I am Oscar Wilde (11th March 1997)

I am Oscar Wilde. Dandy, laughed at, reviled, but triumphant, forever above them all. I am Aubrey Beardsley, sad, frustrated, repressed young artist. I am Giacometti, a very private man who spent all his time in brothels. I am Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh.

Love how you want to love; love who you please (9th March 1997)

Love how you want to love; love who you please. 

Give me greater self-knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I dislike what I feel inside. I don’t want to open up and let people inside my Swiss bank vaults because they’ll take everything. I trust you. This self-knowledge has just given me the belief that I have got the strength and inner riches to stay on my own. 

Summer’s coming and perhaps I will come into my own: Misadventures finished at last, money to spend, films to see, strolling around London under the trees, I’ve removed the last taboo with the prostitutes. I felt I was deliberately stopping short of something which I didn’t really want to think about. I was deliberately limiting my experience. Now I’ve done everything, I can get on my with my work. 

It was fascinating to be on that bed and have her putting condom on and wanking me wasn’t it? Then lying back for me, and putting me in. The Astral kept me permanently turned on and bored at the same time.

"For some of us at least he hasn't lost any of his old vulgar vitality"

"For some of us at least he hasn't lost any of his old vulgar vitality, his willingness to give something a go, his relish for chaos, his failures of nerve, his inability to become respectable no matter how hard he sometimes tries, his contempt and anger at the follies and cruelties of the powerful."

"Walking with a yellow star on my coat, some woman spat at me" (6th March 1997)

"Walking with a yellow star on my coat, some woman spat at me....You have to look straight through people like that, without seeing them, or else how could you bear it.....They came to watch us at the station; they expected wailing and crying. We had a dignity which made my heart overflow with respect." So I did it. Went in model's room in Dean Street. Big breasts blonde in Carnival again. Plus big new long black-haired girl, with green shockwave tattoo round bottom. Big voluptuous bottom, in black ski-shorts over white knickers and bra. Great dancer, sensational big girl, big hips, big bottom. Her bottom dancing in front of me. I had a permanent erection in Astral but you don't really see anything. I go to prostitutes. Whatever turns you on. Prostitutes turn me on. That's what I want. I've done it now. I can do it whenever I want now. I am Wedekind. Toulouse Lautrec. Van Gogh.

 

"No matter what circle of hell we are living in I think we are free to break out of it"

"No matter what circle of hell we are living in, I think we are free to break out of it. And if people do not break out, again they are staying there of their own free will. So that of their own free will, they put themselves in hell. So you see that relations with other people, incrustations, freedom--freedom is the other face of the coin which is barely suggested--are the three themes in the play. I should like you to remember this when you hear that 'hell is other people'."

I don’t want a real woman (6th Feb 1997)

I don’t want a real woman, that would steal my time and freedom; my peace and quiet, I only want to go to prostitutes when I feel like it. I really don’t want a girlfriend, you know that, I couldn’t bear that. I do want a naked girl to myself every few weeks just to relieve the sexual pressure, I do know that. So that’s the problem solved then. Real girls I definitely don’t want. Prostitutes I do. That is my ideal perfect solution. Find where the models work. That is my desire. I don’t need to be ashamed and repressed like Hugh Grant. Be like Sickert, Wedekind, Toulouse-Lautrec. Sitting in the front row of Carnival Strip Monday and feeling so ruthless and in control decided it, told me I could do it. I was surprised to realise at last I could do it, I was ready for it. It is necessary for the next stage of my development.

 

The block of ice can't help giving off a cold air (4th Feb 1997)

The block of ice can't help giving off a cold air, it doesn’t do it deliberately. It's not its fault. The block of ice doesn’t want to be a block of ice, it would much rather be a warm pool teeming with micro-bacterial life. It’s punishment enough to be trapped as a block of ice, it doesn’t need abuse from other people as well. It doesn’t need punishment from outside, being is punishment enough. 

Strindberg. Munch. Hugh Grant. David Mellor. Judge the worth of a person by looking at their enemies. Eric Cantona used the ugliness and abuse to fuel him, give him power. Perhaps that’s what Sarah meant me to do. 

To ween yourself off the morphine and accept some modicum of reality. To suffer the abuse, and to not be crushed by it, but triumph to confound them. To confound! To draw power from abuse, take it in, convert it and use it back at them to confound and distress them, make them see themselves for the small people they are. Hugh Grant gives me strength, and inspiration! 

Their silly self-humiliation is the sweet air I need to breathe. Schadenfreude. Their attempted pain is what gives me pleasure. Eric Cantona came back from his private despair to win the double with Manchester United and be voted player of the year by the press. The adversity was what he needed to wrest his triumph. Hugh Grant needs his shameful incident to build his triumph. I need my shameful incidents to build my triumph. 

I inject their abuse like Sherlock Holmes injects cocaine. I will have my Baker Street rooms. It strengthens me, and thrills me, and becomes my dearest companion.

I know this morphine (this composure) is a painkiller not a cure (30th Jan 1997)

I know this morphine (this composure) is a painkiller not a cure. The disease is still there, but it’s better to have the painkiller than the pain. The disease I believe is incurable. So I will need this morphine forever. I am now finding more and better strains of it. Morphine rather than pain. Composure rather than decomposure. Voluptuous luxuries rather than black emptiness. Composure and morality, as long as people don’t get too close, then I have to go on the defensive to keep them out. No one is going to deflect me from my path, to the hanging gardens of Babylon, my Swiss bank vaults.