Punchdrunk and delirious in pre publication frenzy, my commissioning editor at Zapa suggested that we could do a free ebook of this blog at some point. Post publication, he's gone very quiet about this, though I will have a chance to quiz him about in when he arrives on Tyneside for his annual visit this week. Taking his words of encouragement seriuously, I penned this introduction, which I'd like to share with you now -:
My life involves a number of interests that can easily be
regarded as verging on obsessions; football (primarily Newcastle United, but
also all levels of the professional and especially the amateur game as a
volunteer, spectator, supporter and alleged player), music (from angular,
uncompromising post-punk to enduringly, classic and seemingly mainly Scottish,
guitar based indie to folk and folk rock, both Irish and English), Ireland (the
history, culture, politics, music, sport and indeed every aspect of life in the
entire 32 counties), literature and books in general (from Cormac McCarthy to
William Butler Yeats and all points in between), not to mention Real Ale and
ultra-left wing politics, though the commissioning editor for this volume would
prefer I described myself as a cynical, petit-bourgeois, quasi-Stalinist,
dilettante rather than a Marxist. These interests coalesce and combine when I willingly
succumb to the primary, motivating urge in my life; the need to write. This
need is beyond the intellectual; it is primal and something I find myself
uncontrollably drawn towards and driven by. Every single day, there are
thoughts, phrases, concepts and ideas I simply have to explore and exploit by
writing them down.
This urge isn’t new. From the early 1980s onwards, I wrote
poetry, lyrics, short fiction, as well as reviews, interviews and opinion
pieces on music and football for an immense range of publications that ranged
from national newspapers and magazines, to long forgotten fanzines than lasted
barely a tomato season, let alone a football one. As I approached my mid-30s at
the turn of the Millennium, several things occurred to me; firstly, the
internet had caused an incredible contraction in the number of printed titles
where I could have my work published. Basically, why would anyone choose to pay
to read someone else’s opinions when they could publish their own in seconds?
In practical terms, this technological revolution meant I found myself mainly
writing for Newcastle United fanzines The Mag, from 1989-2004, and Toon
Talk (formerly Players Inc), from 2005 to the
present, as well as the Percy Main Amateurs match programme from 2007 to 2013.
Currently, I am about to embark on an exciting (for me at least) new venture as
editor for the Heaton Stannington programme for the 2013/2014 season; it may
not be brilliantly designed, but all the apostrophes will be in the correct
places.
Secondly, and thankfully I was completely wrong in this, the
music scene appeared to have begun a slow death. For a number of years, I still
listened to and watched live music, without ever imagining I’d write about it
again; happily, I am rediscovering the pleasure of turning sounds in to words. Thirdly,
my talent for writing fiction had deserted me; like Wendy scanning the night skies
for Peter Pan, I fruitlessly hoped it would return. Sadly, it hasn’t in any
meaningful way, though 2013 has seen 5 of my poems and one short story
published in issues 2, 3 and 4 of the brilliant new literary fanzine Push.
Rather like the continued existence of niche markets such as Real Ale and vinyl
records, small bands of devoted followers are keeping a range of new and
established fanzines going, with every sign of a grassroots renaissance in the
offing, proving those who announced the death of the printed word to be far
from accurate. I have also been commissioned to write pieces for the new
Barnsley fanzine West Stand Bogs and the long established Wigan Athletic
publication Mudhutter, showing that the fanzine renaissance is palpable;
the best examples being the general zine Stand AMF, where I’ve seen my work
appear and FC United of Manchester’s A Fine Lung, which sets the bar for
all other fanzines in the quality of its writing.
However, the internet has proved to be the ultimate punk
rock tool for writers everywhere; in the blogosphere it’s always late 1976, as
everyone, regardless of their ability or lack of it, is as valid a voice as
anyone else when it comes to publishing on line. This has been the case for
quite a while; the platforms for publication have just become a little more
sophisticated. Back, in 2002, I discovered the possibilities afforded by
domestic broadband internet for the first time, which almost immediately resulted
in my writing striking out in a whole new direction. Exploiting the speed and
reliability of my connection, I became involved in a baffling array of on-line
communities, signing up with new ones, seemingly on a daily basis, as my
interests caused me to range around the web. These “messageboards,” especially
those dedicated to particular bands, introduced me to the concept of writing
briefer, more personalised, generally succinct and highly opinionated review
and comment pieces, but for far more
informed and interested audiences than the general readership of those
magazines I’d written for in the past. Aesthetically, the on-line results
weren’t as pleasing as seeing your name on a glossy A4 double-page spread in a
quality publication available in WH Smiths up and down the country,
but the feedback was potentially immediate, mainly genuine and unfailingly
honest. Crucially, it was, and is, also interactive. Through the on-line forums
of Teenage Fanclub, The Wedding Present, Christy Moore and Fairport Convention,
I’ve made virtual and real friendships with cyber penpals from around the
world, enjoying pre and post gig beers with many of them. This is the nature of
friendship in the contemporary world and I’ve mainly had positive experiences
of it.
