Please Make All Cheques Payable to "The Mornington Crescent Elevator Repair Fund"
non iguato cresseunt
An Autumn evening just after the end of school - we are all at home now and the last of the light is streaming directly in through the windows. There is a bar of sun-lit distemper in front of us so we are lit like ghosts, dreaming of fame and how cool we could be. There is some audience in our distantly perceived visions but nothing to react against us and so we dance like maniacs , like David Byrne who seems to have turned into his own father, dancing that dads' version of the moonwalk. Our singer seems to bounce, just out of time, swinging her arms in time with her artistically rhythmical dress. She turns to us in turn and smiles, white teeth in the sun but this smile is only for herself. She is deep into thinking only of herself and who she could become. She has learned this dance of illness from someone else, someone really ill and it makes me nervous that she will sort of catch something; by trying to act ill she will get ill and die and then maybe we will be famous. But of course I do not want to be famous, to be rich. I want so much to just curl up, hide in one of the battered sheds outside. But she needs us, all our limited talents at guitar and bass and drums and even that sad keyboard that plays itself.
Our singer smiles too much. She is lost to this rhythm we cannot escape. I want to stop and everyone else wants to stop but none of us can. Maybe this is hell - we will play until our hands are cut down to stumps - maybe it is heaven and the sound will take us to some top level where we will find our own Beatrice, helping God to decide on what to do next.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Everybody has a Prozac moment sometime.
Listening to Dry by PJ Harvey
Well it wasn't as bad as the Kate Bush biography but Siren Rising - a biography of PJ Harvey didn't quite reveal the depths that Polly Jean shows us in her music. Having said that, what exactly is the function of a music biography other than to reveal juicy snippets to the fans? They rarely live up to any promise of real analysis because very few pop and rock musicians have real depth of intellect. If I was more widely read, I suppose I could expect a bombardment of counter-examples and I bet Leonard Cohen would be in there somewhere but even Radiohead are counter-culture lite really. They want to sum up beliefs and package them up for the sixth-form poetry brigade to understand and yet still think they are digesting some meaty new idea. Still, if they are on the side you believe in then what is wrong with that?
PJ harvey is of course listed as being strange because she is perceived as singing about 'feminist' issues and things than blokes just don't like talking about or even hearing. The indie kids get such a kick from thinking that they are being alternative because they give ear-time to her complaints about men. The problem is that I don't think that they are complaints about men in general - they are stories and recollections about specific men - and women - possibly without wanting to colour how you think of them - a sort of Fortean scepticism where no comment either way is actually wanted - just a list of the events that happened so you can say "hey - wasn't that strange and dramatic?" rather than wanting any solution or opinion. Anyway, the biography was just that really - a time line of a life lifted from interviews and discographies, written well-enough but without any real insight into the person other than what you might get from the limited amount of lyrics that were included.
Dry - the first album - is still the best - lyrically and musically. It has no theme other than the similarity of the instrumentation that comes from simply recording the instruments you have. It actually blows me away that one so young could write it; I remember what I was like at the same age (she is not far behind me really) and I could never have anything like the depth of feeling that shines out of those songs. It is strange as well, that the discordance of the music seems to be lessened by the sense of the words beings 'meant' rather than being throwaway lines for the sake of getting some singing on the album. Compare this with the prozac-fuelled noodlings of New Order where the music is great, still echoing with the Chords of Joy Division but the words are rhyming by numbers without reason and meaning.
Apologies for a little bit of politics today but heavy respect is due to this man.
Also, I am smug because I finished the first THREE on this list and only jettisoned one of the others though I have not started the other 6. I think I should try Cloud Atlas again - it is still by the bed rather than back in the bookshelf.
Och-A-Vaye
Listening to Dry by PJ Harvey
Well it wasn't as bad as the Kate Bush biography but Siren Rising - a biography of PJ Harvey didn't quite reveal the depths that Polly Jean shows us in her music. Having said that, what exactly is the function of a music biography other than to reveal juicy snippets to the fans? They rarely live up to any promise of real analysis because very few pop and rock musicians have real depth of intellect. If I was more widely read, I suppose I could expect a bombardment of counter-examples and I bet Leonard Cohen would be in there somewhere but even Radiohead are counter-culture lite really. They want to sum up beliefs and package them up for the sixth-form poetry brigade to understand and yet still think they are digesting some meaty new idea. Still, if they are on the side you believe in then what is wrong with that?
PJ harvey is of course listed as being strange because she is perceived as singing about 'feminist' issues and things than blokes just don't like talking about or even hearing. The indie kids get such a kick from thinking that they are being alternative because they give ear-time to her complaints about men. The problem is that I don't think that they are complaints about men in general - they are stories and recollections about specific men - and women - possibly without wanting to colour how you think of them - a sort of Fortean scepticism where no comment either way is actually wanted - just a list of the events that happened so you can say "hey - wasn't that strange and dramatic?" rather than wanting any solution or opinion. Anyway, the biography was just that really - a time line of a life lifted from interviews and discographies, written well-enough but without any real insight into the person other than what you might get from the limited amount of lyrics that were included.
