Maybe I Still Would
Just 70, Joan Bakewell's column in the Guardian is the best thing in it. The problem I have is that this makes me think that I am getting close to 70 as well. For all the years we saw her as an arty feminist, she has turned out to be an eminently sensible though still left-leaning defender of truth and decency. The last paragraph of this week's offering which referred to us all enjoying a decent single play on the TV, brought back fleeting images of the sixties as clearly as any strange and evocative smell of varnish on herringbone-pattern wood-block in school at the time. She is exactly right on the issue of drama on TV.
Having said this, maybe I should have watched The Long Firm, which from the review I read, was not what I was expecting. Not sure I would have liked watching execution by hot poker though which seems to suggest the level of nastiness which came in the second episode of the first series of Spooks (The Deep Fat Fryer). I gave up on Spooks after episode one though I caught various scenes in later shows one of which showed how easy it is for a hacker to make all the lights in MI5 headquarters go off. Ending sentences with prepositions again. Sorry! It has been a bad week.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Jingle Jangle Man and Steam Engine Governor
Listening to FCD from the Guardian.
Next CD will be Dear Catastrophe Waitress by Belle and Sebastian.
Isn't it strange how getting some small thing done and out of the way can make the whole day seem like it has achieved something. In the mad Catch-22 world that is big business these days, it appears that five minutes success can outweigh whole days of fruitless effort. Many small successes have made life here very happy and when this upbeat ambience is backed with music from Zero 7 and Death in Vegas, all is right and well with the world.
Like I am still 12, I want to tell everyone about the music that I like but tastes are so different that I haven't bothered since I was .. er .. 12. The only time I ever managed to get a positive reaction to my enthusing about something was when my dad said he was quite impressed with the Kodo drumming (unfortunately this was the musical interlude on the Wogan TV chat show). My dad has taken British reserve to something like the level of Hugh Laurie's character Mr Palmer in Sense and Sensibility. Of course it is sad that I can only refer to a well known actor in a big film rather than the character from the book which I have not read despite pressings from my wife (and in future years my daughter as well no doubt).
All this excitement seems to be bubbling along in the background. Normally it is at this point that the control rods drop in and I start to look for problems on the horizon. However, presently all this seems to be below some sort of emotional parapet. I can say 'he happy' to myself which sounds like some hippy-drippy self-confidence exercise but so many times people say cheer up it might never happen (and to someone who is down that is really annoying) but when you ARE happy and smiling, they all begin to wonder whether it is all front and that underneath the tranquil waters the melancholic paddles are beating away like always. Well they are not. It may be obvious but I worry sometimes that analysing all this makes depression more likely but at the moment we are back to where I started this entry, with small successes outweighing the long periods of bad stuff.
And Belle and Sebastian are helping so much. Underneath all that jangly guitar pop, there resides the originals - the boy and his dog - with the theme tune I can still hum and the gentle action, which was in fact so gentle as to, be more like inaction. I am probably misremembering but it seemed like BAS was just aforesaid boy and dog wandering round some central European village.
Searching for info about Belle and Sebastian (Dog and boy - not band) I have found from TV Cream that Andrew Collins has the second volume of his memoirs out. So two things for imminent purchase. What more could you want - and for me the weekend starts here.
Listening to FCD from the Guardian.
Next CD will be Dear Catastrophe Waitress by Belle and Sebastian.
Isn't it strange how getting some small thing done and out of the way can make the whole day seem like it has achieved something. In the mad Catch-22 world that is big business these days, it appears that five minutes success can outweigh whole days of fruitless effort. Many small successes have made life here very happy and when this upbeat ambience is backed with music from Zero 7 and Death in Vegas, all is right and well with the world.
Like I am still 12, I want to tell everyone about the music that I like but tastes are so different that I haven't bothered since I was .. er .. 12. The only time I ever managed to get a positive reaction to my enthusing about something was when my dad said he was quite impressed with the Kodo drumming (unfortunately this was the musical interlude on the Wogan TV chat show). My dad has taken British reserve to something like the level of Hugh Laurie's character Mr Palmer in Sense and Sensibility. Of course it is sad that I can only refer to a well known actor in a big film rather than the character from the book which I have not read despite pressings from my wife (and in future years my daughter as well no doubt).
