Gut Wrench

There is a hole in the pit of my gut. A huge writhing knot of dark matter twisting and turning and hurting.

I actually couldn’t make it in to work today because of a full on stomach cramp.

I’ve been feeling emotions much more physically lately, which has been great when I’ve been happy and bouncy and electrically loving life. But currently it means it all really hurts.

I’ve been wanting to vomit it out. Push the darkness out of my gut and flush it away.

I don’t think these things are that simple.

I’ve spent a lot of today thinking about  cutting my hair off. Just hacking away at it and leaving it a chaotic jumble of curls.

Okay, it’s already a chaotic jumble, but gravity is clearly winning.

I want to break it. Destroy myself somehow. Or at least try and end all of this. Start a new portion.

(Incidentally, nobody get too worried, you should know by now that a couple of depressed posts and a short story about suicide does not mean I’ve gone total self destruct. It’s not that bad, and I know that. I just need to stop feeling the way I feel…and that’s not easy.)

But yeah, there was the time I was on the train and I remembered the Kaveman briefly. A warmth, starting as a tingle in my nose, just cascaded right through my body. It was electrifying and invigorating. I felt more alive from head to toe.

That’s how much I love that guy, he has a place in my heart, he always will.

So will they all. All of those loved ones (they know who they are).

I’ve got so much to be grateful for. Surrounded by wonderful friends and good people. I’ve got my health (just about) and technically, I’m being paid a lot of money to do not a lot of work.

The fact that the work makes me miserable, and that I’ve been (what feels like) pointlessly dumped by someone I love (who, admittedly, I know will remain as a friend forever, so it’s not like I’ve really lost her….of course, in the immediate, that’s not going to help, that’s only going to make it worse) shouldn’t really be that big a deal. This is fucking tiny little beans compared to the shit people put up with all the time in this world.

But that doesn’t change the feeling in my gut. The twisting, writhing ball of pain.

It’s a blockage. I should really go to Tai Chi, but I just don’t have the energy. I need to get it out. I need to pass it away and enter a new phase.

I’m terrified that I might cut my hair, much like I’m terrified of leaving anything behind.

So it stays in my gut, this feeling of loss and regret.

I won’t feel better until I let go.

But if there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s how bad I am at letting go.

This could be some time, sorry if this place turns all melancholy. I always feel like I’m dicking you guys out of something when I become morose and self obsessed. I’ll try and keep it down…but…well…y’know.

Peas and gloves.

Wrong type of life on the tracks

He had planned it in meticulous detail. He’d spent months studying the intricacies of the rail network, the daily rhythms of the crowds to ensure that the most people would remember him. Found the busiest point at the busiest time. Torrents of people pouring through the network of tunnels and rails. He’d found the focal point, the heaviest cascade.

He’d given up on his isolation ending, but didn’t want to be forgotten instantly. Other people had friends, families, potential mourners. They would remember them, keep them in mind beyond the moment of death.

Nobody remembered him. He talked but no one listened. Eventually he stopped talking, and resigned himself to his fate.

He would hurl himself off the bridge, into the 0827 to London Victoria. Just outside Clapham common, the train that passed down those lines, if stopped, would interfere with the whole morning. Trainloads of commuters mornings would be interrupted by his last breath. It would take them hours to clean up the mess and get the trains running again. Get the city back on track again.

It would be his legacy.

They wouldn’t know it, but those commuters, would remember him, with their frustration. Angry calls to work, explanations and rushed dramatic blackberried messages. ‘I’ll be a little late today, I’m commemorating the death of a loved one.’

Those wouldn’t be the real words, of course, but he knew he would be the subtext of the whole debacle.

He pulled himself over the barrier on the bridge, and watched down the line as the train heaved into sight.

He was ready to give himself to the world, knowing that for the few hours afterwards, and maybe further, as the tale was recounted (’you would not believe the day I’ve had), he would be more important than he had ever been before. His life would have meaning, impact. He would be powerful. The hand of God reaching out and touching their lives.

He smiled as he let himself drop down. Time seemed to slow as a thought occurred to him.

Delays happen all the time.

People are used to this inconvenience.

Everybody at that time in the morning has adjusted their expectations to the point where this is normal.

This kind of thing happens every day.

The world doesn’t notice.

He felt a thud of regret as the train rushed and squealed it’s way through his last breath.

DownwardsPieWhirl - Things Falling Apart (again)

Down. Need to moan.

I don’t like my new job. Totally unsatisfying and I feel trapped away from any opportunity to help and/or interact with people. Salaried alienation.

That and the Sea Witch has left me cast away and land locked. I’m still not entirely sure why. But I do understand in a way. If it’s not there it’s not there, even if everything else is right.

