O Absalom

Return

2012-01-31T20:23:00.004-05:00

6 weeks. Man.

Things that have happened:

1. I had a long break at home for Christmas. It was wonderful. I love my family.

2. Work got really good. Sometimes when things are slow or even just normal I lose enthusiasm; I need to be overburdened with work at all times. This year has delivered a suitably enormous and interesting burden. I work with always nice and sometimes brilliant people. It's good.

3. I just started teaching a class. It's a lot to take on with work as it is, but I'm glad I did it. It's weird to be in a university environment again. American kids/young adults are much more articulate and confident than British kids, it seems. If my memory serves.

4. I got dragged into this George R.R. Martin thing and have consumed about 4000 pages of fantasy fiction in less than a month. It's my dad's fault. Actually my own fault as I got the books for him on a friend's recommendation, and then found myself with nothing to read when I was home and dove in and now... well, I refuse to trash them. They're not Dan Brown-embarrassing or Harry Potter-embarrassing. The narratives are complex and engaging, the character development is actually very good, especially - right now, for me - the Jaime Lannister storyline. And he is just a bloody good storyteller - he knows exactly how long to toy with you before he releases a certain tension, resolves an ongoing question, he doesn't indulge in too much hinting, and he has more sex and violence than a Starz TV series. It's really good. I can't think of anyone, even with obscure or snooty tastes (and let's face it, I took shit from friends recently for reading the sermons of Gerard Manley Hopkins on a flight) who wouldn't enjoy these books. Go read them.

5. I feel pretty emotionally and physically decent. I don't feel blazingly fantastic all the time, but I feel tuned-in, not to sound like a yoga instructor or something. I feel like myself. A little bit of happiness is happening.

6. Also, a tiny little bit of poetry-writing is happening, for the first time in months. Scared to say anything about it in case it goes away.

Fear

2011-12-15T13:46:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite things to do when I go home is take the Newblets (my nephews and niece) to the cinema, watch some terrible kiddie film, buy them a ton of junk food and sugar and then send them on their merry, hyper way. I've seen some truly awful films in pursuit of this tradition. I think I'm pretty hardened to irritating cartoons, awful songs and puerile jokes. (Okay, I like the puerile jokes.) But when I checked the cinema listings for next week an icy chill went down my spine:

Failure

2011-12-15T11:07:00.003-05:00

The December blogging resolution got nowhere.

This has been a weird week. I'm dying to get home for the holidays. I have new projects at work and it's an odd time of year to be applying my brain to newness - I just want everything to shut down.

Yesterday was dreadful. Friends at my old workplace, Y&R, started posting stuff on Facebook about something happening in the building. It turned out an employee had been killed in an horrific elevator accident. I didn't know Suzanne (I knew her face - we worked on the same floor, a few offices down from each other, but on different teams). I got in those elevators every day for 3 and a half years. It was a standing joke in the building that they were dodgy as hell: they'd suddenly drop a little, or fail to open. A particularly unpleasant episode of Six Feet Under that featured an elevator accident had always stuck with me, and I'd often shudder as I stepped out, imagining if the elevator suddenly plummeted. Unbelievable that something that seemed like a silly superstition could come to life with such monstrous force.

More Pound

2011-12-05T22:01:00.005-05:00

As I said below, Pound's a fascinating letter-writer. I think he valued the technically or stylistically new, the rebellious, the clever, very highly - but I don't know that I found, in his letters, much emotion. He lived through two catastrophic wars, lost many friends, and got a first look at a lot of art that still moves many people today. But he lingers so much on intellectual achievement and trailblazing that I wonder if the emotional power of art meant less to him, or moved him less, or maybe he just preferred not to write about or analyze that.

A couple of extracts below. The first, the only reference to sadness I found anywhere in his letters, reporting news that a friend and admired artist had died in the trenches of the Great War:

"Gaudier-Brzeska has been killed at Neville St. Vasst, and we have lost the best of the young sculptors and the most promising. The arts will incur no worse loss from the war than this is. One is quite obsessed with it."

And this on his approach to writing:

"What a good man gets from another man's work is: precisely the knowledge that the other man has has done a job, and that he, the first man, need not do that same job or an imitation of it, but is free to do his own job.

"The utility of education or of knowing the subject is mainly to know what one needn't bother to do."

I disagree with that, the second sentence in particular.

