Utopia Avenue Quotes

My Dutch grandfather used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do nothing for eight days.’ ” Dean asked, “Why eight?” “Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.

Grief is the bill of love, fallen due.

If we could read the script of the future, we'd never turn the page.

If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.

Art is memory made public. Time wins in the long run. Books turn to dust, negatives decay, records get worn out, civilizations burn. But as long as the art endures, a song or a view or a thought or a feeling someone once thought worth keeping is saved and stays shareable. Others can say, “I feel that too.

To have your photo taken is to be told, “You exist.

Writing is a forest of faint paths, of dead-ends, hidden pits, unresolved chords, words that won’t rhyme. You can be lost in there for hours. Days, even.

Marriage is an anchor, lads. Stops you drifting onto rocks, but stops you voyaging as well.

Fuck all war. Fuck old people who start them, who send young people to die in them. Fuck the hate that war makes. And fuck people who feed that hate, even twenty years after.

But reality creeps in wherever you live, however pretty the flowers are, however blue the sky, however great the parties. The only people who actually live in dreams are people in comas.

Each square light, thinks Elf, is a life as big as mine.

Suffering is the one promise life always keeps.

True love is the act of trying to love. Effortless love is as dubious as effortless gardening…

Jasper notes that Jesus's disciples were, essentially, hippies: long hair, gowns, stoner expressions, irregular employment, spiritual convictions, dubious sleeping arrangements and a guru.

True love is the act of trying to love. Effortless love is as dubious as effortless gardening …

Drums were here before we are. The rhythms of our mothers’ hearts.

Jasper notes that Jesus’s disciples were, essentially, hippies: long hair, gowns, stoner expressions, irregular employment, spiritual convictions, dubious sleeping arrangements, and a guru.

The best pop songs are art,” says Jasper. “Making art is already a political act. The artist rejects the dominant version of the world. The artist proposes a new version. A subversion. It’s there in the etymology. Tyrants are right to fear art.

A brain constructs a model of reality. If that model isn’t too different from most people’s model, you’re labeled sane. If the model is different, you’re labeled a genius, a misfit, a visionary, or a nutcase. In extreme cases, you’re labeled a schizophrenic and locked up.

Small talk, thinks Elf, is Polyfilla you fill cracks with so you don’t have to watch them widening.

Amsterdam wraps itself around itself: London unfolds, unfolds, unfolds.

Ah, to be young ... and be right about the ways of the world by default.

For a brief spell, we share a stage. Others are coming to kick us off. But while you're here, write yourself a good part. Act it well.

He wondered if identity is drawn not in indelible ink, but by a light 5H pencil.

Regular memories are courtroom sketches, elaborated and eroded at every viewing.

Jasper de Zoet. A damn good name. A ‘J’ and a ‘Z.’ Nice high Scrabble score.

Good for you. The word ‘faster’ is becoming a synonym of ‘better.’ As if the goal of human evolution is to be a sentient bullet.

If reason worked on alcoholics, there’d be no alcoholics.

Utopia" means "no place". An avenue is a place. So is music. When we're playing well, I'm here, but elsewhere, too. That's the paradox. Utopia is unattainble. Avenues are everywhere.

Once I knew a stable-boy,” says Francis Bacon. “He used to say, ‘Grief is the bill of love, fallen due.’ I can’t recall his face or even name, but I remember that line. Isn’t it odd, what sticks?

Labels. I stuck them on everything. 'Good.' 'Bad.' 'Right.' 'Wrong.' 'Square.' 'Hip.' 'Queer.' 'Normal.' 'Friend.' 'Enemy.' 'Success.' 'Failure.' They're easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they're covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality is the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality's the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It's difficult. It's many things at once. That's why we're so crummy at it. People harp on about freedom. All the time. It's everywhere. There are riots and wars about what freedom is and who it's for. But the Queen of Freedoms is this: to be free of labels.

I asked if I could ever learn to play like that. "No," he told me, "because" -I'll always remember this- "you haven't lived my life and the blues is a language you can't lie in." But if I wanted enough, he said, then one day I'd learn to play like me.

At your age - says Mr. Hughees -, you think getting old and dying's what other people do. At my age, you think, Where did it all go? If you want to do something, do it. 'Cause your turn to be in that box, it's coming. No doctor, no diet, no nothing'll keep it away. It'll be here. Quick as - she snaps her fingers and Elf blinks - that.

The mystery o’ fishing’s this,’ said Dean’s dad, ‘what’s the hook, who’s got the rod, what’s the maggot, what’s the fish?’ ‘Why’s that a mystery, Dad?’ ‘Yer’ll understand when yer older.’ ‘But ain’t it obvious what’s what?’ ‘It changes, son. In a heartbeat.