I just wish I knew what ‘it’ was. But you can’t have everything (or anything…at the moment…it seems).

It’s not been a good weekend, though really, good things have happened.

Ambivalence I guess.

Right now I’ve got to focus on not crying at a family barbecue.

Sorry I’ve been so lazy on the blog lately. My mind’s in a million different places and drained of enthusiasm. Hopefully it won’t last.

Now lets go pretend to be happy.

Shit.

Gotta go.

Our World doesn’t Work

So, just a quick one.

Basically, if there’s a fuel crisis, prices are rising and we’re supposed to be acting to halt massive amounts of pollution and waste, shouldn’t the petrochemical companies be losing lots of money as we halt their ability to grow and screw the world up.

The opposite is happening.

Surely this means something is wrong.

Busy Courgettes

Courgettes swiftly became my favourite vegetables after I started cooking with them. So easy, and they’ve got great texture.

You can’t complain about a courgette, not least because they look vaguely rude but friendly, and the word rolls of the tongue in a similar fashion.

I’ve got some waiting to be added to the pot shortly. I cook, then I dash off on a hectic ramble to the midst of a techno festival that I have somehow wangled free access to. BUt I can only stay for one night. Which is sad, to say the least. As there is fun to be had, and I would like to have more of it.

Still, might take my mind off things. Remind me of the fun (and sun) that remains out there.

I’m a mopey bastard. It’s a problem.

Anyway, I think I’m posting aimlessly, but I thought you should know my feelings for the brother courges.

What?

Yoyo

Can’t take this constant shifting.

Don’t know what to deal with.

Everything is finding new ways to suck.

Not that bad really, but I have to make a big deal.

That’s who I am. Overblown exaggerated me.

Stuck. Fucked.

Sorry.

Kinda failing you.

Something’ll return.

Hope.

Fully.

Five things walk into a bar…

Damn you Asuka, hijacking my blog and making it actually have content (well, pseudo content). Damn you.

5 Things Found in your Bag

• Wind up mp3 player thing
• Books (Basho’s Haiku, Alan Moore’s Guide to writing comics and Dick’s ‘Transmigration of Timothy Archer’ and a diary, for work, for the first time ever)
• Post It notes (stolen from work)
• Empty bottle of ice tea (no longer of ice tea…soon to be of water)
• Tiny round container with White tea bags in

5 Favourite Things in your Room

• My new purpley orangey patternedy drapey thing, hanging from my ceiling
• My new Ocarina, courtesy de la Sea Witch
• My Tree monster picture
• My magic love light box
• My bucket

5 Things you have always wanted to do

• Get a whole techno club dancing to something by Gershwin
• Learn to play one of Will’s songs on the Piano (hell, just learn to play the piano properly)
• Perform a sample and loop driven avant garde vocal noise poetry thang. Solo.
• Travel the world slowly (boat and train and foot) the long way round.
• Own a little sunny bookshop and sit and write all day

5 things you are currently into

• Tai Chi
• Miranda July
• Trees
• The Sea Witch
• Reconnecting my mind to the outside world. Came unplugged temporarily. Little better now.

5 people you want to tag

• Philip K Dick
• Claude Debussy
• Francis Bacon (the artist, not the Saint)
• Karl Marx
• Freddie Mercury

But lets face it. Dead dudes don’t do memes.

The girl with the Sun in her mouth - work in progress

After I had said my piece I quietly awaited her response. My eyes tried to pierce hers, wondering if I’d gone to far and should prepare my apology.

She stared.

I waited, my eyes softened and I found it hard to focus.

I had to maintain eye contact though. This was important. This meant something.

Something in her eyes hardened, and I her nostrils flared the tiniest speck, an inhalation.

Her lips parted, slowly splitting to reveal her response.

Eye lost eye contact rapidly, as the searing white light emerged.

Keeping it in the corner of my eyeline, I could see it as it happened. Her mouth pulled slowly apart, to reveal the brightest of bright lights. Her mouth rounded to an oh and a beam of heat washed over me.

Then she tore. The mouth opened further than should be possible. A sound as her jaw cracked, and then a burning, acrid smell as her lips started to burn.

Her face was rapidly crept over by the charred blackness.

The light, a solid ball of it, ripped apart her skull, and tore into the sky, lighting the blackened universe as it went.

Her body, crumpled on the floor, her head nothing but burnt crumbles of ash and bone.

Perhaps I had gone too far.

And if everybody jumped off a cliff would you do that too?

Sure. Sounds fun. If everyone else is doing it. Why would I want to be left out?

Ahem.

Yeah. She started it.

In other news, I’m sad and lost but I don’t want to talk about it. At least not yet. However, I am also falling head over heels in awe with Miranda July. Possibly the loveliest stuff ever.

Worst designed best site ever. Lovely.

