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.

New projects for 2021

Having finally finished The Collected Works of Ernst Graf, what will always now be the standard textbook for anyone interested in the mysterious Marquis de Vaccine 1996-2019 (and who is not?), I today tentatively start work on my new projects: ON WRITING, a pondering on the process of writing itself, my way of writing anyway. AN ILL WIND, my ‘plague diary’ for 2020. A SOHO GOLDEN AGE, revisiting the 1992-99 years of my life when Soho was the absolute centre of my world. In SOHO (1998-99) the ‘action’ all takes place in our narrator’s head, his inner thoughts & feelings & struggles, so we never actually get to see what he was doing in Soho. A SOHO GOLDEN AGE will put that right. WHITE DEATH a lurid look at the schooldays of the Marquis de Vaccine and the roots of his ‘infantile eroticism’ that he has never grown out of & has no intention of doing. Perhaps also LOVE ME SOME OTHER WAY, sequel to THE STRIPPER (2007), to see what happened next.

My current books

 My current list of books in print:

1.Therapy

2.Soho

3.Autismus 

4.Lotta

5.The Cold Icy Air of the Mountains

6.Casanova, or Lost Wanderings

7.The Stripper? (in revision)

8.Twelfth Night

9.A Winter’s Tale

10.Alhambra

11.Brussels in the Years of Recapitalisation

12.Yes it is I

Working on:-

An Ill Wind (my plague diary for 2020)

A Pilgrim’s Tale (my serialisation exclusive to PunchRiot magazine)

White Death (my school years erotic novella)

On Writing (an in depth analysis of my own writing techniques & books)

SOHO (1996-99) was my starting gun being fired on myself

SOHO (1996-99) was my starting gun being fired on myself, it was my Manifesto, my Communist Manifesto of 1999, my declaration of war and of my intent. Now MOLOCH (2020) is a statement of where I am 20 years later. Setbacks, slips back along the way, but overall 20 years of strong growth and progress, and blooming & blossoming. You can’t have the ointment without the fly. You can’t have the soup without the fly. You can’t have the eye without the mote. If you don’t want the ointment because of the fly, I do understand, but you’re missing out on some good ointment. If you don’t want the soup because of the fly, I do understand, but you’re missing out on some good soup. If you don’t want my eyes because of the mote in them, you’re missing out on some beautiful eyes! I said on page 1 of AUTISMUS (1999-2002) (what I thought was to be my first book but became my second!) this is ‘A MANIFESTO FOR FIGHTING. A MANIFESTO FOR GLEEFUL WAR. A MANIFESTO FOR REVOLUTION’, but in fact it is SOHO (1996-99) that now precedes it that I see is the most glorious manifesto for war, the most glorious setting out of my position AGAINST the society surrounding me on all sides. Surrounding me on all sides so they thought it easy to crush me and yet it was I who ran rings around them. It was I who played them like a piano. It was I who has increased his salary every year. It was I who now has 10 books to his name, and am lauded by such respected figures as Troy Francis as “one of the greatest degenerates of modern times” and by Nick August for “proper artful decadence and degeneracy” and “the mindset that conquers”.

SOHO (1996-99) is a monument to the time when the ‘Great War’ against me was unleashed

SOHO (1996-99) is a monument to the time when the ‘Great War’ against me was unleashed, like a dam bursting, and the ‘great separation’ began, when polite society “cast me out” thanks God. I don’t know if anyone is ever brave enough to cast themselves out. You need to BE cast out, be forcefully expelled, be exiled. This forces you to make a life in exile, and in exile you achieve your glory. Like James Joyce “exiled” from Ireland, Marx from Germany. For some of us, exile is when we are born, and only when exiled can we start our rise to power, and glory, and triumph. Only in exile can we bloom & blossom. It was the “comfort” of living in a society that never really liked me that held me back for so long. But—hard to cast yourself out! You need them to do it for you. So you provoke them to it. In relationships, too. I’ve been in relationships where I’ve provoked the girl to end it, because I knew I needed to be free again, but didn’t want to hurt them by doing it myself.

I don’t like reading fiction anymore

I don’t like reading fiction anymore. I want to read about the author who wrote the fiction, what was it really about. What really happened in his life that is the raw material for his fiction. I loved Ian Rankin’s BBC documentary exploration of the story behind Jekyll & Hyde and in particular his trying to work out where was Jekyll’s house. In the book it is stated as being only “in a Soho square” but which Soho square? Which house number? Wonderfully, Rankin tracked it down to No.28 Leicester Square, now the Moon Under Water Wetherspoon’s pub!

