» Lady midnight
Katie is getting drawn into a night-time cult via an addiction to YouTube
I am just going to watch just one last YouTube video of Chris Fountain in Dancing on Ice, and then I’ll go to sleep.
‘Time Warp‘ it is. “It’s astounding, time is fleeting/madness takes its toll.“
Chris curves his body into a ‘Time Warp‘ boogie, his shiny polyester shirt glinting as he shimmys his hips across the frozen lake.
“Johnny Depp’s saying he met him once, as he smoked a roll-up from his kitchen window”
As my watch glides towards 4am he lifts his partner off the ice, her legs split open, his head between them. I would love to meet that boy.
I click down the other ‘related’ offerings until my mouse hovers over a Chris Fountain tribute video. Images of Chris, in Tshirts, in vests, in bed, in love. There’s Chris on a beach in sunglasses, in a suit and tie holding a microphone stand, on a blue sunlounger with his top off. Again. All sexy and blonde and young and muscled.
Now I’m bored. 5am has passed, it would be nice to be asleep. I remember Leonard Cohen’s ‘Lady Midnight‘ and tap it into the search box, rifling through the videos to find it.
From Cohen to Dylan – flicking through his cards for ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues‘ – until I’m watching Hendrix via ‘Like a Rolling Stone‘. Ginsberg’s reading Howl on some scratchy recording, and Johnny Depp’s saying he met him once, a dream come true, as he smoked a roll-up from his kitchen window.
Johnny on Ginsberg. Johnny on Kate. Kate pictured with Johnny, then Doherty, then Jamie. Johnny on Paradis. Johnny in Vanessa on Ginsberg up Kate via Jamie. Paradis is singing ‘Joe Le taxi‘ as the eighties start to take their turn.
The videos follow one another in an endless stream of time wasting. There will never be sleep. The insomniac vision continues as the clock hits 6am.
I reach for the keyboard again and again and I can’t turn it off. The YouTube drug. The quality gets worse as I get more desperate for a fix. Soon I’ll watch anything just to keep my eyes stimulated with the continuous flicker.
I can’t resist it. Although I’m doomed to go on consuming it until the sun starts to rise; I call in sick, I lose my friends, turn up to my job looking drawn and pasty. An underground cult is slowly consuming me.
Just one last video of Chris Fountain – then I promise I will sleep.