Heart rendingly painfully lovely film. Lovely.

Lovely.

Out.

Declare Independence - Linguobatics

One way you can tell a subject is particularly contentious is if you see me taking two sides of the argument on two separate occasions. Especially if I’m the one starting the argument each time and I’m the most vociferous each time.

Particularly when I still can’t decide where I stand.

And especially when I change my mind during said arguments at least three times.

So yeah, contention.

Languague right. It’s pretty fucked. Björk inspired me again today (I fall in love with her voice a million times a minute whenever I’m listening to or thinking about it. If you don’t love her go listen to Five Years, if you don’t love her by the second time she says she’s bored of cowards I swear to all that is holy or not that you don’t actually have a heart.)

Basically, it’s that line about making your own currency and stamps and protecting your language.

I mean, I want to make my own language. There is no greater freedom. To be able to say exactly what you mean without just living out someone else’s grammar and linguistic structure with every fucking word you spout.

There’s an obvious problem though, if you make up your own language, nobody else will understand.

Society is strangled by the fact that everything has to make sense, and not just to me (or you, if you feel that way inclined) but to everyone else as well.

It’s that social element that gives hegemonic forces their stranglehold upon us.

Let’s take a step back to the contentious issue already alluded to.

Basically, I can’t decide how to use the words father and mother. Paternity and Maternity.

The terms are loaded. There’s a whole ream of associations with each.

Now to me, my definitions are different to others, not least because they are, to some extent, defined by relationship with my own mother and father. In ways, my definition is non-traditional, but in other ways it isn’t.

Then there’s the fact that I’m aware what the cultural norm is. Fathers are authority and maybe games (particularly competition), Mothers are love and nurture.

Now in fact, for me, father becomes anger, drunkness and distance, the one to rebel against (which I guess makes him authority). Mother becomes sadness, a guilt attached. The love’s there for both, but different.

Anyway, we’re supposed to be talking about society, not my own upbringing (maybe some other time…I’m conscious that I just painted a fairly bad picture pretty quickly, but that ain’t true, there was just no outwardly expressed love in my family, it was all implicit, hidden and almost ignored…I think I only realised recently how strongly it was always there…anyway, I’m gonna change the subject).

So there’s a mix coming into the words. Personal experience, and the culturally mediated ‘norm’. The patriarchy, the word even, it’s about father hood.

I’ll get somewhere near my first point maybe, which is that I don’t want to be a ‘Father’. But, y’know. I’ve got to be (assuming I have kids at some point, which I really hope happens).

I don’t want to be some cliched stereotype, I want to be loving and caring, and to all intents and purposes, closer aligned with the ‘norm’ of motherhood. I intend to nurture and raise and be loving and equal and everything. I don’t want to be distant and authoritative, I don’t want to be cruel and I certainly don’t want to be anything like the SCUM daddy:

Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity): Mother wants what’s best for her kids; Daddy only wants what’s best for Daddy, that is peace and quiet, pandering to his delusion of dignity (`respect’), a good reflection on himself (status) and the opportunity to control and manipulate, or, if he’s an `enlightened’ father, to `give guidance’. His daughter, in addition, he wants sexually — he givers her hand in marriage; the other part is for him. Daddy, unlike Mother, can never give in to his kids, as he must, at all costs, preserve his delusion of decisiveness, forcefulness, always-rightness and strength. Never getting one’s way leads to lack of self-confidence in one’s ability to cope with the world and to a passive acceptance of the status quo. Mother loves her kids, although she sometimes gets angry, but anger blows over quickly and even while it exists, doesn’t preclude love and basic acceptance. Emotionally diseased Daddy doesn’t love his kids; he approves of them — if they’re `good’, that is, if they’re nice, `respectful’, obedient, subservient to his will, quiet and not given to unseemly displays of temper that would be most upsetting to Daddy’s easily disturbed male nervous system — in other words, if they’re passive vegetables. If they’re not `good’, he doesn’t get angry — not if he’s a modern, `civilized’ father (the old-fashioned ranting, raving brute is preferable, as he is so ridiculous he can be easily despised) — but rather express disapproval, a state that, unlike anger, endures and precludes a basic acceptance, leaving the kid with the feeling of worthlessness and a lifelong obsession wit being approved of; the result is fear of independent thought, as this leads to unconventional, disapproved of opinions and way of life.

For the kid to want Daddy’s approval it must respect Daddy, and being garbage, Daddy can make sure that he is respected only by remaining aloof, by distantness, by acting on the precept of `familiarity breeds contempt’, which is, of course, true, if one is contemptible. By being distant and aloof, he is able to remain unknown, mysterious, and thereby, to inspire fear (`respect’).

-Valerie Solanas - SCUM Manifesto, available all over the shop, including here.

