N.C.Miles

Non-Verbal III [In Progress] (Dec 2011; Dorset)

2011-12-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

Definitely going to do things to this in future, but for now... HAPPY CHRISTMAS/HANUKKAH/KWANZAA.

Non-Verbal III by NCMiles

Non-Verbal I (Dec 2011; London)

2011-12-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

Best through headphones...

Non verbal I by NCMiles

Non-Verbal I

I do not want to talk to you

I want to feel and feel straight through

Your cold hands on all saints' days

and hide away on turnpike lane

Far away from fields & southern coasters

I would take what I wanted if I knew what it was…

And when it's clear

It's not for sex

But to put our ears to the necks of strangers

On the day something changed and I started shedding skin

And I've been afraid to let the right one in

I think I stopped losing the day that we met

By the time it happened I had no skin left

Stole from the cold I didn't get old I never knew what I wanted

Turn away from turnpike lane

make a way to those old coasts for winter

Would you believe that your bed is an ocean,

That I would choose it over any other woman’s?

Untitled, Unfinished[?] (November 2011; London)

2011-11-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

I talk too much.

I know that you've got dreams now darlin I have got some too

There was a time when yours included me and mine did you

We've lived just like the chickens in the yard scratching the ground

But we don't have any money honey and there's not much around

I know that you've got dreams now darlin and I've got my own too

There's a man down on the street he says he's got his eye on you

You know well where the door is I can't stop you going down

You say you only need enough to get us out of town.

I waited on the corner for you, I felt the cold you feel

I couldn't see you coming, here it's hard to know what's real

I hope you didn't lose too much in finding what you found

I'll wish a happy end for you my friend but there aren't much around.

and Childish (November 2011; London)

2011-11-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

For the last month or so loads of people have been trying to get me to make demos, for various reasons. The thing is, I'm not sure I like recording things properly, I'm not really very good at it, and because of that I can never really get things to sound how they do in my head, so I spend hours and hours getting frustrated over it... this is why I usually just make youtube videos, it means I have no control over the sound besides the way I play, and that's comforting.

Anyway, I have just finished a demo, I did most of it about a month ago, then got bored and forgot about it, then today I finished all my work and I couldn't find anybody to play with so now it is a proper-ish thing. It's a song I've actually been playing live for quite a few months but never got round to making a video or anything of... I can't really decide on a title for it.

I really don't know how it'll sound on other peoples machines, but I imagine your best bet is bit speakers or headphones...

and Childish (2nd Mix) by NCMiles

Don't go away from you
we pass like ships in the night always looking for some great truth
I don't know what I've been doing here waiting for you
there's an abundance of youth in the days as they move

say hey
I think I'm glad to know you are out there too

Soon I will jump into time I will leave for some strange city
I will love nobody, no, and have nobody else love me
the days will be talking, be working, be living, be void and sweet
until the time when a thing is because it must be

hey
I think I'm glad to know you are out there too

Don't go away from you
your eyes they shine through the night and they say what you say is true
I know that when I will know that will know that I will know it's you
I can say, finally,

hey
I don't know what I'd do without you.

How? Which? When? Where? Why? (Nov 2011; London)

2011-11-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

Am I as I am because I am the way I am or as I am because I am the way that you left me?
Am I as I am or just a poorly put together hybrid fictional character from my favourite movies?
Sometimes when I think of yesterday I can't remember what i did I get confused it feels a lot like vertigo...

But I don't know what I don't know, if I don't know that I don't know it.

People on tv never just sit and watch tv, and 'no you cannot sell reality cause real life is boring'
I believe that if you looked around you'd be amazed but they say someone else's life is always far more alluring
The purpose and the destiny, excuses and the light relief, the things we used to hide inside are empty, false and in decline

But I don't think that we're anything by design
and yes it's scary that we don't know where we're going
yes, I think it's scary that we don't know where we're going
but I don't think think that we're anything by design.

How? Which? When? Where? Why?

Nothing Inbetween (Oct 2011; London)

2011-10-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

This is one of those songs I don't really ever think about, they just sort of ripen in the background, occasionally when I'm messing around I'll sing what I've got of them, and slowly they become full songs. "I'd like a songwriter who writes songs like a pumpkin vine makes pumpkins" - to totally misquote Calvino. Because no real effort gets put into them, I tend to undervalue them a bit, there are quite a few of them I've never even played live or recorded, but I'm starting to think that's a little wrong of me.
Anyway, Ed's in Scotland at the moment, writing books and tending moors, so I went to his house and nicked his ebow, I've put up two versions of the song, one is kind of an early ebow experiment (I'm sort of considering buying one, but they're way expensive), and one is a pretty standard version... so see what you think, I guess.

EBOW

NO EBOW

I see an animal
he's in your backyard
sometimes he fights with other animals
'cause life's so hard
he needs to eat, he needs to sleep, he's got to fuck, he needs somewhere to lay his head
he's just an animal,
he's alive or he is dead.
But nothing in between.

