Neverwhere

I re-read Neverwhere, after chatting to Luke, who was reading it for the first time. I love this book quite madly, probably due to the combination of loving Neil Gaiman and loving London madly as well.

I love the way the hugely different worlds of London Above and London Below overlap, yet don’t quite merge, at stations of the London Underground. The Gap is a ravenous predatorial pouncing fog if you’re from London Below, as opposed to the minor hazard we’re told to Mind by a disembodied voice that’s become background noise to most of us. If you get off at British Museum (long-closed to London Above), ads for moustache wax and two shilling seaside holidays are still plastered on the walls.

There’s something about London, and the London Neil Gaiman presents in Neverwhere, that makes it almost easy to believe that in London Below there are black friars at Blackfriars, an actual angel in Islington, shepherds in Shepherd’s Bush who you should hope you never have to meet, Coke and chocolates from platform vending machines are served if you are a guest at Earl’s Court, and you have to get to the floating market at Harrod’s (the previous one was in Big Ben – it floats from place to place) by crossing Night’s Bridge.

One Day, Fourteen CDs

I held out as long as I could. I really did. But I had to leave the house at some point, and Music Warehouse was (kind of) on the way to the optician’s, and Gramophone was (kind of) on the way back. Okay, so maybe they involved little detours, but they were on the same bus route.

Well, er, these are all new:

  • Work 1989-2002 (Orbital, S$18.99)
  • The Private Press (DJ Shadow, S$17.99)
  • No More Shall We Part (Nick Cave, S$18.90)
  • Love And Theft (Bob Dylan, S$16.90)
  • Harvest (Neil Young, S$14.99)
  • Roseland NYC Live (Portishead, S$18.99)
  • Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (Lucinda Williams, S$15.99)
  • Murray Street (Sonic Youth, S$17.99)
  • Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Wilco, S$18.99)
  • Pet Sounds (in mono and stereo, Beach Boys, S$17.99)
  • Souljacker (eels, S$17.99)
  • Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection” (EMI Classics, Otto Klemperer conducting, S$17.99)
  • A 2 CD choral compilation (S$18.99)
  • The Mirror Conspiracy (Thievery Corporation, FREE because of Gramophone’s buy-10-get-another-free offer! So I’ve saved, really I have…)

Ohdearohdearohdearohdearohdear. Somehow my usual excuses of “It’s my only vice” and (recently) “I deserve a graduation present” aren’t really cutting it in the face of such gluttony.

Help? Please?

One More Year

I went to Germany feeling extraordinarily low; protracted showers and sleeps over a too-brief weekend hadn’t been enough to combat the accumulated dust and disorientation of moving out of my comfort zone of 2 years, and remaining rebel elements in my lungs were still mounting the occasional tubercolotic (that’s probably not even a word, but you know what I’m getting at) revolution. I felt residually gritty and somehow off-kilter, like a bad photocopy of myself.

I returned from Germany yesterday and it feels like everything has changed. I had a pretty damn fabulous holiday with my pretty damn fabulous best friend, which will hopefully be written about soonish. I found out two wonderful pieces of news – one, that I got first class honours in my degree, two, that my scholarship organization will let me take advantage of this by sponsoring me for a Masters (which means another year before they have to pull me kicking and screaming from London back to Singapore).

For the first time in a while there is certainty, and optimism that can finally be more than just cautious. It’s sunny today. I’m feeling good in my skin.

Circus Hostel, Berlin

Another very short update: am in Berlin with Russ, in a youth hostel so amazingly posh (Circus Hostel) I think I may actually emerge cleaner from the showers than when I went in. The weekend involved moving my life out of the hall I’ve lived in for 2 years – it was stressful and more than a little sad. I slept for 15 hours on Saturday night, when it was all over. And I fear that’s all I can write for now, on expensive Internet access. The cleansing showers await.

Excerpts: Writing Home (Alan Bennett)

Writing Home is one of John’s favourite books, and I’m glad he made me read it despite my complete unfamiliarity with Alan Bennett’s work. In some ways it’s an experience akin to reading the very best (I use that word loosely, and won’t bother to clarify it) blog/online diary combinations, except that you can curl up in bed with this, and it is consistently charming. Thought I’d put a few favourite entries up here before I return the book to John (with many thanks!):

1982
5 April, Yorkshire. I walk round the village at half past ten, the shadows from the barns sharp and clear under Larkin’s “strong, unhindered moon”. “This must wait”, is my foolish thought, “until I have written something that permits me to enjoy it.”

