Friday, July 01, 2005
Pimp my hide
I do wish the universe wouldn't insist on being so anal about maintaining its balance. Whenever I go away and have a modicum of a good time, I have to come back to financial panic and miscellaneous doldrums and shite. I nearly came back to a very wet digital camera, also, as the postie left it next to the porch with no card so it wasn't discovered for some days. The box got rained on but fortunately not the hardware itself. Grrr. And I had to get the back door reglazed today after some entertaining shattering antics last night. I am a walking blancmange of burned-out whatever.
But! Glastonbury was great, pole-dancing was great, London was great, writing about Glastonbury was great, eating strawberries is great.
Glastonbury was very muddy. I was weary. I didn't get to see much but then it was nice to just blither about, rather than race from main stage to second main stage with notebook in hand. Did a good deal of wandering and taking-in, drinking green tea and hot chocolate with brandy in, trying not to spend money and failing. Saw Coldplay, leaked with awe and nostalgia and something else of whose substance I'm not sure. Saw The Bravery, shrieked with joy and glee. I almost care enough about them to start pointing out noisily to industry people why they're wrong about them. But they can just be mine. Mine! Saw Rufus, sang 'Hallelujah' very softly along with however many thousand others. I was glad that my worst thoughts of a hellish weekend didn't materialise - lying in my tent at 6am on Friday as an enormous thunderstorm raged outside (and only just outside, it was coming in and trickling down the sides after a while), I had this great sense of dread and gloom. It doesn't take much for me to start yanking back the curtains and saying "aha! the lair of Beelzebub is where we really reside, each of us alone and scweeeming and oh look, another new level of nameless horror slobbering all over our poor dumb faces, aaaaaaaaaaa" etc.
There's so much more to say about that - about the festival, not the silly dread stuff, although it was all-encompassing for an hour or so and took another day to recover from, wilty wilty forehead-clutchy consumptive-romantic-heroine-swoony - but I'm almost asleep. Don't know why.
Pole-dancing was heartening and bruising. Thanks to Kaine-walking muscles I could hoist myself up the thing with little difficulty (hoiyar!), but thanks to inherent defensiveness/fear of relinquishing control yawn snore predictable I didn't succeed in pulling off any graceful circling moves. I just made squeaky noises against the blazing hot pole and hurt my legs slightly. But I could fancy another go. It was inspiring watching the others do their performances - ordinary women transformed, in all honesty, into steamingly rude showgirls. Just for each other. Rather made me realise how reliant I am on male attention and how I could do with. . .reconnecting with girls. I've had the usual typical problems with them, and have probably used iffy individuals as indicators of the general character of the whole gender more with them than I have with men. I've uttered the odd sweeping generalisation about men but have taken all of them on their own merits, I think, which I'm not sure I can say about women. I've always been wary of them, and held up the nice ones as exceptions rather than considering the venomous bitches the odd ones out, the problems. And should probably stop. I've met and spent time with some really brilliant avatars of the gender lately. Without getting all connected-to-the-earth misty-eyed about it, women have such depth and strength of character and innate power and spending more time being with them and of them seems like a good idea. It's not necessary to suddenly get a library of literature and start talking out of your arse and alienating people. It's more a matter of relaxing into what you are.
Yes.
Business is miserable. Each time I get another enquiry saying "ooh I'd like to do your job, can you help?" (two today - two!) I want to throw something. I sent a mildly rude reply to one which was itself pretty brusque and presumptious, telling them to set up their own website and brace themselves for the flood of enquiries from people who probably couldn't do the job but assume they could and want you to tell them how. And added a couple of useful links, just to ensure that I only get a prod from the devil's hoe and not the full pitchfork treatment. Fuckers, though, really. Debating whether to return the camera or not. I know it will make me happy but it was expensive and it will sit there accusingly the next time I gasp at a bill. It's still sitting in its box. The packing it came in is still there too, dithering, amongst the tiny slivers of glass that keep on twinkling even after I think I've swept them all up.
There was some particularly treacherous mud around the Pyramid stage that you could get seriously and genuinely stuck in. Crowds diverted around the worst patches almost instinctively (crowd behaviour is fucking fascinating). I found that rather than try and pick your way gingerly across, getting into slightly scary trouble in the process and having to stop and pull hard to get leg back, then trying an even gingerly-er gait and making it worse, lateral thinking and speed worked. I ran across it in big strides and the momentum meant I never got stuck. No one else seemed to think of it. I zipped between big stumbling hordes of people. It was like, the freakin' Matrix or something, dude. I knew something they didn't, and did something they didn't, which is always exhilarating in a childish sort of way.
There's a Lesson in there. Yes! But my lethargy and my horror of hackneyed psychological-analogy hokie-dokieness prevents me from extrapolating it at this time.