All this excitement seems to be bubbling along in the background. Normally it is at this point that the control rods drop in and I start to look for problems on the horizon. However, presently all this seems to be below some sort of emotional parapet. I can say 'he happy' to myself which sounds like some hippy-drippy self-confidence exercise but so many times people say cheer up it might never happen (and to someone who is down that is really annoying) but when you ARE happy and smiling, they all begin to wonder whether it is all front and that underneath the tranquil waters the melancholic paddles are beating away like always. Well they are not. It may be obvious but I worry sometimes that analysing all this makes depression more likely but at the moment we are back to where I started this entry, with small successes outweighing the long periods of bad stuff.
And Belle and Sebastian are helping so much. Underneath all that jangly guitar pop, there resides the originals - the boy and his dog - with the theme tune I can still hum and the gentle action, which was in fact so gentle as to, be more like inaction. I am probably misremembering but it seemed like BAS was just aforesaid boy and dog wandering round some central European village.
Searching for info about Belle and Sebastian (Dog and boy - not band) I have found from TV Cream that Andrew Collins has the second volume of his memoirs out. So two things for imminent purchase. What more could you want - and for me the weekend starts here.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Top Ten Irrational Fears
(Apologies to Ed Broom)
1. Tinsel - Bundles of soft scalpels if you ask me.
2. Full washing up bowls. Nothing should be out of the water or else what is the point?
3. Railings. They are OK if you don't climb on them but think of the mess!
4. Andrew Marr. Not sure how irrational that is but he becomes more like the Dead Ringers impression every time he is on.
5. Food in the keyboard. It's not too healthy down under these very fingers. I try and tip most of it out. Who eats all this stuff?
6. Dreaming of a crash which then happens. Too serious for you? Don't worry about it.
7. That the entire world will be defined by top-ten lists and no one will be able to think of anything outside hard facts. Self-reference is still the theme of this blog after all. See Orwell's essay on Newspeak, that bit at the back of ninety-eighty-four that you should have read at school but didn't.
8. Mandolins both musical and those for hard-boiled eggs, vegetables etc.
9. Yellow snow.
10. Henry Kissinger.
As you can tell the last few are jokes but there is one serious one which I have got over now (until I think about it tonight) which is trying to see the light in the fridge go off. No really!
(Apologies to Ed Broom)
1. Tinsel - Bundles of soft scalpels if you ask me.
2. Full washing up bowls. Nothing should be out of the water or else what is the point?
3. Railings. They are OK if you don't climb on them but think of the mess!
4. Andrew Marr. Not sure how irrational that is but he becomes more like the Dead Ringers impression every time he is on.
5. Food in the keyboard. It's not too healthy down under these very fingers. I try and tip most of it out. Who eats all this stuff?
6. Dreaming of a crash which then happens. Too serious for you? Don't worry about it.
7. That the entire world will be defined by top-ten lists and no one will be able to think of anything outside hard facts. Self-reference is still the theme of this blog after all. See Orwell's essay on Newspeak, that bit at the back of ninety-eighty-four that you should have read at school but didn't.
8. Mandolins both musical and those for hard-boiled eggs, vegetables etc.
9. Yellow snow.
10. Henry Kissinger.
As you can tell the last few are jokes but there is one serious one which I have got over now (until I think about it tonight) which is trying to see the light in the fridge go off. No really!
Something inspired in the State of Denmark
I don't know what it is but thirty years seem to have rewound off the spool today. There is probably something wrong chemically but I feel like I could be back in the Rose Garden (No running or shouting) which was tacked on to the side of my Junior School. Of course this is all to do with the start of the holidays, which for my daughter is tomorrow and means a lie-in for my wife. Number One Son may have something to say about lie-ins but he may sleep in the languid, early-morning air that you always get at this time. I was dangerously close to talking about the weather there when I should be telling you about the latest book.
I finally collapsed and bought Vernon God Little. I am afraid that there is a slight element of the car-crash writing that made me finish American Psycho just to see Bateman caught. He wasn't and is still at large working out his next move. Yesterday I found that despite wanting to pick up VGL at any spare moment, I did not find myself wanting the waster of a main character to get away. I don't really care at all about him. What I do care about is the bleeding-edge writing which is at times so far off the standard stuff these days as to be totally new. This is what Martin Amis wants to be but goes too far and ends up seeming cliché d through his almost manic avoidance of cliché. And then again, VGL sometimes has the treacle prose of something like On the Road or the rushing detailing of internal conversations that you find in Ulysses. I foresee myself throwing the book in disgust after the final paragraph but it should be an interesting few hours getting that wound up. I have not actually brought the book with me today and I just turned around to look for it. At least I am clear as to why the BBC put this book up against The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Why say Mandolin Twice?
