He's a European Legacy, a Culture For Today

Roses, Henri Fantin-Latour, 188x

The past week has gone by quite slowly, rather than it's usual thundering pace, which tells me I'm out of another depression. The obsessive tendencies of the past two weeks have stopped.

Last Thursday I sat up in bed at 0340 and wrote another (less vague) hash of Low 4/4, mainly for myself. It was one of those 'teenage disappointment' style pieces I seem to write too often these days - I don't want this to end up a diary. Anyway, it helped me get a number of things off my chest (or more accurately, one person out of my mind). It's somewhat disturbing how easily you can cease to hold particular feelings toward someone overnight (at least, consciously - whether my dreams will betray me...).

I'm thinking about getting my hair cut... On an almost totally unrelated note, I'm just thinking, did Bowie make instrumentals fashionable (particularly ones that flow into the next)? The Human League's first two albums (1978 and 1979), Spandau Ballet's Diamond (1982), Simple Minds' Empires and Dance (1980), and Ultravox's Vienna (1980) have them.

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I Fall Into the Wide Screen

Am I the only person who puts on Return of the Jedi before they go to bed, just to see Leia's braided hair in the last half hour, and uses VLC's snapshot function like I'm armed with a dozen rolls of film? There's a bit around chapter 37 on the ROTJ DVD where Han gets angry with C3PO, and Carrie Fisher smiles at something happening off to the left of the Camera.

I'll probably get sued for uploading such a high-res screenshot

There's something captivating about that smile. You know you've gone over the edge when you wish you were involved with Leia; hanging around a playpark holding hands, being decidedly cheerier than I am now. I've been refraining from watching Battle Royale as it sent me off the deep end in January.

You'll be glad to know I stopped my constant listening to The Black Hit of Space and WXJL Tonight by the Human Leage on Monday evening. Hell, I might even go to college this week, rather than my planned wander round the cemetary. Now excuse me whilst I dream of Leia...

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Somewhere There's a Morning Sky / Bluer Than Her Eyes

Time for a customary middle-of-the-night, blurry-eyed, half-asleep, doing-fuck-all but not in bed even though I'm fucking tired stream of conscience post. I've been listening to selected pieces from Bowie's 1976 Station to Station album. I too have stopped blinking - and I think I'm approaching the sort of mental conditions that precipitate the formation of such an album... "It's not the side-effects of the cocaine / I'm thinking that it must be love." Currently I'm listening to Human League's WXJL Tonight (from the 1980 album Travelogue - not the shite pop of the mid 80s they put out after Marsh and Ware left to form Heaven 17) over and over again (3 hours as of 4AM in rotation with The Black Hit of Space). There's something captivating and disturbing about it. "I don't want you to go tonight."

Career Opportunities

What a horrible time to require sustenance. I can't talk my way into another year of college, plus I've come to my sense and realised it's just glorified school, so the future is a bleak spell of "employment" for me. It's a sad day when I consider my options, when in the past I would have stuck The Clash on in the common room and ignored the fascists. Time, you fucking bastard. The times have changed, as have the circumstances. If I want to hang about anywhere, I have to pay to get in. The closest thing to the common room is the college library - especially, and ironically, the silent section.

Thursday Morgenspaziergang

Skidging again, I set off and let the wind guide me. I've lived in this area for 6 years now and been going to school in this area since 1991. I had no idea the Golf Course entrance was up the road and I had no idea there was a lane and a stream up that way too. If only I had known that then.

I was going to see if there was another way into the cemetery, but I forgot about it when I discovered Peile Lane - it's a toss up whether to pronounce it as in John Peel or Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Anyway, having forgotten about my intended cemetery wonder, I decided to see if I could walk up the Lyle Hill and the view of the Firth. Except, I forgot the camera. And I stopped at what I thought was halfway (turned out the top was right around the corner).

Take this Google Earth landscape view

Crossed with this Deacon Blue album cover

...and try to imagine the view. Dammit, a camera describes it more accurately.

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Away 4

I'm pissed off. The Sun is rising in a beautiful orange glow out the other side of the plane. Yet again, I, the one with a camera, am screwed out of photographing it by being on the left hand side of the plane. There isn't even anyone looking out the windows at this cosmic display. The best I got was photographing the pre-dawn glow on the taxiway.

Las Palmas Sunrise, Prij, 2006

Surrounded by peons! It's about 8AM now and I'm enjoying this silent film being shown - Buster Keaton's The Cameraman. Much fucking better than that You've Been Framed style crap they had on again.

Away 3

In 6 days I've clocked up 30 minutes of time in the pool. The holidays since leaving school have been quite landbound. I don't derive a lot of entertainment from getting wet anymore.

Similarly, when the students of the college walked out of classes over staff cuts for an hour last month, I would have been at the front leading the protest. Instead, hanging around the back of the crowd, staying away from the cameras, I was dropping a few jokes in light discussion. I was cold and would much rather have been in the library reading The Independent. Is this the same person who got himself deliberately suspended in Sixth Year? Twice as bright...

Where's Wally?

H5N1 From Above, 1610
20 minute ago I was listening to Ride of the Valkyries, drifting in and out of Apocalypse Now fantasies. The pool area has a bit of a pigeon problem - rather that than a roach problem, of course. They hobble about looking for food scraps. Every so often one will swoop low over the pool, sometimes landing like a UH-1 on the other side. Those birds fuel the fantasy more than the occasional helicopter over the bay.

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