I heard you had an accident
I heard you fell out
now something's changed within your bones
these days you don't get out the house
you never talk you are a stranger unto me
you are a stranger to the world
you refuse to choose a life below the life you lived
this is what I've heard
We're nothing in between.

Thanks for this,
the sweet and dour(!)
your crippled legs
should mark the hours
should hang from a bell
and kick like hell at the sides
and tell us when it's time to wake up
tell us when it's time to go to work again
to church again
and hear about how no one really...

we're nothing in between.

AHMAHGAWD. (Oct 2011; London)

2011-10-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

I have the internet! I'm not even going to think about uploading proper songs yet, because I'm a bit busy but, to relax a bit this evening I started playing around with a song I've been working on, then I messed a little with a loop pedal, then an e-bow, then a piano, and ended up having one of the most fun lone-jams I've ever had... unfortunately I didn't record the process leading up to the loop, or the tons of piano/ebow/guitar twiddling that went on, but here's a little sample of the loop on its own and a little messing around... mainly so I can remember it when I come to finish the song... bit tricky, I promised myself ages ago I wouldn't get involved with pedals and things again, but this was so much fun!

Nachtherzwaltz (Sept 2011; Dorset)

2011-09-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a piano arrangement of QuietWinterHeart I threw together. I recorded this a week ago, I'm putting it up now.

A friend lent me the piano around a month ago and I'm enjoying it a lot, I'm really not much of a player (getting better, though), but really, if I didn't have to stop at some point and laugh/swear at myself, it would feel kind of weird.

As for the unnecessary German title, when I originally started writing the song, I wanted to write it in German, I started that way, but then a couple of lines came to me in English that I really wanted to use as they were, and so carried on with that. I still think I'd like to translate it at some point, then perhaps make one version exclusive to the piano and one to guitar... those are my thoughts on it, anyway.

Die Tortenschlacht - My Cut, and a letter to Wim Wenders (August 2011; Dorset)

2011-08-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

So, most people who know me well enough to know what I like will know that my absolute favourite film of all time is Wim Wender's Der Himmel Über Berlin (Trailer below), Wenders also being my favourite director.

I re-watch the film a few times a year just because every time I see something new, and it never fails to do something for me, it's life affirming in this amazingly sad, real but fantastic way - it's a testament to Berlin and to the beauty of human experience, and in my experience, these two things often go hand in hand. It's also largely inspired by Rilke, who happens to be one of my favourite poets.
A few days ago, I was idly looking through some of the deleted scenes included on the DVD I have of the film - I was curious to see what the director thought worth leaving out, how he thought about his work and what belonged in it. And I found out what has to be the best bit of movie trivia ever, in the original raw footage for Der Himmel Über Berlin, there was a pie fight! Wenders actually used all four cameras and shot two takes of the three lead characters fighting...with pies! If you've seen the film, you'll know how brilliantly weird this is, and admittedly, it is a really good thing the scene was left out. I guess it was so obvious that it should be left out that the raw footage was never even cut. So, on the DVD where the raw takes are, Wenders, in his commentary, says jokingly that if someone wanted to edit the scene themselves and send it to him he would be really happy to see it finished, he even goes so far as to say that the best one he receives might get some pie.

So! I decided to have a go, I've always been fascinated by film-making, I love movies, and actually have a dream that I keep very quiet to some day make movies myself, unpopular, self-funded, bankrupting movies that I'll love forever. As well as making the cut, I've tracked down a middleman address for Herr Wenders in Berlin, and have written a letter (in my not so good German) to go with the DVD, I'm going to send it in the morning.

What's really cool about it is that I basically did it because I wanted to, it was a great opportunity to cut a raw bit of film from my favourite movie, and the process was great fun. I also got to, in a very small way, show someone whose work I've enjoyed and admired for a long time that I appreciate what they do, and that's cool. If Wim Wenders ever does reply to my letter, which is unlikely, it'll probably happen months or years from now on some terrible day and suddenly all will be awesome. If not, that's fine, getting a reply isn't the reason I did it. I used to do this kind of stuff a lot, just throwing myself at things, sometimes it really pays off, and it can't really go wrong, so I'd really like to start doing it again (on that note, I need to write to Joanna Newsom's press agent, I have a press pass for End of the Road and getting an interview would be amazing). If nothing comes of these things, it's still really fun and exiting to try.

So, here's the cut, obviously the audio wasn't intact or prepared so it's basically a silent with music, bar one moment at the end. The film was pretty damaged and there were various chunks cut out of it that I had to edit around, but there were some really nice shots I think I managed to include. Solveig Dommartin (the most beautiful woman that has ever been) and Bruno Ganz have some great moments, and Otto Sander pulls off some great facial expressions/slapstick moves. -It's all really weird that this was ever a part of this movie!

Here's the cut, the quality should be high enough to watch in full screen:

And here's my letter to Wenders:

I am really happy I did this. First post to Berlin tomorrow! I hope Wim Wenders checks his mail.