I’m not good at getting offended.

I was tired of flying. Tired of that life, of the screams, of the faces, of the fame. So I quit. Fame molds itself onto your face. Then it molds your face.

charm in a guy is a warning sign. Like black and yellow stripes in nature mean, Watch out, there are stings near this honey.

Beware idyllic names in the New World.

Keeping track of each of us would drive God quite insane.

Crows tumble like socks in a drier.

Self-pity can lift one's mood.

I can't say I understand it, but I know 'xactly what it means.

Friends, family, love, or a band are the rare anomalies…You’re born alone, you die alone, and for most of what lies between, you are alone.

It's a classy Victorian pub with brass fittings, upholstered chair backs, and NO SPITTING signs.

Musicians may be walking asscracks or they may be God’s mouthpiece on Earth, but punctual they ain’t.

Are yer from New York, Max?” asks Dean. “No. I endured a childhood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.” “It’s an idyllic name,” remarks Elf, “Cedar Rapids.” “Beware idyllic names in the New World.

As far off as an icy glare is from summer laughter – as 'Once upon a time' is from 'Happy ever after' As far off as the brutal truth is from prose gone purple, as far away as death from birth unless life is a circle –

Songs do not change the world,’ declares Jasper. ‘People do. People pass laws, riot, hear God and act accordingly. People invent, kill, make babies, start wars.’ Jasper lights a Marlboro. ‘Which begs a question. “Who or what influences the minds of the people who change the world?” My answer is “Ideas and feelings.” Which begs a question. “Where do ideas and feelings originate?” My answer is, “Others. One’s heart and mind. The press. The arts. Stories. Last, but not least, songs.” Songs. Songs, like dandelion seeds, billowing across space and time. Who knows where they’ll land? Or what they’ll bring?’ Jasper leans into the mic and, without a wisp of self-consciousness, sings a miscellany of single lines from nine or ten songs. Dean recognises, ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, ‘Strange Fruit’ and ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’. Others, Dean can’t identify, but the hardboiled press pack look on. Nobody laughs, nobody scoffs. Cameras click. ‘Where will these song-seeds land? It’s the Parable of the Sower. Often, usually, they land on barren soil and don’t take root. But sometimes, they land in a mind that is ready. Is fertile. What happens then? Feelings and ideas happen. Joy, solace, sympathy. Assurance. Cathartic sorrow. The idea that life could be, should be, better than this. An invitation to slip into somebody else’s skin for a little while. If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.

Worship still happens here, thinks Jasper. Not of us four, but worship of music itself. Music frees the soul from the cage of the body. Music transforms the Many to a One. The Marshall stacks vibrate his skeleton. We touch something divine. His Stratocaster speaks of ecstasy and despair. We’re not gods, but we are channels for something that is godlike.

It was like arguing with a tennis-ball launcher: pop, pop, pop – always a comeback.

Does acid cure you of colour-blindness?’ asks Dean. ‘No,’ says Jerry, ‘but it makes you wonder if you’ve actually been living not in the real world but only a description of it.

Dean never saw the point of church. ‘God works in mysterious ways’ seemed no different from ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’.

For Anglo-Saxons, time is a master. For Mediterraneans, time is a servant.

File us under Theory X. Not reality, not delusion, but a phenomenon awaiting proof.

it makes you wonder if you’ve actually been living not in the real world but only a description of it.

The world has too many mystics and too few scientists.

Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.

Hope stops you adapting to a new reality.

Reality erases itself as it rerecords itself.

To have your photo taken is to be told, "You exist

The present is a curtain. Most of us can’t see behind it. Those who do see—via luck or prescience—change what is there by seeing. That’s why it’s unknowable.

It’s like a lake giving up its dead.” “The past, giving up a moment.

Bruce was charming, but charm in a guy is a warning sign. Like black and yellow stripes in nature mean, Watch out, there are stings near this honey.

The word ‘faster’ is becoming a synonym of ‘better.’ As if the goal of human evolution is to be a sentient bullet.

We come, we see, we hang around till Death snuffs out our candles …

Photography needs lots of water, like all living things.

8’ is infinity, sat up.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.

Dean had to leave, but a part of him never would. In memory and in dream, he’d revisit this lacuna in time and in space. The place was a part of him now.

When I had fame, fame was killing me. Now it's gone, anonymity is killing me.

Time's a fire extinguisher

There’s solace in “Maybe.

A person is a thing that leaves.