Dry - the first album - is still the best - lyrically and musically. It has no theme other than the similarity of the instrumentation that comes from simply recording the instruments you have. It actually blows me away that one so young could write it; I remember what I was like at the same age (she is not far behind me really) and I could never have anything like the depth of feeling that shines out of those songs. It is strange as well, that the discordance of the music seems to be lessened by the sense of the words beings 'meant' rather than being throwaway lines for the sake of getting some singing on the album. Compare this with the prozac-fuelled noodlings of New Order where the music is great, still echoing with the Chords of Joy Division but the words are rhyming by numbers without reason and meaning.
Apologies for a little bit of politics today but heavy respect is due to this man.
Also, I am smug because I finished the first THREE on this list and only jettisoned one of the others though I have not started the other 6. I think I should try Cloud Atlas again - it is still by the bed rather than back in the bookshelf.
Och-A-Vaye
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Don't Get Me Started on the Jet Skiers.
Listening to Peng! by Stereolab
Some miasmic metronome here; a pulse like some song you cannot get out of your head but from beyond the county border, over there where they believe in all the things you got out of your mind long before they woke up and started thinking about things. They think all those illnesses come from the smell in the air, no such thing as bacteria to them. And the award to the best use of the phrase "doo - ooo - ahhhh" goes to ..... not that it matters who it goes to. Communists all.
The duck eggs were very tasty. There are still some left for breakfast at the weekend. They weren't particularly strong but they did taste somehow more like eggs if that makes sense.
The big news around our way is that Antony Gormley's statues that collectively make up Another Place are staying on the beach down the way from us. The statues have become a community art installation, something more than the rareified artefacts that most modern art is made up of these days. They are dressed up in all sorts of costumes, used as extras in Easter and Nativity plays and have become part of the background, sort of strangers at the dinner table with their reluctance to speak and stoicism in the face of the rough Irish Sea. I sometimes think of them when I remember the worst days that pound the promenade there, putting every one of those hundred soldiers under at least 10 feet of water. The problem is really that most of the complainants just can't stand Modern Art which has rung a bell in my head as being from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Must visit them again at the weekend, in the wind and the rain hopefully.
I am quite enjoying my drive home at the moment. There is always good stuff on the radio. There is A Good Read on Tuesdays where Sue MacGregor and two guests each choose a book to talk about for ten minutes. Andrew Motion was one of the guests this week and selected The Peregrine by J.A. Baker, which surprised me. Motion even mentioned that there was an obvious Ted-Hughes influence on the book. Think of a flat marsh at dusk, with the cries of estuary birds scraped into ambience by the distance. Think of the mist coming down and a warm fire waiting at home. Think of a day with nothing to be done but what you want. It's all a long way from this place but keep thinking of it anyway. It needs to be done.
Listening to Peng! by Stereolab
Some miasmic metronome here; a pulse like some song you cannot get out of your head but from beyond the county border, over there where they believe in all the things you got out of your mind long before they woke up and started thinking about things. They think all those illnesses come from the smell in the air, no such thing as bacteria to them. And the award to the best use of the phrase "doo - ooo - ahhhh" goes to ..... not that it matters who it goes to. Communists all.
The duck eggs were very tasty. There are still some left for breakfast at the weekend. They weren't particularly strong but they did taste somehow more like eggs if that makes sense.
The big news around our way is that Antony Gormley's statues that collectively make up Another Place are staying on the beach down the way from us. The statues have become a community art installation, something more than the rareified artefacts that most modern art is made up of these days. They are dressed up in all sorts of costumes, used as extras in Easter and Nativity plays and have become part of the background, sort of strangers at the dinner table with their reluctance to speak and stoicism in the face of the rough Irish Sea. I sometimes think of them when I remember the worst days that pound the promenade there, putting every one of those hundred soldiers under at least 10 feet of water. The problem is really that most of the complainants just can't stand Modern Art which has rung a bell in my head as being from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Must visit them again at the weekend, in the wind and the rain hopefully.
I am quite enjoying my drive home at the moment. There is always good stuff on the radio. There is A Good Read on Tuesdays where Sue MacGregor and two guests each choose a book to talk about for ten minutes. Andrew Motion was one of the guests this week and selected The Peregrine by J.A. Baker, which surprised me. Motion even mentioned that there was an obvious Ted-Hughes influence on the book. Think of a flat marsh at dusk, with the cries of estuary birds scraped into ambience by the distance. Think of the mist coming down and a warm fire waiting at home. Think of a day with nothing to be done but what you want. It's all a long way from this place but keep thinking of it anyway. It needs to be done.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The Clouds are Moving to the Perimeter
Listening to Substance by New Order
I've just been over the road to buy some duck eggs. I just got the last half-dozen and there was someone else after me. I got a taste for duck eggs when I was about four years old. While on holiday we stopped off to see a friend of my parents somewhere in South Wales I think, possibly near Tintern Abbey. The house was dominated by what seems in my imperfect memory to have been a coterie of girls of all ages who swarmed around my brother and me, treating us like dolls to be pampered and given presents. We left with many duck eggs which I loved, though my brother hated them like all eggs. I seem to remember that we had some gulls eggs as well but that may have been a present from one of my father's birding trips.