You had me at DESTROY (August 2011; Dorset)

2011-08-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Pete & Sandy dropped round a piano - I spent an hour or so this afternoon getting acquainted with it and ways of fucking it up to for ambiance, and made this improv. It's way minimal, but there are a few nice moments, I think. Weirdly enough, my voice in the last minute isn't in any way effected... apparently it goes really, madly low... I mixed it on a super cheap pair of in-ear headphones, so I really have no idea how it'll sound for anybody else- mixing really isn't something I'm good at anyway, barely even playing, I'm just about the writing, really.

You had me at DESTROY by NCMiles

There are lyrics, auto-lyrics... I think. Try and work them out for a fun activity.

I had a go...
"oh wont you climb up on top of my love?/Cause I have so much, but rage falls in trench fulls,/ it's strange how I want a stranger, I know.../I fell out, I felt a lot older, I'm fed up with trying./What you don't know, you don't how it started, you're tired of trying./ This stranger is wasting./ There's a man that I know I am,/ I know I will feel them forever, I wasted it all./Stare up the mountain, there is no shame in loving this nothing, I don't know, I don't know./ But I've been wasting."

Domestic Automata I (June 2011, London)

2011-06-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

I recently took part in a project by SSE Space, London, to have writers create texts to match pieces from a photography exhibit by artist Yorgos Loizos.
Below is my contribution, it'll be on exhibition along with the photographs and texts by other writers for the rest of the summer, I can't make the opening, but I may try to go and have a look myself...

Domestic Automata I

When, in our Brutalest moments,
We built these towers
In the wake, and polyglot
Dispatch of empire

So proud

We never once thought
That in their sepulchral bodies,
Alive by dint of in-livers,
We'd trade life for shiny, votive offerings
Flooding the market of the beyond

And remain.

Us and our appliances,
These lonely, bird-like machines,
Carved and not built,
That left no sign or cicatrix,
No sigh nor parting kiss
On the mother ore that bore them.

We and They are a euphony
In the vacuum of escaping days.

To Be Good (Spring 2011, London/Dorset)

2011-04-30T00:54:00.000-07:00

Far from perfect recording, in terms of quality and error, but I really don't want to do it again right now...so, songsongsong...

We saw headlights and brake lights

Reflected in cat's eyes

Knew nothing real happens

Unless something else happens first

And I don't feel worse

Unripe avocado

unfounded bravado [I really don't know why I sung something else here...]

A libertine, sort of saturnine,

Who always woke up alone

& no I don't know

how we got here

I think that I'm happy

With less than before

For all of this yearning

I loved when you said

"I can't take vice magazine seriously enough to consider it

a legitimate cultural threat"

Gave my head to play fighting

The rest to absurdity

I don't feel like fucking

And train strangers cause me no ache

Is this what it takes?

And someone said it's always wrong

To tell the kids about the bomb

We set out wanting only love

And ask ourselves 'are we living yet?' [and now ask only is 'is this life yet?'?]

I think I dreamt that

You had a baby

You hadn't named it

Said there was no time

Paid no attention

Said that maybe

You don't miss the one you're thinking of

You just miss yourself when you're in love

Ne'erdowells (Spring[?] 2011, Dorset)

2011-03-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to do something with this on and off since September...so here it is...

Prepositions & personal pronouns,
would it bug you out if I stayed around?
I've never had anything much to say...
It feels like it's always been like this,
and things here never seem to get serious
but I honestly think that I like it that way.

It's been time
and if I don't I never will,
for all I love you ne'erdowells,
if not now I never will.

In the month when we only went drinking
and I'd just come, still in love with Berlin,
we said two-thousand nine was the year of the ghost.
I think that I almost became one,
haunting the streets of hivernal London,
never knowing which city that I loved the most...

2011-02-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

Me and Morgan made this a million years ago, but youtube made it red and mixed the frames up...

On Revolution and Leadership (Winter 2010; Dorset)

2011-01-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

So I wrote this a little while ago as a response to the debate regarding the leadership of the student movement, but it's also, for the most part, a meditation on where we are as a western, European society. I just didn't really get round to sending or posting it anywhere, partly through shyness (which I get when it comes to this sort of thing) apparently.
I had this thought that we've been going for a long time now, and we've been trying to work out how to make the world a decent, fair place, and in a lot of ways we've really not come that far. So, as I see it, perhaps there are some old concepts we need to grow out of, and shed our nostalgia for, if we're ever going to progress. Would be very interested to hear what anybody else thinks on this....

------------------------------------------------------------

Throughout western history, two constants, one in part responsible for the other, can be easily observed. The first is dualism, the belief that has sought to split (or arguably to merge) the perceivable world into two opposing parts. Be it of body and soul, good and evil, the conscious and unconscious minds, capitalism and communism, left and right, dualism has shaped the western World form Plato to Freud and beyond. The second constant is an inevitable by-product of dualism, and that is fear. Fear because dualist belief necessitates the taking of one side in opposition to the other and, therefore, the creation and designation of enemies.

From the earliest experiments in democracy this dualist approach to the perception of the human world has driven human beings to sacrifice their individuality for the greater good manifested in their ‘side’. The individual has been willing, and understandably, to lay down some of their idiosyncratic beliefs in order to present a united front against the enemy they have dualistically created. Of course, it may well be that many of these idiosyncratic beliefs are shared by their enemy but, of course, these common beliefs are ignored out of respect for wherever the lines of classification fall. For the greater good.

