Название | #Zero |
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Автор произведения | Neil McCormick |
Жанр | Контркультура |
Серия | |
Издательство | Контркультура |
Год выпуска | 0 |
isbn | 9781783526642 |
When we weren’t on air, I was fielding phone calls, disembodied voices asking questions so old and overdone I only needed to tune into one or two key words to dial up the appropriate answer:
Press one if you want to hear amusing tales about Zero’s tough childhood without a mother’s love in the barren hills of Ireland.
Press two for how Zero came by his unusual name.
Press three for the latest on the hot romance between Zero and movie legend Penelope Nazareth.
Press four for the young philosopher king’s inanities on the power of music to heal the world.
Press five for the hidden pain behind worldwide hits ‘In The Stars’, ‘Make It On My Own’, ‘Amnesty’ and ‘Never Young’.
Press six to hear those anecdotes again.
Ad fucking infinitum. You should never believe what you hear about me anyway, cause it’s all lies, and I should know, I tell them.
There’s a Zeropedia which is supposed to collect every known piece of information about me from my first breath (one dirty morning on a table in the kitchen of Castlerea Hotel, or so I’m told) to my last known sighting (in the bathroom mirror, while taking a piss, half an hour ago, though I don’t think you’ll find that on the net, at least I hope not). I have been known to check the Zeropedia sometimes to find out what I am supposed to have done on such and such a date, and it usually leaves me feeling there must be another me out there living my so-called life in a parallel pop universe where Elvis is on the throne and all is well in his kingdom. And that is why you should never read your own press: the essential facts may be the same, significant dates coincide, but nothing rhymes. No bells start ringing. Events have been twisted back to front and had bits grafted on and you’re left with this kind of Frankenstein fiction lumbering around, made up of bits of you and bits of other people’s fantasies and bits of God knows what, space junk and landfill. Next thing you’re talking about yourself in third person. ‘That’s not the kind of thing Zero would say,’ I might say, and then immediately think, shit, who said that? Was it Zero, or was it me? What kind of name is Zero anyway? It says Pedro Ulysses Noone on my passport, which is also a fucking ridiculous name, but no one calls me Pedro any more, except close family and officers of the law.
And while we are on the subject, we might as well get this name business over and done with cause I’ve heard a lot of stories about how I came to be Zero and told a few myself. The favourite fansite theory is based on my surname: Noone becomes No One, i.e. nothing, nada, zilch, zero. Like kids are that smart, well, maybe they are, but not where I grew up. I’ve been Zero since I was seven years old. It was just a basic racist insult, because I was the only brown-skinned boy anyone in Loserville, Roscommon had ever laid eyes on. Even my brother got my old man’s Irish pale face. I just got his ginger hair. All my life I had to answer to stupid Spanish nicknames. I’ve been Carlos, Cheech, Chong, Wah-Wah (as in Chihauha) and Torro (at first I thought that wasn’t so bad. But whenever I said anything, my tormentors would shout out ‘Bull-sheet!’ in a stupid accent). So when The Mask of Zorro popped up on Saturday morning kids’ TV, every pint-sized bigot in the playground started calling me Zero. It was only later, when I really started listening to hip-hop, I learned you can neutralise an insult by treating it as praise. Which is how come nigga became a term of endearment but only from one person of colour to another. I don’t recommend any honky hipsters using it out of context cause it’s still a millimetre away from starting a race riot. Anyway, as an authentic brown skin Paddy, Kilrock’s first and only nigga, I wore the name Zero as a badge of pride. But try explaining that in a five-minute phone call between traffic bulletins on a breakfast show. I usually stick with the lies.
