What Will Be Will Be Fine

This was what was supposed to happen: I’d meet Russ some time on Saturday afternoon, we’d hang out a couple of hours, he’d leave after dinner for a party he’d been invited to, and I would then pack in some hardcore study for as much of the night as I could manage.

This was what did happen: at some point during dinner I reminded him about the party; at some point after dinner he decided to skip the party. At some point we were faintly aware he’d missed his last tube home; at some point I looked out of the window and it was no longer dark. At every point we talked. And talked. And talked.

I crawled into bed at 6 am, curling myself around what felt like an intense core of happiness, gripped by the conviction that what we have will withstand the stresses and separation to come when I leave England, that our two worlds will continue to have space for this.

The Path Of Least Resistance

I can only ever hold out for so long, and certainly against Django giving 10% off and free shipping for orders of $38 and above I was incapable of resistance. Witness my downfall:

  • The Decemberists: Castaways And Cutouts
  • Calla: Scavengers
  • Calla: Televise (although I wouldn’t have bought it if it wasn’t $6.99)
  • Magoo: The Soateramic Sounds Of Magoo (they didn’t stock Realist Week, their latest. Pity, because that’s the one I wanted. But after their Arts Cafe gig gobsmacked me so thoroughly I was prepared to buy anything by them.)
  • Black Heart Procession: Amore Del Tropico

And then I wandered over to CD-WOW for:

  • Calexico: Feast Of Wire
  • Prince: Greatest Hits :P

I still really really really want and will probably give in soon and buy:

  • Stephen Malkmus: Pig Lib
  • Prefuse 73: One Word Extinguisher
  • Lewis Parker: It’s All Happening Now
  • Matt Elliot: The Mess We Made

Elsewhere in music, Cry Me A River (Justin Timberlake) and Scandalous (Mis-Teeq) refuse to leave my head. Think I’ll download those.

KLF Uh Huh Uh Huh

It was 3 AM, and I’d been reading the same sentence on the page of my IT law textbook over and over again for what seemed like forever. This triggered obscure skippety synapses in the Random Useless Music Trivia part of my increasingly bored mind and I found myself typing “KLF 3 AM Eternal” into Google just for the hell of it, only to reel back in shock at the discovery that after all these years of thinking they were saying “ACtion so GROO-VEE”, they were actually apparently saying “ANcients of MU-MU”.

SARS Travel Etiquette

I feel a little guilty.

Not only did I sneeze the other morning in a fairly crowded tube carriage, I was also reading The Outsider, which wouldn’t have been reassuring for anyone with some knowledge of its particular philosophical message.

Anyway, if you were on a crowded Central Line tube train on Monday morning somewhere between Liverpool Street and Holborn, and an Oriental girl with weird short hair reading The Outsider sneezed, don’t panic. It was probably me, and the look of acute pain and discomfort on my face most of the journey would have had nothing to do with Sars, I just bloody hated the book.

Burning On Re-Entry

Back. We came in from Heathrow on a tube full of Saturday night wankers, dumped our bags at my flat and headed out starving to China House. We had hash browns the next day for breakfast, dim sum for lunch, and chicken korma and saag gosht at Sweet’N’Spicy (our favourite Brick Lane eaterie) for dinner. You can probably tell we were tired of continental European food (though not its wine prices, hic).

The problem with holidays is coming back to earth afterwards. I have managed to spend all five weeks of the Easter vacation not studying, and haemorrhaging money. I’m worried about Sars and my family in Singapore. A variety of small but significant things I need to do and make decisions about are building up under my skin and feel unpleasantly like ticks. I’d like to be writing here about everything we did, but I’m probably going to be too busy burning on re-entry.

Italy, Croatia, Hungary (Easter 2003)

Should probably have popped in here before I left for Italy, Croatia and Hungary to mention that I was going to Italy, Croatia and Hungary. But now you know.

It’s been a worryingly hitch-free holiday so far – Alec’n’Michelle holidays aren’t meant to be this way and we’re waiting fearfully for the fall. There was the small inconvenience of train strikes in Italy on the day we were hoping to travel to Florence, but ultimately all it meant was that we got another day in Venice, which was far from a hardship. We also got to grumble about lazy greedy Continentals, which is always fun. Meanwhile, Croatia is fabulously beautiful (scenery, old towns, people – on Easter Sunday the church was full of men in suits. I was very happy. Less happy about standing through two hours of the Good Friday service in Croatian, but never let it be said that I shy from the tough bits of the faith), and hopefully Hungary will be just as great.

For now, I had better log off and go join Alec, who is patiently reading (either American Psycho or the Bible, I’m not sure which) while waiting for me.

Billy Collins

I love finding new (new to me, anyway) poets to explore. Last week’s Saturday Poem(s) in the Guardian Review were by Billy Collins. Today seems to be about most of the days we’ve been having lately, if you ignore the biting cold that strangely crept in with the sunbeams in the past two.

I went looking for more, and ended up with quite a haul. Introduction To Poetry and Dear Reader seem like good ones to start with.

