Rediscovering Mess. A beautiful, beautiful mess.
FOREWORD
by Danny Tucker.'Dreams that we were searching for They don't matter anymore'
Although internationally known as a novelist, Now Is Not The Time For Trumpets, Beautiful Deconstruction, Everything Could Be So Perfect, Sunsets Etc and Sad Confetti to name a few, Mark Binmore is less known for his prose, which features a kaleidoscope of scenarios and locations, together with a highly diverse cast of characters, from glamorous movie stars to burnt out strippers, somnambulists to drag queens, from a lonely bee-keeper, who said, 'I don't meet many people, I'm very busy with the hives, when's my cloud of bees coming home?' to the child growing into an adult, on the day they learned to swim, because, 'I’m all grown up now.'
'Whatever you say, whatever you know. Love may come and go, so take the things that life can give...'
That he has shared some of these characters through prose has enriched popular culture for many years; that he has also done so through poetry strikes some as surprising years since the publication of his first book. One reason is the comparative greatness of his literary output –sometimes the work can get lost – he has published several prose only
collections, the first, Beautiful Mess, with excerpts contained here for the first time via a now non-existent publishing house. It’s a book Mark never mentions.
'And in case I do not wake tomorrow whisper in my ear what I have missed
And if for any reason I never open my eyes then leave your imprint on my forehead with a kiss' Those familiar with his work may notice similarities. Mark has incorporated some lyrics into passages from his various books, an expansion of an original idea. At other times the story has been edited back into prose. An edit. A remix.
Influenced by his life experiences, musical idols, observation, and by poets such as Baudelaire and Verlaine, his words often have a musical and rhythmic quality, and enchant the reader like infectious songs, full as they are of a very human vulnerability, an acknowledgement of pain and loss, and the need for love. Indeed, many press interviews have described Marks prose work as cinematic and musical.
'Searching eyes but such lonely faces
We hunt for those soft embraces just need another moment’s understanding'
Mark Binmore was born in Torquay, England, a place he remembers in his semi-autobiography In Search Of The Fabulous People for its, 'ragged tide line of bones and shells, the gaudy seafront and its rows of onceresplendent houses.' 'It is a town,' he writes, 'like Miss Havisham and her wedding dress, awash with a faded splendour that imbues it with a slightly
seedy air of decayed decadence.'
He tells us how Torquay, a seaside resort in Devon remains within him, as the places that we come from always do, and anyone familiar with his work might easily appreciate the prevalence, however subtle, of this decadence and wistful beauty in his poetry and songs. But Devon soon became a memory when Mark moved to London.
'The sound of the city, grinds teeth just for you you know what it wants and why it needs you' New memories were made.
New people were introduced.
'I like diamonds in the rough that’s what I prefer Diamonds, in their early carbon state
I love beauty when it shows its scarred and ugly face'
I sometimes speak to those who knew him, and recently heard Mark described by a friend who worked with him as, 'someone who was always watching, observing, catching glimpses of life which he would store away and use.' Another friend would notice him spend time writing and typing, hibernating away his thoughts. One of Marks early homes in London was in Soho when it still hosted a red-light area, '...a grey and sooty place, always damp,' as he recalled in an interview, brightened only by the shop below selling glittering saris, scarves and brightly coloured Indian sweets. The brightness was obscured by his poetry of the period with its businessman smell, one-night hotels, rent-boys and its faceless figures. An early attempt at a novel, Twilights & Lowlifes, drew on these
observations. The story, based on the streets and buildings of his home brought recollections where he would sometimes hear sex workers and customers heading up and down the stairs. The narrative combines a stark realism with a nod to youthful bohemianism, before a hefty thud of Southern bathos.
'All night the girls would clump downstairs in heavy platform shoes. But I sat alone typing, listening. I painted all the walls flamenco orange and one window which was enclosed in the door-frame a vivid pink. The drains were always blocked. I started to write.'
'My mind is poisoned by the presence of you
The presence of you in my veins, the cells in my body have been told what to do to rid me of your remains'
The sense of feeling trapped, the fear of boredom and conformity raged against stands out in the first draft. The story itself is delivered in cold, hard slabs of almost nihilistic sadness including the opening passage.
'Twilights and lowlifes, we hide from the daylight. Trying to find the dream inside, trying to find some peace of mind. On the hunt for a lover. And failing. But it doesn't matter. One way or the other'
It is a fabulous read, but it has never been published in its entirety. But Marks semi-biography also reveals, '...despite it all, I personally never felt happier than during the time I stayed there, because despite what it was, it was all mine' and as the orange bedroom walls suggest, his general state of mind was more colourful than grim.
Inspired by directors such as Tod Browning and Fellini, films like 'Cabaret' and 'The Damned,' the art of Jean Cocteau, and the novels of
John Rechy, Mark fired his energies into many artistic genres, giving rise to a strangely beautiful second unpublished novel he completed in a week called, The Flamenco, the story of which displays an amorous frenzy between a wide-eyed flamenco dancer and the tender adoration of two boys.