I was spinning more nonsense over the phone when Honey Pie came gambolling down the corridor, a burlesque teen beauty queen hemmed in by suits, minders and hangers-on. ‘Hey, Zero!’ she called out, with a camp, delighted chuckle, and blew me a theatrical kiss. She was too much of a pro to interrupt an interview but she made the universal ‘call me’ sign before moving on about her business. Which was nice. I had never met Honey before in my life, but we pop stars stick together. ‘Honey Pie just went by,’ I told my caller, inciting fake orgasmic excitement in the grey hinterland of Midwestern radioworld as the DJ stoked listener fantasies of celebrity nirvana, just out there, beyond the veil, over the rainbow, down the yellow brick road. ‘Breeze Black just arrived,’ I added, catching sight of a dark fury in a rainbow shock afro wig striding out of a lift with her own entourage. My announcement caused more squeals of incredulity down the line. Could life really be this glamorous? Then the pale, slender figure of movie star Gena Claudette emerged from a studio, looking dreamily distracted amid another welter of people although it was hard to tell whether they were her people or her rock-star husband Adam Monk’s people, or maybe they shared people in a happy marriage of entourages: Do you take these people to be your lawfully wedded people? We do. I couldn’t help but notice, with a twinge of irritation, that my people (who had professionally ignored Honey’s people and Breeze’s people) were starting to twitch about Gena’s people, exchanging discreet nods and smiles, probably wondering how cool it would be to work for a movie star. That’s the problem with people. No fucking loyalty.
It may have been Weekend Zero but clearly I didn’t have the music station all to myself. The stars were in town for the Generator magazine tenth anniversary awards (only in America could entering double digits be viewed as a milestone achievement), which (in one big daisy chain of mutual media masturbation) all major networks would be covering, MTV would broadcast live online, and at which I would be performing, as well as picking up several richly deserved gongs for my outstanding contributions to music and culture and civilisation as we know it, to add to all my other gratefully and humbly accepted statuettes, which presumably my manager kept, though fuck knows where. At this stage he’d have to have a warehouse. I must have had at least one gong from every TV station, pop radio station, celebrity website and music magazine in the known universe, or at least in every territory where Beasley considered a prime-time appearance to be worth its weight in additional sales and endorsements. I could spend the year just travelling from one award show to another, and last year it felt as if I did just that, perfecting the act of surprise for whatever honour was being bestowed when I knew perfectly well I had won because otherwise why would I even turn up? Critics may have fulminated, panels debated, viewers, listeners and readers voted, but Beasley negotiated.
‘Hi,’ said Gena, who had been discreetly lingering till I finished my call. So I said hi right back, and we did some cheek-pecking, and I tried not to think about the see-through underwear she wore in the cyberpunk remake of Pride & Prejudice when she strips for Mr Darcy, which is the only bit of the film worth watching. YouTube it. ‘How’s Penelope?’ she asked and I reeled slightly until I remembered they did a movie together and were bonded for life in the sisterhood of the set.
‘She’s fine,’ I replied. Not how the fuck should I know, the bitch never calls. ‘She’s shooting with Troy in Brazil.’
‘That’s what I heard,’ sighed Gena. I was watching closely for telltale signs, in case she had actually heard anything. But if she had, she wasn’t giving it away. Fucking actresses.
Then her husband appeared, bouncing around, all high-wire energy, eyes popping, clapping me on the shoulders. ‘Just the man I wanted to see. Hey, how are you, we need to talk, can we talk?’
Much as I dug his band, Softzone, I had my suspicions about Adam Monk. He exuded the happy-clappy energy of a Born Again using the Holy Spirit to override shyness. I kept expecting him to break out in prayer or try to interest me in a copy of The Watchtower. Now he was propelling me away from the safe haven of my people, wheeling me down a corridor, babbling enthusiastically. ‘I love “Never Young”. It feels like a song the world needs right now.’ He broke into a snatch of chorus, as if I needed reminding: ‘We were never young, we were born into a world, you had already destroyed … Genius.’ Glancing back to see two sets of entourages trailing, with MTV’s cameras and my own zero24seven crew capturing this collision of heavenly objects for live transmission,