January 9th 2019: (Edwards Rd.,)
Cutting patterns from a sheer, black material.
Making a shirt for a soldier.
I have never made a shirt before: I am winging it.
The best way to cut patterns, I suppose, is to work from a cardboard template.
My landlady appears at the window & asks, “Where is the collar?”
January 12th 2019.
Working again at a version of the old place in south London. It is a cross between a hair salon & a laundrette. Tumble driers churn clothes, silently. Wayne B & wife sit on a bench reading magazines. Wayne has a mohawk. Hannah has rollers. Their daughter, Daisy, runs & plays between & around the driers. She bangs on the glass & laughs as the clothes blur inside.
The music is annoying. I stand at the huge & complicated sound system, trying to figure out how it works. I have found a Jungle Brothers cassette tape. It is an album called ‘Hard Life.’ I have never heard of it before & I am quite excited to hear it.
After a long time I discover the cassette deck. I put the tape in & press play.
“Didn’t know you liked the Jungle Brothers,” says Wayne.
“I’d forgotten all about them,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “The jungle, the jungle, the brothers, the brothers!”
We laugh.
January 13th 2019.
Perhaps it is a studio. Perhaps it is an air B&B. It is Scandinavian in design: an open fire; highly polished, open, wooden stairs; high ceilings, large, simple, metallic lampshades – soft white globes of light. Out the window (dark, wooden frames): pines, heavy with snow; the sunlight shafts through the trees. The sky is white – thick with fast moving clouds. They are like sails. Casey A is stood on a mezzanine floor; dressing, humming. I am collecting logs that are scattered across the floorboards. I stack them by the fireplace.
Outside, I notice a yellow bus. It speeds through the deep snow with ease.