However, this new world of music mates mailing you
compilation CDs and putting you on the guest list in Bristol or Leeds wasn’t
uniformly pleasant; The Fall’s messageboard was the virtual equivalent of a
belligerent taxi queue on Christmas Eve, where bile, vitriol and personal abuse
seemed to be not only tolerated, but compulsory. Sadly, that level of profane
invective appears to be the rule rather than the exception with most football
boards. Indeed my club Newcastle United has one messageboard, which I’ll not name,
that spews all manner of unchecked hate speak 24/7, where new participants
endure a kind of ultra-Darwinian initiation ceremony, involving abuse, scorn
and incessant ridicule that must skirt the borders of illegality. No doubt our
rivals Sunderland have the same kind of vile sub-culture; indeed, I’d imagine
such a depressing scenario is repeated at every football club, as it seems only
general non-league forums, typical of the more civilised nature of the
grassroots game, attract reasoned debate, despite the preponderance of
groundhoppers, who tend to muddy the waters in that particular gene pool. Worse
still are the soi-disant football Brains
Trust egoists that frequent the on-line
sections of broadsheet papers and supposed independent football monthlies,
where Polyversity Media Studies and Sociology drop outs assume dominant roles
in a self-elected, self-perpetuating cyber Republique
des Lettres and make smug, shallow, unfailingly inaccurate pronouncements
about every aspect of a sport they never bother going to see. Certainly their
activities have turned me right against Huddersfield and Ipswich Town over the
last few years.
My life has been marked by a series of milestones, the dates
of which I still remember; 1st January 1973 saw my first trip to St.
James’ Park, while 24th December 1976 was the first time I heard (I
Belong to the) Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Void-Oids.
Perhaps one of the most liberating dates in my life was 24th
February 2007 when I made my final contribution to a football messageboard,
after I’d involved myself in a particularly mindless, internecine debate on the
quality of Glenn Roeder’s stewardship of Newcastle United. What particularly irked
me about attempting to discuss football on with ill-informed, faceless, abusive
trolls was not the fact that followers of the same team could end up as
implacable on-line enemies, whereby inflammatory rhetoric, vile threats and
deeply wounding personal accusations would be the order of the day, all day,
every day, but the paucity of actual, stimulating intellectual debate. Nowhere
more is the truism that some people
prefer simple lies to the complicated truth more evident than on the
internet. I found the whole experience infuriating and dispiriting by turns and
decided not to waste any more of my time on it. Unsurprisingly, my writing has
changed, deepened and, dare I say, improved immeasurably since that point.
Consequently, I disowned everything I posted on-line, as well as everything I
wrote for one particular publication between 1999 and 2006 and then
concentrated my efforts on focussing my creative urge in to becoming a proper
writer.
Also, in 2007, I became involved with Percy Main Amateurs
football club, initially as a programme contributor, then in the role I’ve
recently vacated for the Heaton Stannington programme job, of Assistant
Secretary. This set in action a series of events that resulted in me writing my
first book Village Voice, which chronicled Percy Main’s promotion and cup
winning season of 2009/2010. It’s self-published, but then again so were The
Songs of Innocence and Experience and Spiral Scratch. What
writing a book taught me was the need for discipline and rigorous
self-criticism, when embarking on a writing project that extended over a longer
period of time.
My writing, as far as it has changed over the years, has
gone from the broad-brush, sweeping generalisations and vehement denouncements
of my 20s, to a style that is hopefully more nuanced, consisting of a detailed
exploration of the minutiae of any debate. Often, I start writing about a
particular issue without knowing what I fully think or believe to be “the
truth,” which can only emerge after upwards of 4,000 words and a week’s
intellectual wrangling, relentless rewriting and ruthless editing. It may be
pushing things to call my preferred prose style Socratic Dialogue, but I find
this kind of on-going debate to the most effective way of communicating my
ideas. My relationship with writing involves considerable amounts of reflection
on events that matter to me, whether they are sporting, cultural or political,
and to fill the void created when I completed Village Voice in June
2010, I began the Payaso de Mierda blog, almost by accident, as a way of
recording my responses to the world around me.
