Wednesday 22 December 2010

And so 2010 draws closer to its end...

I am becoming increasingly out of touch with the world of popular music, which is a sure sign of getting older I suppose. It's not as if I haven't been listening to a lot of music this year, it's just that I have been spending more time looking backwards; turning to artists I might have overlooked to some extent in the past. 2010 is the year I first tried properly listening to the varied likes of Minutemen, Joni Mitchell, Roxy Music and Flipper. None of these, however, are what the "kids" are listening to these days, and I don't think any of them have featured heavily in the NME.

Which left me feeling slightly confused when it came to indulging my annual hobby of compiling a top ten of the best albums released this year, as I felt myself struggling to come up with very much. Scouring my iTunes proved therapeutic though, and I realised there had actually been quite a lot of good albums released this year (even if very few of them were either by new artists or could be said to represent much of a creative departure). So here we go...

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening: James Murphy has said that This Is Happening will be LCD Soundsystem's final album. Based on this evidence, if Murphy doesn't find some other outlet for his musical and songwriting talents, it will be a great loss for both anyone who enjoys mature, intelligent music and anyone who simply enjoys dancing. I'm not entirely sure that it is as good as Sound of Silver, but the very fact it is possible to consider this album as comparable to their previous effort should indicate to anyone familiar with LCD Soundsystem's past work that they have exited on a high. Sophisticated, smart and fun.

Les Savy Fav - Root for Ruin: I have to confess that this one passed me by a little bit. I'm ashamed of this fact, as I have been Les Savy Fav fan since college, so was quite surprised to see, a few weeks ago, that they'd had a new album out for a few months. Needless to say I have attempted to make up for lost time since then. Compared to their previous studio album - Let's Stay Friends - Root for Ruin is perhaps treading water a little; if anything, it could be said that it harks back to their earlier material at points. But when the water they are treading is shitkicking art-punk of a kind that nobody else is even close to touching, this is by no means a bad thing, and there is enough here to suggest that Tim Harrington et al have a few tricks left up their sleeves yet. Definitely worth getting hold of.

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me: I'm not entirely sure about this album. Most people, having suffered from health problems related to their voice, would possibly think twice about releasing a triple album that expands their stylistic horizons whilst also exploring their musical influences. But this is what Newsom did. First time I heard it, I was underwhelmed; it felt like too much, and that the album would have benefited from more brutal editing to reduce its overall running time. However, I then later heard it again around a friend's house on vinyl, a format on which the listening experience is punctuated by the necessity of the turning over and changing of records. Somehow these pauses in the listening experience transformed it into something very different. Since then and having listen to it more I would struggle to identify any particular songs I would happily exclude, so maybe this is the record Have One On Me was always destined to be. Either way, the combination of beauty and ambition means it easily warrants a place among the top releases of the year.

Mike Patton - Mondo Cane: Mike Patton, renowned for his vocal prowess with bands such as Faith No More, Mr Bungle and Fantomas, is not exactly renowned for doing the obvious thing; the last album he released under his own name was an avant garde piece he wrote and conducted based on the Anarchist's Cookbook. But somehow Mondo Cane manages to combine being one of the most approachable and one of the most downright weird works he has ever been associated with. Patton, on this occasion, decided to release an album of versions of cinematic Italian pop music from the 40's and 50's, all recorded on tour with the help of a forty piece orchestra, a choir and a fifteen piece band. Sung primarily in Italian, in Patton's inimitable style that ranges from dark croon to manic wail, Mondo Cane manages to be both strangely familiar - it has Patton's stylistic fingerprints all over it - and utterly alien insofar as these are versions of songs from a time gone by, many of which are rendered in a style in which it is hard to imagine the composers would have ever imagined; Morricone has rarely, if ever, sounded like this before.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs: Part of me didn't want to like this album. The snobby part of me. Arcade Fire are almost certainly at that point now where, for most bands, their popularity would mean they run the risk of either imploding dramatically or believing their own hype, starting to wear sunglasses indoors all the time and turning in to U2. But, for now at least, their musical inventiveness and lyrical intelligence means that Arcade Fire have sidestepped these options and released arguably the finest album of their career. While it lacks some of the fire of Funeral and brooding apocalypticism of Neon Bible, The Suburbs focuses on the Absurdity (in the truest sense) of the kind of life that so many of us grow up in, and that can so easily consume us. Fun stuff, eh?

Leatherface - The Stormy Petrel: I get the impression that Frankie Stubbs is feeling old sometimes these days. Considering the amount of time that he and Leatherface have been playing some of the most intense and intelligent melodic hardcore music around, this is perhaps unsurprising. It is a terrible injustice that a band as consistently brilliant as Leatherface have remained quite as overlooked as they are; although Stubbs' gravel-raw voice might have something to do with it. Either way, The Stormy Petrel is an excellent addition to their catalogue, and I hope they continue to release music for years to come yet.

Vampire Weekend - Contra: There is something unpleasantly trendy about Vampire Weekend. I've heard that they are popular with young people. And they dress funnily. But despite this, Contra was an essential part of my musical year. The album was released in January, but it is the Summer in which it finds its home. The combination of indie rock with influences from popular African and classical music make it the perfect soundtrack for the discerning music nerd looking for something both fun and intelligent to dance to in the sunshine; an idea attested to in their success on the festival circuit this year. It has to be said that, since the sunshine gave way to rain, clouds and snow, I haven't listened to it half as much, but I am almost certain that come next Summer, it will be back in regular rotation, as there aren't many albums better suited to soundtracking life outside in the warm weather.

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul: It was only in 2010 that, after lengthy legal disputes, Dark Night of the Soul finally got an official release. The fact that by this time Mark Linkous and guest vocalist Vic Chestnutt had both committed suicide adds an extra layer of poignancy to proceedings, but even beside this Dark Night of the Soul is undoubtedly an excellent album. Due to the collaborative nature of the work - it features a dazzling array of talent including Wayne Coyne, Suzanne Vega, Iggy Pop and Gruff Rhys in addition to Linkous and Danger Mouse - it can be a little hit and miss, possibly depending on the listener's feelings for whoever happens to be guesting on any particular song. Any listener should, however, find at least something here to make them appreciate what a great talent we have lost in Linkous. R.I.P.

Beach House - Teen Dream: Dark, lush and melodic, Teen Dream feels something like lost in a space between a dreamstate and waking life; that slightly woozy feeling you get when the sun creeps between the cracks in the curtains. I've managed to find it both strangely comforting and almost unbearably melancholic, largely depending on the mood I happen to be in at the time. Either way, I can't deny the that this is one of the more accomplished and affecting pop albums released this year.

Sam Amidon - I See The Sign: I'm not entirely convinced this is a great album. Although that might just be because I feel slightly guilty about enjoying his cover of R. Kelly's Relief quite as much as I do. There's more to I See The Sign than a magical ability to transform trite pop into something capable of moving even the stoniest heart though. With a voice deeply reminiscent of Nick Drake and a talent for channelling traditional folk music, Amidon has created a deeply engrossing record. Add to that a rather wonderful experience seeing him perform at Green Man this year, and I'm won over.

Saturday 13 November 2010

Staying in...

