I think Eyes Wide Shut was ultimately a 'failure' but a very interesting failure

I think Eyes Wide Shut was ultimately a 'failure' but a very interesting failure. Fascinating for the complete LACK of sexual chemistry between the real life couple Cruise & Kidman.

I like the sinister uneasy feel of the whole film. Something just 'wrong' about it, in a good way

It opened in London September 1999, one of those times of my life I regard as a real ‘crucible’. Times when the fires & pressure were building up to a fever pitch, and in that great pot new things could be forged. I was just a few weeks away from travelling to Europe for the first time in my life, that first ‘Grand Tour’ that would lay down the markers for the whole rest of my life to come (a trip detailed in my book AUTISMUS (1999-2001). On that first Grand Tour I would go to Brussels, then  Munich, then Vienna, then Berlin, and it was those four ‘Cities of the Autumn Stars’ as I called them (after the Michael Moorcock book of that name) forever after that I would return to again & again & again in the years that followed, and pretty much only them. 

My excitement & tension in those weeks leading up to that journey was extreme and so anything else that came into my life at that time left a huge mark, like with a branding iron. So along comes Eyes Wide Shut. It will always be part of my history now, almost feels like part of that first journey to Europe. I started the journey months before I actually physically set off.

I am someone OBSESSED with my own personal history. Everything I write is a very conscious effort to record my time on this Earth as I am obsessed with leaving a record behind for posterity, and always conscious that every day may be my last, so I must hurry. That is why I publish all my books before I am really satisfied with them, I just need to get them out there in case I drop dead the next day (God forbid). Once published I can then keep reading them, making changes, uploading the changes ad infinitum. My books are never finished. They go on blooming & blossoming even after initial publication. Blooming, Blossoming, pruning too. Adding stuff, cutting stuff. An Ernst Graf book is never finished.

I am great believer in the 'crucible' idea of one's own life. 1999 was absolutely a crucible time in my life, whereas 2000, 2001, 2002 absolutely were not. 2003 was a crucible and so was 2004, but then 2005 absolutely was not, and so on. 

I have also observed the seven-year cycle in my life, the 'seven year itches' when I need to start a new era. In 1992 I went to Soho for the first time, a strip club for the first time & therefore saw a naked woman for the first time, and began my 'career in infamy', and from that moment on Soho became absolute centre of my life. 

In 1999 I travelled to Europe for the first time and from that moment on Europe became absolute centre of my life.

In 2006 I fell in love with a dancer at the Flying Scotsman strip pub in King's Cross and from that moment the Flying Scotsman became absolute centre of my life.

In 2013 we split up and I became single again and commenced a second 'Golden Age' of solo travelling to Europe.

In 2020 Chinese Flu came.

My books must have an intensity. A kind of claustrophobia. They are chamber pieces

My books must have an intensity. A kind of claustrophobia. They are chamber pieces. Huis Clos. True for Soho, Autismus, Lotta, the Cold Icy Air of the Mountains. Then Twelfth, Winter and Alhambra. A new London set book in the claustrophobic chamber music venues of London. Using the 2006 Casanova stuff? Fucking violinists and pianists in London. 

The sickly sweet smell of cum in the Soho porn cinemas? This my chance to talk about the Sunset Cinema period of 2005 (rather than the Soho Cinema period of 1999). The old girl on Wednesdays in the upstairs cinema. This is where we SEE what actually happens in Soho. Lela. Ana Maria. Olga. Sunset Cinema women coming in. Sunset Strip Yolanda Red Right Hand, Ding Ding Dong, Queen Anne Redd Adaire. This book can precede The Stripper, as the 2005 Soho period was Soho's last hurrah before King's X took over. Adelaide, Diana, Theodora. The steamy fronds of the Wigmore Hall, Boulevard Strip, Sunset Cinema. The curling tendrils of the Queen Anne to finish. End of an era for Soho and the Queen Anne. But the Scotsman is about to take over from everything, about to become the most important building of my life. 