I don't know what it is but thirty years seem to have rewound off the spool today. There is probably something wrong chemically but I feel like I could be back in the Rose Garden (No running or shouting) which was tacked on to the side of my Junior School. Of course this is all to do with the start of the holidays, which for my daughter is tomorrow and means a lie-in for my wife. Number One Son may have something to say about lie-ins but he may sleep in the languid, early-morning air that you always get at this time. I was dangerously close to talking about the weather there when I should be telling you about the latest book.
I finally collapsed and bought Vernon God Little. I am afraid that there is a slight element of the car-crash writing that made me finish American Psycho just to see Bateman caught. He wasn't and is still at large working out his next move. Yesterday I found that despite wanting to pick up VGL at any spare moment, I did not find myself wanting the waster of a main character to get away. I don't really care at all about him. What I do care about is the bleeding-edge writing which is at times so far off the standard stuff these days as to be totally new. This is what Martin Amis wants to be but goes too far and ends up seeming cliché d through his almost manic avoidance of cliché. And then again, VGL sometimes has the treacle prose of something like On the Road or the rushing detailing of internal conversations that you find in Ulysses. I foresee myself throwing the book in disgust after the final paragraph but it should be an interesting few hours getting that wound up. I have not actually brought the book with me today and I just turned around to look for it. At least I am clear as to why the BBC put this book up against The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Why say Mandolin Twice?
Thursday, July 15, 2004
The God of Not War
Everything has got bitty recently which explains the lack of entries for this week. Big news here now is that Number One Son has Primary Dentition and is spending a lot of time trying to investigate them. Remember those long entries about brain state and relativity?
Listening to The Planets by Holst
How this man saw the trenches ten years or more before the existed is a great mystery. It always makes me think of him as a classical music version of the guy who sold his soul to the devil in order to be able to play his instrument well. Like Robert Johnson and others. That opening stutter of the Mars theme is just a musical interpretation of machine guns; you can see the jerky film of the Tommies going over the top, tripping over the barbed wire and being cut down. We are back into The idea of Michael Nyman music fitting any scene over which it is played. Change the muddy fields of Flanders to the blasted scrub of Southern Iraq or the steamy rain forests of Vietnam and it all still works. Vietnam one works extremely well for those pictures of the Napalm going off. All this makes war sound like a film which is of course, a very bad idea. War is missing faces and mashed guts and in some ways is like comedy with the laughter removed. Try the Benny Hill theme for those Tommies and the farce of what it achieved is probably better explained. What a stupid rant that was! I meant to be meaningful today. Oh good! Here's Venus - with the tea.
My daughter is now listening to Lesley Garrett during her going to sleep time. My daughter is now on first name terms with Lesley Garrett, Julie Andrews and The woman who plays Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which makes her sound like some stage school brat. I like to think she actually likes the music and dancing rather than the glitz and glamour but she is six after all.
Just got to Jupiter. When was at school we used to sing hymns every morning and I Vow To Thee My Country was the only one I really liked. I mean liked enough to get the tingly excited feeling that good music produces. I also like to think that Alexander Courage took inspiration from Jupiter for the Theme to Star Trek, which in tone and timbre is a direct rip-off of one part of Holst's stand-out track. While on the subject, is the Imperial March from Star-Wars nicked from the Montagues and Capulets (probably really called Dance of the Knights) by Prokofiev? We all know that the Cantina Band song is a chord-for-chord copy of You were made for me by Freddy and the Dreamers. Honest!
Everything has got bitty recently which explains the lack of entries for this week. Big news here now is that Number One Son has Primary Dentition and is spending a lot of time trying to investigate them. Remember those long entries about brain state and relativity?
Listening to The Planets by Holst
How this man saw the trenches ten years or more before the existed is a great mystery. It always makes me think of him as a classical music version of the guy who sold his soul to the devil in order to be able to play his instrument well. Like Robert Johnson and others. That opening stutter of the Mars theme is just a musical interpretation of machine guns; you can see the jerky film of the Tommies going over the top, tripping over the barbed wire and being cut down. We are back into The idea of Michael Nyman music fitting any scene over which it is played. Change the muddy fields of Flanders to the blasted scrub of Southern Iraq or the steamy rain forests of Vietnam and it all still works. Vietnam one works extremely well for those pictures of the Napalm going off. All this makes war sound like a film which is of course, a very bad idea. War is missing faces and mashed guts and in some ways is like comedy with the laughter removed. Try the Benny Hill theme for those Tommies and the farce of what it achieved is probably better explained. What a stupid rant that was! I meant to be meaningful today. Oh good! Here's Venus - with the tea.