Everyone stays in these days
I guess maybe we're getting old
Changing our minds & what we believe
Everyone stays in these days
And I miss you

But I can remember your smile
Or how it used to be
But memories fade, don't they?
With every moment you're away
From me

Can you hear a slow decay
Of photos from back when...
Or maybe that's just me
The sound I make as I breathe
Everyone stays in these days

And if you ever hear this song
A missive written in silence
And you think of me
I hope that you will smile again
The way I remember

Thursday 11 November 2010

When The Skies Are Grey

The winter nights are hurting
I have lost my way
But some time before the sunrise
You will make it ok

I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

I only talk about the weather
When the skies are grey
And when you're not beside me
I find it hard to concentrate

But I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

I had words with your father
It seems we disagree
He doesn't want to understand
About you and me

How I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

Sunday 7 November 2010

Types

There's a difference between what you do and what you know is right
I've got a creeping melancholia stealing over me tonight
Now every time I strike a match it's to light another joint
Think of all those numb evenings to which we were lost
I can only get my kicks these days from watching bad TV
It's a great comfort to me


We never really tried that hard, but we're both thankful for
All the friends that we have made somewhere down the road
I'm sorry that I am this way, and I'm sorry you got hurt
I promise that I'd intervene if I had another chance
Until then I will read and re-read
The words that you sent to me


I'm inured these days to the thousand words you say that I am worth
All the empty signs that we pass by and that we disregard
I've been living in the stories you told to keep us both warm
And I'd spend the night translating my word into yours
I prayed today, But I still don't know who it was that I prayed to
Maybe words don't count for much any more
Maybe words don't count for much any more

Saturday 6 November 2010

Freedom, Beauty & Philosophy

I recently came across a statement about philosophy from one of my all time philosophical heroes, Paul Ricoeur...

"Philosophy is ethical insofar as it transforms alienation into freedom and beauty."

I will put this in context a little...

"Ethical", although a familiar enough word, is distinct from "moral". Whereas morality is consumed with right and wrong, the ethical encompasses life in its entirety with all the shades of grey left in. For Ricoeur the relation between identity and the projection of the "good life" is intimate and integral. For philosophy to be ethical would be for philosophy to play a part in who we are and how we live.

Ricoeur was a French philosopher who was a brilliant writer on, among many things, hermeneutics; the science of interpretation. I think this is relevant here because of the notion of "alienation"; part of Ricoeur's concept of interpretation is that it always involves distance; understanding necessarily implies, to some extent, criticism.

Alienation in the context of the ethical, then, implies how we become distanced from our own lives; the way that the extraordinary removes us from the ordinary, or when the ordinary becomes the uncanny. In reflecting upon anything we risk encountering strangeness within familiarity. Philosophy can help us overcome this.

Or so it seems to me. What interests me is the relationship between freedom and beauty in this process. I would argue that there are different ways in which these two qualities can exist in relation to one another, and that this relationship is shaped by the philosophical methodologies and traditions we bring to bear on the aporia we encounter.

Systematic and analytic philosophy aim for freedom through beauty. They rely upon elegance. Analytic philosophy demonstrates the beauty of the ordinary; life through the microscope. Systematic philosophy constructs elegant structures of ideas, aimed towards perfection within the limits of discourse. The freedom they grant is one of lightness; the alienation we encounter can be explained, or integrated into something else.

Therapeutic philosophy, as typified by certain interpretations of Wittgenstein, finds beauty in freedom. The alienation we encounter is a form of confusion; we see the ordinary as extraordinary because we are seeing an unusual aspect of some phenomena. As soon as we realise this, we realise that the alienation we feel is simply a result of looking at something awry. Rather than explain the aporia we dissolve it. Beauty does not emerge from the freedom this dissolution endows us with, the freedom itself is beautiful.

Hermeneutic and existentialist philosophies, however, have the potential to forge beauty from freedom. The freedom they grant us is by denying the Absolute; in the absence of God, everything is permitted. This is not to say that everything is possible; our actions are still circumscribed by our circumstances. But it means that we are free to be the authors of our own existence. Of course, this is a heavy kind of freedom. But then nobody said beauty was cheap...


As ever when I write philosophy on here, all simplistic nonsense. It's the kind of thing that you couldn't possibly agree with unless you already believed it. But, even if philosophy has nothing to do with it, freedom and beauty, both separately and in relation to one another, are surely worthy of our consideration?

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Two Beautiful Songs and a Brief Meditation on Love

Today I listened to the entire back catalogue of The Weakerthans. They are a band that I love, primarily for how evocative I find the lyrics.

Two songs in particular mean a lot to me, as they seem to do a wonderful job of catching the peculiar tension inherent to love between the positive and the negative, coming from two different directions.

The first of these two songs is called Plea From A Cat Named Virtute.



The song is written from the point of view of a cat and addressed to the heartbroken owner of the cat. Virtute, the cat, loves her owner. She wants her to be happy, and believes in her strength, and is calling for her owner to take control of their life once more. What I find so stunning about the song is the violence of this; Virtute is frustrated with her owner's self obsession and is demanding they snap out of it; "I swear I'm going to bite you hard and taste your tinny blood/If you don't stop the self-defeating lies you've been repeating since the day you brought me home/I know you're strong". It is rare to find this kind of honesty in a song. So often we deny that love can possibly be a source of negative emotion because we idealise it. But anyone who has ever cared for anyone knows that it is possible to become more frustrated and angry with someone you love than anyone else precisely because you do care about them, and it is difficult to accept that they don't see themselves in the way you see them; that they can't see their own strength.


The second song is a follow up, and breaks my heart more regularly than any other song I can think of; Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure.



This song was written after the cat that inspired the first song died. It is, in a way, far more obviously about a cat than the first, but it still has a resonance far beyond this. It is a song of irretrievable loss, but one tempered by the beauty of what has been. Love is a beautiful thing, but it will always end one way or another. The true loss is when we lose what was beautiful is what we had. The dying Virtute sings about forgetting her own name; "I can't remember the sound that you found for me". The beauty of this song for me lies in how it channels the positivity that can be found even in a lost love. Insofar as we have loved, that becomes part of who we are. It is only when we forget all that was good about love that we lose something beyond anything else, and when we know that we have lost that. For me that is true loss.

The final striking thing about these songs is how they refer to love in many forms; they are not songs about romance, although what they have to say could equally be applied to romantic love. Even friendship, real friendship, involves both positive and negative emotions, and the possibility of loss.


Love is a strange thing. It is idealised. It is Romanticised. And this is important. Especially when we are young. We need to be able to throw ourselves in to these things. We even need to be hurt, I think.

But the noblest thing we can do is to love even in the face of loss. To know that we will be hurt but to go ahead and do it anyway. It is, in many ways, much easier to despair. To cut ourselves off from the world and from those who love us, so we don't get hurt again. But this will only be a lie. We need other people. And people will care about us. And we will love again, if we let ourselves.

We need love. We need romantic love. And we need the love of friends. To trust and to love other people automatically makes you vulnerable. You are saying; "I care what you think. I care how you feel. You are part of who I am, and I hope that you feel the same." Whenever we do this we run the risk of being hurt. So it takes strength and courage to do so. But it is worth it. I think.

It ain't easy though...

Tuesday 28 September 2010

The Zombies Want Nothing More Than To Consume Your Brains & Lifestyle!

You spin a little coccoon
From the trappings of success
A big job in the city
The privelege of status
Whilst the world crumbles around us
And the dead rise from the grave
Here in our plastic bubble
You tell me everything's ok
I see things different to you
And you try your damned hardest
To hold on to what we got
But the undead are going to get us in the end

I can still remember
The day that we met
You called me your angel
And I took you in my arms
I fought so many battles
To keep your heart at peace
But time is running out now
I'm going to break an old promise
Don't fall to deep my darling
I don't want you to get hurt
This love won't last forever
'Cause the undead are going to get me in the end

And there was no rapture
You're all stuck here with us
No Lamb of God to save you
As the shambling hordes encroach
I don't mean to sound self-righteous
But my life was better off
Without all your judgements
All your petty little laws
I guess that with hindsight
That you might just think
That your God ain't so clever after all
When the undead are going to get us in the end

Monday 13 September 2010

15 Albums...

Recently I indulged myself with a meme that demanded that, in fifteen minutes or less, I attempt to list fifteen albums which have left an impression on me. A frustrating project, to say the least. You will undoubtedly end up listing albums which don't necessarily reflect your current musical tastes. Leaving out albums which you love but are too new, or are too new to you, to say they have definitely had a lasting impact. And forgetting things which you will kick yourself repeatedly about.

Nevertheless, I tried. My list largely looked like a playlist from my highschool/college years. I have been reliably informed since then that it is full of obscurities. So between that, a faint sense of embarassment at some of my choices, and a need to do something else other than work for a little while whilst my brain resets, I am going to attempt to do so with a little blurb about the fifteen albums I picked (and a few honourable mentions I missed out)...