If anyone asks me to name the worst thing about modern
football, I’d unhesitatingly say referee Howard Webb. Born and brought up in
Rotherham, in the heart of Yorkshire mining country, Webb was a month short of
his 13th birthday when the Battle of Orgreave took place; no doubt
influenced by those images, he later joined the South Yorkshire Police, whose
culpability in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster continues to emerge, rising to
the rank of sergeant. His nonsensical decision to disallow a perfectly valid
headed goal by Mark Viduka against Fulham in May 2009 contributed to Newcastle
United’s relegation, but that is a minor (‘scuse the pun) transgression when compared
to those listed in the sentence before. In July 2010, my cousin John (whose
idea this book was) and I were in the centre of Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Basque
Country; a slightly surreal, though undeniably idyllic location from which to
watch Spain win the World Cup final on a giant screen. Webb was the referee
that night and his abject performance caused many a member of the surprisingly
partisan (if not patriotic) crowd to relentlessly berate his decisions, often
using the phrase Payaso de Mierda. The literal English translation of Payaso
de Mierda is shitty clown, which appealed
to me instantly, mainly because of the lack of cultural significance or even
any real meaning in English, and was the only viable title for the blog that I
established, at John’s suggestion, on my return home. Ironically, my first
article was about a trip to see Linlithgow Rose v Musselburgh Athletic in the
East of Scotland Cup Final at Bathgate Thistle’s Creamery Park.
Since July 2010, I’ve posted over 170 articles on Payaso
de Mierda on subjects as diverse as:
football, music, Ireland, literature and books in general, not to
mention Real Ale and ultra-left wing politics. While about a quarter of the
posts are articles that were written for or occasionally commissioned by other
publications, the pattern I sought to establish from the outset was a regular,
ideally weekly, lengthy comment piece on one of my major obsessions, related
both to current events and what I’d been doing with my leisure time. Basically,
Payaso
de Mierda is both a recycling bin to store and a soap box from which to
proclaim my opinions.
From my reading of other Blogs, predominantly about
football, a major, repeated flaw seemed to be the predictable opinions, mundane
style and discernible lack of editorial and quality control; people (I hesitate
to say writers) seem to upload their thoughts without bothering to afford any
article even the most cursory proofread it in most instances, which I think is
both lazy and arrogant. However, even worse, it pays no respect to the
audience, for surely if you publish something, your expectation is that
somebody is going to read it and, ideally, respond in some way. While there are
some great Newcastle United blogs such as Leazes Terrace, The Shite Seats and
the brilliantly iconoclastic tt9m, the vast majority were cursed
with appalling grammatical errors, but also many missed opportunities to
elaborate on interesting points, or to eliminate potential ambiguities, which
is real bugbear of mine. I always pride myself on the length of time it takes
me to write my blog; a tortuous process of thinking (generally while cycling),
note taking and making (often in bed), writing, editing and constant revision
is my method. It seems to work, I may modestly say. Weekly posts are announced
on Twitter
(https://twitter.com/PayasoDeMierda)
and, much to my immense personal gratitude, the feedback I receive is generally
positive. However, I value negative comments as well, as only through
constructive criticism can I improve. Mind, I know that even if my posts
remained unread, I would still write; the creative urge will never go away.
So, here is a volume of my selected works, organised in
thematic rather than strictly chronological terms. While being aware that the
amorphous nature of many of the pieces means that boundaries may blur, I’ve
grouped them around the subjects of Newcastle United, Ireland, music and football
in general. Looking back on these pieces now, all of which I’ve provided a
contextualising introductory paragraph for, it strikes me that I haven’t always
got things right. If you’ll forgive me the indulgence of proofreading them for
grammatical and factual errors, as well as a nervous sweep for anything vaguely
libellous or just plain cruel, I’ve not materially changed anything in the
text, as I felt the integrity of each piece would be better served by remaining
in the form it was published. Every one of these pieces was created at a
particular point in time and reflects my thinking at the moment of publication.
While temporal distance has provided experience and perspective, to incorporate
revised thinking would be to negate the creative urge that brought the articles
in to being. Obviously, I’m aware this means I’ve included points and opinions
which are inaccurate, poorly expressed, deliberately provocative, mad or just
plain wrong; I’ll leave it up to you to work out which bits these are.
If you’d like to keep up to date with the blog, the address
is http://payaso-del-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/
while my Twitter contact is https://twitter.com/PayasoDeMierda
and I can be contacted by email at iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk
Hope to hear from you soon.
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