Saw and enjoyed 'Batman Begins' the other night. Terrible, crapulous local cinema with christawful sound and less charm than it thinks it has meant that most of the portentous mutterings of Liam Neeson and the eminently chew-on-able Christian Bale didn't get through. But lush visuals, of course, and Large themes. Batman was always my favourite, and I'm still a bit enraptured by the idea whereas the others leave me more or less cold. All those garish colours and wimpy struggles with the state of being Different. Being from another planet or conveniently bitten by a nuclear spider is all very well, but it pales beside all this gorgeousness - traumatic childhood events, Gothic mansion and faithful retainer, city at height of decadence, seven years' ninja training in Nepal or somefuckingwhere, maniacal desire to clean house, fear of self, nature of vengeance, duality, isolation - look how sexy and deep and perfect and enduring, and get thee hence with your outside-underpants. This may be part of my trouble - too much of the delicious dark stuff, what with that and Coldplay, it seems to stretch my mind and imagination in a specific way that tires it and makes it mourn for something intangible. Gah. Gah, I say unto you. The further I get from childhood though, the more I need that particular thing. Dark/uplifting thing.
I spotted Tim Booth of James in the film and was inordinately pleased. He was my first famous person under whose nose I stuck a dictaphone, Blackpool's Tower Ballroom in 1999. He was very sweet and personable and whisperingly charismatic. A proper pop star. I was charmed and awed. I was in one of the grotty backstage corridors afterwards and I had my tape and my notebook full of scribble from the gig and I realised what was going on, and had a little leak to myself. It was lovely. I spent so much time in the first year or so of writing for the First Mag trying to inhabit the moment, trying to pin down this idea that I was doing amazing enviable things and meeting all these extraordinary people, and mingling with people who thought it was all entirely ordinary and usual, that I blew some sort of a fuse and ended up in some numb state of unreality. If I hadn't tried so hard to hang onto it all, I would have enjoyed it more. You can't wrap experience in plastic while you're having it. It only works when you do it later, get the essential second half of experience by making a memory of it - if you try and have the memory at the same time, to try and fix it to yourself, then it overwrites what's happening.
The only way to do it is to take pills. Probably why I like them. You can cheat. It separates everything into layers that you can enjoy all at once rather than having to go through them in the proper chronological order. You can hear every element of a piece of music at once and concentrate on it fully, rather than having to zone in on the bassline and then out again to the vocals. Same goes for whatever you're doing, you can have it all at once and not chastise yourself for trying to remember it as it's happening. The delay no longer applies. It's great.
I did none of this at Glastonbury. Blast. But at least I didn't get all scrambled and fall over and cry or anything.
P next door is going up to Edinburgh to blow bubbles for world peace. I'm feeding the cat, and probably the sauna.
I missed The Boyfriends, y'know. And I missed being a music journalist a little bit. I might see if I can re-dabble without losing all sense of what is sweet and pure. Not for NME, though. I looked at the site today and my intellect vomited repeatedly until it had to lie down and take fluids.
But! Glastonbury was great, pole-dancing was great, London was great, writing about Glastonbury was great, eating strawberries is great.
Glastonbury was very muddy. I was weary. I didn't get to see much but then it was nice to just blither about, rather than race from main stage to second main stage with notebook in hand. Did a good deal of wandering and taking-in, drinking green tea and hot chocolate with brandy in, trying not to spend money and failing. Saw Coldplay, leaked with awe and nostalgia and something else of whose substance I'm not sure. Saw The Bravery, shrieked with joy and glee. I almost care enough about them to start pointing out noisily to industry people why they're wrong about them. But they can just be mine. Mine! Saw Rufus, sang 'Hallelujah' very softly along with however many thousand others. I was glad that my worst thoughts of a hellish weekend didn't materialise - lying in my tent at 6am on Friday as an enormous thunderstorm raged outside (and only just outside, it was coming in and trickling down the sides after a while), I had this great sense of dread and gloom. It doesn't take much for me to start yanking back the curtains and saying "aha! the lair of Beelzebub is where we really reside, each of us alone and scweeeming and oh look, another new level of nameless horror slobbering all over our poor dumb faces, aaaaaaaaaaa" etc.
There's so much more to say about that - about the festival, not the silly dread stuff, although it was all-encompassing for an hour or so and took another day to recover from, wilty wilty forehead-clutchy consumptive-romantic-heroine-swoony - but I'm almost asleep. Don't know why.
Pole-dancing was heartening and bruising. Thanks to Kaine-walking muscles I could hoist myself up the thing with little difficulty (hoiyar!), but thanks to inherent defensiveness/fear of relinquishing control yawn snore predictable I didn't succeed in pulling off any graceful circling moves. I just made squeaky noises against the blazing hot pole and hurt my legs slightly. But I could fancy another go. It was inspiring watching the others do their performances - ordinary women transformed, in all honesty, into steamingly rude showgirls. Just for each other. Rather made me realise how reliant I am on male attention and how I could do with. . .reconnecting with girls. I've had the usual typical problems with them, and have probably used iffy individuals as indicators of the general character of the whole gender more with them than I have with men. I've uttered the odd sweeping generalisation about men but have taken all of them on their own merits, I think, which I'm not sure I can say about women. I've always been wary of them, and held up the nice ones as exceptions rather than considering the venomous bitches the odd ones out, the problems. And should probably stop. I've met and spent time with some really brilliant avatars of the gender lately. Without getting all connected-to-the-earth misty-eyed about it, women have such depth and strength of character and innate power and spending more time being with them and of them seems like a good idea. It's not necessary to suddenly get a library of literature and start talking out of your arse and alienating people. It's more a matter of relaxing into what you are.