01. Mclusky - Do Dallas: I'm not even entirely sure where I first heard Welsh noiseniks Mclusky. The song though was "To Hell With Good Intentions", and the combination of bass driven noisy punk racket and confrontational but bizarre lyrics (My dad is bigger than your dad/He's got eight cars and a house in Ireland/Sing it) blew my tiny sixteen year old mind. The album itself doesn't have a single duff track. Throw in the fact that Mclusky were the first non-local live gig I went to (a very sweaty evening jumping about in the mosh pit at the Cavern Club in Exeter), and it is fair to say my love for them has endured.

02. Faith No More - Angel Dust: I guess everyone first heard of Faith No More when they heard their big hit "Epic" from The Real Thing. As much as I do enjoy that album, it was when I bought the follow up, Angel Dust, that I grew to love the band. Not entirely sure when this happened on my personal timescale (it seems fair to assume that it wasn't in 1992 when the album came out, as I would have been six years old at the time), but it did mark the beginning of an obsession with FNM's lead singer Mike Patton. Patton's lyrics were dark but smart and funny, some distance away from angsty contemporaries such as Korn. And his delivery would veer from crooning, to spoken word to frenetic scream (best showcased here on the positively psychotic track "Jizzlobber"). Musically too, FNM moved on hugely from the funk metal of The Real Thing, drawing on many different musical influences (including sampling the Kronos Quartet and doing a bizarre and creepy instrumental cover of the theme from Midnight Cowboy). Angel Dust remains FNM's most coherent album, and an essential listen even if metal music isn't your thing.

03. Pixies - Surfer Rosa/C'mon Pilgrim: My first exposure to Pixies is somewhat fuzzy. I remember, during my metalhead days, thinking that Pixies was a shit name for a band (being a big fan of Rotting Christ at the time, I can only look back on this judgement with some shame). This probably means that I got in to them when I was in college. All I know is that upon getting this (double) album, I was hooked. It was weird and shouty and noisy and Black Francis would sing about all kinds of bizarre things which necessitated dozens of repeated listens. Throw in to that Kim Deal's equally brilliant songwriting and Joey Santiago's virtuoso surf guitar and it didn't take a genius to work out that perhaps dismissing them on the basis of their name hadn't been all that well thought out.

04. Final Fantasy - Has a Good Home: A much more recent album, released in 2005. I think I got the album shortly after it was released, based at least in part upon the track "adventure.exe" being featured in a phone advert (an odd choice for marketing, considering the track itself being about the perils of unprotected sex in gay subcultures). Final Fantasy was the name that, until recently, Canadian violinist Owen Pallett traded under for his solo work. The album is full of beautiful tracks made up of looped violin parts and Pallett's fragile and thoughtful vocals. It is, undoubtedly, a beautiful album and also one that I listened to a lot while working through some heartbreak, which is why it appears on this list.

05. Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation: Despite discussing my metalhead status in relation to some of these albums, metal wasn't my first musical love. That dubious honour, strangely enough, falls to dance music. My first exposure to such things was when I ended up winning Dance Mania '95 as part of a local radio phone in (other things I won in phone ins at some time or another included a Subbuteo set and a kitchen knife... it was boring in the countryside, ok?). My little nine year old mind took rather a shine to the likes of Livin' Joy and 2 Unlimited, so for a few years, as well as plenty of pop nonsense, I found myself increasingly drawn to dance music. This probably manifested itself most obviously at the beginning of high school, which would also be when I first encountered The Prodigy and the rather ubiquitous Fat of the Land. It didn't take too long for me to dig into their back catalogue, and I still believe now that what I found there in the form of Experience and Music for the Jilted Generation are infinitely superior to anything they did since. ...Jilted Generation is the album that takes it for me though, just because it is where they hit the perfect balance of rave electronics and rock guitars before tipping into self-parody with the likes of "Firestarter". It is as vital and confrontational as it has ever been and the inner sleeve art of a hippy raver dude raising his middle finger to the fuzz seemed like the coolest thing my pre-teen mind had ever encountered.

06. Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots: I'm not sure that this was the first Flaming Lips album I bought. I suspect that might have been Soft Bulletin. I distinctly remember a sense of shame, especially as after leaving the darklands of metal behind I stumbled into the realm of punk, at buying an album I first heard a track from on Radio 2. This would have been college years again, and the Devon punk scene was open minded enough that any shame I felt was entirely imagined. I include Yoshimi... over Soft Bulletin and the 'Lips excellent back catalogue primarily because of one song; "Do You Realize???" This song has always struck me as staggeringly beautiful, and has just grown more so as I've grown older. Despite often being accused of having depressing lyrics (Do You Realize/That everyone you know someday will die), it embodies an approach to life, one of embracing life in the now and loving wholeheartedly, that I try and strive to live. I often think that I don't try hard enough, and that I let too much and too many people slip me by. But I try, and this song helps. Experiencing the 'Lips playing this song live was enough to cement it in my affections as possibly my favourite song ever. So the album definitely belongs here.

07. Godflesh - Hymns: Godflesh are a grindcore band and brainchild of the prolific Justin Broadrick. Godflesh are, in my mind, the band that anyone who dismisses extreme metal out of hand should have to hear. Extreme metal is associated, among other things, with being played really fucking fast. Godflesh manage to be heavier that pretty much any of their competitors whilst slowing their music down to crawling speed. Hymns is a fantastic album and unusual for a Godflesh album in that it features a human drummer, rather than simply pummelling electronics, and Justin Broadrick actually sings on it sometimes. It is almost certainly the least conventionally extreme of the Godflesh albums, but it even better for it. It means Broadrick can bring other music influences in to the mix and stretch his wings lyrically, and sets the template for his later critically acclaimed work with Jesu. It is also one of the albums which really opened my eyes musically, showing me that music was often better when it let itself do something genuinely different rather than plowing the same furrow over and over again.

08. Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman: As I'd expect is the case with most people, I first heard Underworld with the release of the track "Born Slippy.NUXX" in the wake of Trainspotting. I can only assume I didn't see Trainspotting until significantly later than that, but "Born Slippy" was pretty much everywhere at the time. It might have been some time during high school that I bought Dubnobasswithmyheadman from a market stall in Tiverton, but it is at least faintly possible I didn't get in to them properly until college. Either way, the album blew my mind. Trancey epics like "Mmmm... Skyscraper I Love You" were far removed from most of the electronic music I had experienced up until that point (with one possible exception that we will reach shortly) and when the beat drops on "Cowgirl" I still get so excited I just have to giggle and dance. Incidentally, also a mindblowing album for driving at night to.

09. Mr Bungle - California: Here we return to Faith No More's lead singer. Prior to joining FNM, Mike Patton was in a band called Mr Bungle. Somehow or another, Patton managed to get his other band signed on to FNM's label, Warner Bros. The upshot of this is that in 1991 Mr Bungle's self titled debut album, a lyrically scatological experimental mix of noise, metal and ska produced by legendary avant garde saxophonist John Zorn, was released on a major label. They followed this up with what was probably their best album, Disco Volante, a bizarre mix of speed metal, classical and middle eastern music, and cartoon noises that really has to be heard to be believed. My pick here though is their final album, and a staple of my years in high school, California. While remaining as bizarrely eclectic as its predecessor, California manages to distill these influences into something much more listenable. Which is probably why it sits on this list in place of Disco Volante. Undeniably brilliant and something which, again, served as an eye-opener for me as to what it was possible to do with music.

10. Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole: Back to the dance stuff. Dig Your Own Hole was the first Chemical Brothers album I bought, I think. I say this because I'm fairly sure I got it before the more mainstream Surrender was even released, after seeing the video for "Block Rockin' Beats" on MTV while visiting my uncle (we didn't have satellite so our trips there were pretty much spent rooted in front of the box-of-wonders). As good as "Block Rockin' Beats" is, and as sublime as Beth Orton's vocal is on "Where Do I Begin", it is another track on this album which raises it to a different level for me. I might have been gobsmacked by Underworld, but Chemical Brothers had beaten them to it by some distance in the shape of "The Private Psychedelic Reel"; nine and a half minutes of ecstatic build and release that felt like something from another world to me.