Okay-who do you want to sound like?' The three musicians replay in unison 'Us.

In fifty years,’ said Jasper, ‘or five hundred, or five thousand, music will still do to people what it does to us now. That’s my prediction. It's late.

I is an Empire of I's.

Suffering is the promise that life always keeps.

Elf is trembling and isn’t sure why. Her eyes meet the Mona Lisa’s above Mrs. Biggs’s till. The most famous half-smile tells Elf, Suffering is the promise that life always keeps.

the best pop music is art. And art is about whatever the artist wants it to be.

When you go abroad, you learn more about where you're from than when you're heading - Elf

One spoon of Dylan makes a gallon of meanings.

reality creeps in wherever you live, however pretty the flowers are, however blue the sky, however great the parties. The only people who actually live in dreams are people in comas.

Jasper notes that Jesus’s disciples were, essentially, hippies: long hair, gowns, stoner expressions, irregular employment, spiritual convictions, dubious sleeping arrangements and a guru.

say to Immy? What can I possibly do? The late April afternoon is cruelly perfect. A thrush sings, very near. A word, “threnody,” arrives in Elf’s head. If she once knew what it meant, she doesn’t now.

The truth is that you’re not your own private “I”. You are to consciousness what the flame of a match is to the Milky Way. Your brain only taps into consciousness. You aren’t a broadcaster. You’re a transceiver.

But the genies we let loose stay loose. In the ears of the young the genies whisper what was unsayable. ‘Hey, kids—there’s nothing wrong with being gay.’ Or ‘What if war isn’t a patriotism test, but really fucking dumb?’ Or ‘Why do so few own so goddamn much?’ In the short run, not a lot seems to change. Those kids are nowhere near the levers of power. Not yet. But in the long run? Those whispers are the blueprints of the future.

Queens, queers, stiffs, straights, squares, givers, parasites, mediocrities, fellow artists, hypocrites, crooks, honest souls, old friends’ – Francis catches Levon’s eye – ‘dark handsome strangers and Muriel, who maintains this enchanted outpost of Utopia. For a brief spell, we share a stage. Others are coming to kick us off. But while you’re here, write yourself a good part. Act it well.’ He looks around the bar. ‘Act it well. There’s nothing else to say because there’s nothing more to say. Wisdom is platitudes gussied up.

Here in the land of the free, you’ll meet some of the gentlest, smartest, wisest people who ever lived. But when violence comes, it’s merciless. Without warning. Out of the bluest sky. Quick as that.’ Max mimes a gun going off. ‘Enjoy the land of the free. But be careful.

Dean glances at the customer with the blue glasses. He’s switched Record Weekly for a book, Down and Out in Paris and London. Dean wonders if he’s a beatnik. A few guys at art college posed as beats. They smoked Gauloises, talked about existentialism, and walked around with French newspapers.

You’re not an artist per se but you enable the artists who make the art. What you are is an enabler. An assembler. A builder. This is a calling. You don’t get the glory. You don’t get remembered. But you don’t get devoured. And you do get the money. If that’s not good enough, go and play golf.

IS THE SOUL a real thing? I wondered then as I wonder now. Are the unscientific majority right? Does some essence of Dean persist somehow, somewhere? Or is the notion of the soul a placebo, a comfort blanket, a blindfold we use to spare ourselves the full awfulness of the cold, hard truth that when we die we stop?

Jasper was by then totally lost. Why, he wondered, do Normals get so worked up about who’s having sex with whom? Surely, people who want to sleep with each other will do so, until one or both no longer want it. Then it ends. Like the end of the mating season in the animal kingdom. If everyone just accepted that, there would be no more heartache.

Your big mistake,” the bun tells Dean, “is to assume your brain generates a bubble of consciousness you call ‘Me.’ ” “Why is that a mistake?” Dean asks the talking bun. “The truth is that you’re not your own private ‘I.’ You are to consciousness what the flame of a match is to the Milky Way. Your brain only taps into consciousness. You aren’t a broadcaster. You’re a transceiver.

Every third or fourth generation is a generation of radicals, of revolutionaries. We, my friends, are the bottle-smashers. We release the genies. We run riot, get shot, get infiltrated, get bought off. We die, go bust, sell out to the man. Sure as eggs is eggs. But the genies we let loose stay loose. In the ears of the young the genies whisper what was unsayable. “Hey, kids – there’s nothing wrong with being gay.” Or “What if war isn’t a patriotism test, but really fucking dumb?” Or “Why do so few own so goddamn much?” In the short run, not a lot seems to change. Those kids are nowhere near the levers of power. Not yet. But in the long run? Those whispers are the blueprints of the future.

