Figments and Fractions
(Pretentious Filler For A Saturday)



Actually Listening to Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp

We were out and about today though the high winds seemed to be keeping most people indoors which made me wonder about being inside the minds of the few people we did pass. The only person I can truly know everything about how they feel is me and everyone else dwells in varying circles of experience - obviously most of them outside any possibility of me knowing them at all. The man passing the new building work on the corner, hands in his pockets and jacket held tight against the wind was in my sight for less than a second and in my memory, though I know he was moving, is just a snapshot of a man with one leg off the ground. I was thinking about how all this must have been thought about before and by many and better equipped minds than mind but I still want to write about the empirical evidence of this as it crossed the canyons of my own mind rather than being filtered through other peoples. These thoughts are like random X-Wings, sparking along the grey trenches of my brain, waiting for some tiny exhaust port to open up and let them bomb me with some really important concept - something that will be "right" like that piece of music that came to the composer in Amsterdam and then will just float away leaving some messy impostor that seems the same but to everyone else is just a thought. The external world is continually hitting us with stuff that goes in through senses and mostly ends up flying right out again.

Yesterday I wrote a paragraph in the notebook about how hearing a great piece of music can feel like winning the lottery, the music seeming to provide a level of happiness well beyond that which you might feel you deserve. How can something so simple as a few notes backed with a peachy chord actually give you feelings that are only ever matched by complex things like love and long-term fulfilment? It is a wonderful free-gift. I suppose I have to tell you which piece of music sparked this don't I? It was As the Bell Rings the Maypole Spins by Dead Can Dance.