11. Radiohead - Kid A: Speaking of something from another world, I really didn't know what to make of Kid A when I first bought it. It was my first real experience of Radiohead, and it is a fairly deep point at which to jump in to their discography. If I remember rightly, I bought it a few months after it was released based upon the fact that it (alongside Drukqs) was mentioned in an article in Kerrang! as an example of the growing prevalence of "arty" music in the mainstream which then went on to ramble about a number of art-metal bands. I liked a number of the bands mentioned in the article, so I thought I'd give it a go. Needless to say I wasn't quite prepared for what I encountered. I think I found it a little upsetting to start with. But after a few listens it had got under my skin. The dancey "Idioteque" was the most obvious point of reference for me, but tracks like "National Anthem" soon grew on me and even the weirdness of the title track started to make sense. Certainly an important formative part of my current musical tastes.

12. PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea: Possibly a little later than I discovered Radiohead, I also first heard this album. Oddly enough, I have no real recollection of where or when. Music tends to leave flashbulb memories with me. I have a few connected to this album, to do with mixtapes made for girls and hanging around waiting for buses in Tiverton, but nothing to do with when this album entered my life. But it has hung around to occasionally provide songs that seemed to soundtrack my life. "We Float", "A Place Called Home" and "This is Love" especially. There are probably better PJ Harvey albums than this, but this is the on I return to most regularly.

13. System of a Down - System of a Down: Metal again. High school again. Must have got it some time around the time Toxicity came out. As good as Toxicity is though, System's debut is their best. While it seems to me that Daron Malakian has been intent on gradually turning them in to a Metallica clone, this album catches System at their most inventive and exuberant. It is full of musical references to their Armenian roots and Serj Tankian is on blisteringly weird form. The perfect soundtrack to an angry pubescence. Listened to it again recently whilst playing poker with friends and everyone in the room had to join in shouting along at some point. Still fantastic.

14. TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes: Got this one as soon as it was released based upon hearing a few tracks from the Blind e.p. I would have been seventeen or eighteen at the time, I guess, which places it later on my personal chronology than most of the albums here. What I do know though is that TVotR sounded like nothing I had heard before. They were clearly influenced by a lot of post-punk stuff but approached the sound from a completely different angle incorporating urban and electronic sounds into a completely organic whole (incidentally, their self-released debut Ok Calculator provides an interesting insight into how these influences came together as their music developed). Tracks like "Staring at the Sun" and the spooky barbershop of "Ambulance" won me over immediately, and TVotR remain one of the most interesting and innovative bands in the world today.

15. Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump: I suspect that I first heard Grandaddy on the soundtrack to 28 Days Later shortly after I had started at college. It is certainly when the track A.M. 180 latched indelibly on to my brain (manifesting itself most recently in attempts to transpose it for ukulele... an unusual sound). And although this track lives on the wonderful Under The Western Freeway, it is their follow up album that I hold dearest. A fragile and icy album on the whole, suffused with a faint sense of alienation, it is almost certainly their best and most coherent effort. I'm not sure I have too many memories connected to this album in particular, so much as spending a lot of time sitting along in various places around college listening intently on my discman (the days before I had an iPod and used to carry around several hundred pounds worth of CDs with me everywhere I went). Still a wonderful listen now.


And honourable mentions go to:

Leatherface - Dog Disco: The pinnacle of my relationship with the Exeter punk scene came with seeing Leatherface whilst they were touring this album. Frankie Stubbs is one of the greatest songwriters alive and is criminally overlooked.

Mogwai - Young Team: A band I got in to after hearing a live session on John Peel's radio show at some point during college, I think. Still haven't seen them live. Something I desperately need to put right.

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless: Picked up from Tiverton public library on a whim based upon the name. I think I was expecting some kind of metal music. Instead I found something infinitely more beautiful and extreme. Waves of feedback and ghostly vocals provide something truly ethereal and life changing.

Orbital - Orbital II: I was a relatively latecomer to Orbital, I think. I remember hearing Halcyon & On & On on the (brilliant) soundtrack to Hackers during high school, but never really followed it up. Some time during college though I quickly caught up with their back catalogue and this, for me, remains their definitive statement.

Sunday 12 September 2010

New song(ish)...

I will always remember this day
When I told you what you refused to believe
And I saw in you someone who
I couldn't let you go
So I took you with me

And you were always the last one to know
Why you were always alone
You always let things pass you by
But now you have a chance
And if you don't go now, you might not ever

We, we will start something
And we will always take the blame
But we can't hear your recriminations
'Cause we are deaf and blind
We today, we tonight

So tell your boyfriend not to wait up
There's always another tomorrow

Hope that your family never wakes up
There's always another tomorrow

Hope that it never gets out
There's always another tomorrow

Tell your boyfriend not to wait up
There's always another tomorrow...

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Patterns...

I have been thinking... this is rarely a good thing.

Today though, I have also been meta-thinking. To be exact, I found myself feeling slightly sleepy at a gig this evening and thinking about the relationship between various guitar chords; the barred A, open E, and open A, to be precise. I found myself thinking about this relationship and how wonderful it is that they make sense in the context of one another, and how beautiful it is that music is based upon systematic patterns but that the composition and appreciation of music transcends these patterns. Then I found myself thinking about how this is a very "stoner" thought...

It is this final thought I am going to focus on. In some sense, it is perfectly natural that I should have stoner thoughts while sleepy; both states of mind weaken the psychic barriers between the conscious and the unconscious. It's what the Surrealists were all about, y'know. In the Surrealist manifesto they write that; "Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts." Although I'm fairly sure the Surrealists were rather too intense to partake in such things regularly. If you marry a Surrealist sensibility to a propensity for getting stoned you end up in psychedelia, which is something very different indeed.

But there is more to the concept of a "stoner" idea than that, I was sure. So what could this be then? The key, I feel, is in trying to find a similarity where there might appear to be difference. There is a famous anecdote about stoners sneaking into the second half of 2001: A Space Odyssey during the interval so as to lie directly beneath the screen for the trippy second half of the film. Absorption into visual and auditory sensation is a cliche of the stoner experience. Being high can also heighten physical sensation in rather wonderful ways.

The other cliche of stonerhood is a great receptivity to connection; the way that ideas that correlate take on a great sense of significance. The "wow" factor at something which makes sense. And I can happily testify to taking great pleasure in logic puzzles while stoned; I find something intensely pleasurable about the neatness and sense there is to be found in a closed system of signification and the elegance therein. An experience which at first glance probably seems quite far removed from zoning out in front of the iTunes visualiser (something I consider best saving for other drugs, by the way).

But, there is a similarity there too.

The way I see it, it largely comes down to patterns. What physical, auditory and visual sensation and cognitive absorption have in common is that they both rely on the human capacity for pattern recognition. What we take pleasure in, in both cases, is how we perceive something in terms of the patterned qualities they present to us. The relationships between different colours or sounds, for example, comes down to variations in vibrations and wavelengths. The ability to perceive the vibrational regularities is a form of pattern recognition. Similarly, the ability to make links between different ideas and the absorption into a logical or mathematical system of some sort relies on the ability to at least unconsciously comprehend the rules to which these forms of cognition cohere, and to recognise the patterns with which these rules operate.

For many people, being stoned heightens receptivity to these patterns. As such the cliches of stonerdom are born.