What is Laurie Taylor on? I listen to Thinking Allowed on the way home every Wednesday and I still do despite the fact that his knowing and dismissive narration annoys me intensely. I hated the limited sociology I had to do for my degree despite having an agreeable and approachable American lecturer and I should be annoyed at the generalisation that seems to pass for informed investigation as part of the subject. I am sure that sociology comes within the target area of Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World, though not as much as the French Philosophical junk that I have ranted about before. Anyway, Laurie Taylor always sounds as if he would rather be somewhere else and why does he insist on telling ancient jokes at the end of the programme?
For something to do, why not type "Peel Sessions" into Amazon. I want them all. Some of them I already have cluttering up the garage, buried under a pile of unused woks and a bag of approximately 300 teddy bears that the local children's hospital doesn't want because they can't sterilise them. I suppose they would make a nice fluffy surprise in any landfill they might end up in. Talking of which, we have a plastic recycling facility near us now which means that we can get down to about one bag of rubbish a week now.
There were four of us in the van.
Listening to Substance by New Order
I've just been over the road to buy some duck eggs. I just got the last half-dozen and there was someone else after me. I got a taste for duck eggs when I was about four years old. While on holiday we stopped off to see a friend of my parents somewhere in South Wales I think, possibly near Tintern Abbey. The house was dominated by what seems in my imperfect memory to have been a coterie of girls of all ages who swarmed around my brother and me, treating us like dolls to be pampered and given presents. We left with many duck eggs which I loved, though my brother hated them like all eggs. I seem to remember that we had some gulls eggs as well but that may have been a present from one of my father's birding trips.
What is Laurie Taylor on? I listen to Thinking Allowed on the way home every Wednesday and I still do despite the fact that his knowing and dismissive narration annoys me intensely. I hated the limited sociology I had to do for my degree despite having an agreeable and approachable American lecturer and I should be annoyed at the generalisation that seems to pass for informed investigation as part of the subject. I am sure that sociology comes within the target area of Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World, though not as much as the French Philosophical junk that I have ranted about before. Anyway, Laurie Taylor always sounds as if he would rather be somewhere else and why does he insist on telling ancient jokes at the end of the programme?
For something to do, why not type "Peel Sessions" into Amazon. I want them all. Some of them I already have cluttering up the garage, buried under a pile of unused woks and a bag of approximately 300 teddy bears that the local children's hospital doesn't want because they can't sterilise them. I suppose they would make a nice fluffy surprise in any landfill they might end up in. Talking of which, we have a plastic recycling facility near us now which means that we can get down to about one bag of rubbish a week now.
There were four of us in the van.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Fly Away Stanley - Be Free
Hello there Nigel - I'm Back!
Listening to Duet by Steve Reich played by the Smith Quartet
I've been away. They were very nice to me while I was there but I think I'm ready to come back now. Does that sound a little over-dramatic?
Now the big question in my mind at the moment is whether the kaiser Chiefs are being ironic with their song Everything is Average Nowadays. I'm not sure that this actually warrants any deep analysis but my recent blogging hiatus has left me time to think about whether this assertion is indeed correct. What with this and Paxman J.'s eloquent rant about the scruffiness of this country I am beginning to get rather despondent about how much of this is actually down simply to "most people" or even just "some people". It seems that we are turning into a nation of at best selfish chancers and at worst unemotional psychopaths. How about urging a potential suicide to jump? If even one person does it then we have failed. I have a problem at the moment which is a continuous worrying about everything - the whole future laid out in front of me is an assault course of possible issues and drags on what should be a happy life but it seems that there are people out there who would sleep happily after downing ten pints and mowing down an entire family. We champion personal freedom without any mention of personal responsibility.
Everything is indeed average, though I seem to have managed to spell psychopaths correctly without having to look it up. I love the smell of unleaded in the morning.
Hello there Nigel - I'm Back!
Listening to Duet by Steve Reich played by the Smith Quartet
I've been away. They were very nice to me while I was there but I think I'm ready to come back now. Does that sound a little over-dramatic?
Now the big question in my mind at the moment is whether the kaiser Chiefs are being ironic with their song Everything is Average Nowadays. I'm not sure that this actually warrants any deep analysis but my recent blogging hiatus has left me time to think about whether this assertion is indeed correct. What with this and Paxman J.'s eloquent rant about the scruffiness of this country I am beginning to get rather despondent about how much of this is actually down simply to "most people" or even just "some people". It seems that we are turning into a nation of at best selfish chancers and at worst unemotional psychopaths. How about urging a potential suicide to jump? If even one person does it then we have failed. I have a problem at the moment which is a continuous worrying about everything - the whole future laid out in front of me is an assault course of possible issues and drags on what should be a happy life but it seems that there are people out there who would sleep happily after downing ten pints and mowing down an entire family. We champion personal freedom without any mention of personal responsibility.
Everything is indeed average, though I seem to have managed to spell psychopaths correctly without having to look it up. I love the smell of unleaded in the morning.