Maybe self-preservation led him to set the novel in London rather than Edinburgh. On the other hand, London was perfect. It had been the home of a Scots-born doctor called John Hunter. Hunter was known in all the right circles. He was married to a patron of the arts who would give grand parties at their home in Leicester Square. But if you continued through the house you came to Hunter's surgery. You might also be shown his vast (and growing) collection of weird and wonderful specimens. And eventually, you'd find yourself in the cramped accommodation used by his students, beyond which a door led out into a narrow alley off what is now Charing Cross Road. This was where, at dead of night, the grave-robbers arrived with fresh deliveries of cadavers.

John Hunter did like his little experiments …

When you read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde you will be struck by the similarities. (Jekyll himself purchased such a property from the heirs of a great medical man.)

What has now “become” my first book SOHO (1996-99) was never meant to be a book at all as that material seemed too inchoate

What has now “become” my first book, SOHO (1996-99), was never meant to be a book at all, as that material seemed too inchoate. AUTISMUS (1999-2002) was always meant to be my first book. Only as I was about to publish AUTISMUS, I thought let me just check the words I was writing immediately before, and there was such good stuff in it, I thought I have to try to pull this together. SOHO (1996-99) kind of naturally had an atmosphere of 1896-99 about it (in my head anyway), helped by my love of Ernest Dowson, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack the Ripper (not love in his case exactly), and I do think MOLOCH (2020-) will have the spirit of the 1920s about it. This could be a fantastic era dawning now—as Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings reshape the political landscape in a radical way, at the same time as I hope for a similar paradigm shift in my own life; my return to Moloch the first part of it. I love the defiance of it (SOHO 1996-99), the defiant arrogance of it, the declaration of war of it, the refusal to take a single step backwards of it—on the contrary, the deliberate marching right into the heart of the enemy of it. Before the rest of my books became more about my unrequited lovesickness for one unobtainable woman after another, AUTISMUS, LOTTA, THE COLD ICY AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS, CASANOVA LOST WANDERINGS and THE STRIPPER. MOLOCH will be a return to the cold defiant arrogance of SOHO.

I have started work on a new book MOLOCH (2020)

I have started work on a new book MOLOCH (2020). MOLOCH will feature the flourishes and adornments I always wanted to put into SOHO (1996-99). If SOHO was the chrysalis then MOLOCH is the glorious iridescent butterfly. My life has absolutely followed a pattern of 7 year eras: 1992 "discovering" Soho was the occasion of an incredible flourishing, blooming & blossoming in my life, erotically, musically, artistically, spiritually. When I tell you I'd never even seen a naked woman before, then you will appreciate the effect on me of descending those steepling deathtrap Sunset Strip stairs, watching the curtain squeak open and then seeing this young woman stripping to Tallulah. 1999 "discovering" Europe was occasion of a new flourishing, blooming & blossoming etc as I discovered "new Sohos" that gave me the erotic excitement Soho had once done. 2006 Flying Scotsman, 2013 post-marriage Vienna & Brussels. 2020?
For me SOHO just crackles with electricity, furious indignant controlled rage at anyone daring to try to crush me, and hilarity at them being so stupid to think they could. I love the exaltation in it; I love the tone of SUPERIORITY in it. The fact that in real life I am really so shy makes my tone of SUPERIORITY in the book all the more thrilling! Of course even a morbidly shy person can feel innately superior to every other person in the universe. The two things are not mutually exclusive, and certainly not in my case. My innate feeling of superiority is something I constantly have to suppress, to hide, like a Victorian lady with huge bosoms had to suppress them, as such overt exhibitions of “sexuality” and “erotic invitation” would wreak havoc on the world around them! (Turns me on just thinking about her, you little beauty you!) I love the RAGE and the VICIOUS TRIUMPH of every word of SOHO. I don’t know if this is normal but I re-read SOHO (start to finish) about five times every week and it thrills me every time. I enjoy all my own books, but they don’t give me a punch in the guts like SOHO does every time. 1998-1999 was the time I was under most pressure and this pressure produced my most powerful writing. In some sense I see myself at the start of SOHO as a caterpillar just entering the chrysalis, and I’ve been in it for more than 20 years. In MOLOCH I see now as the moment I finally emerge as the butterfly. But I shall find out—the idea of a book at the start is not necessarily where I will end up.