Writing | Art By Logovend.com

The Complete History of Alcohol

First Verse:
It seems obvious, but by standing on either bank of the river Thames you can survey the other side. If it's so obvious, let's do it ...
   Look from left-to-right as far as the eye can see. Think about everything that you are looking at. Take it in. After enough time, you'll come to the conclusion that there is an immensity of detail. Too much to take in with a single sweep. But let's try ...
   On a simple level we see the different heights and widths of buildings. The simple measurements. Time to move onto the styles of architecture, the history of that architecture, and now how the buildings are utilised. Of course there is also a history inherent within this use.
   Once we have that cracked, let's do an easy one and count the near-infinite amount of windows you can see. Counting easy. Done?

Now that was just the buildings, but let's stick with the buildings because that is how 'A Complete History of Alcohol' starts. This is the analogy I choose. Buildings as bottles. Either bank of the Thames an esoterically stocked bar.

Our left-to-right is the 'Complete History', from the dawn with its first fermentations, off into the infinite permutations and uses the future holds to the end of the right-hand horizon.
   All I can do is look directly to the other side - the now. A wafer thin slice of a 'Complete', no more than one or two millimetres thick.

'Port and Brandy, please,' I ask. 'It's a fun life,' in a defeated and sarcastic tone behind me. Someone serving Southside.
   Stand on either Bank of the Thames and look from left-to-right but you'll usually end up in the drink.

Chorus:
Can I interject here to make myself feel better? I need to give you some dates. Dates within a history would make me feel better;
3,500 BC - Egyptians start making wine. The earliest recording of alcohol.
100 AD - Brandy is created by the Romans, probably the earliest form of hard liquor.
1640 - First records of a distillery in New York City.
1650 - Rum started being manufactured in Barbados.
1720 'til 1750 - England Gin epidemic.
1751 - UK parliament passed an act putting a high tax on strong spirits.
1926 - Prohibition in the US starts.
1929 - Prohibition lifted.
1994 - First Alcopop goes on sale.
15th October 2002 (Today) - Money in my pocket for any alcohol I desire.
16th October 2002 (Tomorrow) - Hangover.
Cheers.

This two-verse song needs a bridge (or bridges) to connect. The first bridge:
'A Complete History of Alcohol' like art. For art is art. On top of itself - like alcohol. Cocktail of colours, stirring-up dormant emotion. Solid, liquid and gas without the measurements of science. I am a cultured man. A man of culture. Art places me within society and references me within that culture. Or some such bullshit.
   'The precursor to lose beer bowl, the fart sent tremors through the arse (art) world. He'd come had come out with some good shit in the past, but this was bigger than everything he'd produced before. It would create quite a stir - conceptually.'
   Conceptually 'A Complete History of Alcohol' is a masterpiece, ensuring its creator unadulterated immortality. Or some other such bullshit. For the journalistic slant look up the review in the Guardian's Art Section.
   But how subjective favour can sour: from pedestal to park, from Ł300 Malts to black cans, from white, clean, minimal galleries to dirty benches.
   'A Complete History of Alcohol' says there is nothing objective about its person. Drinking like beauty, form, just like art. Emotion as is true within the eye of any beautiful, beholden drinker. The beauty is in the eye, not in what the eye observes.
   'A Complete History of Alcohol' can write itself into any stone, granite, mould itself into any malleable material, on any canvas, any piece of paper, any wall, or toilet door. The aesthetic could even be vandalistic and still retain its intrinsic worth.
   And so, 'tag it' becomes 'down it'.

Second Chorus (same as the first):
I can feel it rising again. Let's just name some drinks. As before, it would make me feel better.
Pernod or Ricard.
Three Rivers Rum.
Gordon's Gin.
Woodford Reserve.
Guinness.
Red Wine.
Absolut Vodka.
Cheers.

Shorter, multiple bridges (maybe these will be long or plentiful enough to actually make a crossing?):
'A Complete History of Alcohol' is the internet, a foundation for meeting strangers.
   'A Complete History of Alcohol' is homelessness, cold and begging.
   'A Complete History of Alcohol' is science with its precision and measurement. Experiment, results and a following conclusion.
   'A Complete History of Alcohol' is music or literature. It doesn't matter because anything new is a remix or rehash of something that has already existed; ingredients remain the same. Letters, words, notes, chords with the fermentation of imagination. Reading, listening, writing, to serving, pouring, brewing.
   If I were obese rather than perpetually drunk 'A Complete History of Alcohol' would be 'A Complete History of Food'. So 'A Complete History of Alcohol' is also 'A Complete History of Food.' Therefore 'A Complete History of Alcohol' is 'A Complete History of Anything' and so, '... Everything.'

Chorus (am I repeating myself?):
I still don't feel right. Names will help.
Janis Joplin.
Ernest Hemmingway.
Oliver Reed.
Dylan Thomas.
Jim Morrison.
Jackson Pollock.
Keith Moon.
Francis Bacon.
Charles Bukowski.
Cheers.

Final Verse:
'A Complete History of Alcohol' like the contained history of a relationship. Start and finish like the "Complete History of a Single Drink'. Glass full - glass empty. Start - finish.
   'The Complete History of Alcohol' used to play fight with one another. The pretending just intensified and reaffirmed the real feelings.
   Open log fires like brandy. Sex like vodka. Caresses like whisky. Kind words like wine. Kisses like pints. Gretna Green like expensive champagne - a spontaneity I could never afford.
   I miss that girl.
   Like her, 'A Complete History of the Heat of Mexico', I have a bottle of Sauza tequila in my bag. And so, for this afternoon, outside the pub by the Tate Modern Gallery, I'll stand at the edge of that dirty bag of a Thames, looking directly across the river in front of me, into the face of that now and fall into the drink, until the glass is completely drained.

Until the glass is completely drained (repeat to fade).

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