It is worth dwelling at least briefly on the mention of vibrations and wavelengths in that last passage, as they provide an interesting touchstone for the connection between the sciences and the arts. Even as I write this, my inner purists (both scientist and artist) are screaming in dissent, but we'll allow ourselves to be softcore for now. Waves and vibrations are both very useful concepts for describing many physical properties in the sciences (albeit often in quite a simplified way). In the arts this finds itself manifest in the fact that what we perceive can always be reduced, on some level, to these physical properties. Painting relies partly upon our perception of colour and shading, which comes down to different wavelengths of light. And music is all, ultimately, vibrations. Of course these are things which many artists consciously factor into their work, but even when it doesn't it would be naive to overlook this (anyone who has ever been to a drone rock gig will testify to that, I would hope). Perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this kind of connection is in the idea of synesthesia, wherein different sensory experiences are conflated. Meditating on a Kandinsky can be a very rewarding experience, from this perspective. Music too embodies this kind of connection very well, because of how it relates to mathematics (itself the language of physics).

But on another level, one which relies equally upon the place of the arts and the sciences in our lives, vibrations and wavelengths have a great emotional and moral importance for us. They are terms in our language that describe our relationship with the world. The atmosphere of a place of situation can be described as having a particular "vibration". If we connect with another human being we say that we are "on their wavelength". If an idea strikes us in a particular way we speak of it having a certain "resonance". It is no coincidence that we have adopted these terms into wider human discourse. The reason we do so is because we perceive even the aspects of our lives that cannot easily be reduced to what are broadly physical qualities in terms of patterns and regularities, and these words describe these things for us. The idea of character and habit, that which makes us the people we are, is largely the accumulation of various regularities in our thought and our behaviour. Our minds are simply set up to be receptive to these things, in one way or another and to varying degrees.

At the gig, Robert Brook spoke briefly of the idea of psychic geography, and how even small changes in our milieu effect us in profound ways. This is because we make sense of the world in terms of deviations from regularities. The physical environment we are familiar with provides us with a constant by which we make sense of everything else we experience. There are, of course, canonical deviations that we take in our stride (we are rarely sent reeling by the fact that it is raining today when it was dry yesterday, because we are familiar with the idea of rain and that the weather changes). But if a tree at the bottom of the garden, something we are familiar with but take for granted, blows down we can be left with a faintly uneasy sense that something isn't quite right. In psychoanalysis this is referred to as the "uncanny"; the idea that something can be both familiar and unfamiliar at once, and unsettling precisely because the familiarity which we rely upon is disturbed. The pattern, so to speak, is slightly wrong.

As such it is no surprise that mind altering substances should respond to this capacity for pattern recognition, both altering it and heightening it in various ways. Our lives are infused with patterns and deviations from patterns in every moment. A "stoner thought", I think, is one that revolves around these patterns; either in terms of absorption into them or in the creation of them, just as watching the iTunes visualiser is a case of absorption into and recognition of visual patterns.

I've occasionally meditated on the idea that pattern recognition is a basic attribute of what it means to be alive. For a plant to thrive, it has to be able to respond to the patterns of the seasons and of the movement of the sun. This isn't to suggest that plants have to put effort in to this, but simply that they wouldn't be if they didn't respond in such a way. Animal life relies upon deeply ingrained instincts which can also be perceived as a form of pattern recognition insofar as they involve regularities in responding to environmental stimuli. And everything which makes us human, from the ability to learn and use tools to the formulation of great works of art and systems of thought also rely on patterns in a similar way.

Quite whether any of this has any human significance I don't know. Partly because it is all nonsense, of a sort; I simply use the very broad idea of patterns as an interpretive grid to understand various aspects of life and the relationships between them. There are any number of different ways in which one can approach the world and the manifold things in it. And if one were to attempt to come up with one single specific use of the word "pattern" which applied equally to all aspects of life, I am sure it would be in vain. These are, to be frank, the thoughts of a stoner. But I would hope that you would at least entertain the idea that I could be on your wavelength.

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Batman

I have been to the Green Man festival. Was very good. Whilst there, I ended up writing a song (on an empty paper bag stained with donut grease). It is undoubtedly the most cutesy and twee song I have ever written, but I came up with the conceit and had to follow it through...

I wish I could be Batman
You'd be Robin by my side
Riding in the Batmobile
And beating up bad guys

Searching for the signal
That tells us where to be
We'd spend our nights together
As a crimefighting team

Girl, I could be Thelma
And you could be Louise
Cruising in a cadillac
Our lives a road movie

No-one understands us
Why we do the things we do
So head for the horizon
We'll ride in to the blue

And I will be the Morecambe
To your Ernie Wise
Dancing through the kitchen
For the rest of our lives

People would raise eyebrows
At things best left unsaid
But we would be together
Side by side in bed

But if I could be Batman
You would almost certainly
Turn up as the Joker and
Try to kill me

And here is the song.




My iLike page for music (under the name David Jane) is here, by the way. It features this song among others. It's definitely a work in progress kind of thing.

Sunday 8 August 2010

Mo' Lyrics...

I'm all angst and despair whenever I write anything at the moment... Which makes me wonder if there is anything in particular I'm trying not to acknowledge... Usually I'm quite good at knowing what is bothering me... but right now I'm largely opaque to myself... Never mind...


I think it's easier this way
All those things I don't have to face
Looking for someone else to blame
For every evening being the same
And I just don't try any more
Turns out that no-one's keeping score
Sure I've got a few regrets
But they haven't killed me yet

And I know that I hurt you
But honey, what else could I do?
That was then, this is now
And I can't do that again
So c'mon darling
Give up the ghost
We can be happy
Without hope

You tried to show me someone cared
Everything you did & everything you said
But I was never there for you
Never noticed that your eyes were blue
Until that colour drained away
Until your heartbeat slowed
But you never came to hate me
Even if that's what I deserved

And I know that I hurt you
But honey, what else could I do?
That was then, this is now
And I can't do that again
So c'mon darling
Give up the ghost
We can be happy
Without hope

Wednesday 4 August 2010

Limbo

I'll follow you
Farther than you know
Protect you
From the men that
Hunt for you
In limbo

The day is gone
So please stick close
I'll hold your hand
Won't let you go
Down
In limbo

I'll start a fire
I'll burn the skies
We'll watch clouds ablaze
As ember rains
Start to glow
In limbo

It's dangerous
To be alone
To wake up in
An empty bed
Unguarded
In limbo

It won't work out
We both need to grow
And I beg you stay
You say that I will
Find myself
In limbo

The more I see your imperfections
The more beautiful you are
I miss being lost
In conversation
And I miss late nights
With you

Monday 2 August 2010

An Innapropriate Clash of Cultures...

I was reading Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations today and came across a quote which I had forgotten about by an Italian poet called Giacomo Leopardi. It reads:

Nothing lives that is worthy
Thy agitation, and the earth deserve not a sigh.
Our being is pain and boredom and the world is dirt - nothing more.
Be calm.

Now I know that it is arguable that this little piece of nihilism is simply an early example of emo kid ramblings (the Italian's a renowned for being a passionate people, after all; it seems reasonable that they would be ahead of the times with angst), but somehow the final line makes it unbearably beautiful to me.

As such I looked up some of his other poetry, and came across this:

To His Lady

by Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Leopardi
Beloved beauty who inspires
love in me from afar, your face obscured
except when your celestial image
stirs my heart in sleep, or in the fields
where light and nature's laughter shine more lovely—
was it maybe you who blessed
the innocent age called golden,
and do you now, blithe spirit,
fly among men? Or does that miser fate
who hides you from us save you for the future?

No hope of seeing you alive
remains for me now,
except when, naked and alone,
my soul will go down a new street
to its unknown home. Already at the dawn
of my dark, uncertain day
I imagined you a fellow traveler
on this arid ground. But there's no thing
that resembles you on earth. And if someone
had a face like yours, in act and word she'd be,
though something like you, far less beautiful.

In spite of all the suffering
fate decreed for human time,
if there were anyone on earth
who truly loved you as my thought depicts you,
this life for him would be a blessing.
And I see clearly how your love
would lead me still to strive for praise and virtue,
as I used to in my early years.
Though heaven gave no comfort for our troubles,
yet with you mortal life would be
like what in heaven leads to divinity.

In the valleys, where the song
of the weary farmer sounds,
and when I sit and mourn
the illusions of youth fading,
and on the hills where I recall
and grieve for my lost desires
and my life's lost hope, I think of you
and start to shake. If only I, in this
sad age and unhealthy atmosphere,
could keep hold of your noble look; for since the real thing's
missing I must make do with the image.

