A Suicide/The Kiss

I've always been interested in space and astronomy. Unfortunately, the sense of proportion that comes with that is a form of torture. I had what can only be described as an existential crisis at the age of 14, bad enough that the school contacted my parents.

Whilst I may not be as acutely mind-fucked a decade on, I've never actually exited the crisis, just attempted to ignore it. It popped up again in 2006, as a large bulk of posts will testify, and now and then since but the lack of posts mostly hide it. I was thinking a lot, however, and I happened to be reading this article:

A particular way of breaking through the sense of isolation is through touch.

when it struck me like a diamond bullet through the forehead, that I already knew this. Nothing could more be described as transcendent than the random hug the girl in my chemistry class once gave me. It sounds so petty and laughable a saudade, but it just could keep me going. Somewhere out there is a connection to be made.

Art: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Extract), Georges Seurat, 1884
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Quadrant 3

F-35 JSF Developmental Pilot Helmet, Image Editor, 2007

One of the more overdone tropes of Western cinema is the notion of the machine revolt. Most people are familiar with The Matrix and Terminator, but I highly recommend Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970 as an early example of the genre. The final scene of Colossus is as poignant as John Connor's radio broadcast at the end of Terminator 3 (which was in all other respects a bad remake of T2).

In all these films the machine revolt is preceded by a common act - a computer is empowered by man to do what we are either unable or unwilling to do or think.

Golden Brown (GA-Slag 0)

It's nearly ten years ago that GA received a very special visitor. Chris Eubank came to the school for all of 15 minutes. To this day I wonder if I was daydreaming in English. It was totally surreal. You think he's eccentric on the tv? Try seeing him on stage.

We were all called into the assembly for a special talk about drugs, m'kay? Chris was promoting a hip new website called Dare to be Different or D2BD as per all the promotional material. The excitement builds as he arrives with his entourage and runs up on stage. Imagine if Dali had been recruited to write a public service announcement.

Music For Your Tape Recorder

This time last year I was quite excited about La Roux. Here was a band I thought was going to finish what Yazoo started. But the voice and the bleeping began to grate. Music in the early eighties sounded like that because of hardware limitations. Consider these words from All Music Guide on Simple Minds' second album: "It's where [they] ventured beyond the ability to mimic their influences and began to manipulate them." I hope their next effort will endear itself more, but I'll probably forget to check up - which is why it took me till May to find Fujiya & Miyagi's Lightbulbs disappointing. Unfortunately life is too short to spend it listening to stuff again in the hope you might appreciate it second time round.

Only with a band as good as Boards of Canada would I do that. Having devoured Twoism, Music Has The Right to Children and Geogaddi last year, I started searching for In A Beautiful Place..., The Campfire Headphase, and Trans Canada Highway, which were not included in the set I procured (Bought them all since). When I came across Macquarie Ridge, I swore I had heard it before. I listened to it endlessly, trying to remember when I thought I had heard it, before realising it had actually overwritten a memory of hearing Kelly Watch the Stars on a school trip in 1998. That is the genius of BoC.

Last year Dalek i was my now-out-of-print-good-band-your-parents-shunned of 2008. This year it's The Passions. Bet they could only remember through Ashes to Ashes.

Communication Let Me Down

Beginning, Kenneth Noland, 1958

Though I wouldn't consider this blog to be in the same league as Doctorvee's, it seems many bloggers are facing the same issues.

The post rate here and elsewhere is down. In the early days it's probably true the deluge of posts each consisted of 500 words or less. Occasionally I would post some grand interpretation or theory, until gradually great 2000 word essays felt expected. Writing multiple 100 word entries, even if it is a legitimate non-twitter-esque post, feels like cheating . I've tried Twitter and found 140 characters only suited to celebrities talking about a cloud they saw an hour ago, or more interestingly (links to) breaking news.

Saturday's Kids

Preparing the Night Mail, scardy, 2002

I always wonder who's up at 6am watching cartoons and then I remember I used to get up every Saturday morning in the mid 90s to watch Live & Kicking. L&K was on from 9am to noon but I was always afraid I'd sleep in and miss it - the tagline being "Miss it, miss out".

I'd wake up in the dark and drag my duvet into the living room. I was often up far too early, sometimes BBC1 would still be off-air and there'd be static. At some point the test card would kick in with a piercing tone before transiting to Pages From Ceefax. The music played over PFC is often described as terrible, but I love it. As a preteen exposed to manufactured pop, this poor man's jazz/funk/easy-listening was amazing. PFC was probably also my exposure to the wider world: I remember reading about an IRA bomb one morning as the news pages scrolled.

Book of Brilliant Things

Ten years ago, before I had an internet connection or Amazon started turning a profit, I remember being at my Nan's and the TV was on. During the programme break there was an advert for Amazon.co.uk. As a 75 year-old she dismissed the internet as a fad. A strange attitude to have for someone born 18 months before the first demonstration of the very thing she's sitting in front of. I do love the smugness that comes from looking back on that.