'The story and images merge in a dazzling blur of cobras, broken Spanish dolls, castanets and Broadway tap rhythms, swinging from the sinisterly surreal. The whole story is practically a lesson in hallucinogenics.'
Mark recently confirmed that parts of this novel were reused in his later work.
Mark’s poetic lyrics from that time on seems to me not so much psychedelic as experimental, partly the stuff of cabaret and the 1930’s avant-garde. By turns gritty, surreal and confessional, it treads a fine trapeze between the macabre:
'A beautiful raven, a bird that sweeps and weeps flies my way through my daylight nightmares' (The Raven), the ugly: 'And this city is a pot-pourri of carnage, you can smell the lovers and the wasted, from the filth and dirty to the fallen stars in the gutter' (Fallen Star), and the beautiful: 'He is as black as the night, exotic and dark, a smile as deep as the earth, erotic and sweet, a lover, a healer' (Angel)
By the time Marks unacknowledged debut book appeared, its author had enjoyed more than a decade of writing, editing, observing and collecting. A more market-oriented artist might have produced a safe or straightforward book, or at least have splashed it in the public eye by extensive promotion. But Beautiful Mess is not a typical suite of fiction,
either by the standards of writers or of mainstream poets. Promotional posters appeared throughout London's Soho. A picture of a half hidden author with the wording Mark Binmore/Massive in small helvetica font at the bottom. The original book cover was also minimalist. The tiny cover photograph, a 35mm photographic negative enclosed by a sea of white, was seen by some design observers as a reaction to the traditional book cover. The book title and authors name was strangely omitted from the first print run. His publishers also created a two minute promotional video using music composed by Mark. A brief, somber mid-tempo instrumental characterized by Hindustani-inspired instrumentation, particularly in its percussion, woodwinds, and sitar, synthesized. (The music was later reused in the theatre production Simply Divine which Mark was involved with) But what this had to do with the book was never clarified. Mark had been seen as wilfully contrary in terms of commercial image, self promotion and the nature of his own writing, defying the expectations of the awaiting publishing world. He appeared to have a detached and ambivalent approach to initial success, which also showed in his low profile when it came to promotion.
In his early years, Mark seemed to be mostly defined by the things he refused to do. But initial reviews were good. Journalist Steve Brentshaw described the book as an, "ear for commerciality, small tidbits of words and lyrics" with Mark having the desire to create, "something more highbrow". He also described Mark’s lyrics as showing a, "love for language." The words were considered androgynous. The stories they
contain being equally applicable to gay and heterosexual relationships. Mark, in particular, enjoyed this ambiguity.
Published by Massive, the book presents provocative, sensual, at times humorous poetry. Its author tells us the poems were, 'written between the years 1987-97. They are explorations and observations, they part document my ever changing attitudes.'
The original edition gave titles to each piece.
Lonely, As A Sun begins 'Send me blue cornflowers' and goes on to enticingly suggest: 'I am drifting somewhere in dreamland. I lie naked asleep on your bed.
There’s danger in your eyes in deep velvet of night'
There is a sense of foreboding, such as in Dreaming, which may well draw its anxiety from the threat of AIDS that had by the late 1980s overshadowed much of the country.
'Trouble awaits on the horizons, thoughts crackling like a storm. People tumbling like rain and thunder. So keep me warm and keep me away from fate of some ghastly hand. While friends wait silently at the gate'
A similar subtext appears in the beautiful Black Swan. Elsewhere, love itself is presented as something beautiful: 'And my precious heart, I could give to you when I’m feeling blue. The colour of a kiss in my young minds dream…'
The tender sadness with which Mark writes captures something of a different era, when for all the brash materialism, another Britain of unemployment, homophobia and division was reflected by such poetry
as: 'Somewhere on the radio I hear a song of yesteryear. Words that only go to fuel my bile-embittered heartache. I felt nearly as sorry for you as I did for myself that night.
Trying to feel me up in your dirty Pimlico bedsit'
But later in the book, the decade is given lighter treatment; we see the thrills and spills of legendary nights out. Mark has recalled the 1990’s as times of fun and 'living for the day' (to quote an early title), and rising above the 'dark cloud' by clinging to the silver lining of the flamboyant Soho scene. 'And on the dance floor we came, and after the dust, we went The hot euphoria, heaven sent. And how we lived those times…' Other pieces celebrate exotic foreign scenes, like the 'fruitful valleys of California.' Life is laced with sad humour: 'And if I die before I wake up, I pray no one will smudge my make-up.' Described by its writer as 'a hymn to destructive divas and drag queens, it is truly empathetic, as behind the gloss and glamour of the movies, the tormented star is depicted in exploited pain and suffering: 'There are too many of my skeletons in other people’s closets. So many people taking. Too many people bringing me down'
The interplay around sexuality and language ('pun' seems too casual for writing so subtly clever) is impressive, and painful. How easy it would be to cast such a character in clumsy melodrama, to drench the writing in cliché. Yet this makes the reader think, and think again. 'Sometimes I feel like a moral-less child' resonates like music on the brain, and is somehow deeply sad. The poem unites two factors in its author’s artistic motivations: glamour, and darkness. In the original introduction to Beautiful Mess, he tells of 'a twilight world of neon and the unknown, of secret dreams and deals, of contrasting morals and different codes.'