Sorry for the long dense and vaguely irrelevant quote, but seriously, This is big important and scary stuff. I Solanas will make you think more about the fucked up nature of the world than virtually anything there is.

My thought stream is interrupted, so I shall move closer the the point. Yes.

Basically, there’s a dilemma. Do you withdraw from the loaded language or do you subvert it?

The first big argument about this came from Significex talking about wanting to abandon both terms in favour of the gender neutral ‘Parent’. That didn’t sit well with me. It sounds strained and unnatural.

But I think the real problem, as came to light in more arguing with the Sea Witch, is the fact that it’s like giving up. It’s like saying, you’re strangling us with language, and so we’ll have to lose all the richness of it, and just use neutral bland terms to describe everything.

Sure, they’ll lose some power, but where’s the challenge, where’s the subversion, where’s the ‘fuck shit up’ attitude that you need to grab people, make them think, re-evaluate, and then change.

Where’s the taking the language and re-inventing it?

That’s what we need to do surely? Declare independence, don’t let them do that to you.

But how can you redefine language in a way that actually gets across the difference. The palimpsest insists that you always see the old traces.

When I was thinking about this earlier, it all tied in with a big spiel about post modernism. The route that challenges everything, asks all the newest and most exciting questions, because it asks all questions.

That sense of play, of vague, uncentred, looseness. That danger, that lack of structure. It means everything gets upset.

But it’s like an internal language, one only you can understand.

It is detached, and somehow, useless. It has no answers.

But I can’t give up on it. I do believe that there is value there. The challenge can be laid down. Then we can build something.

Float downstream, into the ocean, and build something new. (cf The Passion of New Eve, another of my favourite texts).

I’m not resolved. I feel two opposite and contradictory things at once. There is no absolute truth, just multiple truths. All jumbling for dominance.

But they can’t. We just need to keep on jumbling. The very foundations of patriarchy cannot hold against this plague of uncertainty forever.

I hope.

Words have power.

Language is weird. And we’re stuck with it. But that I suggest we beat it into submission; and not the other way round.

Just a thought.

—————-
Now playing: Chris Clark - [Body Riddle #01] Herr Bar [foobar2000 v0.9.4.3]
via FoxyTunes

Web Design Fashions

Just a quick point.

BBC News has today changed the design of their site (this may be throughout the BBC, or just here, but I actually can’t be bothered to even click on the one solitary link and activate that portion of my memory required to cross reference that information. I am that lazy.)

This seems to happen everywhere these days, and I keep on noticing the same trends.

Everyone’s becoming fond of airy, spacious layouts. Big gaps between things, and no harsh lines or borders.

I guess the idea is that it’s more friendly and inviting. But to my eyes, it just seems less clear, more vauge and less densely informative.

Bear in mind this is a news site we’re talking about.

I don’t like this trend. It rarely sits right with me, and it seems particularly contrary to the goal of news institutions (assuming they are what they should be, which, having watched JFK last night, I assume they aren’t).

Basically, everything’s spread out, no longer delineated, and I have to scroll…scroll I say, to get all the information available to me previously.

This is rubbish. I’m not happy.

Home pages like this, I want to be able to flick my eyes over and know whether there’s anything of interest to me in about a second. More detailed viewing should reveal slightly more data, but it should all be increasingly esoteric and useless.

This is how my mind works, this is how I absorb data best, and that is what you are there for internet. For quickly dumping information into my already bulging cranium.

Please stop pumping me with vacuous space.

Now, I’m off to buy some fabric to make my room less spacious (or perhaps more cosy).

Funny that. Too much whiteness on my walls, and I’m going to make a bed cave.

Architecture, interior design, and web design. They all of their fashions, but they are also all about the way we live, the way we understand, the way we relate to our world.

Bloody fascinating when you think about it.

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Now playing: Múm - [Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy #12] Winter (what we never were after all) [foobar2000 v0.9.4.3]
via FoxyTunes

Anx

Morning full of massive anxiety dreams. Feel totally unrested, and it sounds like the world and it’s dog is doing DIY just outside my window.

Bastards.

That’s right, the new job starts tomorrow, and my unconscious has decided to just outright jump up and down and point out that it’s terrified.

Essentially I dreamed up an entire worst possible first day ever.

I couldn’t sort out my desk because it was full of old rubbish and cobwebs (and a stack of magazines about an obscure tabletop miniatures game, that was  treat). The mess became steadily more as I tried to phone the people I needed to phone. Nobody answered, and answer machine messages for me were indecipherable. Then people came in and started rearranging the desks so I couldn’t even get to mine. Went to meet someone (suddenly the exterior of the building is my old school) and put my foot in my mouth and screw everything up.

