I am an Astronaut

Listening to Emperor Tomato Ketchup by Stereolab

I am determined to make a mark via this blog. I know it will probably never happen but I have come up with an idea in the situationist spirit of 30 years since some arbitrary milestone in the history of Punk Rock. I do feel that the use of the phrase situationist by the pioneer punks of the day was probably not as rigorous as it could have been though that is probably in the self-referential spirit of the whole thing anyway. Feel free to tell me if the following idea is situationist or naff or somewhere in between. You are right in thinking that I have not read exactly what Wikipedia says about Situationism.

I read a short prose piece by someone who detailed why he should not be allowed to have kids because he would subvert society through them, causing them mental anguish along the way. I think it was only half serious – very worrying if it wasn’t. A sort of de-energised version follows – like a vaccine is the thing you are trying to protect against without the deadly payload. For a long time I have fed my daughter various phrases to shout in the playground, not that she remembers to do so very often but I like to think of her marching up and down shouting “Sinister – Dexter” or even the one she thought up to use on her own during her Suffragette phase “Votes For Women!” My next meme will be – Clap – Clap – Grabowski. Clap - Clap as an action with “Grabowski” shouted afterwards – like a football chant. I will try and persuade her to get the other children to shout this at the same time. If just one of you convinces a child to pass this around, we could soon have a new craze. This is what Tim and Graham shouted when they were at the world chess championships in the Goodies Kitten Kong episode. Go on! You know we can do it. And maybe we will have a few more kids picking up guitars and learning three chords. I know three! I can see the positions – no idea what they are called. Let’s call them A, B and C. That’s the truth! OMG! “Three Chords and the Truth” is a country album. Now the question is do I look like the original scream or like macordly culllkin in the Home Alone posters?

We did have a phase at school where the standard response to anything – question – statement – strange shaped vegetables was “Ooooh! Sponge”. I thought it was my brother who started this but he cannot remember it at all. I have no idea where it came from – it might well be filthy in the extreme as the school’s registered keeper of “art” magazines seemed to be the focus for it. For this reason it will not be passed on for Junior School appreciation.

Souvenir by OMD was a great self-referential record for me. Less than a second into it and I can place myself back in the sunny late summer of 1981, walking through the woods with a girl called Julie – not sure how we heard music out in the woods but the link is there. The words to it are just abstract additions that may give some insight into the state of mind of the person who wrote them but only to himself. I always get frustrated by the fact that people speak different languages and the further you get from home, the less able you are to pick out the emotional content because of various inflections used to convey meaning – so many Chinese words are pronounced the same way but by using different timbres and cadences, the same word conveys many different meanings. However, music seems universal. Regardless of the changes in scale, the different tunings and keys, it always seems possible to pick out at least the very highest level of emotion from a piece. I seem to remember that this was some part of the explanation of how the Star Trek universal translator worked but I may be wrong. Anyway – if by the slightest chance – Julie is reading this (I was the guy with the Rubik’s cube fascination and the green shirt which looked so punk * – I brought you Rock back from holiday), please tell me if you still like Souvenir.

I suppose we liked Enola Gay as well but that’s about the plane which dropped the atomic bomb, never a suitable romantic song though I did once hear it used as backing for a programme about Japan’s economy. Give the producer of that show a toffee.

* It was actually my old scout shirt. I took the badges off – all except the one for self-piercing.