This is my final substack of 2023. I’m not a fan of the past – gargantuan stinkbog sucking hungrily at the present that it is – but I am an enthusiastic proponent of recaps. Listing good stuff and listing bad stuff is vital – if only to work out what you need more or less of for the next incarnation.
Apparently ‘23 skidoo’ – meaning to get out – comes from the early part of the 20th century when boys would gather at 23rd street in New York by the Flatiron building to watch the ever-present winds there lift the skirts of unsuspecting women. NY cops would shout ‘23! Skidoo’ – ‘skidoo’ being a variation on skedaddle.
Do you believe that? I don’t. Belief systems are BS said Robert Anton Wilson, who also had a thing about 23. Here’s another good RAW quote, I used it in my TypoCircle talk at the end of November.
That’s generally the kind of spirit I try to bring to all my projects, commercial and artist. Right, here’s that 2023 recap.
(If you’ve signed up to this email for more general thinking about writing then you’ll be pleased to hear that my first Substack of 2024 will contain nothing of my projects but instead will explore the esoteric link between spies and poetry. The wilderness-of-mirrors CIA in the late 50s / early 60 is my new jam.)
First we’ll look at the things that were good, please feel free to skip these for the schadenfreude of things that were bad. Always more interesting I’m sure we all agree.
I started the year by becoming the owner of a year in Bill Drummond’s life in exchange for writing 1000 words of his autobiography. (He likes 23 as well, check out the date.)
Suggestions of what to do with my abstract property (all property is abstract) are welcome …
A huge huge artistic highlight of 2023 was being commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields to write a piece for Sir Simon Russell Beale to recite. The three week gap between sending it to his agent and waiting to hear if he approved was a thrilling agony. You can read the piece here or just look at this photograph and imagine it.
A commercial highlight is the building of an ongoing body of work with everyone’s choicest spectacle fashioners Cubitts. Who are, incidentally, opening their first store in New York next year. 24 the opposite of skidoo. A particular joy has been developing their latest newspaper – seek one out if you can. It’s marking Cubitts’ ten year anniversary and this issue of Spectacle is one giant CODE. Solve it and you’ll win a prize we’ve hidden somewhere in the UK.
I launched two books this year – The Idyllegy and These were days of endless endless.
The Idyllegy was a new work but These were days … was a collection of five previous releases, so this is actually my lowest release rate in the five years I’ve been trying to be a writer. I can’t work out why I’ve been less productive. I *think* it was that writing 2022’s Changeling was so horrible and hard and abyssy (it’s about the abyss) that I needed to spend far longer in the bright, sensual, pastoral landscape of The Idyllegy than I would normally.
It’s obvious really, but I’ve realised that the subject matter one chooses for an artistic project seeps into your soul in a very affecting manner. Your life warps around whatever you’re writing. The Idyllegy was a beautiful piece to be part of much of this year, I needed its meadows.
I’m now working on a book called Very Special Knowledge about DNA, longevity, aliens, secret research facilities, CIA agents having breakdowns in English pubs and anarchy so I’m not sure what this will result in. Chapel Perilous I suspect.
I’d also add Very Special Knowledge to good 2023 things. It’s an experiment and a new way to support self-publishing. A bunch of people have subscribed to the Substack to get a running commentary on this latest bit of writing and their money will go to funding the first print run, which makes a big difference. Thanks to anyone here who is supporting it!
Collaboration is integral to my practice and a couple of partnerships have been particularly inspiring. The first with Will of Margaret who was one of a handful of artists to receive a copy of The Idyllegy to do with whatever they wished.
In WoM’s words ‘The Idyllegy, a psychedelic pastoral about sex, death and golden golden golden meadows. This peculiar poetry became for me an open vessel where a burst of overflowing energy would be received with every vision. An open channel in which I was willing to breathe Love into.’
You’ll see on the above title page of the book that I left a space for each reader to add their name. A poetry book is *always* a collaboration between two consciousnesses.
I’ve never met WoM. This particular collaboration is through Instagram messages. I find that amazing. How the writing can initiate a golden chain of art. Go to mine or WoM’s Instagram to see more of her Idyllegy art.
The other poetic collaboration was with the brilliant Karina Bush – a highly original poet but also a creator of the wildest images and videos. See more of her work here. A few months ago Karina turned my long poem, The Supreme Point, into a film. The TerenceBaby now haunts my dreams.
My final honour of 2023 was that a brand piece I wrote for London Fire Brigade was read out at a firefighter’s funeral. Something similar happened – albeit for a different life ritual – a few years ago when an advert I wrote for the city of Bath’s Roman Spa was chosen by a couple to be read at their civil ceremony.
To create something for immediate commercial purposes, which is then adopted by people to become part of deep moments in their lives makes me feel like I’m on the right path.
And so to the less triumphant clumps of 2023.
My challenges this year have not so much been on the commercial side of my work – though the vagaries of the economy do keep you on your toes, right? – but rather what feels like a stalling in my artistic career.
Specifically the question of how to reach readers. In the words of one of the experiencers on my website …
Try as I might, I *cannot* get my work stocked in bookshops. Now that could be because my work is unreadable and unsellable, but a negative factor is definitely being self-published and unknown. You’d weep (well, you wouldn’t, you don’t really care) to see the various packages and letters I’ve mailed to indy bookstores all over the world. The absence of response is a cold disinterest sure to ignite all the fears one has about lack of talent.
I obsess about it almost as much as I obsess about James Jesus Angleton, Head of CIA Counter-Intelligence from 1954 to 1975.
So that’s a downer and being *really* honest, I almost gave up this year. Not writing, just bothering to turn it into books and other stuff. I’ve been doing this for five years now and it feels like I’ve hit a real plateau of audience.
I didn’t give up obviously, mainly because I had the idea for Very Special Knowledge which got me all excited again, but it was a close call.
I’m afraid I have no sublime philosophical learnings from this major wobble – I still want to be read by more people and it will always frustrate me not to be in bookshops – but I have taught myself to increasingly relish the people and adventures self-publishing offers.
And so to thank you, the reader of this Substack. For supporting and sharing and liking and commenting, I’ve loved the conversations and connections that have emerged from these posts and genuinely appreciate your interest.
Next email will be an interrogation of writing and spycraft … but you’ll have to wait until the mysterious black site of January 2024 for that.
Alongside the voyeuristic thing, I know a couple of other things about 23 skidoo.
Well a thing about 23 Skidoo and a thing about Skidoo 23.
According to John Kenneth Galbraith (a kind of Marshall McLuhan figure for economics in 60/70s USA) Skidoo 23 refers to a US gold mining town where a murder took place. The killer was hanged. But because it took ages for the press to get there and report it, townsfolk re-hanged the body.
Galbraith thinks this says something significant. I put a quote up from him here: https://jonone100.blogspot.com/2014/05/money-wisdom-265.html
The other thing (this might mark me out as an obsessive) is that '23 Skidoo' is mentioned in the official inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic. They were trying to determine if doors were open that were supposed to be closed. Guess which number door they were worried about?
anyway, go here https://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTInq06Joughin03.php then scroll down to 6341 and its the next few sentences.
Thanks for always putting a few interesting thoughts out there and illuminating words in unexpected places. Have you tried Balham bookstore https://backstory.london? They have introduced me to several new authors, publish a magazine and run in-conversation events.