Okay, so I’m aware that all this dream journal stuff ain’t popular with you guys, the last dream was much more interesting and nobody looked at it anyway.

But yeah, basically, I’m worried, really worried. I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes to do this job.

That’s not true.

I know I’ve got what it takes to do this job, I just don’t know where to begin. And I’m not going to know until I get there and start doing it. The problem being, that if I’m in an off way tomorrow, I’m going to find it really hard to get started.

So I’m scared.

Perhaps more than I’ve ever been about something before.

I never got scared about exams, because I always knew how to deal with them, and I knew how to approach it.

But I don’t know how to approach this. I feel like I can’t plan it because I’m not sure what I’ll have to do.

Really, I can’t be that bad, as slowly, even in the dream, I was doing the right things. I checked the voicemail, I sorted out my drawers, I made contact with the staff. I tried to deal with problems as they came up.

I guess that’s all a big part of it. But is it enough?

Fuck knows.

And we won’t know until tomorrow. Then I get to calm down. But blatantly not before then.

Finite anxiety, we hope. Because I can’t go on like this forever.

And most of all, I want the people beside my bedroom to stop hammering and sawing. I really needed another half hour of sleep. I stayed up to late last night, and I’ve got to work til ten in my last shift at the internet mine.

Then it’s back, bed, hundreds of anxiety dreams (assuming I can sleep) wake up, Tai Chi, big breakfast, and assault the job head on. Bursting with energy and ready for anything.

Theoretically.

Until then. I’m scared.

The Loneliest Number

A night filled with horrible, horrible, yet very cinematic dreams.

I was a bit stressed and emotional yesterday, and though I calmed down in the evening, I obviously still carried a lot of junk around in my unconscious.

The first one was longest, and framed in a dusty interconnected network of colloseum like arenas, each filled with big tops and chambers and stages and stuff. It was supposed to be a music festival, but there was something horrible going on. I kept on shifting perspective to different people. Vaguely people I know, but mostly not identifiable, they were just ‘friends from London’.

Anyway, The camera would focus in on someone, and we’d watch them get singled out and play some bizarre game, either with recorded messages, strange visitations, strangers in the crowd, ring masters, or whatever. The end result would be kill or be killed. So lots of people kept on dying, and it was always covered up.

This kept on happening, and we appeared to be getting closer to a solving a mystery, at the expense of lots of people dying. There was a name, G or C something (Stringer? Probably not, but something like that) that kept coming up (at one point it appeared to be either Craig or Graig, it was written down, and I was expecting a G, but it was indeterminate).

Anyway, so we’re in a big top, where someone’s been trapped, tortured for hours (the violence all happened ‘off camera’, but it was still pretty horrible, as these things are) and suddenly told, through a public address system, that he had a chance to escape. He was told to pick an option, but as he was told which option to choose between, a loud noise obscured what was said. All he heard was the final words of the statement, something like ‘Do you want option C, or option Seven?’

The guy was terrified, not sure what choice to make, so he made a run for it, out the open door, towards the nearest exit. As he ran, he saw the first identifiable people of the dream, me, Denile, Denile’s brother, and the Kaveman. He shouts our names, and we turn around, just in time to see him get run over by a truck.

Pretty horrible, but we just shrugged and got blasé about it. I tried to explain that there was something weird and horrible going on at this place, but nobody really cared, and I lost interest quickly enough. We walked out the exit, and saw a van with the name from before on the side, it looked like it was the security firm running the festival.

Anyway, Kaveman starts talking about something, and I happen to be carrying one of those old fashioned portable tape recorders. I press play, and it starts playing the song ‘One’ (you know it, ‘One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know, two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number after number one’ etc etc) as the camera pans out to reveal we’ve not left the festival, we’re now just in a bigger arena than ever before.

Dark, and possibly deep. Very, very cinematic. The whole thing was clearly ’shot’ with an attention to camera angles and lighting and stuff.

I wake up with a start to find it’s lighter than I thought it might be, and so I panic because I think I’ve missed my alarm and I’m late for work.

Fucked up, evil and dark.

The second dream was all drugs and abandonment, beautiful views and unpleasant behaviour between friends. Vaguely post apocalyptic version of my home town, with inserts from the simpsons and people being left for dead.

Really, really disturbing, though I’ve woken up not particularly unsettled. The dreams were fairly psychopathic, but they were also totally detached from me. It worries me that this is all in my unconscious mind, but what do you expect when we live in a world that has Saw, David Lynch, and all sorts of fucked up violence as a part of it’s cultural narratives. Weird, but to be expected.

Anyway, soon I will be late for work, so I’d better go. Hope all is well.