Whether you are the only one
of the eternal ideas eternal wisdom
refuses to see arrayed in sensible form
to know the pains of mortal life
in transitory spoils,
or if in the supernal spheres another earth
from among unnumbered worlds receives you
and a near star lovelier than the Sun
warms you and you breathe benigner ether,
from here, where years are both ill-starred and brief,
accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.

Translated by Jonathan Galassi


The poem is about the idea of the Platonic ideal of beauty and the (im)possibility of ever finding it in this life. Leopardi is mourning the fact that he has come to realise that what he has found beautiful in all of the women he has loved is something transcendent; it is what the women embody rather than the women themselves. Leopardi also realises that the true object of his desire, Beauty in and of itself, is always going to beyond him. He is destined to always be the unnoticed lover.

I don't know how this poem was intended, but it is significant to me that it is, and could only ever be, a lament. People, especially in the Western/Judaeo Christian tradition, have always strived towards the infinite (thanks, in part, to the likes of Plato). This comes as part and parcel of having the wonderful imagination and minds that we do; we can abstract from what is and imagine what is not, and work towards making it real. However, we also get rather carried away with this. We are finite creatures, and can never know the infinite (however one might wish to imagine it being, and whatever sense one makes of such an idea). We need humility. The ideal of beauty means that we can strive and create things that we may never even have once believed possible. But it also means that we may fail to appreciate what is in front of us, as we are comparing it to an impossibility. Ideal beauty is exactly that; an idea. Human beauty is what we see in those we love, and in the world as perceived through our eyes. It is probably better to leave ideal beauty for the gods, and try hard to appreciate the beauty in our own lives for what it is.

Although I have to say I do like Leopardi's lament for the ideal. So maybe it is ok to open oneself up to the pain of the Absurd now and then, if only to bring beauty in to the world.

Having said this, for some reason I have done a very bad thing. The "clash of cultures" of the title of this post comes about because, taking a shine to Leopardi's poem, I took the next logical step of attempting to set it to the ukulele. You can hear the results in the video below...



I really am sorry...

Thursday 22 July 2010

Late Blooming Lesbians

This article was in the G2 supplement today.

Ok, there are many positive things about this article but there are still a number of issues that bug me here.

Athough they do at least nod at the fluidity of sexuality, the whole thing is still very heteronormative. It seems to mostly be suggested that one switches from straight (a hugely inappropriate term) to lesbian; that attraction to women beforehand was present but non-sexual. Surely the reason that this phenomenon often occurs in later life is not due to a change in sexuality, but due to a change in circumstances? When we are older, and have experienced more (including things like a long term heterosexual relationship and having a family) we often find ourselves more confident and comfortable in ourselves, and therefore more willing to explore aspects of ourselves we wouldn't have previously.

And men are largely excluded from this, but no reason is given as to why this should be. There is still much more of a stigma over homosexuality in men than there is in women, and more pressure to be either completely straight or completely gay as a consequence (as, despite the stigma, at least if one identifies as gay then there is a community there with which to identify). The fact that patriarchal values have always been dominant in our society has meant that the idea of being "straight" is not one which has been challenged from within, meaning that male sexuality is almost a cartoon of what sexuality should/could be.

When we get down to brass tacks, labels such as "straight", "gay" and "bisexual" serve a social purpose, and it would be wrong to try and deny this. And there are plenty of people to whom they comfortably apply. But, just as the fact that someone identifies as male or female doesn't mean they don't also have masculine or feminine qualities, just because someone identifies as gay or straight doesn't mean they don't also have a hetero- or homosexual aspect to their sexuality. The role of sexuality, our social definitions of "love" in it's various manifestations, and the relationship between the two definitely need a rethink. It feels like we should have grown up a bit more as a species by now. These things have been debated before, of course, but usually in a heavily politicised way (e.g. the sexual revolution and second wave feminism). It feels like we should be able to talk about these things on the level of the individual, interpersonal relationships and personal identity, preferably without too much overt reference to the "system". The term "late blooming lesbians" makes a good headline, but ultimately it doesn't really challenge our perceptions of what makes a healthy sexuality.

But anyway, enough of my hippy bullshit. I'm off to become a lesbian...

Sunday 11 July 2010

Sticks and Stones

Just some ramblings from my head I might try to turn in to a song. Or part of one (I am very tired right now, so there is every chance this is unadulterated nonsense).

I'm just a patchwork man
And all I have is words
And they say they can never touch you
But I'm far too tired to care
About what abstract people think
Too exhausted for romance
And if every broken tooth changes how I speak
Then every broken bone changes what I see
And if this has to be
Then I hope that it can be with you

And Cher is an idiot
'Cause I know there's life after you
And I know that I'll love again
And if it's better to have loved and lost
Then I'll break my heart a thousand times
And be the richest man on Earth
And I know that you'll laugh
When I say that I felt God
I always get religious when I'm tired
But if this has to be then, Lord
Let it be with you

Friday 25 June 2010

Science Dick

Haven't posted for some time now. Have been in a state of revision for a while, and am now mostly in a state of disarray. Fuck it.

Anyway, time for a rant...

A scientist friend of mine has previously informed me of the phenomenon of the "science dick". This refers, essentially, to the esteem attached to one's research in science, and the sharing of said research. Basically, the scientist will collect his or her data, and as he does so his or her science dick will grow (it is an equal opportunity appendage, you'll be happy to hear). Eventually you just gather all your colleagues around, flop it out on the table and cry "Look at this baby!" to anyone and everyone within earshot.

Ok, so I'm over simplifying the scientific process somewhat here. Hell, I'm even oversimplifying the idea of science dick. But it is to make a point. Y'see, the beauty of science dick is that anyone can have one. You just have to put the work in. It doesn't favour any particular kind of person. You don't have to be a dick to have a science dick. And I'm not so sure this is the case in philosophy.

Philosophy dick, if it exists, is largely based on excessive self-esteem. For some reason, there is a climate of rampant alpha-maleism in the world of philosophy (and, I suspect, the humanities in general). The standard approach to any philosophical discussion in the world of academia is to shout the other person down. You tell them how misguided they are, how they're coming at it from entirely the wrong angle, and how they don't understand what they are talking about. The same kind of thing exists, albeit in a far more rhetorically snobbish way, in exchanges within philosophical literature; a paper is written, someone writes a reply, the original author replies to that (this time condescendingly pointing out how their interlocutor has missed the point of the original paper), the interlocutor replies once more... and the whole thing descends in to name calling (I'm really not exagerrating this; ad hominem attacks are really quite common, in some form or another). You are also, as an academic, encouraged to be self-aggrandising. Humility will get you nowhere. The result of this is that, unless you are willing to enter in to this remarkable display of cock-waving you are likely to be marginalised within the philosophy community. I've seen this happen on a number of occasions.

Of course, this aggression does serve a purpose. Submitting your work to the disapproving glances of your colleagues and social betters can be a good way to get the feedback necessary to improve it. And it encourages a... competitive attitude. Let's face it, debate would be pretty rubbish if everyone was just looking to agree all the time, and philosophy requires that we discuss and debate problems in order to try and move beyond them. Or at least reframe them occasionally.

But it is worth noting that different disciplines do work differently. I've been lucky enough to sit in on a group crit session at an art school before now, and was frankly astonished to find out that people were being quite genial, picking out things they thought were good about the work and offering ideas about ways they could possibly be developed. It occurs to me that this might be something that would be useful in the world of philosophy. Not that it never does occur, of course. And not that the general critical approach within philosophy isn't supposed to be positive. But, nonetheless, it is quite rare and would certainly make academia a less forboding place to be.