My daughter is now listening to Lesley Garrett during her going to sleep time. My daughter is now on first name terms with Lesley Garrett, Julie Andrews and The woman who plays Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which makes her sound like some stage school brat. I like to think she actually likes the music and dancing rather than the glitz and glamour but she is six after all.
Just got to Jupiter. When was at school we used to sing hymns every morning and I Vow To Thee My Country was the only one I really liked. I mean liked enough to get the tingly excited feeling that good music produces. I also like to think that Alexander Courage took inspiration from Jupiter for the Theme to Star Trek, which in tone and timbre is a direct rip-off of one part of Holst's stand-out track. While on the subject, is the Imperial March from Star-Wars nicked from the Montagues and Capulets (probably really called Dance of the Knights) by Prokofiev? We all know that the Cantina Band song is a chord-for-chord copy of You were made for me by Freddy and the Dreamers. Honest!
Friday, July 09, 2004
Penumbria: A great word for a Partial Eclipse in Central Italy.
Listening to Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega
I am annoyed that I missed Suzanne Vega on tour here - she was at the Lowry Centre last weekend. Hers was the first concert I saw in Liverpool in 1986 and she was there again around about the time of Days of Open Hand. I cannot decide which is the best album between Solitude Standing and Songs in Red and Gray, though it is difficult to put even those two above all the others. I suppose the weedy poet in me - still nascent in 1986 - was stimulated by La Vega's first album.
What now! Oh yes! BBC4 have started showing the original Shock of the New which was excellent. Robert Hughes left great open spaces between his commentary, which I hope were to let you appreciate the art without listening to some overheated wibbling by the critic. What he did say was pointed and intelligent but the major voice was the art itself. It was nice to see that he joined art and technology together. For years I have wondered about art critics' views that the 20th Century began in 1880 as far as art was concerned but of course this is when the great expansion in technology began and art reflects that. Hughes also said that he thought that the 20th Century was drawing to a close around the time of the programme which was first broadcast in 1980 and that reflects my idea that all the great single ideas and achievements had been made by then. There may still be great things to do but they all seem to be the result of group efforts. Watching Dan Cruickshank in What the Industrial Revolution Did For Us, it came to me that I could understand a steam engine or a chemical process in one single lesson, the basics in a few minutes. These great achievements are simple; their greatness is in the breakthrough it first took to create these things in the first place. However great they were, they were actually simple when compared to the tacit knowledge and delicate skill of the craftsmen or the artist.
I was scanning a book called Leonardo's Laptop yesterday which took issue with all our mid-eighties ideas about computers taking over human abilities, all that stuff about Artificial Intelligence to take over from Doctors. The book tells that we have rightly dropped this conceit because what we really want is for computers to be tools to increase our own abilities rather than to mimic them. An analogy could be that we want a bulldozer to amplify our muscles not a robot to pretend to be human.
How did I get on to this from The Shock of the New? I have suddenly had a great impression of emptiness after having switched at speed between thinking about all these concepts. This happens often and is something I have decided (in the last few minutes) to call my gibber-gibber phase. Obviously not quite as debilitating as all that as I am still writing. Back to The Ascent of Man
Listening to Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega
I am annoyed that I missed Suzanne Vega on tour here - she was at the Lowry Centre last weekend. Hers was the first concert I saw in Liverpool in 1986 and she was there again around about the time of Days of Open Hand. I cannot decide which is the best album between Solitude Standing and Songs in Red and Gray, though it is difficult to put even those two above all the others. I suppose the weedy poet in me - still nascent in 1986 - was stimulated by La Vega's first album.
What now! Oh yes! BBC4 have started showing the original Shock of the New which was excellent. Robert Hughes left great open spaces between his commentary, which I hope were to let you appreciate the art without listening to some overheated wibbling by the critic. What he did say was pointed and intelligent but the major voice was the art itself. It was nice to see that he joined art and technology together. For years I have wondered about art critics' views that the 20th Century began in 1880 as far as art was concerned but of course this is when the great expansion in technology began and art reflects that. Hughes also said that he thought that the 20th Century was drawing to a close around the time of the programme which was first broadcast in 1980 and that reflects my idea that all the great single ideas and achievements had been made by then. There may still be great things to do but they all seem to be the result of group efforts. Watching Dan Cruickshank in What the Industrial Revolution Did For Us, it came to me that I could understand a steam engine or a chemical process in one single lesson, the basics in a few minutes. These great achievements are simple; their greatness is in the breakthrough it first took to create these things in the first place. However great they were, they were actually simple when compared to the tacit knowledge and delicate skill of the craftsmen or the artist.