Fear and Loathing on a Happy Monday

Stuck in work. This is the second to last shift at the internet place. The place is rammed, due to the Bank’s going on holiday. The only appreciable difference to me is more high pitched squealing all around, and a promise of ‘a bit more money’, on pay day. This is good as I’ve already had to sub the majority of this weeks wages so I can afford to live until payday.

It was a busy weekend, the sea witch was down (which was lovely in extremis by the way), I was hungover for lots (ssh…don’t tell work), and I DJed at my first paid gig (unfortunately, the cost of organisation, plus one broken needle, plus the fact that the Kaveman forgot to pay me the cash before he went back to London, means that in fact, I’m operating at what feels like a loss (actually even-ness has been broken).

Anyway, read Thom Yorke’s interview with Ken Livingstone, which definitely reinvigorated my support for ‘Red Ken’ as probably not being an absolute wanker, even when he comes across as one most of the time. Boris Johnson remains as detached from reality as ever. The idea of him having actual power would be hilarious if I didn’t occasionally visit the potential seat of his power. I do not want to touch his seat, even though a part of me loves his idiotic charm. I would like to have a pet miniature version of him, but I don’t want him making decisions that have any chance of affecting me. Any chance whatsoever.

Anyway, anger was sparked by the talk about Porsche lobbying against the proposed increased Congestion Charge type thing on high emmission vehicles.

Porsche has already mounted a legal challenge, as it produces only two cars that would not be hit by the charge, while its Cayenne Turbo is one of the most polluting vehicles, with 378g CO2/km, four times the level of the lowest-emission diesel car, the VW Polo Blue Motion.

Presumably their legal challenge is based on the assumption that ‘that’s soooooo unfair, I mean, it’s almost as if you’re trying to encourage us to use our vast mountains of cash, and our high tech R&D departments to make ego masturbation devices that don’t also fuck over the world we live on. I mean, what the fuck is that?’

I am riled. Basically, the whole point of taxes on anything that damages the environment is to make them seem less popular, and by extension change the demand for them. Maybe, if we’re lucky they’ll actually change their business practices and try and build something sexy enough to appeal to their rich, image obsessed customer base, that would satisfy Jeremy Clarkson’s urge for adolescent satisfaction of primal urges with essentially nonsense metaphors whilst not pumping shit into our atmosphere.

Just an idea.

Wankers.

Elsewhere, we have a child (in my shop, I’d guess about 13-1 years old) wearing a T-shirt belittling women, reducing them to status not just of objects but actually beneath objects (three images, one of a man and a woman together, one of a man with two women, and one with a man playing on a computer console, the legend labels each image in turn as ‘Good, Better, Best’. If it wasn’t for the fact that I feel there is an undertone that belittles the wearer as someone so terrified of human contact that they only enjoy playing with themselves, I would probably have set fire to it. In fact, I probably should have, as it’s that kind of belittlement and behaviour that no doubt leads to the sort of sexual aggression and domination that is completely strangling our society. I should’ve set fire to that kid.)

In other, and hopefully entirely unrelated news, I’m terrified of my new job.

I have to learn about the intricacies of the National Curriculum (currently a moving target at best), education in general, all manner of Health and safety, child protection, human resources and just about everything else, plus management techniques and all that entails, in about a week.

Step one: Setting fire to kids, or anyone, is wrong.

Guess I shoulda thought of that.

But seriously. I have a lot to learn, I have to be on the ball straight away, and I need to take responsibility for a couple of hours a day, for a number of little, tiny lives.

And the problem with small people, is that there very smallness increases their future potential.

I really, really want to do them justice.

I rambled on in the interview about how important education inside and out of school is important, and I managed to avoid the phrase screaming in my head ‘I believe the children are our future’. It would’ve been tantamount to saying girl power and making a peace sign as I left.

And I believe it. That’s the worst thing. I actually believe that teaching kids to learn, giving them space to be themselves and discover the true meaning of Christmas all by themselves (I look away for the screen for five seconds and when I turn back all I can think of is meaningless tangents). Doing that, providing a space where kids learn, where they can feel safe and welcome and that they, to some extent, own, will give them confidence and knowledge and strength for their whole lives.

There’s the potential here to change lives for the better.

Fucking terrifying.

And I’ve jsut got to do it.

Somewhere between thirty and seventy percent of me (depending on varying atmospheric conditions, the shape of the moon, direction of prevailing winds and the size and tastiness of my breakfast) reckons I can do it. Right now that’s at a low point, and I’m trapped by fear. I have to manage this fear by the time I get in there. I’ve got to battle for this one. I’ve got to get my war on (Total War, in fact….gearing my entire economy towards one purpose, so to speak).

I’ve got to bring it.

I’ve got to smell what the rock is cooking. Or something.