To protect us from these great and fearsome enemies, we have been always willing to sacrifice our individual beliefs to our leaders, again quite understandably, in order that they might speak for us where our discrepancies might prevent us, as a mass of individuals, from speaking clearly for ourselves. And, in the past, this has been a sensible way of letting our voices, on those uniting issues most important to us, be heard. It is this artificial splitting (or merging) of entire populaces into two mighty metaphorical and personified figures that has in modern history, particularly, led to one of the greatest active manifestations of fear that we as a civilisation have come to know, revolution.

In the one-dimensional thinking of dualism, revolution seems a viable solution to the struggle that this thinking has created. Where there is one distinct side pitted ideologically against another, there will always be the desire of that in opposition to supplant that in power. And in cases where the one side is so driven by fear for its existence that it gains the momentum to overthrow the other, a funny thing occurs. Once a side has won outright over another, it finds once more that it is made up of individuals; suddenly all the smaller beliefs of these individuals that, until now, have been ignored for the greater good, demand to be recognised, and the united victors (so long as they intend to continue democratically) are forced to hesitate, and once again to appease their own individuality with another great, dualist artifice.

While all of this is happening, and in the wake of revolution the victors are hesitating, the populace, thrown into chaos, are left confused by the dissolution of certainty that has overcome the victors, and are once again thrown, as they were before, into disillusioned, unrepresented desperation. And there is no more fertile soil for the growth of despotic ambition and cruelty than that of human desperation, from which we have nurtured the Lenins, the Stalins, the Titos and the Francos of the world.

So many revolutions throughout history have enabled the perpetrators of more misery than that which inspired them. But where in history do we see actual improvement and the overcoming of real problems? In the slow burning, individual centred movements of modern history, the Suffragette movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the arduous emancipation of the old Eastern Bloc, which was a ‘revolution’ only in name. Many of these struggles continue, and continue to progress, even today, long after the last of our so called great revolutions have fallen into complacence, obsolescence or have been exposed as more inhuman than the state of affairs they sought to replace. These movements achieved the success they did not through rash, spontaneous risings and violence, but through slow, thought out and introspective progress that made full use of the growing opportunities to share their message and their ideas through the media, communication and modernised transport.

We now live in a world where these means of sharing and spreading our ideas are infinitely more advanced than they were in any of the aforementioned movements, and yet on the enthusiastic tongues of young and understandably angry people, the word revolution can be heard again and again. We allow the movements of the past to speak for us as the heads of our dualistic sides when we chant ‘Tory Scum’, or our slogans from ’68, and why? When ’68, for all its slogans, in fact said so little. A slogan of that age is as effective a way of sacrificing our individuality to a dualist figurehead as any other. The question is: why, in an age of free information where we each have the opportunity and the freedom to inform and express ourselves more than ever before, should we be content to then package ourselves in one of two boxes and allow someone else to speak for us? Should we not be expressing ourselves as individuals constantly and unashamedly? Using our reason and our compassion to form an organic, whole movement that rejects the dualism of our past and its necessity for bloated, artificial, representative faces, and embraces the sea of authentic, optimistic faces that each speaks of its experiences and hopes for the future?

With this freedom, however, there is of course a price. And it’s a big one. If we are not to sacrifice our individuality to our leaders in return for their protecting us from the enemies our dualist thinking has created, then we must each take responsibility for that individuality, and that is no light requirement. We must each look inside ourselves and ask honestly and truthfully what it is we believe. We must forget the one-dimensional prejudices of left-right politics, and let go forever of the rash slogans and catchphrases like ‘Tory Scum’, which serve only to alienate those who we might be surprised to find, in the vibrant diversity of non-dualist humanity, agree with us in more ways than we could imagine. Once we have each of us undertaken to begin this introspective endeavour that will likely never end, we must talk about it, discuss it without prejudice, communicate with the whole world, as we are only now able to do, and to do so as unashamed and unaffiliated individuals.

When we have finally let go of the false comfort of dualism, of the security that comes in creating enemies and asking others to protect us from them, and we have become an organically growing body of individuals, assured in our self-knowledge and supported by our acceptance of the self-knowledge of others we will find this: while the plant that grows precociously, bursting with all its energy through obstacles in a single revolutionary act is battered by the wind, or collapses under its own unsupported weight and snaps at the stem, the sprout that lies in the dark, increasing its body cell by cell through the sharing of collective energy and the goodness it finds in the world immediately surrounding it, will one day not burst, but as an irresistible, inseparable force of nature, will push through into the fresh air and the bright light that it has never before had the fortune to see, and that will nourish it in its prosperity indefinitely.

Some new old songs...

2011-01-12T06:49:00.000-08:00

So I found some old recordings from a few years ago that I totally forgot about... some of them are below...