I was scanning a book called Leonardo's Laptop yesterday which took issue with all our mid-eighties ideas about computers taking over human abilities, all that stuff about Artificial Intelligence to take over from Doctors. The book tells that we have rightly dropped this conceit because what we really want is for computers to be tools to increase our own abilities rather than to mimic them. An analogy could be that we want a bulldozer to amplify our muscles not a robot to pretend to be human.
How did I get on to this from The Shock of the New? I have suddenly had a great impression of emptiness after having switched at speed between thinking about all these concepts. This happens often and is something I have decided (in the last few minutes) to call my gibber-gibber phase. Obviously not quite as debilitating as all that as I am still writing. Back to The Ascent of Man
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Misanthropism Sucks!
I am in the mess of having a number of books half-completed. I was in a phass where I was finishing books before starting others but I am back in book-pile-mode.
I have just finished Night Train by Martin Amis. I'm not sure you would want to bother. For all his 'War on Cliché', Amis seems to have got into creating a meta-cliché in the form of his stream of what I have heard called 'clever neologisms'. A little less clever-clever Martin and a bit more concentration on writing like he did for Time's Arrow. I will not be getting Yellow Dog any time soon.
Other books in the pile are :-
Frida Kahlo Biog
The Savage God - Al Alvarez
Wintering - Kate Moses
I am just sitting back lost in all the beautiful flow of Music for 18 Musicians. Why does my wife hate this one so much? I think if a snippet of melody is good and hooky, then it is worth repeating. It is better than this if, in the process of repeating it you change it over time to produce another killer tune. If in this process of change, every intermediate melody is beautiful as well then you have perfection. Add in some mega-chord changes - turning 18 musicians on a dime - then to make a superlative absurd - what more could you want. Here comes a change, a fade out and another melody overlaid. You can hear the rain outside the studio, or then cracking of paving in some back-lot. The staff of the building sit on upturned crates on the sidewalk outside but in the shade of the building, probably smoking but happy anyway. The city would make noise like this; it does make music like this. Listen to the repeating things of the city you are in. This takes everyday life and makes it beautiful. Poetry rooted in this can make concrete and steel seem like living things, the tissue of some giant organism.
Not a city poem but from the same place I think. I have not written any poems for about three months and I really though that the crazy rate I was writing them has gone forever. It seems that I am like a capacitor; I build up little by little and then all the metaphors I have stored away shoot out in one big lump.
Radio 3's Morning on 3 programme is currently featuring many pieces of music about Orpheus and Eurydice by way of explanation.
I almost forgot to mention Robert Hughes' The New Shock of the New. For all my admiration of (some of) the Brit Art mob, I sneakily found myself agreeing quite a lot with Hughes' championing of what you might call 'proper' art. It was strange to find myself falling back to agreeing that David Hockney and Paula Rego are the real owners of the current champions of art. I like Damien Hirst and was quite surprised to find my Aunt who is 'alternative' in her politics and social outlook but quite traditional in her liking of art, was quite taken with the Hirst Book. However, personally I think he does not have a personal element to his work. Which is of course a pompous way of saying that money is probably his main concern.
I have just reached fuddy-duddyism. Maybe I should head this entry 'I don't know art but I know what I like' which is honest if nothing else.
I am in the mess of having a number of books half-completed. I was in a phass where I was finishing books before starting others but I am back in book-pile-mode.
I have just finished Night Train by Martin Amis. I'm not sure you would want to bother. For all his 'War on Cliché', Amis seems to have got into creating a meta-cliché in the form of his stream of what I have heard called 'clever neologisms'. A little less clever-clever Martin and a bit more concentration on writing like he did for Time's Arrow. I will not be getting Yellow Dog any time soon.
Other books in the pile are :-
Frida Kahlo Biog
The Savage God - Al Alvarez
Wintering - Kate Moses
I am just sitting back lost in all the beautiful flow of Music for 18 Musicians. Why does my wife hate this one so much? I think if a snippet of melody is good and hooky, then it is worth repeating. It is better than this if, in the process of repeating it you change it over time to produce another killer tune. If in this process of change, every intermediate melody is beautiful as well then you have perfection. Add in some mega-chord changes - turning 18 musicians on a dime - then to make a superlative absurd - what more could you want. Here comes a change, a fade out and another melody overlaid. You can hear the rain outside the studio, or then cracking of paving in some back-lot. The staff of the building sit on upturned crates on the sidewalk outside but in the shade of the building, probably smoking but happy anyway. The city would make noise like this; it does make music like this. Listen to the repeating things of the city you are in. This takes everyday life and makes it beautiful. Poetry rooted in this can make concrete and steel seem like living things, the tissue of some giant organism.