Oh, yeah, for those that don’t know. I got the job. The one I’m technically underqualified for. I steered myself in using my masterful manipulation of the facts and a sheer unbridled enthusiasm bought about by extreme confidence in the fact that I couldn’t possibly get this job, so there was no harm in trying.

Life’s funny, isn’t it.

So how do I do this. How do I learn to manage staff, to look after and think about young people. To become a learning and education professional. What does this entail.

I do not know. But I must find out.

I’m scared Toto. This isn’t Kansas any more.

Someone gave me responsibility. I’m thinking of running a sweepstake on how long it’ll take me to blow something up, or at least get a negative mention on national news.

I’ll give myself an optimistic month before anything really catastrophic happens.

That or within the first ten minutes.

Interesting times folks. Interesting times.

On the other hand:

You really can’t argue with that logic.

A Theoretical Upper Limit to the Density of Experience

I bear the emotional, physical and mental scars of a densely packed weekend.

It feels like I squeezed the usual events of a month into about three-four days, to the point where I’m no longer sure how much time has actually elapsed, or is even occurring in the immediate present. My Shatner’s Bassoon is totally haywire

On the plus side, I’m currently wearing a quite cool hat, and that is making my shift at the Gaming Centre more bearable than it should be given my currently compressed mental state.

I can only skim the surface in the allotted time (and I feel like I should be reading, but I have to say something at some point) but I feel dutibund (I feel like a neogogue today) to summarise.

And everything was in the midst of what should have been a recovery period of a crippling head cold.

Let’s try and talk about it.

There was some very fun culture clash style noise, as recommended by the ‘Bit. Klezmer Electro and Hip Hop type stuff. Essentially, it was good, with some really interesting ideas well implemented. Unfortunately the Electro suffered from bad engineering or production on the electronic side of things (meaning the rhythm section was really flattened, criminal in drum and bass sounding music, particularly when the live clarinet and accordion is tearing the house down). Balance was lost…though the music itself was spot on, if a little obvious. There’s a problem with combining trad stuff with modern electronically produced music, which is that people are likely to rest on the most obvious and simple forms of the each. This means the only excitement is in the juxtaposition, leaving a mediocre taste behind. The Hip hop had competent live drumming, which made for an excellent energy, the violin was superb as was the female vocalist. Unfortunately the male rapper was so so, the only plus point being that the engineering meant his voice was lost in the mist, becoming just an annoying distraction rather than ruining the whole thing.

Drunkenness then ruled the evening, encouraging nudity in others (he was very drunk and did have a fantastic torso, but don’t let him hear me say that). Fun was had, silliness was said, and I am assured that I can borrow a fantastic dress off of a lady friend of mine. Sexiness will ensue rapidly.

A perfunctory amount of sleep before journeying to London to see the sea (which? Witch).

Terrible tourist pub (how dare you serve me hot water with a tea bag beside it when I asked for tea. You destroy my day with your insipid tea….damn you), with mathematically impossible price list. Run away. Lurk outside Victoria station, scaring people with singing and funky dancing.

The Sea Witch arrives, and affectionate reunion gives way to a visit to the Science Museum.

Oh baby, oh baby. Your science and history combine to make me thoughtful and excited. And the bad tea had enough caffeine in it to make me slightly manic.

Computers, Maths, Klein bottles and thoughtfulness.

I found it really romantic, actually. All clever sounding discussions about art versus science, museum versus gallery, and the past versus the present.

Really fucking interesting.

Anyway, some rude service in a lovely pub, some terrible food in a horrible pub, and eventually we get back to some music appreciation.

The night was called the Arctic Circle, and it was cold but romantic. Romantic in the dramatic sense of the word. Like huge icy vistas.

More detail perhaps.

Elysian Strings performing works by Max De Wardener. Truly heart shaking. I was amazed at the kind of sound you can get out of a quiet string quartet, I would have sworn it was run through effects processors, eerie, subtle, emotive and rich, all at once. Very, very very good. Complex bounding soundscapes, seesawing through tone and timbre, occasionally reaching for your gut with that bass tone of the ‘Cello. You know the one, the one that genuinely stirs my loins.

Then they were joined by Mr of Wardener himself. He and a friend (name escapes me) build another layer out of bowed and struck glass instruments. It looked like a science experiment in a garage. Like some Victorian experimentalist had given up on science and was turning to musicianship and needed to use all his leftover apparatus.

It sounded like falling in love and freezing to death. Trapped in ice but it’s fine, because you’ve got your soul entwined in someone else.

Or something.

Anyway, it was good.

Colleen was an unknown quantity. I’d had a recommendation, but I was coming because of Max. I like surprises.

She took a while to build it up, but once she got there, she was totally entrancing, and quite frankly, made my bowels leap twist and clench. It’s funny how much I get excited by live music sometimes. Like, pure arousal. Physiological signs of excitement abound and I have a need to grip, clench, bite, rub and stroke.

