All the Paddys you knew were related to a member of the IRA and all the Jocks were cousins of Jimmy Boyle and all the cockneys had been sodomized by one of the Kray brothers. The eighties were fucking miserable, Thatcher took away milk from the class room and she gave the money to the police and they were more than happy to remove a pate here and there. Who the hell would want to be a part of this shit. It rained nonstop through the eighties. The team you supported was always losing. "Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed." Most people would concur with Dr Johnson, but not M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux. Finding him changed my life, like listening to Can, Eno and Beefheart. I could find no English translation. It took me a year to read that beautiful book. I translated the book from French into English. Here is a taste of that most delectable book.

“Je suis reposé sur un mettre hors jeu et mon robinet brûle parce que j'ai juste versé le gaz plus d'il et l'ai allumé.”

Here is my translation:

“I am sat on a bench and my cock is burning because I have just poured gas over it and lit it.”

For M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux sex was Rabelaisian. Pain and suffering he welcomed them with open arms, penury was a thing that clothed him. ‘Sucer Mon Robinet’ by M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux should be read by all.

I sit before this with the impotence of Abelard.

M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux said before they shot him, “avez-vous une lumière pour ma cigarette ?” He was shot because he attended the German Writer’s congress at Weimar. He was a nefarious man; he practiced what he preached, unlike most. A bullet was shot into his head sometime in 1945. The fog of war obfuscates. He did not have time to write another book. The world was robbed of a pure soul. Remember pure means undiluted. “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." Dr. Johnston once again.

And so it was in the eighties when I first heard of M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux, at any moment we could have been incinerated by the Russians, or an American bomb could have landed upon us, friendly fire, it happens. Thus death was everywhere. One of the ramifications of this impending death was violence and I witnessed a lot of violence, from drunks in chip shops to football hooligans storming like SS troops through the desolate streets.

Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk.

Here is the first usage of the word fuck. It is from the poem 'Flen flyys'. Written some time before 1500. In fact the usage was "fuccant", a hybrid of an English root with a latin conjugation, and was disguised in the text by a simple code if you went to school that fucking is, in which each letter was replaced with the next letter in the alphabet. Anyway it was during the early eighties that I first heard the word fuck. It was just past midnight New Years Eve 1980. M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux used the word fuck like it should be used, his fuck reeked of excreta, rotting fishheads, whore’s twats that reeked of burnt rubber. When he wrote fuck on the page, the verb became animated and the whore he was fucking screamed. I love the word fuck, I really do.

And so we come to Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel. Listening to that mellifluous voice and reading M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux was a marriage made in heaven - or hell. Before the Christians got hold of hell and made it into a fiery pit, a De Sade horror picture, Hell was a barren wasteland, much like the Northwest of England under Thatcher. With Scott Walker ringing in my ears I declared myself to be French. Who wouldn’t, catholic, poor, shitstains, lice in the hair? I read Abellio, Anouilh, Aragon, Arland, Artaud, Barthes, Bataille, Beauvoir – anyway I read everything I could get my hands upon, I read Genet, De Sade, Villon, Celine and I listened to Scott Walker sing the songs of that genius Jacques Brel and I smeared garlic over my balls. Songs like ‘Amsterdam’, listened repeatedly while reading Camus’ ‘The Fall’, and ‘Jackie’ when I hear that song now I am reminded of first reading Genet. But it is M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux that is stirred in my bowels when now I listen to the whole cd. Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel is poetry, sorrow, heartbreaking, fierce, brutal, a compound of Rimbaud, too much drink and that band that keeps playing even when the lights have been extinguished. Nobody sings like Walker like nobody can write a poem like Apollinaire. Walker’s depth is only matched by Proust. Walker tells a story like Gide. Walker’s bravado is only equaled by M. Merde Pour Des Cerveaux.

And so while I was listening to Scott Walker maybe I was French, and all the Paddys I knew were in fact related to a member of the IRA and all the Jocks were hammer wielding (in joke: what the movie ‘A Taste of Freedom’) cousins of Jimmy Boyle and maybe, yes just maybe all the cockneys I knew had been sodomized by one of the Kray brothers.

paul kavanagh was born in england 1971. he is happy. his wife is happy. together they are happy. To read a selection of Kavanagh’s writing on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.