Violence is on every page of our history.” Max mops up his gazpacho soup with a crust. “Brave settlers massacring Indians. Some days we’d cheat them with worthless treaties, but mostly it was massacres. Slavery. Work for me for nothing till the day you die, or I’ll kill you now. The Civil War. We industrialized violence. We mass-produced it, years before Ford. Years before the trenches of Flanders. Gettysburg! Fifty thousand deaths in a single day. The Klan. Lynchings. The Frontier. Hiroshima. The Teamsters. War! We need war like the French need cheese. If there’s no war, we’ll concoct one. Korea. Vietnam. America’s that junkie outside the hotel, only heroin’s not the drug we’re hooked on. No, sir.

At the end of its eight-minute journey from the sun, light passes through the stained glass of St. Matthias Church in Richmond, London, and enters the dual darkrooms of Jasper’s eyeballs. The rods and cones packing his retinas convert the light into electrical impulses that travel along optic nerves into his brain, which translates the varying wavelengths of light into “Virgin Mary blue,” “blood of Christ red,” “Gethsemane green,” and interprets the images as twelve disciples, each occupying a segment of the cartwheel window. Vision begins in the heart of the sun. Jasper notes that Jesus’s disciples were, essentially, hippies: long hair, gowns, stoner expressions, irregular employment, spiritual convictions, dubious sleeping arrangements, and a guru.

I’ve never associated America with violence,” says Elf. “Violence is on every page of our history.” Max mops up his gazpacho soup with a crust. “Brave settlers massacring Indians. Some days we’d cheat them with worthless treaties, but mostly it was massacres. Slavery. Work for me for nothing till the day you die, or I’ll kill you now. The Civil War. We industrialized violence. We mass-produced it, years before Ford. Years before the trenches of Flanders. Gettysburg! Fifty thousand deaths in a single day. The Klan. Lynchings. The Frontier. Hiroshima. The Teamsters. War! We need war like the French need cheese. If there’s no war, we’ll concoct one. Korea. Vietnam. America’s that junkie outside the hotel, only heroin’s not the drug we’re hooked on. No, sir.

Labels. I stuck them on everything. “Good”. “Bad”. “Right”. “Wrong”. “Square”. “Hip”. “Queer”. “Normal”. “Friend”. “Enemy”. “Success”. “Failure”. They’re easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they’re covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality is the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality’s the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It’s difficult. It’s many things at once. That’s why we’re so crummy at it. People harp on about freedom. All the time. It’s everywhere. There are riots and wars about what freedom is and who it’s for. But the Queen of Freedoms is this: to be free of labels. Here endeth today’s lesson. You’re giving me a funny look.

Hang on, Levon,” said Elf. “Hang on. Are you saying you want to sack Griff because his brother just died in a horrific car crash and he’s too full of grief to play? Seriously?” “I am laying out the facts. Because somebody has to. Or there is no band. Of course we give Griff time. Of course. But you heard Griff. You saw him. It is entirely possible he won’t be back.” “Drummers like Griff don’t grow on trees,” said Elf. “You think I don’t know that?” asked Levon. “I chose him! But a drummer who can’t drum isn’t a drummer. Jasper. Speak.” Jasper drew a spiral on the steamy glass. “Eight days.” “Speak English, not Cryptic Crossword. Please. I have a headache as big as East Anglia.” “My Dutch grandfather used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do nothing for eight days.’ ” Dean asked, “Why eight?” “Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.” Without warning, the train shuddered into motion. The passengers raised a weary ironic cheer.

There is, however, another avenue of utopian thought, one that is all but forgotten. If the blueprint is a high-resolution photo, then this utopia is just a vague outline. It offers not solutions but guideposts. Instead of forcing us into a straitjacket, it inspires us to change. And it understands that, as Voltaire put it, the perfect is the enemy of the good. As one American philosopher has remarked, “any serious utopian thinker will be made uncomfortable by the very idea of the blueprint.”23 It was in this spirit that the British philosopher Thomas More literally wrote the book on utopia (and coined the term). Rather than a blueprint to be ruthlessly applied, his utopia was, more than anything, an indictment of a grasping aristocracy that demanded ever more luxury as common people lived in extreme poverty. More understood that utopia is dangerous when taken too seriously. “One needs to be able to believe passionately and also be able to see the absurdity of one’s own beliefs and laugh at them,” observes philosopher and leading utopia expert Lyman Tower Sargent. Like humor and satire, utopias throw open the windows of the mind. And that’s vital. As