Song With No Name

Once again I find myself unable to complete the pile of drafts waiting to be published. It then occurred to me that I could meet my post-a-month quota by writing about writing - metablogging. I've mentioned the draft backlog a few times before and thought I'd shine some light on the unseen. Perhaps explaining what some of them are about will save me having to work on them. It also prompted me to tidy up.

Roygbiv

Untitled, 2005

Riding up front to the drifting American Dream
In the garden where whitewashed walls and paper bleach vision to a soft yellow glow
Away from the modem, pen in hand, sheets of untouched paper
Afternoons by the window, in earshot of the news from China
April 2001

Fuck You, I Won't Do What You Tell Me

Such a big event I forgot to write this for the 4th of December.

When a candle burns that bright, it goes out not long after it's lit. Beginning 5 years ago, but active for just 18 months, it was the site that stormed the snack bar and crossed Checkpoint Charlie.

The GA-Slag was not my idea. Nor was my idea the GA-Slag:

I Live To Fall Asleep

Untitled Red Clouds, Prij, 2007

I like to sleep, and as a young adult I maximise the hours in which I do just that. But first lies the age old problem of falling asleep - the very thing that keeps me awake.

For those of us with active minds, simply switching off is difficult. When I lie awake in bed, my mind races. It always races when I'm without anything else to do. To give you an idea of how hard it is just to stop thinking: this post was drafted in my head when I tried to blank my mind. For a few minutes I didn't even realise. I hear my voice in my head. As I finalise this post, I'm transcribing my internal stream of consciousness.

It's not that bad since it of course places me cognitively far above the readers of Kidz Newz and the viewers of Big Brother (Oh, how the masses love our Orwellian future). The only way I can escape it and fall asleep is to listen to music. Since I got my iPod Nano for my birthday, I've repeatedly fallen asleep with it on, waking up with the headphones strangling me. I continually fall asleep to Seeing Out The Angel by Simple Minds. And not because I don't like it.

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Music For Your Tape Recorder

Here we are, another orbit around the Sun...

I got three CDs in the last six weeks of the year. It's a bit difficult to explain everything between March 2006 and then.

We Love The Winter, It Brings Us Closer Together

The Hearth, Aaron Gustafson, 2006

Between 1986 and 1990, there was me, my cousin, and my brother. For the best part of the decade it was just us three. The Padre's brothers hadn't had any kids yet.

Around 1992 my cousin moved to Florida via Big Blue and later settled in North Carolina. Roughly every second year my aunt, uncle and cousin would come over for Christmas - and occasionally Easter. When we were still kids, it was easy to maintain a relationship, but by the start of this decade it just became too awkward. One year we could all be on a train to Glasgow having a laugh, and the next time it would all be undone. Ironic considering the ways to stay in touch are much better than 15 years ago.

The 'best' Christmases are still the ones when they come over, though. Christmas doesn't feel like an event unless they're over. Isn't it all about seeing people again in the deep of winter? Something has disappeared from the experience. Perhaps it is the excitement that comes with being a kid receiving all the toys you want. In its place the simple joy of being in a family.

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Beyond The Infinite

Screenshot from Space Odyssey, BBC, 2004

By now anyone reading this blog will have composed an eschewed psychological profile of me. Perhaps the most interesting things are happening inside, not out. A reflection of existence once we'd been to the moon and bought the tat.

Among the small assortment of recurring dreams I have, is a particularly adaptive one. The core elements remain static but the circumstances which frame it are always different. In the 'Astronomic' dream some ridiculously large and visible heavenly object rises/sets/appears in the sky. By this point most of the framing has dropped away and I'm concerned with relentlessly photographing it and staring straight at it as my mind melts.

Sometimes it's a spectacular pumpkin Moonrise/set, a gigantic Jupiter hanging on the horizon, or most recently Comet Holmes (which I have yet to see in reality, despite much effort). In the most strange version I was equipped with large binoculars and witnessed the true structure of the universe - which I can reveal is a lattice of red and green pipes not unlike that old screensaver.

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