The Mermaids Singing on the Rocks

Music is World Service - Man Jumping

What to capitalise? There is never anything definite written on grammar, which makes me think that I should just choose my own. After all that is what text messages so. Sometimes it is OK to use a sentence without a verb but what about one without a word. Was it Victor Hugo who sent the shortest telegram or was it his publisher? Was it "!" or "?"? Work that one out grammarians.

Totally blocked now. I have spent five minutes trying to think of something to write about. I know there are things out there or in there rather but I cannot get at them. I make music using the enemy's machines. They keep me going. I would not be able to make the protests I do without stealing resources from the people I aim to criticise. When they fail, will my world collapse? Probably not. I love the rain on days like these. I do not love the poems that the local paper prints. The “very corridors” and all that. Think about taking away the net and writing some blank verse with some metaphors in it. At the end of this cable which comes out of the machine under my fingers at this moment, there is the whole of mankind. I can almost think a message to any one of the millions of people on the end of it. I work with these machines but it still excites me to think of the complexity behind it all. Dream away and everything comes true. We thought Prestel was good but this is just the whole world in one space. One big swing and the whole world is there - or blown apart by the very thought of all it can hold. This is automatic writing at its best; no restraining bolts or anything else to hold you back. Melancholia is a clinical term and it is engaged by the many chemicals that we use to control it but at no point can we control depression with words only. I love the rain on days like these. It is true that love of inclement weather is really love of proof against it. We love the fact that we can venture out on such days and know that we may return to safety and warmth where we are protected for all the time we choose to stay indoors. I ramble on about this so much and can almost type in rhythm with the music that we make to indicate our obsessions. I think of many things at all times; so many that the world falls away from around me and leaves me gasping at the simultaneity of it all. Everything happens at once inside your head and all thoughts about what has happened and what will happen crash into each other. Yet even this event has no linear relationship to the rest of thought and action.

Man Jumping are these thoughts set to music. The complexity of this music is breathtaking and absolutely justifies the phrase "The Most Interesting Band in the World". "My Son. Don't forget my life and don't drink so much as I did." This music is an instrument and yet it sounds like words. You wish it were. The sound is like the rocks around you speaking of how they feel about the world. Their life is long compared to yours and yet so short. This system is so old and tired.

I wanted to know when Sylvia Plath's mother, Aurelia died. She was interviewed in 1990. I am about to find out for sure. It was 1994. I don't remember it being noted. Maybe I should have not searched and let myself believe that she was still alive as a sort of balance to the fact of her daughter's early death. This is a turning point on which we can make up our own new view of the Universe and what it would be like. Wars change the world because so many people die but the death of just one person can change the world completely and forever. We do not know if the Death of one person 40 years ago can have changed the world but it is possible for one person doing one thing slightly different to affect the whole world. We have to see this in the context of all the other possible events and turning points of history. I have learnt something which I never knew in the last five minutes and it has changed my view and made me sadder for the afternoon because I thought that the possibility of someone being alive somehow made up for the death of her daughter. I had read all Sylvia Plath's published poems long before her mother died and that somehow made something about the whole depressing affair a tiny bit better. When would I have known that Aurelia Plath was dead? She would be 96 had she still been alive now.

Still in two minds about the film. Plus - it looks OK as a film. Minus - Frieda Hughes wants no one to go and see it. Guess what I will do.