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.