Eurydice in Pieces
06/07/2004
Out of the close, old summer air,
there comes a thump of cracked geology,
the white and marble of someone
edged deeper in their mind of glass
and fluid, stretched by hated physics
to some string or particle of math.
Here is a blur of ice and words,
a book and paper in her arms
to detail cracking and implosion
with every tracking thought and view,
this book of empty mind and scars,
a charm, a shield against the drugs.
I used to dream of cold, sunny days,
against the sky of mountains,
as we climbed to snowlines
through the sharper light of forests.
And here is my companion, eyeless
in her graceful lope and prayer.
Here, some talk of submarines,
some line about her school for me
to understand her days and thoughts,
poured white through mirrors.
And even then I guessed her end,
her shattering through dogma.
Not a city poem but from the same place I think. I have not written any poems for about three months and I really though that the crazy rate I was writing them has gone forever. It seems that I am like a capacitor; I build up little by little and then all the metaphors I have stored away shoot out in one big lump.
Radio 3's Morning on 3 programme is currently featuring many pieces of music about Orpheus and Eurydice by way of explanation.
I almost forgot to mention Robert Hughes' The New Shock of the New. For all my admiration of (some of) the Brit Art mob, I sneakily found myself agreeing quite a lot with Hughes' championing of what you might call 'proper' art. It was strange to find myself falling back to agreeing that David Hockney and Paula Rego are the real owners of the current champions of art. I like Damien Hirst and was quite surprised to find my Aunt who is 'alternative' in her politics and social outlook but quite traditional in her liking of art, was quite taken with the Hirst Book. However, personally I think he does not have a personal element to his work. Which is of course a pompous way of saying that money is probably his main concern.
I have just reached fuddy-duddyism. Maybe I should head this entry 'I don't know art but I know what I like' which is honest if nothing else.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Question Everything
Listening to Out of Season by Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man
I was going to say I found a great second-had record store at the weekend but I already knew it was there. It is one of those shaded cubes filled to the point of nearly having no space to walk with crates of vinyl and CDs. All second hand CDs are £5 and I didn't get started on the Vinyl. We don't actually have a record player (deck - whatever the kids call the spinny thing with the arm and the needle these days) at the moment. All my records are still in boxes (upright of course) and most of them have only been played when I put them to tape. A good lot of them are also on CD somewhere close and I suppose I should check the web for any of value and dispose of the rest.
With the convenience of the media player on this PC at work, I have in my head the idea of putting ALL my CDs on to one computer next to the amp and speakers though that might take a bigger hard disk than I could get hold of. Of course this will enter the fuzzy area where all such ideas go and remain for lack of talent, ability or even cash. In this very area, I have recently discovered that the score for Six Pianos is available from Boosey and Hawkes. I once put the first few bars of Six Pianos into the sequencer (at half speed) which gave me a few hours of mixing time but I only had a few rough notes in a book on minimalism. I want the whole thing and better mixing.
Listening to Out of Season by Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man
I was going to say I found a great second-had record store at the weekend but I already knew it was there. It is one of those shaded cubes filled to the point of nearly having no space to walk with crates of vinyl and CDs. All second hand CDs are £5 and I didn't get started on the Vinyl. We don't actually have a record player (deck - whatever the kids call the spinny thing with the arm and the needle these days) at the moment. All my records are still in boxes (upright of course) and most of them have only been played when I put them to tape. A good lot of them are also on CD somewhere close and I suppose I should check the web for any of value and dispose of the rest.
With the convenience of the media player on this PC at work, I have in my head the idea of putting ALL my CDs on to one computer next to the amp and speakers though that might take a bigger hard disk than I could get hold of. Of course this will enter the fuzzy area where all such ideas go and remain for lack of talent, ability or even cash. In this very area, I have recently discovered that the score for Six Pianos is available from Boosey and Hawkes. I once put the first few bars of Six Pianos into the sequencer (at half speed) which gave me a few hours of mixing time but I only had a few rough notes in a book on minimalism. I want the whole thing and better mixing.
Friday, July 02, 2004
Not Golf
Listening to Cobalt Blue by Michael Brook.
At last something to spark off many thoughts. I often write about the idea of a machine that can automatically record brain state. This guy seems to have gone much further in his thoughts about it to the extent experiencing something that must have seemed like madness.