Poetry (Winter 2007)

2011-01-12T06:48:00.002-08:00

Poetry (Winter 2007) by NCMiles

Little Egg Remix (Spring 2008)

2011-01-12T06:48:00.001-08:00

Little egg remix (Spring 2008) by NCMiles

GoldenWindows (Spring 2007)

2011-01-12T06:47:00.002-08:00

Golden Windows (Spring 2007) by NCMiles

Little Egg (Summer 2007)

2011-01-12T06:47:00.001-08:00

Little egg (Summer 2007) by NCMiles

Glasnost (Autumn 2010; London)

2011-01-04T13:24:00.000-08:00

So yeah, 'Glasnost' is kind of a working title because I went through a phase this Autumn of writing a lot and giving up on writing titles at all... I think it kind of works though, in a funny sort of way it fits, and the song's kind of an act of openness in itself... I'll get a proper version down at some point...

RedBus (Autumn 2009; London)

2011-01-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

Pressed your lips to my cheek and I made a little beep
like when an oyster card checker's checked an oyster card
and my eyes like a screen displaying insufficient funds
betrayed the moribund nature of this one way journey
and it burns me that the people on the pavement outside
seem to be getting where they're going faster than us,
but they're all incomprehensible bastards anyway,
going round and round and round here like the wheels of the bus...

And the only thing to vex me is if red's meant to be sexy
why do people on buses always argue instead of kissing
instead of kissing
and the logical disaster is if red makes you go faster
why are buses always late and make me miss you

I always miss you

Afraid, sometimes, like kids are afraid (Summer 2010; Dorset)

2011-01-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

You wore your best summer dress & let it go clear in the rain,
& if your poor mother found out how she'd be so ashamed...
You'd just met me, you barely knew my name,
but you let me see you all the same.

We ran back to shelter, stood under the boughs and the groves,
and when we stopped running you helped me to take off my clothes...
I waited a while, then told you I had to be home,
I didn't look back, I dressed, & I left you alone

...And I feel ashamed when I think of your name & of then, but it's not the same & I'll say we were only children...
but I still feel like a child, with a child's little voice, don't you know
It's a conscious choice & you grow when you want to grow(?)

I had an old camera & shot as the rain sank inside,
& fifteen months later the film came out warped and belied...
...your expression, you didn't seem to mind,
but your face was wet, I didn't see you cry...

Manners (Summer 2009; London)

2011-01-04T13:08:00.001-08:00

Pretty obviously really, really drunk in this one, so forgive the shifty red-eye...

We sat in there impatiently with teacups and saucers and red label,
and half finished translations of Kafka and Chaucer on the table,
you tell me that I'm too polite and that one of these days I'll get in trouble,
I tell you when you kissed me I resisted to the point that I was able,

But it's the least that I could do,
to fall in love with you,
It's the least that I could do...

I left you at Victoria with all the spite that lurks in benediction,
and I overwrote the story with diaspora from greater works of fiction,
You wore the same wan smile as when you oh so often mocked my elocution,
And I'm glad polite society progressed if only slightly since our meeting.

Now We're 20 and We've Slept Together (Summer 2009; London)

2011-01-04T13:07:00.001-08:00

I like you, but you're always late,
just as I give in you send me a card,
I'm glad you made it to Dubai.
When I dream, I'm on a page,
one that you'll read when we're strangers and see,
What I mean when I tell you that I....

wish the sky were a giant concave mirror,
And you'd see me wave from the roof.

This is not the last time that
We will hold each other.....

We'll float around,
like paulo and francesca,
together but apart.

Tongue (Autumn 2008; London)

2011-01-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

I'm less than articulate,
each time you see me,
I stare at you silent and savour the irony,
hoping that five or six words is enough to convey that I care.
I could shout it in poetry later that night,
but can't say a thing while you're there.

and each time we speak it'll seem that it's forgone,
that I should just stand there and smile like a moron,
Still the most blissful of idiots wordless and gasping for air,
and I could write songs in a number of tongues,
but can't sing a word when you're there.

Bicycle (Winter 2008; London)

2011-01-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

I had to dig out the lyrics for this one, and apparently there were two extra verses I didn't see fit to put in the recorded version. I figured I'd put them up anyway...

Ive got a new bicycle,
It's not like my dad's old one,
that got stolen when I was young,
With my own seat strapped to the front.

(I've got a new coffee pot,
It's not like the one from home,
and sometimes it overflows,
but it's all mine to call my own.

I live alone in euston now,
and only just up the street,
from that hotel, we couldn't sleep
a couple of kids in way too deep.)

I found an old polaroid,
it was us but our hair was worse
marked September 21st,
and your writing on the reverse..

You get your train
from Warren Street to Waterloo
and Waterloo to where we make out names...

I've bought myself a newspaper
to pass the time on this train,
and call old things by new names,
but I'll be back round here again.

