Saturday, October 18, 2003
Comedy bomb. Yes, I like the idea of that.
10/18/2003 11:49:00 am
Friday, October 17, 2003
Consider this a moment...
You are in a war, a dirty, long-fought desert war which has seen the death of many men both friend and foe. You are alone in a horizonless plain, shot and bleeding slowly to death. No, not alone. The only other living being is the man who shot you. Consider his nature. Is he a bad man? Is he a man who believes he is good? Is he a good man?
The bad man sees you, bleeding slowly and painfully to death, his own bullet lodged deep beneath an artery, your life-force flowing quickly from you, your nerve endings caught in the agonising space between excrutiating pain and the relief of blissful numbness. He knows you will take an age to die, alone and in pain. The bad man shoots you in the head and kills you instantly, before turning and walking away.
The man who believes he is good sees you, bleeding slowly and painfully to death, his own bullet lodged deep beneath an artery, your life-force flowing quickly from you, your nerve endings caught in the agonising space between excrutiating pain and the relief of blissful numbness. he knows you will take an age to die, alone and in pain. The man who believes he is good says he cannot shoot you again, that you must think about what you have done, that you must make peace with your god, before turning and walking away.
The good man sees you, bleeding slowly and painfully to death, his own bullet lodged deep beneath an artery, your life-force flowing quickly from you, your nerve endings caught in the agonising space between excrutiating pain and the relief of blissful numbness. He knows you will take an age to die, alone and in pain. The good man shoots you in the head and kills you instantly, before turning and walking away.
Where is the bad man and where is the good man?
10/17/2003 09:16:00 pm
Nick sits at the computer in his bedroom, tapping at the keys, pausing and retracing his digital steps every few seconds as his slightly drunken fingers hit the wrong keys, Massive Attack's remix of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's "Mustt Mustt" schloozing from the small, fake-wood speakers positioned to either side of his flatscreen monitor (digital interference flashing pink as he illegally downloads more music), each speaker a light brown box, some nine inches high, powered by the small, glass-fronted Sony minisystem which sits, pushed shamefully into a corner, atop the chest-of-drawers to his left. Cables spiderweb behind and beside the dressing tabnle which masquerades as a desk. Nick considers whether he is a cultural tourist, an athiest fake, stealing pleasure from devotional music created in a world which is almost entirely other to him. If they want Coca-Cola then I can want Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, he thinks. Is that wrong? I never liked Coke anyway... Nick doesn't understand the words (now past Mustt Mustt and onto the less Westernised Devotional and Love Songs) and cannot ever hope to, but the swirling, magnificent arc of Fateh Khan's voice, the endless surge of tabla-based percussion and the droning, heart-yanking instrumentation beneath the rhythm does something in his chest and guts and the back of his head that makes such considerations seem trivial. Who cares about right and rite and understanding and religion when there is this?
10/17/2003 09:09:00 pm
Olly, you're a beautiful man. Thank you. x
10/17/2003 09:09:00 pm
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Olly - you left an html tag open somewhere.
10/15/2003 06:35:00 pm
I'm at work. I feel exactly the same as yesterday, which is that I suspect I am about to be ill but am not really ill yet. My tonsils are swollen slightly and a touch sore. It's a very strange condition. Oh well, there are Maya Deren films to be catalogued and screenings of Kiarostami (sic) films to be arranged and no doubt this afternoon there will be discussions of Pink Floyd's early output to have with Billy (as well as discussions over whether he wants copies of Massive Attack, .O.Rang, Mouse On Mars, Can or all of these...). My S L S K name, should you wish to peruse my folders, is frighteningly obvious, writ in big orange letters at the top of the page...
Sam is as wracked with confusion and multiplicity as any other 16-year-old, he's just got more fonts for its expression. Sam, I never knew why I liked anything until recent- no, I still don't know why I like anything, not really, I'm just very good at making up reasons by lying, bullshitting and blagging. The "some of this may not be true" caveat at the beginning is purely wonderful. We always need to be reminded. Make your life a fiction.
10/15/2003 10:23:00 am
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
In other news, I've just watched one of my favourite scenes in movie history again; the moment in Blue Velvet when Dean Stockwell's narcissistically louché and threateningly camp drug-dealer-come-pimp mimes along with Roy Orbison's strange and beautiful "In Dreams", using what looks like a miner's lamp as a fake microphone, his smoking-jacket-suited frame draped against a doorway. Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth, the very essence of psychotic for the rest of the film, stands only inches from Stockwell, his being wracked by some inner turmoil and long-repressed trauma, mouthing every word. Is it a homoerotic scene? Very possibly you could read it that way, but the charge between the two men is emotional rather than physical. The balance of power between the two men is strange; moments before Stockwell begins his performance he pops a pill in Frank's mouth, like a mother feeding a helpless infant, but it's Frank's inner furnace and his resultant inability to remain incapacitated by the allure and emotional resonance of the song that ends Stockwell's mime, positing power very much in his hands, giving the audience jurisdiction over the actor. Who the director and stage-manager of this spooked, cathartic rendition are is up for debate; Frank stands apart from Kyle Machlachlan's idealist hero and his own henchmen who form the bulk of the audience, but the performance is till very much for Frank, everyone else's presence is merely incidental.
10/14/2003 11:24:00 am
Argh.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
I want to buy some new jeans and some shoes and I need to sort out a new mobile phone.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
Damn you, germs! I have things to do!
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
And maybe for a couple of days after that.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
But also, probably, no work tomorrow.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
That means no football.
10/14/2003 10:58:00 am
Asshat.
My tonsils have swollen up overnight.
10/14/2003 10:58:00 am
Monday, October 13, 2003
Sheath has arrived; many many thanks to the person concerned. (Actually got here Friday, I'm just forgetful.)
10/13/2003 10:01:00 am
Sunday, October 12, 2003
Addendum to below post; a chair would've been good. If I'd been able to sit down I'd have loved it. If I'd been able to sit down and if the sound had been a bit better and between a bit and a lot quieter - the cavern is a cavern, the bass in there reverbs like a Hippo giving oral (it hurts my head like a hundred dogs!). And if maybe the Cavern's typical crowd wasn't quite so rock/punk oriented; I'm not sure they knew what to do with Four Tet live, although people were obviously enjoying it. At least the bits when he wasn't pitch-shifting backwards samples and bottom-end filtersweeps so that they made a; your head ring like a fire-alarm and b; your stomach threaten to collapse on the floor.
10/12/2003 12:44:00 am
Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
No...
Four Tet Live @ Exeter's Cavern Club, October 11th 2003
Or...
Why Electronic Music Doesn't Really Work Live, Especially in a RockTM Venue
I mean what are you meant to do? Dance? Pogo? Sing-a-long? Nod your head? Cheer when you recognise a bit of a song from his latest critically-acclaimed album, no matter how mangled-up and spasticated Kieron has chanced to make it this evening? Get really high? Retreat to the bar? Chat up student girls in vest-tops? I saw people doing all these things. None of them looked convinced (especially the student girls).
So what's the problem? Well, for a start, visually, to watch Four Tet is essentially to watch someone play a computer game whilst nodding their head to abstract techno.
Ah fuck it.
It's nearly quarter to one in the morning and I can't actually focus on the fucking screen. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow I have to watch Brazil eat Jamaica and write about Luke Vibert. I have lots of interesting thoughts about Four Tet live which I'll edit into this post when I can be arsed.
Good night and God Bless.
10/12/2003 12:25:00 am
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