All crunch and no credit

At the supermarket yesterday I decided to be a little more economical given just how much prices are rising. I was planning on making a chilli con carne, and I bought a lower-priced brand of minced beef - perhaps £1.60 lower than the stuff I normally get.

It didn't taste bad at all, but there were far too many gnarly bits of gristle in there (which reminded me why I always bought the more expensive stuff in the first place), and I had to pick one bit out which got stuck between my teeth. Later I realised that this particularly vindictive piece of gristle had managed to bring half of one of my fillings out with it as well.

So for a saving of less than two quid, I'm faced with possibly 10 or 20 (if not more) times that amount on dental work.

Bugger.



*Update Tuesday 26th Aug: tonight I will be having cheese and tomato sandwiches with houmous. More news as it happens.

Interval (the musical kind)

I'm a wreck, thanks to a piece of music:

Requiem For Dying Mothers, Pt 2, by Stars of the Lid.

Since I got back from Edinburgh, I've listened to it often - whether through the pc speakers, or on what might be termed my internal walkman, when I've been out and about.

It's a lush, majestic piece: I'll surely do it an injustice by trying to describe it in terms of form (you'll note also that I don't read music, otherwise I'd do a far better job technically in the following description) but, broadly speaking, it comprises of drones, loops, ambient washes of sound, reverb, and a gorgeous string section.

It also makes use of repetition.

But what really gets to me are the chord changes. It starts in C, centred around a simple but beautiful tonal phrase, which then liquidly changes to a G chord. This repeats a few times at a slow and stately pace over a rich palette of sonic layering and texture.

After perhaps the fourth repetition it morphs from C to B flat, with a slight change also in the tonal phrase: this too repeats for maybe four times. It's all held together delicately but beautifully by the various drones bleeding into one another as the whole piece unfolds.

And how it unfolds after this point.

Because after this last particular B flat, it does something simple and astonishing. It goes up to E flat - at the same stately pace - and then through a progression to B flat, F, and back to C. It then repeats this progression over and over, weaving textures in and out, before the string section comes in and takes the same progression through to the end of the piece, totalling 7 and a half minutes.

But the effect of that change from B flat to E flat the first time round: real lump-in-the-throat stuff. I still cannot get over how a sequence of chords and notes in a certain order can just cut right through to something in oneself that brings out such feeling.

In terms of how to describe the overall effect, I'm struck by the kind of bipolarity it leaves me conjuring with:

It's delicate and subtle, yet heavy and monolithic;

It's beautiful and bright, yet bleak and intense;

It's wordless, and speaks volumes to me.

But more than anything, there's that one, devastating moment.





*Update: as found by nmj, here's a link to the piece in question. There's some extra stuff at the end, but the actual track ends around the 7 mins 30 mark.

Postcard

Journeys by blog/ The last post ever

Well let me clear something up before we ("we?" Who's this "we" exactly?) get any further: the bit about "the last post ever" is bollocks. Complete and utter shite. I just wanted to inject a bit of pointless drama into the proceedings early on.

In a way though it does illustrate a point. I think. One reason I took a break from writing blog posts was that in some ways it all felt like using a lot of different words which could be summed up as elaborate ways of writing "me, me, ME!"

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing in itself: it's in there amongst the reasons I actually started blogging in the first place - it was just that I stopped finding ways of writing "me, me, ME!", or at least, I stopped finding it interesting. So what does that have to do with including a stupidly melodramatic and mendacious line in the title? Well it just feels like another way of saying "me, me, ME!" but in a much more barefaced kind of way, and hence signalling a return to writing posts.

Hmm, not the most catchy way of resuming my blog activity is it?

The other thing is, I think it's only accurate to say that I was taking a break from writing posts. That break has done me good, but I realise that quite a lot of my activity during said break has been blog-related in some way. One such example was a good chat and Sunday lunch in rather genial company some weeks ago: a more than pleasant couple of hours spent in a pub out of town with good food and a couple of pints of Landlord.

Then recently I went to a blog party with an equally genial host and lovely guests. This too was a civilized affair, and was memorable not just for the food, fine wine and conversation, but for the incredible sound of torrential rain against the glass roof of the conservatory.

The thing about it is that I still find there to be an inescapable sense of weirdness (not in a bad way) about meeting up with people who I've previously - or primarily - known online. I'm not talking about it here in terms of the potential risks there might be - but just from the sense that meeting people who I only know through blogging is still something very novel, and...well, weird.

Put it this way, if two years ago you (whoever "you" are) suggested to me that I'd be heading up to Edinburgh for a couple of days on my own, and one of the focal points of that visit was to attend the book launch of someone I'd only communicated with online, I would have politely suggested that you were talking bollocks. Or I might have just said, no, you're talking bollocks. I wouldn't do such seemingly random stuff.

But then it's only just under two years ago that I had a conversation online with someone (no links to post here because the relevant blogs are now defunct) who happened to be in Berlin for a few days, a couple of weeks before I was due to head there myself. The result of that conversation was that the someone in question agreed to set me a challenge: she posted a photograph of a small piece of public art which I had to find and photograph for myself.

It's perhaps telling that I expected this challenge to be no more than an intriguing aside to my stay in Berlin: in the end, due to a number of factors, it ended up being tightly woven, if not utterly integral, to the whole fabric of my first stay there. It also seemed to carry a lot of meaning for me, amplified by the sense of headspace that you get (whoever "you" are, etc) when you're away from familiar sights, sounds, patterns of thought and so on.

I hope that this serves, though, to illustrate the weirdness that I'm talking about - the fact that I could spend so much of my time engaged in something which arose from a chance conversation with someone I only knew through words on a screen.