X & Y (Summer 2009; Morazzone, Italy)

2011-01-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

X attacked ferociously
but y had greater strength you see
and inspite of equality
his legs were long genetically
he kicked her in the history
and as it turned most tragically
the baby of them both was carried out in less time than the time prescribed

and all these things aside
neither one asked why

(y) moved to the city
to lament the loss of baby
in a haze of desktop daydreams
and arrays of neutral colour schemes
the days became excessive
and he'd think about it less if
he could focus his attention on the action of life as it passed him by,

and all these things aside
he never once asked why

(y)'s now estranged lover
learned to hate the role of mother
moving to a town more southern
than the one her grief had governed
now she spends time in the garden
walking circles round the yard and
on the colder days she thinks about her separé thinks under the same sky,

and all these things aside,
we call them x and y.

Adages (Autumn 2010; Dorset)

2011-01-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

QuietWinterHeart (Winter 2010; Dorset)

2010-12-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

Proper(ish) recording of one of the newer songs.
I'm not much of a violinist, but if you are much of a violinist and would like to collaborate at some point, let me know? I like writing for strings and it'd be nice to have them played properly at some point.

Quietwinterheart by NCMiles

We don't pay the bills, we just pace about,
and watch electric lights go out,
when it's dark we dance and play and shout
and our heart's our only home

we ride out into the night
and no one ever knows
how the quietwinterheart glows

Ferns grow in the fireplace
likes lines show on our winter face
they burn and soon smoke out the place
and we share our house's health

we ride out into the night
and no one ever sees
how the quietwinterheart beats,

and the days to come will be quiet ones...
and the days to come will be fuller ones
the days to come will be slower
in the days to come we'll be no one's

so we ride out into the night
and only some will feel
how the quietwinterheart reels.

DrumFun!

2010-12-23T03:27:00.000-08:00

So, a while ago I found a kids' drum kit in a charity shop, I bought it for £10, cannibalized it (The bass was dead, so I just palm a tom, etc...) and dragged it back to the attic... For various reasons I didn't have a chance to play it for a while, but when I started, quickly realised that DRUMMING IS THE MOST FUN EVER! (I gave my 1 year old nephew one of the little toms to play with, he agrees... see...
...)

Here's one of my first mess-arounds on the drums from a while ago... It's pretty raw, but at some point once I work it out I wouldn't mind getting a project up where I play drums and not much else... it's way fun...

Drumfun! by NCMiles

A Comic (Spring 2010)

2010-12-20T09:39:00.001-08:00

Drawn a while ago on the back of an envelope... Click for a bigger image?

Fun times on Facebook

2010-12-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

If your friend and mine has anything else to say about what a logically inept moron I am, I'll be sure to let you know...

[Update-that evening]

Oy... dickend... I'm out.

The World After the World (Winter 2010; Dorset)

2010-12-12T08:39:00.001-08:00

Ummm, so I started sketching this out in my head yesterday while taking a little walk around my home town, first as a poem (I was thinking of writing poems again), but now as this, whatever this is... sort of a sketch, I suppose, I'm not totally sure why but writing it really bummed me out...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bench was white, which is why it looked so wrong there. The sky was flat grey down over the field; trees like anaemic hands pulling it down like a dirty sheet over the dirty earth. The fields looked ashamed as far as we saw them, with the moist damp dark that comes after snow and makes grass look dead and more alive all at once. Bench was in the swamp, the swamp was dry, dry enough, and held bench and the can well. In front of bench was the can, in the can we burnt what we found for fire and heat, in front of the can was the clearing and the fields and the hands and the sky. Bench was always so white.

Kolya spat at the can, I always hated Kolya for a bastard, but he knew me well. The mucous in his spit bubbled by the fire in the can, and slid over the rust while boiling. He cleared his throat. ‘You remember when you was a kid?’ I nodded internally ‘A man came to your house and talked to your mother. He worked with the scrap metal, dancing with it all night, and he brought you a bike he found, to your door.’

‘I remember’ I spelled the words out, moving my eyes over the fire like sparklers and shut my lids for a projectionist’s canvas. ‘I remember’.

‘You took the sorry little thing everywhere, it was humble and yours and you loved it. Then when winter came around your father thought it kind to visit on the man who danced with metal and had its metal cares smudged on his hands and clothes. You went along unwilling like to where he lived.’

I formed Kolya’s next words with my tongue inside my cheek, ‘Hundreds of caravans…’ before it became distracted, tonguing cavities, and fell asleep on the seabed of my mouth.

‘Hundreds of caravans, all with the wheels removed, the sadness of their metal parts rusting round their plastic parts moved you before you entered the man’s home to pay your respects. He said he looked forward to seeing you a man’.

Kolya was drooling a little as he spoke. He loosed his lip over the fire to let the drool crackle in the heat, as this entertained him, but singed his hair and he sat back down, scowling.

‘You whined like an animal when they left you alone, with the noises animals rarely let people hear, I heard you whine so.’ He had malice now and the sinuous muscle of my heart squeezed affirmatively. ‘You cried that you had no means or knowhow to cook your meals and the cold would be the death of you!’ He was excited now, as far as he ever became. ‘And you gots hungry and hungry and hungry, and you took -I know you did take- your little bike and you dropped it into the pool of water from where you drank. (Because they was good enough, I recall, to show you to water before leaving you be) and you waited and waited until you were intolerable thin, and your skin stretched over like a fish with no fins’ A dreamy look came over Kolya’s malice now, as cruelty always pacified him, and he became distracted, ‘Was I to tear off a birds wings I can think of how the bird would be on the ground. But a fish with torn off fins? That should I like to like see. For curiosity’s sake…’

‘But as I say, you were intolerable thin when you harvested the fruits of your sacrifices, I saw you, you drank from the pool, laced with the rust of your little now nothing bike, and it sustained you little and little like.’