Yes.
Business is miserable. Each time I get another enquiry saying "ooh I'd like to do your job, can you help?" (two today - two!) I want to throw something. I sent a mildly rude reply to one which was itself pretty brusque and presumptious, telling them to set up their own website and brace themselves for the flood of enquiries from people who probably couldn't do the job but assume they could and want you to tell them how. And added a couple of useful links, just to ensure that I only get a prod from the devil's hoe and not the full pitchfork treatment. Fuckers, though, really. Debating whether to return the camera or not. I know it will make me happy but it was expensive and it will sit there accusingly the next time I gasp at a bill. It's still sitting in its box. The packing it came in is still there too, dithering, amongst the tiny slivers of glass that keep on twinkling even after I think I've swept them all up.
There was some particularly treacherous mud around the Pyramid stage that you could get seriously and genuinely stuck in. Crowds diverted around the worst patches almost instinctively (crowd behaviour is fucking fascinating). I found that rather than try and pick your way gingerly across, getting into slightly scary trouble in the process and having to stop and pull hard to get leg back, then trying an even gingerly-er gait and making it worse, lateral thinking and speed worked. I ran across it in big strides and the momentum meant I never got stuck. No one else seemed to think of it. I zipped between big stumbling hordes of people. It was like, the freakin' Matrix or something, dude. I knew something they didn't, and did something they didn't, which is always exhilarating in a childish sort of way.
There's a Lesson in there. Yes! But my lethargy and my horror of hackneyed psychological-analogy hokie-dokieness prevents me from extrapolating it at this time.
Saw and enjoyed 'Batman Begins' the other night. Terrible, crapulous local cinema with christawful sound and less charm than it thinks it has meant that most of the portentous mutterings of Liam Neeson and the eminently chew-on-able Christian Bale didn't get through. But lush visuals, of course, and Large themes. Batman was always my favourite, and I'm still a bit enraptured by the idea whereas the others leave me more or less cold. All those garish colours and wimpy struggles with the state of being Different. Being from another planet or conveniently bitten by a nuclear spider is all very well, but it pales beside all this gorgeousness - traumatic childhood events, Gothic mansion and faithful retainer, city at height of decadence, seven years' ninja training in Nepal or somefuckingwhere, maniacal desire to clean house, fear of self, nature of vengeance, duality, isolation - look how sexy and deep and perfect and enduring, and get thee hence with your outside-underpants. This may be part of my trouble - too much of the delicious dark stuff, what with that and Coldplay, it seems to stretch my mind and imagination in a specific way that tires it and makes it mourn for something intangible. Gah. Gah, I say unto you. The further I get from childhood though, the more I need that particular thing. Dark/uplifting thing.
I spotted Tim Booth of James in the film and was inordinately pleased. He was my first famous person under whose nose I stuck a dictaphone, Blackpool's Tower Ballroom in 1999. He was very sweet and personable and whisperingly charismatic. A proper pop star. I was charmed and awed. I was in one of the grotty backstage corridors afterwards and I had my tape and my notebook full of scribble from the gig and I realised what was going on, and had a little leak to myself. It was lovely. I spent so much time in the first year or so of writing for the First Mag trying to inhabit the moment, trying to pin down this idea that I was doing amazing enviable things and meeting all these extraordinary people, and mingling with people who thought it was all entirely ordinary and usual, that I blew some sort of a fuse and ended up in some numb state of unreality. If I hadn't tried so hard to hang onto it all, I would have enjoyed it more. You can't wrap experience in plastic while you're having it. It only works when you do it later, get the essential second half of experience by making a memory of it - if you try and have the memory at the same time, to try and fix it to yourself, then it overwrites what's happening.
The only way to do it is to take pills. Probably why I like them. You can cheat. It separates everything into layers that you can enjoy all at once rather than having to go through them in the proper chronological order. You can hear every element of a piece of music at once and concentrate on it fully, rather than having to zone in on the bassline and then out again to the vocals. Same goes for whatever you're doing, you can have it all at once and not chastise yourself for trying to remember it as it's happening. The delay no longer applies. It's great.
I did none of this at Glastonbury. Blast. But at least I didn't get all scrambled and fall over and cry or anything.
P next door is going up to Edinburgh to blow bubbles for world peace. I'm feeding the cat, and probably the sauna.
I missed The Boyfriends, y'know. And I missed being a music journalist a little bit. I might see if I can re-dabble without losing all sense of what is sweet and pure. Not for NME, though. I looked at the site today and my intellect vomited repeatedly until it had to lie down and take fluids.