The problem is that criticism, haughtiness, alpha maleism and dismissiveness are institutionalised in the world of philosophy, meaning you have to be very thick-skinned to get by. Either that or fairly arrogant. But not all of us want to whip out our philosophy dick at every given opportunity. Sure, sometimes it is fun to do so. God knows I've tried to flail mine around now and then (to little effect). But this should be done among friends, in the same way you'd happily call your mate cunt-breath in the pub. The pub is, in fact, one of the few places where you can whip your philosophy dick out unproblematically. People can take it with a pinch of salt there.

And with that sentence I might well be winning some kind of prize for the most innapropriately mixed metaphor ever. Salty dicks or otherwise, there is, of course, a place for argument and criticism in philosophy, just as there is plenty of cattiness and arrogance in the world of the arts. But insofar as it is as prevalent and institutionalised as, in my experience, it is at the moment, I can't help but feel it is an overwhelmingly negative thing. I've sat through so many workshops and seminars in which nothing gets done just because nobody is fucking listening to anyone else in the room. Not that it would be any better if every argument in philosophy turned in to a love-in (might be more fun, but I still doubt much work would get done), but the ability to listen and occasionally adopt a consolidatory attitude could both allow more work to get done (the idealist in me hopes that traditonally the point in arguing has been to reach a conclusion) and make the academic atmosphere less poisonous and intimidating for those working in it.

It has occasionally been remarked that the history of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. This is, of course, bullshit. But perhaps something we should hope to resurrect from Plato is the Socratic method. Socrates would insist upon his ignorance upon pretty much everything. He would engage his friends and contemporaries in conversation in order to allow them to look closely and analytically at their own beliefs, leading them in the conversation and therefore allowing them to overcome any misconceptions or inconsistencies they might have. I'm fairly sure I haven't seen any modern philosopher insist upon their own ignorance, feigned or otherwise. Perhaps they are overcompensating.

Or maybe I'm just not cut out for this philosophy lark...

Wednesday 9 June 2010

Sex Eggs

For some reason I just started wondering if it would be possible to popularise the phrase "putting all your sex eggs in one basket" as a synonym for monogamy. I felt the need to share this, but just not anywhere where anyone might find it. I'll just continue sniggering to myself for now...

On which note...

Thursday 3 June 2010

Tiny Letters!

As I have said before, this blog is largely a repository for my thoughts. Usually these thoughts can only ever exist in the abstract. Sometimes it is because they are purely conceptual (philosophy and whatnot). Sometimes it is because they are wildly impractical (like the time I decided that Newsnight would be vastly improved by filling the studio with panthers). But occasionally, very occasionally, they become manifest...

This is one such occasion.

The idea first popped into my head when I was chewing gum (the gum of Moustache Heroes fame). The gum in question comes with, very considerately, little pieces of paper with which one is supposed to wrap up the gum before throwing it away. However admirable this use, it is not the one that I first considered upon seeing it. My head went; "Hey! Tiny paper! You could write tiny letters on that stuff, y'know."

And so I went on to my Facebook page and sent out an appeal to anyone who fancied recieving a tiny letter, eventually finding nine volunteers. I should point out now that I only used the gum paper for one letter, as there wasn't a lot of it and it turned out that my handwriting is near illegible when miniaturised (apologies to the two people who have received the handwritten letters). After that I reverted to using a computer and printing out the letters (a surprisingly complex process involving writing the letters in a giant font size, zooming out to make it look small, screen grabbing and then printing out the results before trimming to size... there's almost certainly a simpler way to achieve these results but then I'm not one for making life easy for myself).

Anyhow, I wanted to do this properly so I decided to make a pile of tiny envelopes. What point is there in sending tiny letters if you're not popping them in tiny envelopes? So I went online, found a video about how to make envelopes and miniaturised the process. The result was this:




Now everything was falling in to place... I popped each letter into an appropriate envelope, popped a stamp and address on each and we were ready to go. For some reason I also put football stickers in a number of them.




If nothing else, I have achieved remarkably cute post. Will just have to wait and see if any of it gets delivered or if it all just gets mulched up in the sorting office...


Saturday 29 May 2010

Boulter's Tor

Hallo. Words have been coagulating into something... have been thinking about the nature of time quite a lot (there's, at the very least, a noticeable Heidegger reference in there)... combine that with my usual tendency for schmaltz and I've tried to throw together some lyrics. I'm aware they are cheesy, so if anyone is reading this, constructive criticism would genuinely be appreciated.


We spend our nights on Boulter's Tor
Reaching in the dark
Searching for a way to move
Beyond a broken heart
Soft words there to reconcile
Our fears and our desires
We see a world ahead of us
Where everything moves slow
We all walk alone

Memory and expectation
We watch them fall apart
God only knows how lost I am
In that photograph
These seconds will stay with me
An effigy of you
I don't want to hurt you
But you made me promise to
Where did our summer go?

We write down everything
We're lying to ourselves
We got tired of happy endings
We got bored of romance
They say that care is commitment
But no-one says to what
It's time now for change
But no-one says to what
Wrap up, wrap up

I'll carry this weight
Every girl I never kissed
Every word unspoken
Every chance I missed
Every promise that I've broken
Every day we let slip by
Every little thing I am
Until my dying day
With a smile upon my face

Come sit with me, my sister
Upon Boulter's Tor
The world's a smaller place
Time passes quicker now
I can't wait to see the light
The light that blinded you
No time left for tragedy
No time left for fate
We just walk

Thursday 27 May 2010

Fragment...

A dream that seemed so real, like they always do
Never wake me up, if there's a chance that this is true

Monday 24 May 2010

Moustache Heroes




I'll make another proper post at some point, I'm just determined that this blog won't become a dumping spot for my every little whine and niggle.

In the meantime...

"Moustache Heroes No. 29:

RAF Flight Lieutenant Chris Ball sports a handlebar moustache as popularised by generations of British airmen. In 2008 he was posted to a United States Air Force squadron in Afghanistan who promptly told him to trim his splendid plumage. Ft Lt Ball refused, insisting that his tache, which measured six inches from tip to tip, was within Queen's Regulations. After a check of the rule book and a 'frank exchange of views' his lip appendage was left firmly intact. An MOD spokesman said; 'Local commanding officers should not issue instructions to officers which cannot be fulfilled by reasons of difference in dress regulations.' 'Attire, facial hair and discipline would always follow RAF rules.' Quite right too."


Bizarre, as far as chewing gum goes, if nothing else.


It seems I have failed to guard against this blog becoming a depository for passing whimsy. Never mind.



Reaching out...

It's important to try and connect with others, so I thought I'd send the good people at Unilvever some helpful feedback regarding their well known butter substitute...


Dear sir/madam,

Although your product is a perfectly servicable form of bread paste, I regret to inform you that, if anything, it has made me even more credulous towards negative dairy-based claims; I no longer believe either that the moon is made of cheese or that consuming yoghurt in vast quantities will give me superhuman powers. However, fret not! This simply means that my yoghurt expenses have been dramatically reduced.

Yours sincerely.

David Bumbershock


So far they haven't replied... I just wanted to be friends.

Wednesday 19 May 2010

Cosmic Resonance

I am abusing the term "cosmic resonance" here.

For the sake of my ramblings, cosmic resonance does not imply the idea that two apparently unrelated events can effect one another (my dancing in my room is unlikely to cause a car crash unless I happen to have left the curtains open and the driver loses sight of the road). Instead, I only wish to take from this idea that of connectivity; how we are very much part of the world, and the spiritual resonance this causes.

Not exactly a new thought, I know, but I'm intent to throw in my two pence.

For a long time now I have been struck by the surreality of housepets. We habitually surround ourselves with the artificial. We live in houses largely fabricated out of man-made materials and designed with lots of straight lines and flat surfaces. Very practical, if nothing else. And yet we seem strangely determined to have living things in these spaces. The odd pot plant doesn't really strike me as strange. They have a pot; we have designated a space for them. Even goldfish or whatnot, anything which has been allocated an area in which is belongs, fails to strike me as particularly noteworthy. Primarily it is cats and dogs which leave me feeling a little confused. They just wander about the place as if it were normal. The vegetative equivalent would presumably be to have ivy growing up the walls of your living room, which I'm sure would cause comment among company. There is just something about watching an animal move which fascinates me. These are living breathing creatures, treating our fold out sofa beds as if they were a fallen tree. Don't get me wrong, I like cats and dogs. If I thought I could be trusted with their care, I would probably surround myself with them (as it stands I think I'm just going to let ivy start growing in my bedroom). My point is that there is something incongruous about the situation. We seem determined to live in a space clearly demarcated from the natural world, but equally feel the need to surround ourselves with life in some form or another.