My open eyes howled at him and he stopped there.

‘Never mind though my boy,’ he stared through the fire at the fields, the anaemic hands were pulling down their blanket and hiding their shame and our fire in can was the only throbbing little something of a heart to their dank forgetfulness.

I always hated Kolya for a bastard, but he knew me well.

Some turgid poetry to match my 'turgid prose'

2010-12-07T03:28:00.000-08:00

This one's specially for UCL's 'leading political prose poet'...

Martin opposed occupation
he thought that he spoke for the nation
he got his own way
but then couldn't pay
for his children to write dissertations

He wrote about how he abhorred us
it read like he'd fucked a thesaurus
he set out in prose
all the things that he knows
but the points were prevailingly porous

He argued that in a recession
the students should make a concession
he fought back the tears
when in twenty odd years
the market was pricing the lessons.

MathFolk!

2010-11-19T12:34:00.000-08:00

Sooooo.... I still don't have much of a voice to sing and put anything up, but I have been working on a little something... I've always been into 'mathy' music, and wanted to see if some folk patterns/rhythms could be mixed with some of that kind of style... in the end I'm going to say no, no they cannot, or at least not by me, right now... because I don't think it sounds to great... but here's the experiment...

News...

2010-11-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

Hello, I'd really like to put up a load of music here, new versions of things and stuff... But I've not got much of a voice at the moment... illness and that, so there will be some music, lots, even... soon...

Rock Pools (Winter 2009; London)

2010-11-08T11:20:00.000-08:00

This is apparently published in some independent poetry magazine in Germany, I really have no idea...

I saw upon looking, and asking to see,

the fountains of home; those old cracking baths.

They smelled of stagnant rock pools from the days

when you and I, Sister, together went

crabbing, and found not more than dried out shells.

We knew then how water yellows and still:

We clambered over rocks until the tide

receded, like our father's hair, like that

of his father; like mine, revealing skin.

Now, your child, Sister, what will he become?

Will he go crabbing in vain, stagnant pools?

Will he escape our dulled metropolis?

Running into the tide at it's apex,

Adding his mass and providing the weight,

Refreshing the pools, hydrating white shells;

Turning calcium, flesh,

filling the fountains

of our old town.

Will his hair

recede?

Like mine,

Will it grow?

Dipthongs (Summer 2009; Varese, Italy)

2010-11-08T11:16:00.001-08:00

...because I am fat, and drunk, and when I say your name it sounds like I'm tearing diphthongs apart with yellowing teeth; and you're lovely, and you make worlds and look at them with open eyes, and I want to lick those eyes. Because nobody else could.

Geneva (Summer 2009; Geneva-Rome Train)

2010-11-08T11:14:00.000-08:00

Me and the American traverse Genevan streets,

with their clumsy graffiti, citing slogans from the west,

and the past.

'Filtered through the mountains for a purer taste,'

correspondent to your class.

Those voluptuous black clouds passed on to the east,

without bursting at the prick of the peaks,

And among the working girls of the north side streets,

I long for rain.

To eroticize the subject,

nullify the pain (of being a man)

and dance the opulent tango

of ribbon curves

and slips well deserved.

We look to drown the day,

in the ways and wake

of those great lovers that bade,

on flaking hotel stairwells,

the final, foregone

farewells of the ambitious.

But the afternoon crawls by,

Until we, with the rest, return downstairs.

"City blocks of flaccid cocks trying to off their rocks"

The American muses

as he fuses a flame to a cigarette.

I mutter a laugh,

I want to fuck and forget fucking.

I want the doorways to empty

the neon that tempts only moths to relent;

see dawn, see morning

and talk; Talk;

Talk away this frivolous fever,

that burns in my head on the streets of Geneva.

Health (Winter 2009; London, Dorset)

2010-11-04T14:18:00.000-07:00

"It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream"
-Giorgos Seferis - Remember the Baths Where You Were Murdered.

I
The Age, Sickness and Retreat

The day to day evades history;
all instants pass listlessly.
(You saw your own face in a surface of the sea
oh incredible sight that had you,
horrified and mesmerised,
fall through to the other side).
This was when you were a child
with weak lungs, succumbing to sickness
and your mother looked afraid
and your father, afraid of you,
and consigned you to a room.

Apollinaire's airplanes came crashing behind the windows
with commerce and communications
with the schisms of present and past
and anachronisms unmade to last
then, when only the smoothness of glass
let you see the great event,
your cold sweats condensed,
refracting light as lactic acid burned in your legs
and you twisted in your bed.