His skill as a writer enables him to peer into that world, to document some of its secrets, where 'the young are the heroes and the losers are saints, where the ugly is beautiful and the beautiful more beautiful, in the gutter where gold is found, we are all just a beautiful mess.' His first collection is a glimpse into this world, and shines a torch on the lives that go on unnoticed, overlooked and under-loved, beyond the hype and heartlessness of the everyday mainstream.
But the book sold well.
Then his publishers vanished overnight.
Plans for the completed novels to be released came and went. Mark kept his advance, more importantly kept his retained his copyright and the publishing house closed.
Mark started again.
But this was only the beginning. Fate beckoned over a coffee. Mark found a new editor, a new team and a new outlet. In time a collection of stories, Even When Tonight Was Over was published, short tales, each with a hidden meaning which Mark had been working on for a few years. Promotion paid off and the release was a success. Further books followed, in the form of both poetry and prose.
'That pastel green which holds nuances of lovely rue, that odd quivering quintessence of a pear' (The Chill And The Lemony Sun) with a new novel thrown in please the publishing directors.
Questions were still being asked. 'If I could sing like a blackbird, just like my heart was filled with summer, but of all the people in this world, why should I love you?'
And he would still write and snippets from his very first book would emerge in various magazines.
A snippet here.
A piece there.
From the past.
Catch Me Dancing portrays a city struggling to survive, and its people living a life in secrets and desires.
'A city bathed in decaying dreams where under a crimson sky, spires gleam. A dying fire, where angels fly higher. Where during an age, a man took a trip on a hallucinogenic sinking ship. And endless streets, dark mysterious bars where young lovers meet in secret…'
The End Of London is a burst of joy and sorrow, as Mark regrets the new, corporate Disneyland the city has by that time, he feels, largely become, in much the same way he would write of the white-washing of London’s West End a decade or so later, when famous, and infamous places were replaced by mass-market fast-food chains.
'The end of London came on a day
That was as grey as the hair of the mayor of London town
He turned off the music and turned up the lights
And the corners shone white, pure white
For it was over…'
The Czar Dances portrays a forgotten city struggling to survive, as after years of upheaval the country just about pulls through.
'There’s a city lying in decaying dreams, where under a purple dusk sky, the gold spires still gleam like a dying fire. The statues of angels seek to fly higher. This is the place
where the Czar started dancing. Streets filled with sad, lonely people. And endless avenues, dark canyons where young lovers meet in secret'
Released in 2016, Nemesis saw Mark in nostalgic mood. A pause from novel writing. A step back to where it all started. But it was also a last waltz. His words had long contained elements of European (especially Celtic and Latin) sound. But there was always love. 'She is touching my hand, dead leaves buried under snow, twisted branches cover a frozen garden' (Misty) and always the letting go, 'I put on my pointed hat and my black and silver suit, I check my gunpowder pack and I strap the stick on my back, I’m dressed as a rocket with a fuse in my hand and shooting into the sky' (Rockets Tail)
After publication, Mark continued with two novels Beautiful Deconstruction ('What it really is like to grow old in a foreign land with a sudden urging for home') and Everything Could Be So Perfect ('I remember sitting on a park bench in 1987 staring at the home of a pop star. I sat there for hours. Eventually they appeared, got in their car and drove off. They never saw me, I was invisible and yet I felt exhilarated. That became the basis for this book') before embracing a new team and switching to a new publisher for an impressive five book deal. And still the past would be brought to the present.
His first release Sunsets Etc was a faintly veiled memoir featuring the old mixed with the new. Sad Confetti, was new direction, Shorts, an interlude, almost a greatest hits collection, brought together the very best, and with the forthcoming duology starting with Sleeps With Butterflies, we come full circle.
'I'm not like the other boys that you've known. But I believe I'm worth coming home to. Kiss away the night because this one sleeps only with the butterflies, just butterflies so go on and just fly'
Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.
Beautiful Mess comes across as a sociological treatise on the 80s, documenting in many ways the results of common attitudes and, yes, behaviour and mess of the decade. Whether it's the devastation of AIDS, the outcomes of greed, infidelity, and promiscuity, the poses of stardom, or the virtual collapse of communism, in one prose after another the book details the sense of loss and confusion wrought by individual and collective behaviour gone awry.
Rather beautiful. Go read.
I first met Mark years ago, somewhere in the wintry backstreets of Soho, nervously writing through his nights, watching from the windows, observing. 'The mist and the sun of the morning. It’s over…'
And yet, the same vein of vulnerability, of admiration for the lost, the lonely and the outsiders of life, shines through his recent work. The same idealistic clubber who, living for the moment, dances, 'in a blur of broken neon' among others and, 'a ruined superstar' is not far removed from the wide-eyed youngster, 'looking for those soft embraces' or indeed the young boy dreaming of a life of glamour and excitement among the lonely seafronts of the Devonshire coast. Beautiful Mess might just be that. A beautiful unnoticed mess. It would be shame if it was.