Have the Wigmore Hall book set in one week, a real Georges Simenon intensity, a Sherlock Holmes story, a week of visits to chamber concerts, upstairs at Sunset Cinema, my Vauxhall book, ending in Queen Anne with Redd. Chamber concerts throughout book, ending in chamber strip pubs at end, Yolanda at sunset, Redd at QA. Ends in a foggy foggy December London 2006. That was the end of an era. The Stripper is more a 2009 book. That was heyday of Diana, Teodora. Yes the Wigmore book is my Vauxhall book, Wigmore Hall 2005, Sunset Cinema, Ana Maria, Lemon Tree, December needle-lost in Soho fog to finish. That my title? Needle Lost in Soho Fog. My love letter to Soho. Soho (1999) is more about the Bessemer furnace of the pressure I was under. We don't get to see much of Soho. In Needle Lost we let Soho bloom and blossom before it disappears in a fog. It is my fog book. Fog in Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, Soho, finally Vauxhall. I can talk about solipsism, of the Wigmore Hall transcendency, Viennese eroticism of the chamber music, Bluebeard at the Royal opera, Erwartung, rushing back to Soho in World Cup fever, Dr Who and Sophia Myles, Jolanda, Queen Anne. Just add sex scenes. Sumptuous Siberian Cleopatra. Yes, all the long Casanova passages about solipsism, Viennese eroticism etc but interspersed with rampant fucking scenes in Sunset Cinema, or Sicilian Demi, or Wigmore Hall, ferns, rugs cushions lamps, rain at window, I am an opium addict and a gambler. Describe my Soho opium evenings lovingly. My confessions. Up a mountain too high to come down now. The air so thin so pure makes you hysterical, high in every sense. Don't want the thick polluted air of the ground anymore. Paris 1899. Fog. Queen Anne. Chamber music, porn cinema, strip clubs.

Lord Olyffe and Sir Richard Lovell and New York Bella; when S.E.Londoners come into the West End of London sparks fly (sperm flies)

Lord Olyffe and Sir Richard Lovell and New York Bella; when S.E.Londoners come into the West End of London sparks fly (sperm flies). We are Edwardnauts! We are Wickhamnauts! Put this into EROS and the Bella scene AND Adelaide! I cannot do justice to it in my novellas, it can only be done justice in EROTICA my great magnum opus. My autobiography will be my greatest work of art, my great literary achievement. My Kapital, my A Man Without Qualities, my Origin of Species. 12 Books That Changed the World, 12 books by BRITISH authors that changed the world! I will contribute No.13. 

Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue are always Ernest Dowson territory; but they are also Jekyll & Hyde territory (‘GRAND TOUR’ it only became Dowson territory after 2001 of course). R L Stevenson was great friends with Ernest Dowson’s father and used to play with young Ernest. Bursting with my pleasures, bursting with white sperm, bursting with Eroticism, and lo, here is our idol, Eros himself in the centre of Piccadilly Circus. 

The whole Aureline/Chess Goddess episode 2002, Goethe Institute is clearly in 1999-2006 GRAND TOUR. 

All my London memories e.g. Covadonga, 2002, Lemon Tree barmaids 2005, Calcutta barmaids 2005, here in SOHO? No, better to really develop them and let them bloom & blossom in EROTICA IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH, especially ‘GRAND TOUR’ 1999-2006. Elena Prokina 2005, what an incredible time! Keep the purity of SOHO, AUTISMUS, LOTTA, THE COLD ICY AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS, CASANOVA; the embellishments will all flower and bloom and blossom in EROTICA, an autobiography that blurs fact & fiction like some opium dream. When describing a dream are you recording fact or fiction? Both. And my life was like a waking opium dream. It was unreal. What had become normal for me would be unbelievable to others. The viciousness of the attacks and the exquisite voluptuousness of my pleasures, simultaneously, two sides of the same coin.

Do not change a word of SOHO, AUTISMUS, LOTTA, THE COLD ICY AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS, don’t touch a hair on their heads! All the embellishments, the bloomings & blossoming, the more florid & lurid retellings of the same memories will come in EROTICA IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH, my great masterwork, volume 1 EROS, volume 2 GRAND TOUR, volume 3 WHITE DEATH, volume 4 FREE LIFE, volume 5 1985-1992. Christ, so much writing to do. How dare you go out to the pub day after day and waste all that valuable precious time; defiling your precious instrument!

There is a purity about my writing. PURE SMUT. PURE AS THE DRIVEN SOOT. 

GRAND TOUR - how many times I had written about Frankenstein and now here I was in Ingolstadt. How absolutely overwhelming. How often I’d written about Kaspar Hauser and now here I was in Nuremberg! This was my Romantic Road. German Romanticism had inspired me late 1994 but then I got sidetracked by black bob.

Ernest Dowson was also a discovery of the ‘GRAND TOUR’ era 1999-2006 of course. Absolutely intoxicated with him on that trip to Brussels>Vienna Dorint white waves>Oslo savagery in October 2001. My second Grand Tour. My third Grand Tour encountered Lotta & Sophia and so I didn’t get very far. My trips then came fast and furious (as did I) (‘COLD ICY AIR’). My eroticism came from TV, Benny Hill, Kenny Everett etc.

It makes no difference to me if people tell lies about me or tell the truth about me, they are all so far beneath me, I couldn’t give a single shit. The truth was almost always more scandalous and shocking and unbelievable than the occasional lies they invented. How fascinated by me they all still are! And I too began to feel it made no difference if I told lies or told truths about myself. I think this is what really drew me to Jerzy Kosinski. Also his duality. The Dual Monarchy.