1983
20 December, New York. I am reading a book on Kafka. It is a library book, and someone has marked a passage in the margin with a long, wavering line. I pay the passage special attention without finding it particularly rewarding. As I turn the page the line moves. It is a long, dark hair.

1984
25 September. Gore Vidal is being interviewed on Start the Week along with Richard (Watership Down) Adams. Adams is asked what he thought of Vidal’s new novel about Lincoln. “I thought it was meretricious.” “Really?” says Gore. “Well, meretricious and a happy new year.” That’s the way to do it.

7 December. To a party at the Department of the History of Medicine at University College. I talk to Alan Tyson, who’s like a figure out of the eighteenth century: a genial, snuff-taking, snuff-coloured, easy-going aristocrat – Fox, perhaps, or one of the Bourbons. He is a fellow of All Souls, and when Mrs Thatcher came to the college for a scientific symposium Tyson was deputed to take her round the Common Room. This is hung with portraits and photographs of dead fellows, including some of the economist G.D.H. Cole. Tyson planned to take Mrs Thatcher up to it saying, “And this, Prime Minister, is a former fellow, G.D.H. Dole.” Whereupon, with luck, Mrs Thatcher would have had to say, “Cole, not Dole.” In the event he did take her round but lost his nerve.

1986
4 March. Read Winnie the Pooh to an audience of children at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn. Many have never been in a theatre before. I battle against the crying of babies and the shouts of toddlers and end up screaming and shouting myself hoarse. It is Winnie the Pooh as read by Dr Goebbels.

David Grubbs (The Spitz, London)

Music Industry Trends Not Yet Overexposed (A McSweeney’s list). I swear some of these already exist on the AMG.

Elsewhere in music, we went to see David Grubbs at the Spitz on Tuesday. I’d never heard any of his solo stuff before – what drew me to the gig was more the six degrees process of connection i.e. David Grubbs was in Gastr Del Sol with Jim O’Rourke who now works with Sonic Youth, who is Michelle’s favourite band. So I already knew it wasn’t going to be one of those gigs where I could stick my head up my arse for a bit and, based on my own personal knowledge of the artist, revel smugly in the indieness coursing through my veins. This is probably why I spent a large part of the “song” where sounds of a baby crying/cat wailing (not sure which it was), opera, orchestra and random blips were repeatedly and what felt like randomly pastiched together inwardly giggling at my cliched wondering of whether he was just getting his sound samples ready for the song, or whether the song had already started, or whether everything had gone horribly wrong technically and he was desperately trying to regain control. (Aside: Man, that was a convoluted sentence.)

I enjoyed the gig, though. He looked and acted like his name, which is not to say he was engorged and slimy and writhed around on the floor under a big log, but rather that he seemed overwhelmingly ordinary when he wasn’t being a brilliant guitarist, the sort of person who’d mooch unassumingly into a gig and sit stolidly two thirds of the distance away from the stage with his Bud, watch quietly and leave.

We sat at a bad angle from the stage, and I think poor Alec spent most of the gig watching a pillar playing the guitar. Every now and then the tea light at our table would wink out from a draft and we’d have to relight it. I didn’t actually observe everyone else around us that much, except for a guy with some serious beard action and an aging hipster whose reactions to the music tended to be obvious but didn’t seem put-on. For some reason, even though I was perfectly happy being in a room with lots of other people, none of whom were irritating me (this can be rare), even though I was definitely absorbed in what was a fairly remarkable performance, there was a corner of my mind where the edges of the room seemed to blur where Alec ended, where the hand that wasn’t touching him didn’t register as a part of me and the hand that did, did.

Attack Of The Clones

Attack Of The Clones on Sunday was everything you expect from a Star Wars movie – cool effects, terrible dialogue, corny jokes, shameless use of devices (retain Jar Jar so he can (a) be given away with Happy Meals and (b) propose emergency powers for the Chancellor in the absence of Queen Amidala; get Amidala’s back slashed by animal in gladiatoral arena so that later her top may magically but legitimately become ripped and midriff-baring).

Low points:

  • Hayden Christenson AKA Darth Sipid.
  • The sound of the devil laughing gleefully over Natalie Portman’s soul.