Time seems to be rolling away from under me here. I only have this paragraph and it is probably because, as usual, I have allowed myself to be distracted by websites related to the links above. There is a smell that reminds me of the wine which used to bubble away in the demijohns on the windowsills of our house. We had home-made wine of real quality though us kids were only allowed to drink it at Christmas after our breakfast of Kedgeree (yes really) and before dinner - sorry - lunch. I can't remember what the wine tasted like but the smell that lasted here for a few seconds reminded me of it.
All rambling again. Try to keep down all thoughts. The method must be structured and yes the guy is correct; it must be done with paper as this keyboard needs fixing. What happens when you take longer to write something down than you do to do it. Maybe there should be a bucket that you could kick to indicate that it should not be recorded. Magnetic tape. Small particles on the plastic, all lined up like pointillism on that sunny afternoon walk. Why are the Americans so much more sticklers for punctuation and is that sentence correct? There was a bright light, like a cabbage just before the bomb goes off, a speckled, irregular constellation of black stars, lining the sky like distemper and old rising damp. And then the bright light got brighter and hotter, like that high-pitched sound which told the crew to shut their eyes. When you have a bomb that big, then why bother protecting the men who drop it. You killed so many POWs from Korea and other friends, why not just let the plane get shaken from the sky like jelly or whatever it is called by Enola Gay's son, the captain who worried about what he had done. They tumble out of the belly of their mother, falling to the dry earth to light fires and kill anyone they find. What things are human? When does the question filter through that grey and become an answer. I will write gray from now on. It is a gray poem from a gray poet, lost on the wind that blows up to the sun to melt the wax that held Icarus together. He escaped Crete by hiding in some salty coaster and shooting anyone who came near him. This is a long highway, seems to be built on stilts, just over the water that fills the gaps between the tropical forests. This road has no bends; it does not follow the curve of the earth and starts so high in the distance until it grazes the surface like a gentle kiss and then powers on out into space so everyone running to the country can shoot over the end and into orbit. This road is a tangent, a skyhook to save us the booms and pollution of Cape Canaveral. Space flight and Green politics can never be separated. Twang twang and here comes another. That is not tuned and will break eventually. The strings are too tight. They will strangle you if you are not careful. Fullbrights.
Listening to Cobalt Blue by Michael Brook.
At last something to spark off many thoughts. I often write about the idea of a machine that can automatically record brain state. This guy seems to have gone much further in his thoughts about it to the extent experiencing something that must have seemed like madness.
Time seems to be rolling away from under me here. I only have this paragraph and it is probably because, as usual, I have allowed myself to be distracted by websites related to the links above. There is a smell that reminds me of the wine which used to bubble away in the demijohns on the windowsills of our house. We had home-made wine of real quality though us kids were only allowed to drink it at Christmas after our breakfast of Kedgeree (yes really) and before dinner - sorry - lunch. I can't remember what the wine tasted like but the smell that lasted here for a few seconds reminded me of it.
All rambling again. Try to keep down all thoughts. The method must be structured and yes the guy is correct; it must be done with paper as this keyboard needs fixing. What happens when you take longer to write something down than you do to do it. Maybe there should be a bucket that you could kick to indicate that it should not be recorded. Magnetic tape. Small particles on the plastic, all lined up like pointillism on that sunny afternoon walk. Why are the Americans so much more sticklers for punctuation and is that sentence correct? There was a bright light, like a cabbage just before the bomb goes off, a speckled, irregular constellation of black stars, lining the sky like distemper and old rising damp. And then the bright light got brighter and hotter, like that high-pitched sound which told the crew to shut their eyes. When you have a bomb that big, then why bother protecting the men who drop it. You killed so many POWs from Korea and other friends, why not just let the plane get shaken from the sky like jelly or whatever it is called by Enola Gay's son, the captain who worried about what he had done. They tumble out of the belly of their mother, falling to the dry earth to light fires and kill anyone they find. What things are human? When does the question filter through that grey and become an answer. I will write gray from now on. It is a gray poem from a gray poet, lost on the wind that blows up to the sun to melt the wax that held Icarus together. He escaped Crete by hiding in some salty coaster and shooting anyone who came near him. This is a long highway, seems to be built on stilts, just over the water that fills the gaps between the tropical forests. This road has no bends; it does not follow the curve of the earth and starts so high in the distance until it grazes the surface like a gentle kiss and then powers on out into space so everyone running to the country can shoot over the end and into orbit. This road is a tangent, a skyhook to save us the booms and pollution of Cape Canaveral. Space flight and Green politics can never be separated. Twang twang and here comes another. That is not tuned and will break eventually. The strings are too tight. They will strangle you if you are not careful. Fullbrights.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Crimes of Passion
Listening to 604 by Ladytron
It is hard to place this. While specific sounds and music seem unlike anything else, the whole picture is one of familiarity and brings on a deep nostalgia for the azimuth of the electro bands of the late seventies and early eighties. In deep contrast I am contemplating some Martin Codax which I heard on Radio 3 while driving home the other day.
