Stuart Murdoch - VOCALS - Guitar

Service 11 Operated by Banchory

30th August 2001

A friend of ours, Gary, was planning a fanzine of some kind, and he asked me to write something. So I wrote this and gave it to him. He never wrote his fanzine though. Then I thought I could base a record sleeve around the story. I did that, but for some reason I included a different story. This is the story that's meant to be on the back of "3,6,9 Seconds Of Light". It's come to mind now because I opened some dusty old floppy discs that had been lying around.

Three, Six, Nine Seconds Of Light
Stuart Murdoch

When the editor asked me to write a piece relevant to the music scene in Glasgow, I went "Oh!" Then I went "Oh well then!" Then I went down the caf to do a bit of detective work. I was thinking that maybe I would see some people I knew who were in the Glasgow music scene and then I would ask them things like "How are you feeling today?" and "What makes you tick, musician?"
When I went into the caf, the feeling was auspicious. The waitress said
"If you look out the window in five seconds, Chris will go past."
Chris is a musician. I tried to turn around as cool as possible. I was going to make a slight gesture to Chris to come in. In the end, Chris was coming in anyway after I'd nearly fell off my seat trying to catch his attention.

Chris had just signed a contract to make records. I thought about asking him if it had changed his life at all. Then I did ask him.
"Uh... I don't know. Maybe. I've never really thought about it."
There was a long pause in which my mind wandered to thinking about foxes. Then he said
"It hasn't changed. I've still maintained the same amateurish level of inability."

I'm going to leave Chris to have his doughtnut. It turns out that I'm not very good at interviewing people, especially my friends. But I do happen to be in Chris's band. So maybe if I tell you about my day, you may gain some insight into the life of a so-called musician. I'll call this part

The Day In The Life Of A Singer-Songwriter

The day in the life of a singer-songwriter starts on a train, and a train is a pain because the visual allure of a murky sunrise always puts you off what you were meant to be thinking about. I let myself drift because I am half asleep. My friend is fully asleep, but this is a choice she has chosen to take, it being that she has nothing to say to me this morning on account of a quarrel. I drift, noticing that we have been surrounded by a group of people going to school.

They are well to do, the boys coherent and the girls studious. I catch a plump one motioning to his friend, "Hey John", and then giving it wrists bent over at ninety degrees toward me. I don't think he sees that I can see him. I honestly think he's too stupid. The rest of them snigger. My friend opens her eyes. I ask her
"Are these twats taking the piss?"
"The fat bastard was anyway."
"Public school twats!"
I couldn't think of anything beyond twats. But that seemed to sum them up pretty well. We weren't far out of Glasgow, so I let it ride. I was bristling. My friend remembered that she wasn't in the mood to back me up, so she shut her eyes once more. I found myself listening in to what the school boys were saying. I might as well have been one of the schoolboys, hanging on each word, instead of someone waiting to be called a bentshot again.

I wished I hadn't my sandals on that day. I was as passive as Baby Jesus at a jamboree. And I had a hole in my sock. The bastard toffs had a good laugh at that. They even got the girl laughing. Don't strain yourself darling. I said cheerio to my friend. It was eight thirty. I got a bus along Argyle Street to Bridgeton. I got to my training. I had run over revenge dialogue in my head all the way there. I was worn out. It was first thing in the morning. The smell of picture chemicals did nothing for me. Not for the first time did it occur to me what is it that I am doing? Am I doing any good to anyone? What ought I to be doing? The casual thoughts of a singer-songwriter, professional or otherwise. May as well develop some pictures.

I'm going to go beyond the factual, because it is no suprise that there were no great thrills to be had in the darkroom that day. I'm on a Government Employment Course. I take pictures and print them for an arbitrary little magazine. I like it a lot, and it continues to suprise me that fate has let me get away with such an indulgence. I take pictures of what I like. I print them. My friends go "oh, I like that one", being as it's of them, and they pinch them. Then I do some more. This time I don't show them. I put them in a special folder.

The silence, the darkness, the clunk of pipes, the swish of chemicals in a tray. A schooltime sentence for a schooltime pastime. There is a new stream of my own history untouched. Since I started to develop pictures, I have been plundering picture negatives that have been lying about for years. Most people like to hear and see about themselves, unless they are dead. I'm no different. Suddenly, photo negatives become the stuff my life depends on. Those useless plastic strips you always want to throw out. I want to say gold-dust, but that is meaningless. Whatever you cherish. That's better. I looked through my old negatives. There was some that I wanted particularly. I couldn't sleep. I can't explain the poignancy involved. I never found them. My new indulgence is to imagine finding them.

So I found myself in the darkroom at nine in the morning. I do have some straight forward pictures to develop. There's no one much around yet, so I set up a darkroom to myself. I take off my kagoul and my jumper. I put on the brown lab coat provided. I don't care about chemical splashes, but I care about emphasising each fragment of the day. In a lab coat, I'm a wee photo demon. A mute technician. The fumes from the acid aggravating my throat trouble. I earned that cough, allright?

You put the negative in the projector, called an enlarger. Switch on and focus the image. The negative is really clear. I turn a handle to make the image fit inside my frame. I decide that I'm going to crop the image of the two people sitting on the beach. The whole frame includes the couple's legs. I just want their torsos, their heads and shoulders. All of the background has gone. Quite sure that it's in focus, I shut the aperture down by degrees.

I turn the machine off. I reach into my box for a strip of photographic paper. I lay it down where the image had been projected. I hold some card over all but a segment of the paper. It is this segment that will be exposed to the first three seconds of the lightened image. I switch the timer, projecting the image. After the exposure, I move the card two inches. I project the image for another three seconds. I repeat along the length of the strip. I put the strip into the developing tray. I sway slightly on my heels as I keep a steady slosh. The image appears so clearly. It's only a fragment of the picture, but even under the red, I know that it's a terrific picture. After a quick dip into the two other trays, I can switch the room light on.

A test strip reads like a graph. The segments have been exposed to three, six, nine, etc. seconds of light. I chose by sight the one I think to be most suitable. Fifteen seconds is darkest, the image having been burned into the paper. Three seconds is the lightest. I estimate eight seconds to be the best. I turn off the room light. I go back to the paper box.

On my Government Course, I get so much paper a week. Ten Sheets. Never having developed films before, I have no idea how much the stuff costs. But I usually run short. Therefore it is of great value to me. I take out a whole sheet, and lay it beneath the enlarger. I put the masking frame back in place. I don't mask very much. The image is as big on the paper as I can manage. I set the timer to eight seconds. Without a pause, I press the switch and shut my eyes. I always mumble a prayer in my head at this time. I don't know why. It is always unrelated to the process of photography. When I open my eyes the room is dark.The paper sits concealing the image.

Yup, I wish I had those negatives. I wash and dry whatever pictures I've done, and I skip out of the place about twelve. The Twenty Bus takes me right across town to the café. In a beautifully worked pirouette of twisting narrative, I am about to meet Chris after the insight of the waitress. Remember my sleepy friend on the train? She's the waitress. Later that day, as an end to our quarrel, she cuts my dad's shirt to ribbons with scissors.

After I fail to ask Chris any good questions, I go to the library for a while to write something. I feel clatty, and hemmed in. So I go to the swimming baths. In a moment of clarity, I realise that a singer-songwriter's day is spent avoiding his so-called occupation. I feel a lot better after thinking that. The pressure would've been too much. You need to live a bit. I relax into the pool. I don't mind that it's too warm for athleticism. I start with my lazy crawl. I can see trouble brewing with my waitress friend tonight. I need to be in shape for it.