paper all the generational clichés I’ve ever come across. It’s a long list.
>Well, the presumption that 15-25-year-olds have a totally relativist set of morals whereas all us older people are more absolute about things.
You tap out an e-mail message and play it back in your head and Bingo! It becomes the most profound, the most meaningful, the freshest thought you ever had.
>Actually it seems to me that pretty much *everyone* has a relativist set of morals, it’s just that *society’s* morals have traditionally been absolute.
I suppose it’s a silly fantasy of oneness, e-mail. But then again perhaps it’s not a fantasy. Perhaps, maybe. I don’t know yet.
I sit and think blanks for a while, then finish tapping in my note to Mac.
>Maybe the 15-25-year-olds feel that society’s mores have broken down and they’re simply less hypocritical than the rest of us. Or maybe it’s just that they haven’t learnt how to be full-on hypocrites yet.
No, it’s not the perfect communication, but it’s damned near. An imperfect kind of telepathy.
I leave the screen for a moment and fetch myself a can of root beer. Cat follows at a hopeful trot. Mac’s answer is scrolling up on my return.
>I’d go along with that. Younger people are less hypocritical, definitely. Oh wow, it’s just started to rain.:-)
I glance towards the window, notice twists of rainwater spiralling down the panes and whitened in the light of the desk lamp. Cat yells.
>Here too.
How weird.
>What else?
>Well, issues. When I was a teenager… I think back and do my best to stifle the memory … it was nuclear war and trades unions. These days it’s animal rights, anti-racism, ecology and homelessness. We didn’t really think about that stuff. Oh I don’t know. Things change so *fast* is all.
Animal rights. Cat’s begging has become so insistent I’m driven to leaving the screen and pouring him some Go-Cat biscuits. On my return I tap ‘A’ to send the mail, remember all the points I’ve forgotten to mention and open another e-mail file.
>The decline in trust - another generational cliché. Can’t rely on your education to equip you for a job, there aren’t any jobs, can’t rely on your parents to stay together because half of them won’t, can’t rely on care when care means weirdos and sex abuse, can’t rely on god and the church ditto, can’t even turn to that old teenage staple, sex, on account of AIDS. Or how about this? A generation used to the idea that the only power they’ve really got is consumer power. Disenchanted with politics, enamoured of product.
I tap in ‘A’ again and take myself off for a pee. No word from Mac on my return.
>Mac, hello, I’m talking to you!
Electronic silence prevails. I wait a little while, humming over my screen like a wasp circling a honey trap but no word arrives. Mac has taken on such a sudden and unexpected importance in my life and yet I’ve never met him.
TUESDAY
This is Mac’s eventual offering, paraphrased:
Even though the culture is ridden with premillennial tension the great thing about living at the end of the century is that there’s at least the theoretical possibility of being able to start out fresh. New beginnings, redemption, the Second Chance. So typically American.
WEDNESDAY
A disconcerting lunchtime revelation. Mac is not American. I suppose I should have noticed that he doesn’t spell like an American, but I was too busy making assumptions.
>Why didn’t you tell me before? I typed.
>The Internet makes national borders irrelevant. He typed back.
Somehow all this matters terribly. The beautiful edifice of projections tumbles. Macadamia the California nut is actually Mac a British human being … which makes me what? Some lovesick clown dreaming of California on a computer.
Dawn arrives, but I don’t sleep. I drift about in the pale half-life between unconsciousness and dreams.
FRIDAY
A ticket to Daniel’s DJ event arrives, along with his World Wide Web address. I spend ten minutes leafing through its two main sections, Boredom and Bedroom. Bedroom is the life story of his ambient techno album, Boredom is everything else that has ever happened to Daniel and is capable of being distilled down into two-sentence sound bytes and graffiti graphics. A lot, in other words.
SATURDAY
The moon is made of gorgonzola
Determined not to be entirely ignorant in the face of ‘the scene’ event tomorrow, I pass much of the day in Ambient Soho, Unity, Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus and with a pile of NMEs, Melody Makers, iDs and Mixmags catching up on being young. Nonetheless, I feel like someone trying to swing. My one comfort is that at least I now know what ambient techno is. It’s aural wallpaper, slews of electronic sounds devoid of narrative. Future noyz. Geek pop. Which makes Daniel a geek pop king.