High points:

  • Yoda, who was my imaginary friend for most of my childhood. I somehow formed an attachment to him in Return Of The Jedi (the second film I ever saw in a cinema. I think the first was ET.) and probably embarrassed my family by crying my eyes out when he died. He’d already been swordfighting his way through most of my imaginary worlds for years before Attack Of The Clones, but it was still nice to see it happen on the screen, even if I do think my imagination was better at realistic computer animation than Industrial Light And Magic seem to have been with him in this movie.
  • C3PO: I’m programmed for etiquette, not destruction!

Bart Davenport/Homescience/Amazing Pilots/Ladybug Transistor (The Arts Cafe, London)

On Saturday people on the boating lake in Regent’s Park may have been pleasantly reminded of the age of imperialism by the sight of a small yellow girl rowing a tall poncily reclining white guy round the lake, although Alec had admittedly rowed me round the lake for the previous 45 minutes, and the Irish arguably have as much cause for resentment about imperialism as us yellow people do.

At night I’d decided to indulge my delusions of indieness by going to a gig at the Arts Cafe. We had a good time, but I ended up enjoying the performance of Bart Davenport (who wasn’t even advertised) most, and Ladybug Transistor (the only band I’d actually heard of) least. In between those two were Homescience (not the most cohesive or animated performers around, but their songs were mildly Pavementy so I liked them well enough) and The Amazing Pilots (who were, in contrast, incredibly cohesive, really got into their performance, and had much better rapport with the crowd, but whose songs were for the most part less interesting except for one called I Thought About It And I’ve Still Not Changed My Mind, which lived up to its rather great title).

Alec bought Bart Davenport’s CD on the strength of what he managed with just the quality of his voice, his songs, his guitar and the occasional kazoo, but it turned out to be disappointingly glossier – a bit too sunkissed and xylophoney – than what we’d been expecting from the performance. Still pleasant enough though, and well worth looking up if you like Summer Hymns or Yuji Oniki, who produced some of the CD.

There was nothing I specifically disliked about Ladybug Transistor, but there seemed to be a sameness to all aspects of their performance and their songs that didn’t capture me at all. In response to the last sentence of this review at Pitchfork, I guess I do just prefer the less sophisticated and trippier ways of channelling 60s sound that the Elephant 6 bands come up with (which reminds me, must go listen to my Olivia Tremor Control CDs for maximum summerness).

I Heart Have I Got News For You

This might be one of those things where you just had to be there, but during the captions segment of Have I Got News For You last week, one of the pictures was a close-up of several medal-festooned Chinese military officials standing amidst others in a choir-like formation, eyebrows resolute and aggressive, mouths formed into perfect O’s fervently singing what must have been a political anthem.

Someone’s caption was “That man on the right is thinking: For God’s sake will somebody say ‘klahoma!”

Brilliant.

On Deciding Not To Engage Zadie Smith In Conversation

I can’t guarantee it really was Zadie Smith I saw coming out of Bookhouse (lovely discount bookstore off Tottenham Court Road) on Saturday, but it certainly looked a lot like her. Thoughts of saying hello skittered briefly across my mind, but disappeared almost immediately. I figured even literary celebrities might get tired of being recognised, and what with loaded Tesco’s bags in my hands and a bad hair day, I didn’t really feel I was in optimum mode for meeting anyone anyway.

What would I have said, anyway? Do you come here often? Lovely bookshop, isn’t it? Hey, liked your book. You really do like Salman Rushdie a lot, don’t you? Not that I’m saying your book’s derivative. He should be flattered, really. And so should you, because his writing style’s so tough to copy, I mean, emulate, no, I mean…er…lovely day, isn’t it?

I was probably right to keep all that for the inner monologue. But I really do like White Teeth, even if a large part of that liking is derived from loving Rushdie.

[Indulge me on a tangential analogy here: I like And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead largely because they manage to incorporate a ridiculous amount of all that is good about Sonic Youth in their work, and avoid the bad (Kim Gordon vocals, for example). Perhaps it’s completely arbitrary of me to say Trail Of Dead’s Madonna and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth are influenced but not derivative, but somehow that’s how I intuitively feel about them. The realm of artistry is theoretically open to both the Velvet Undergrounds and the Velvet Underground-influenced, although in practice we may justifiably bicker about the door policy. (There is no guest list.)]

[Footnote to above tangent: I probably diss Kim more than necessary. She takes a lot of getting used to, but it wouldn’t be the same without her. Love Kim, really.]