The world, you felt outside,
by tense imposing movement,
like a coil in a watch,
forever twisted filament
slowly tightened on its core
as molten rock and iron ore
burst from volcanoes and recast the streets,
and geography: vast and intangible Pangaea
that you roamed while half asleep
lost its mystique.
Though you knew nothing of it then.

Still, in your room you moaned and tossed,
Everywhere at once and never so lost.

Laid out on a bare mattress,
you stared, blessed and sleepy,
the soft sound of rain for lacking linen crunch
made fading lullabies slow, and superseded
by another distant music of children singing.
Fond old songs you learned without knowing.

The sound joined the ache,
joined the cold,
joined the air,
joined the smell,
joined the stairs and the street and the hair new grown now on your feet
and you sigh, final sigh,
a bubble underwater,
it floats above,
and you sink.

(Somewhere up there,
in ominous anticipation,
a storm, formed in passing weeks, breaks.
that first drop, straight up,
falls towards the surface,
from another surface,
divine weeping face
to meet your exhalation.)

II
Two Dreams, Death & Half Life

The coming days are timeless.

You step paths never built
but rather
embossed in ancient architecture;
watch yourself traverse these trenches
first foot first.

You pass someone you know and know you know them;
you pass someone you know and knows you know them;
you passed the two at once.
No words were spoken.
No words are spoken.

Through a dulled, damp body
as though bathed in benzocaine,
An icy rain spears your shoulders
as you choose:
"whether you're rising,
whether water is falling around you,"
but there's endless time to think about the weather,
though it never changes in it's measure or its kind,
but it cuts the thin veneer of a nothing half summer,
and therein lies its value.

"Wait! What value?"
You force open an eye,
and ask yourself if life lived still
can be down to the weather.
But the salt outside burns the film
over your iris and dilated retina,
and you regress to the deep.

And dream a moment,
prior to forgetting:
That airy sphere that speaks of you,
that you spoke,
An unending repetition of straight sides,
sketched lines,
and the imperfection of corners.
This bubble that contains all you can say
and nothing you can mean,
that signified scream sinks with you.

The first thread of a deeper dream reaches your lips
but stays there without substance
for the coming days are timeless:
"Now, I will grow my hair impassively,
Buy a suit and traverse India."
words like gunpowder!
All consuming fire in spite of rain.
All consuming rain.
Dance like petrol flames, old flames.
But there isn't any time,
and your hair grew on and left you behind.

Now you could be back on those paths
or under the sea
or drowned in the folds of sleep.

Dark eyed children run around you,
maybe even through you
shouting dai! dai! after each other.
but you've nothing left to give
and beleaguered with their breathing,
you hang upon your head,
you feel
this first time,
the benevolence of the dead.

III
To Fall Willingly

There may be nothing left...

In lifeless equilibrium you float
as though at rest
In a density where
your size is your mass.

This vast substance
that fills your lungs
lunges onto land by the weight of another
Twisting round another, and another, and another and
even this!
even this may be governed by greater weights,
by greater bodies,
while yours floats still, saturated,
lost behind your eyes,
Under one and endless seas.

(Somewhere above,
the last of your breath
has reached another surface,
and from a surface higher still,
Oh divine weeping face,
the first drop reaches home,
to meet it at its place).

You may be gone,
the instant of collision,
could be just that forever.

But you never asked the question
to it's reticent conclusion.
Can a life lived still?
A life lived still,
live still?
Both eyes open,
time bursts into brightly coloured life!
Now, in rushing light,
The instant concludes:

The bubble, the drop,
explode like words, like worlds.
Against a surface shared.

The air, once from your lungs, burst into the oceans,
the dense of the droplet rushes on the skies.

"Now, I see,
and suffer for the clarity of light upon my eyes.
Now, I feel.

"That vast, terrible ocean lies below;
I shall be below it in my turn, but not yet.
And in this textured air,
Where time moves tangibly,
I find myself more scared
to find myself behind my eyes.

"I feel the air that moves around my face,
But now I know the difference,
between a thing and its place.
Yes, gladly, I know,

that I am falling."

Something Good (Autumn 2010)

2010-11-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

The best things that I remember
a friend of a friend got too high again
she asked me to dance
and though I know that I can't
I did not send her away.
We shook off the shakes and moved into the night
or until she bugged out at the shadows outside
so I sat her down and told her about
all the good things that come with the day

and if I could remember myself I would
forget myself and do something good,
If I could remember these things I would
forget myself and do something good...

The best things that I remember
a circle of friends I may not see again
and we sat in the kitchen in aging October
the house was already old.
One of us spoke about searching for happiness
the last of our light bulbs broke leaving him speechless
and just for then, if never again, we were glad to be out of the cold.

If I could remember these things I would
forget myself and do something good,
If I could remember these things I would
forget myself and do something good...

The best things that I remember
we sat on the station awaiting the train
and many oblivious morning coat men were
wrapped in their papers and blowing away
we all of us kissed on the cheeks and the lips
and we hung our ennui on industrial cranes
that spiked the horizon
and you cried from the platform
that I disappeared just a quick as I came

and if I could remember these things I would
forget myself and do something good,
If I could remember these things I would
forget myself and do something good...