Yes, it’s a fairly sexual experience…not really the same as sex, but it seems to induce similar reactions.

I guess I’m weird (or at least my cochlea counts as an erogenous zone more than most).

She was essentially just playing cello, guitar and clarinet, using a loop pedal to layer a huge rich tapestry out of it. Long luscious environments. The first few were alright, but the last few were immensely powerful. There’s a video available of the one where she tootles a music box around and then flips and reverses and plays gee tarr over the top. The version recorded here doesn’t have quite the intensity of the live performance, which was nothing short of overwhelming.

Union Chapel is a lovely building and really makes a great atmosphere for this sort of stuff. Well worth a visit if the right people are playing. Magnificent acoustics.

Which made me think about the power of Churches. It must definitely add to the feeling of being watched over, if any time your in the house of your deity, any little rustle, cough or whatever is amplified a thousand fold. Structures have power, and that’s going to effect your relationship and understanding of the things you’re being told.

Interesting.

Battersea Power station is one of the most incredible buildings ever. Whilst we’re on the subject. I can’t look at it without being inspired. Terrifying, magnificent and rotten. Modern life writ large, perhaps.

Anyway, a private interlude, lacking in much needed sleep, but definitely rich in other ways. (Ahem).

The next day bought a trip to the British Library, currently showing an exhibition on Avant Garde publishing from 1900-1939.

Fascinating, inspirational and really really cool, but I came out pissed off.

Basically, it saddens me how disengaged current art, media, literature and everything else is from politics. Not even just that, but how disengaged politics, as we know it today, is from politics. There is no discussion about the shape of the world, just PR to make it seem less awful. The rich get richer and there’s no talk about how the actual system itself is fucked.

Art and music and literature, act mostly as a panacea. A soporific to make you stop realising just how fucked up your life is, how pointless, meaningless and illogical so much of societies behaviour is. So much of it seems to work to reinforce this hegemony, promoting capitalism, patriarchy, and the oppression of people other than select few. It is not challenged. We don’t have people trying to reshape the world using ideas and words and imagery. People don’t riot at musical performances. Nobody cares enough to fight, and those who do seem content to stay within their own communities and not bother raising the profile enough to challenge the rest of us.

An exaggeration maybe, but it’s the feeling I get from the world.

The city used to be the exciting reinvention of the world. Freedom and the future were there for the taking. But the people who took it sought only to oppress.

I’m being grandiose, but that was the point. It made me feel like nobody is grandiose any more. Even the most radical politics is reduced to branding and campaigns. Let’s all agree to make poverty history so that we can feel a little better about our vampiric lifestyle. Branding and PR are the lord of all these days, pervading everything…including the way we think.

On reflection, there’s the irony. It was this publishing, the use of iconography, image, word, and language for the explicitly political means, that eventually became the branding of our world. The legacy of the publishing on display, isn’t the avant garde, the political, the revolutionary…it is the brand name, the graphic design that sells us all.

I’m going off on one now, and I’m still only half way through the business at hand.

I’ll move on and abbreviate.

The Buck is just sex on a stick, a born performer, capable of waking me from the walking death that my evening had become. So much tiredness, but you can’t not get your groove on when listening and watching a spectacle like that. He makes up for only rapping and scratching live (you could actually see him clicking tracks on iTunes) with sheer force of personality. Add to that doing ‘alternate versions’ of most of his tracks, a few new sounding space age electric sounding bits, a rendition of his ‘big hit’ Wicked and Weird, done to a mic thumping percussion (just a metronome really) in double time with each section bridged with old timey country folk. The guy explores the alienation of celebrity culture by discussing the size of a centaur’s penis for fucks sake. And I’ve got a feeling he practically Rickrolled us. But I’m not certain.

Good gig.

Then today I had the big job interview, for the management post I may be a little bit underqualified for. They said they’d get back to me this evening if they could…but they haven’t. This means the decision hasn’t yet been made, I don’t know if that’s a good sign or not. Could go either way.

My nerves were shot before I went in, but I was confident in the interview, and I think I mostly said the right things. We’ll see. Anyway, the real problem was afterwards…when the nervousness was almost unbearable. I was fine in there, but as soon as I left my chest and head and everything just got wound up around itself, leaving me twisted and confused. Tension.

So yeah, lots of stuff, and I haven’t really explained half of it. I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to do and think and experience more in that period of time, but then, I’m prone to exaggeration and over thought…so I’m sure I’ll do it again soon.

But now I am worn and weary and I must go clean up the workplace.

Thanks for stopping by and staring at my densely intense experience. I enjoyed it. A lot. But it’s hard work.

Lots of everything.