What is happening in the world? We seem to have settled down into a sort of acceptance of bad things gone by. September 11th is a very distant event which leaves me feeling as if the smoke and dust has finally dispersed and we are back to the old complacency. Now there have been times within the memory of plenty of people known to us post-war babies when things were really bad with the chance of non-civilian-caused death being quite high. Even at the height of the mania created in part to justify the War on terror, there were not that many people dying. You may think I am being cynical and harsh but if automobile companies can be so calculating as to assign value to life when it comes down to the cost of fitting safety equipment then so can I. (Stay with me - there is a touch of irony here). How much money are we pouring into various countries? Are the conditions for this expense anything other than arbitrary? Are they maybe hereditary? How many of our precious people have we saved or cut short? I know this is all questions with no answers but I have nothing else. Who does?
I got another book for myself from the Kid's section of the library - Wicked Words which is another in the Horrible Histories series. (I must tell you that typing in 'Wicked Words' in to the Amazon search box gives you a lot of more adult stuff.) This is a very special one as its linking theme covers just about anything. These books are very easy reads but don't skimp the details - the Einstein one actually derives the Lorentz Transformation Equations;you never read them and feel that something is missing. It is easy to censor things we make for children and very difficult to make history truthful for them. These books keep a moral background while revealing the more unsavoury side of certain characters. I can't quite remember how honest the one that dealt with the Death of Edward II was but then again I am not sure that the Poker story is true anyway.
Nothing I write seems to have any substance any more. I have the time to do it but sometimes there is no desire. It feels today that the only reason I am carrying on is because I have nothing better to do. I should start bring a book in and reading over lunchtime. There is the whole internet out there but nothing draws you into reading like having all the text on pages between covers. Having said that, I like the idea of electronic books. I already have the Palm Pilot but it was out-of-date when I got it. I just finished The Wouldbegoods on it just to let you know. Be seeing you. Bye all.
Listening to 604 by Ladytron
It is hard to place this. While specific sounds and music seem unlike anything else, the whole picture is one of familiarity and brings on a deep nostalgia for the azimuth of the electro bands of the late seventies and early eighties. In deep contrast I am contemplating some Martin Codax which I heard on Radio 3 while driving home the other day.
What is happening in the world? We seem to have settled down into a sort of acceptance of bad things gone by. September 11th is a very distant event which leaves me feeling as if the smoke and dust has finally dispersed and we are back to the old complacency. Now there have been times within the memory of plenty of people known to us post-war babies when things were really bad with the chance of non-civilian-caused death being quite high. Even at the height of the mania created in part to justify the War on terror, there were not that many people dying. You may think I am being cynical and harsh but if automobile companies can be so calculating as to assign value to life when it comes down to the cost of fitting safety equipment then so can I. (Stay with me - there is a touch of irony here). How much money are we pouring into various countries? Are the conditions for this expense anything other than arbitrary? Are they maybe hereditary? How many of our precious people have we saved or cut short? I know this is all questions with no answers but I have nothing else. Who does?
I got another book for myself from the Kid's section of the library - Wicked Words which is another in the Horrible Histories series. (I must tell you that typing in 'Wicked Words' in to the Amazon search box gives you a lot of more adult stuff.) This is a very special one as its linking theme covers just about anything. These books are very easy reads but don't skimp the details - the Einstein one actually derives the Lorentz Transformation Equations;you never read them and feel that something is missing. It is easy to censor things we make for children and very difficult to make history truthful for them. These books keep a moral background while revealing the more unsavoury side of certain characters. I can't quite remember how honest the one that dealt with the Death of Edward II was but then again I am not sure that the Poker story is true anyway.
Nothing I write seems to have any substance any more. I have the time to do it but sometimes there is no desire. It feels today that the only reason I am carrying on is because I have nothing better to do. I should start bring a book in and reading over lunchtime. There is the whole internet out there but nothing draws you into reading like having all the text on pages between covers. Having said that, I like the idea of electronic books. I already have the Palm Pilot but it was out-of-date when I got it. I just finished The Wouldbegoods on it just to let you know. Be seeing you. Bye all.