But really, therein lay the appeal. I may yet edit and post my writings about that whole experience, though I'll first have the courtesy to get the okay from the person in question.

Such was on my mind though as I headed up to Edinburgh earlier in the week. I wasn't going solely for nmj's book launch - but that served as the catalyst for me travelling up there in the first place and also giving me the chance of doing a few other things I wanted to do.

So I've had a couple of days with some much-needed headspace and the chance to explore somewhere new (but somewhere I've long since wanted to visit). With the main focal point, in terms of social activity, being an evening with people I've never met before - but some of whom I've had varying degrees of contact with online. The aforementioned blog connections.

As I noted either to bobo or maybe to nmj herself (or probably both and everyone else in the room besides, since I found myself chatting away like I was on commission, and also said hello to hullabaloo, though I can't seem to link to her), it's like a kind of celebrity status: you might recognise faces, you have a certain amount of prior knowledge, perhaps some sense of expectation.

The difference is that these same people are likely to know a certain amount about yourself too, and there results a delightful mix of familiarity and sheer newness: talking over territory you (whoever "you"...etc) may have covered many times - but now with the addition of tone of voice, gestures, eye contact and so on. I realise that's quite an obvious point, but the fact of it can still be just a little startling. Which again serves to emphasise that quite delicious weirdness.

So I've been away in terms of writing my own posts: but I've had a hell of a lot of overlap between Real Life and Blogging.

The other thing which has to be said about each time that I've experienced this overlap so far (most definitely including the previous examples above), is that it's been a fantastic, enjoyable, positive experience.

Last night's book launch was no exception. I was happy to have been asked by nmj to take some photographs at the launch - it was nice to have a bit of a role (perhaps analogous, albeit distantly, to having a challenge set for me as mentioned earlier), which might also serve perhaps as a barrier in case my social skills (of which I have plenty) decided to desert me (which happens aplenty).

But it was great, and I'm glad that it went so well for nmj. She displayed great wit, personality, eloquence and energy as she talked about the book and then gave a reading. (I use the word "energy" whilst being aware that crippling exhaustion is something that those who have ME have to face so much of the time.) It was also great fun: a relaxed and informal atmosphere, good people to meet and talk to, and wine there for the drinking. I haven't read her book yet - haven't had the chance to start it - but I'm looking forward to it.

Time flew. I'm back home already, full of good memories of the launch and the rest of my stay, and these reflections on that intriguing oddness of the overlap between real life and blogging.

I realise too that I'm rambling: I'll stop now.

I hope that this final comment won't detract from or diminish the value and the enjoyment of the interactions mentioned above, since they've been very much shared experiences and, in nmj's case the evening was, as it should be, all about her.

But I have to say, it does seem as though I've found some new ways to say "me, me, ME!"

The trouser Press runs out of steam

Well no, not completely, but I couldn't pass up on another opportunity for such a bad pun.

However, I'm finding that much of my energies are having to be focussed elsewhere at the moment, and the prospect of writing blog posts at the present time is starting to feel like a bit of a chore.

Which clearly signals to me that it's time for a break (though not necessarily from commenting on other blogs), until the old batteries have been recharged and I'm ready to resume with more shining wit, dodgy spoonerisms, breathtaking profundity, or (more likely) absurd irrelevances.










Thanks all, and see you later!

Aftermath

It's been a long, long time since I was heading into work feeling as spaced out and sleep-deprived, and downright vulnerable as I did this morning. Almost a reminder of the bad old days.

Still, it was a worthwhile price to pay for a wonderful few days in which I made some new friends, renewed some old acquaintances and strengthened some existing ones: all within a framework of hard - and sometimes fraught - work, not to mention a bewildering array of fantastic music.

I took this photograph at 1.30 am this morning, an hour after closedown. It was a last tour of all the different parts of the site just to check if anything else needed attending to. I wandered into this space and, for a few short moments, allowed myself to be enveloped by such a powerful sense of stillness and silence. It was simultaneously eerie and soothing.

I'm often not sure whether one loses or finds oneself at such times...perhaps a bit of both.

Quite a stark (but lovely) contrast to the frequently astonishing musical mayhem of the last 60 or so hours. Not to mention volume - often so dense as to be a physical barrier. The absence of such in the space in the photograph, was almost shocking.

Now, this evening at home, there's silence and solitude: it's much-needed, but somehow I've gotten very quickly used to the intensity of hundreds and hundreds of people milling around, and also of working within what very quickly became a very close-knit team of good people.

It was a blast.

No rest

I'm going to be pretty quiet on here for a few days at least: I've had a hectic couple of weeks anyway - though largely in a good way - hence the relative quietness of late.

It'll be interesting to see what state I'm in early next week though. Come Sunday night I'll be doing the last of what promises to be lots of heavy lifting and carrying, possibly til 1 or 2 in the morning. This will be at the close of the music festival I'll be helping out at over the whole weekend (on top of preparatory work tonight and last night also - I've just got home).

Lots of labouring and effort and merely following the instructions of others, which has its own appeal: in contrast to my main job, it's refreshing to do some hard physical work which has a clear beginning, middle and end, and which doesn't exactly require much from me in the way of decision-making and intellect. The other payoff is that I get to see a rather huge amount of weird and wonderful music for free and to mix with some good people.

I'm looking forward to it.

But, Monday morning I'll be shattered: and Monday afternoon I'll be running the art class on my own for the first time, which has the potential to be rather hectic (it's been going well so far though, thankfully). Monday evening, I'll probably collapse in a heap.

In the meantime, hope everyone has a good weekend!