Man Listening To Disc and Marginalia are creepily accurate portrayals of aspects of my two main preoccupations.

Japan is beautifully erotic. Picnic, Lightning is about those sudden moments of clarity that elevate the mundane to the meaningful, and is also incidentally hosted on Nabokovilia, a pretty cool site that collects and explains Nabokov references in other literary works.

(If anyone wants to buy me The Annotated Lolita, please feel free. If not, then please buy it for yourself, it’s fantastic. In related news, I’m currently marvelling my way through The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight, which, though not even ranked among Nabokov’s better books, still beats almost everything else I’ve read recently hands down.)

A Mixed-Up Week

Two fantastic gigs. Friday afternoon on Portobello Road, Russ amusedly tolerant of my compulsion to scan every stall, however ramshackle, in fear of the “bargain” I might miss if I just strolled past. (I didn’t buy vintage fashion or antiques, but I got a great aubergine for 30p!) Fabulous dinner on Friday night courtesy of Tamara and her friend Mark.

Intentions of restarting work feebly displayed in a two-hour stint at the library on Wednesday, and 7 pages of a book on the US Supreme Court on Thursday. Excitement at planning an upcoming holiday, stress at the realization that due to said holiday I will have spent the entire five week Easter break doing no work. Irritation at coming home and finding unwashed dishes in the sink after spending three hours cleaning the kitchen yesterday. Hatching plans to surprise Alec with flowers, and then having them wonderfully scuppered, two days in a row, by him doing exactly the same thing.

Wondering what I ever did to deserve a life this good, and the fear of wasting all my various blessings through laziness, disorganization or complacency. Hence the nagging feeling of tedious but important practicalities I’ve been putting off resolving for ages, and crunch time looming.

The Real Losers/The Project/Magoo (Arts Cafe, London)

These bands played at the Arts Cafe last Saturday. Here’s a quickie:

  • The Real Losers: competent if not exhilarating punk. Funny moments when audience members, hopefully their friends, would shout things like “Go on yer losers!” and “Fucking losers!”
  • A strummy singer guy from NYC: needs singing and guitar lessons, which I realize is quite damning criticism to give a strummy singer type of performer, but he was really no Elliot Smith.
  • The Project: electropoppyweirdrock featuring girl with disembodied voice duetting with big-haired expressionless guy. Fascinating and unusual listening even to this jaded ear.
  • Magoo: bloody amazing, I haven’t been so blown away by a band I wasn’t previously familiar with since Asian Dub Foundation three years ago taught me to like drum’n’bass. Capable of crashing walls of sound and fragile balladry with equal panache. Apparently a new album is due July 23rd, and I’m assuming they’d have played songs from it. It’s going on the wishlist.

Public Enemy (Forum, London)

I’ve seen Public Enemy live, muthafuckaaaaas……

Ahem. Sorry, I realize not everyone reading this will regard such experiences as seminal. But let me take this in steps. First, they’re PUBLIC ENEMY, MUTHAFUCKAAAAAAS! Second, back in the days when for me, buying an album, any album, was an investment of staggering financial significance, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back was the first hip-hop album I ever bought. I know the same could be said for countless other wannabe music eclecticists who did….did..did…..did believe the hype, but let me point out that I spent these formative years in Singapore, where most Beastie Boys albums (and Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope, for crying out loud) were banned until recently. Dammit, it took real commitment for a kid like me in Singapore to become an annoying music snob. Third, it became increasingly obvious in later years that my taste in MCs seems to have been indelibly moulded by the stentorian sounds of Chuck D. To this day, there is no MC I find as compelling.

Public Enemy have still got it. By the time Nick, Benny and I had got absolutely knackered from the sheer intensity of their performance, Griff was still doing quintuple kung fu kicks across the stage, Flav was crowd-surfing, and Chuck D was still sprinting everywhere bellowing. Some bits got a little self-indulgent, like Flav promoting his new album, and going on and on and on at the end about how the war was fucked, and how we had to raise our fingers in the peace sign, and then join them to signify togetherness, and then clench our fists to signify the power of togetherness, but I guess that’s something you have to expect from a rap group which are about more than gold chains and ho’s.

Other worthy features of the evening were masterful performances from supporting acts Killa Kela and Kool Keith. Killa Kela’s gotten even better since the last time I saw him. I suppose people in the beatboxing loop would say he’s still got some way to go before he reaches the dizzy heights of Rahzel or Doug E. Fresh, but I ain’t never heard of them beatboxing speed drum’n’bass before, ‘aaaight? Also noteworthy was his rendition of Britney’s I’m A Slave 4 U complete with gasping orgasmic vocals.

So that was another ridiculously worthwhile gig for the list. I’m seeing El-P and Murs next week, and I haven’t even written about the amazingness of Magoo on Saturday. And Calla are playing at the Water Rats in May. And I’m seeing Nick Cave in June. There are many other ways in life of being a sad geek, but all this certainly works well enough for me.