Lately this feeling has been penetrating my life on a wider scale. Birds in particular will fascinate me. They are so perfectly engineered. Let's face it, if you're going to fly you better be pretty sure that all the parts are going to work properly. Except that, of course, they aren't engineered at all. They just are; the product of evolutionary forces and the inexorable passage of time.

What fascinates me here is the apparent contrast between the natural and the artificial. Given pretty much anything artificial, we can point at it and at least offer an explanation. This house; to keep us warm and dry. The bus I can hear passing by; to get people from A to B. The electric iron I can see out of the corner of my eye; well, I struggle with that one slightly but I at least understand that some people feel the need to look neat from time to time, even if I don't understand quite why. The products of artifice.

(Perhaps not everything we create falls under this category. Art and music generally seem to lack any well defined purpose. We create these because we have to. Because we have no choice. In this sense it is possible that art has, in a vague sense, something like life.)

The natural, on the other hand, is more difficult. Of course, we can offer explanations as to how things have come to be (it is raining because the heat of the sun causes water to evaporate, whereupon it condenses in the atmosphere and, after the droplets of water vapour become too heavy, precipitation ensues). But we can't speak of these things purposively. They just are. Imagine a conversation;

Dreamer: Hey there human couple!
Couple: Hello!
Dreamer: Why do you have that tiny person with you?
Couple: The tiny person is our child!
Dreamer: Why do you have a child?
Couple: Well, we felt that we had reached that point in our relationship, that we had a lot of love to offer a child and that being parents would be an emotionally enriching experience.
Dreamer: So the purpose of the child is to provide you with a sense of enrichment and to give you something to love?
Couple: Well, not exactly... Ummm...

Ok, so dialogue isn't my strong point. The point is that it doesn't make sense to ask what the purpose of a child is. It isn't a category which can be applied to living creatures. Or to the world in general. To a certain extent this is something that we have lost sight of; the human species does not feel connected to the world. People identify more with the artificial environments in which they reside, decked out as they are with posters of film stars and fast moving vehicles, than they do with the world they are part of. Nature enters into our consciousness primarily in terms of the phrase "natural resources" or as a place to visit and gawp at. It is something to be manipulated; either in terms of stripping it bare and utilising it or in terms of demarcating it as an area separate from the human.

It is perhaps because of this that the experience of cosmic resonance can, paradoxically, be quite alienating. You find yourself in awe at the world, at once so massive and so miniscule, and that you are part of this... and that the world is part of everything (there is perhaps a limit to the amount that the human mind can process without shutting down in self defense, so I recommend contemplation of the latter only be undertaken under a starry night sky with a bottle of red wine to hand). But you also, perhaps, find yourself alienated from the human and the artificial (What is this city doing here? And you! You with the Metallica t-shirt! Don't you realise that we are all manifestations of qi?)

But I occasionally think that this is missing the point somewhat. I am focussing on the artificial rather than the artificers. The reason the natural world, birds and all, fascinate me so is their unfathomability. Of course, it could be that, faced with this, you posit some higher power. But I can't go for this. I'm an anti-transcendentalist. I just don't see how you can justify belief in the traditional conception of God (God the artisan). Without getting bogged down in theology, the argument largely seems to boil down to the idea that nothing would make sense without God. But then, say I, maybe things just don't make sense. I'm not sure who it was that told you that they would.

This, of course, leads to another issue. If nothing in this world makes sense, then perhaps we should just give up on it. Perhaps all there is to this world is suffering and illusion, and what we should, therefore, really be doing is trying to limit this. See through the madness. Stop the pain and the yearning. There is definitely something noble about this, and I admire anyone who approaches the world in this way. But it isn't for me. Y'see, contrary to popular belief, I actually quite like being alive. I love the sensation of being out in the coutryside, barefoot in the grass. I love when I realise that I'm arguing with someone about something we agree on. I love having a jazz cigarette and singing to myself at two o'clock in the morning. Admittedly, the more lenient of Buddhist would probably argue that none of this is necessarily forbidden by the Middle Way, but, all the same, I don't think it is for me.

The beauty of the pointlessness of everything is that it keeps on going. By some strange chance of chemistry life exists. It isn't getting anywhere. There was no "grand plan" to which it is progressing. It just is. Being is all. And the idea of not being terrifies us to our core. Pretty much every living thing is simply striving to perpetuate. We run from danger and fuck quite a lot. So do the birds (well, mostly they fly). Admittedly, there are cases when an animal will sacrifice itself, but usually this is to protect its young or its fellows. Humans do this too sometimes. Sadly, humans do seem to self-destruct more often than other animals, but I think there is a reason for this. Or reasons, anyway.

In philosophy, this absence of meaning is often called the Absurd. To be more exact, the Absurd describes the gap between the lack of meaning in the world and our expectation and need for meaning. It is in the face of the Absurd that humanity destroys itself. On the individual level, it can be too much to bear for some people. On the collective level, we deify. We create values and then place them beyond ourselves. God is worth killing for, by this logic. So are any number of things. I'm sure you see where this is going. Of course, things aren't simple. There will always be conflict. And maybe some things are worth dying for. But it feels to me as if human life is often cheapened in the name of ideas, when presumably the purpose of these ideas in the first place was to give human life meaning. It is fair to say that this does not always sit easily with me.

But despite this, there is staggering beauty to be found in our Sisyphean struggle. I think this struggle finds its purest expression in the natural world. Life, without feeling any need to try and justify itself, just keeps on going, despite everything. And we needn't limit this to just the organic. It is very possible to picture the entire world as being, in a certain sense, alive. The universe is massive and uncaring and, ultimately, is tending towards entropy. But still, life goes on. If life had any particular purpose, it surely would have given up long ago. Perhaps this is simply a product of hippyish sentiment, but I like this.

I am an Absurdist. It isn't at all a tenable philosophical position, but then I'm not really a tenable philosopher. Albert Camus, the father of Absurdism, writes that giving up is conceding to the Absurd. Rather than do this, we should rebel. If the universe fails to provide us with meaning, then the only thing we can do is keep on going and find happiness in that. Doing this involves creating all of our own values, and taking joy in what we can. This is, it should be noted, distinct from the deification of human values and ideas because one should never lose sight of the Absurd, and therefore never let our values transcend us, as when they do someone is going to get hurt. They will either crush us when they collapse under the weight of expectation, or they will lead us to hurt those who think our ideas aren't all they are cracked up to be. So, instead, the most noble thing we can do is carry on, constantly keeping the Absurd with us, but never giving in.

Ok, so life in general doesn't really do this. It implies a sense of self-awareness that, as far as I know, nobody has suggested is part of Gaia theory. But then we rarely have this either. Which is kind of the point. Every time I feel at one with the world and this struggle that it is almost entirely unaware of, I am also identifying with mankind and all of it's artificialities. Everything we do is an expression of this same desire to survive, and not just to survive in the moment but to survive ourselves. We want to have a family, we want to provide for that family, we want to achieve great things... we want to leave our mark. We don't know why we're doing all this, and we'll almost never acknowledge that it is because we're scared there is nothing for us to believe in beyond ourselves. So we create. We surround ourselves with meaning. Even that fucking electric iron is an expression, however distantly, of the idea that there is a right way to live, that there is something bigger than ourselves that we are buying in to.

And isn't this fantastic? We're all buzzing around posting letters, buying second hand cars and attending political summits for exactly the same reasons as the world and everything in it does everything that it does; to hold of the yawning emptiness of the void. It is beautiful, even if we don't realise it and I feel strangely peaceful to be part of it.

And this is why people keep housepets.