Near-immediate failure

2011-12-04T17:17:00.002-05:00

Two posts today to make up for yesterday. This is quick, another beautiful M83 track. I'm in love with this band.

Dear James

2011-12-04T15:57:00.004-05:00

I've been dipping in and out of Ezra Pound's letters for the past couple of months. Anyone with even a slight interest in literature and literary theory, history, artists of the early 20th century, or just good letter-writing, would enjoy them. In my view, the best ones are to young, unknown writers seeking his advice. He's amusing and critical and thoughtful and, best of all, endlessly energetic, giving so much to these strangers who came looking for improvement.

But of course, the letters to the likes of Eliot and Joyce have the most celebrity-tinged value. A delicious little note to Joyce:

London, July 1920

Dear James: News item or rather phrase of conversation from ex-govt. official: "The censorship was very much troubled by it (Ulysses) during the war. Thought it was all code."

And some critical advice to Eliot. Surreal (and comforting) to read this guidance on The Wasteland, to remember that lines so familiar to me now were once rejigged and edited and sent to friends for their opinions:

Paris, 24th December 1921

Caro mio: MUCH improved. I think your instinct had led you to put the superfluities at the end. I think you had better leave 'em, abolish 'em altogether or for the present.

If you MUST keep 'em, put 'em at the beginning before "April is the cruelest month." The POEM ends with the "Shantih, shantih, shantih."

Stolen nostalgia

2011-12-02T12:53:00.005-05:00

I spent Thanksgiving in Maine with a bunch of friends - two Americans (including our host), one Australian, one Lebanese and one Portuguese. One of the many things I love about NYC is my friends are a motley crew of international wanderers. Hanging out on the deserted sports field of a suburban New England high school felt like stepping into some movie I watched as a teenager, but with the added surrealism of being surrounded by people all aged around 30 who - by and large - grew up in very different places, too.

Ambition

2011-12-01T23:51:00.003-05:00

Setting myself up for failure here, I'm going to try to post something every day this month until Christmas Day.

Kicking off with M83, a band I saw in Williamsburg last week with Tyler and a bunch of other friends.

They were remarkable. I've been very lucky in seeing scads of incredible live music this year, but for these guys there are no words. I'm dying to see them again. This was the first of the two encore songs.

Youth Lagoon

2011-11-16T11:38:00.003-05:00

I went to see this guy play last night. He's very young, I'm guessing around 22, and has an extraordinary, luminous voice that sounds just as chimerical live as it does on his recordings. I can't stop listening to his album.

Reloading

2011-11-09T14:19:00.007-05:00

In the almost 4 years I've been writing this blog, I've never missed an entire month. Don't think I've missed a week very often. Because this has generally been a place to record the small things that occupy me for a moment or day or week, rather than reflecting on long periods of time, it's hard to reboot it, but I'll try.

I was in Scotland last week with my family. I've seen a lot of the Highlands and Islands now (as well as a fair bit of the rest of the world) and it's becoming increasingly hard to believe that there's anywhere more beautiful. It's difficult to explain, but it's the air, I think, a clarity not just in what you're seeing but how you're seeing it. Everything smells peaty and grassy and leafy. This year was different because my brothers came with their families, so it was a sort of National Lampoon's Scotland, in the best possible way. Spending that kind of time with my family is rare for me, and seeing the kids enjoy themselves there was pretty special - I remember my first holidays in Scotland and how removed it felt from where I grew up. Also my younger brother got engaged to his beautiful girlfriend, Julie, while we were up there, so I had a million reasons to be happy and peaceful and grateful. A few pics here.

On Iona. You should go to Iona; the beaches are past belief. But please don't go there, I liked having it to myself:

Our cottage. The fact that there are people in the world who get to own properties like this makes me a feel sick with envy:

Loch Scridane at sunset. Doubt anyone will ever believe me, but I didn't retouch this at all:

Collected Newblets, on the first and rainiest day, but still in good wave-jumping spirits:

I read Mansfield Park when I was away. She's not my favorite author, but I reckon Austen tops the list of curling-up-in-front-of-an-open-fire novelists. Back home I've been reading Ezra Pound's letters. I can't recommend them enough - they have general entertainment value and serious literary thought and a lot of sparking humor, but it's getting to watch figures like T.S. Eliot and James Joyce rise in real time, as Pound discovers and then pushes them, often in the face of repeated rejection, that makes them unmissable for anyone who cares about literature. I left the book at home this morning but I'll type up some excerpts another day.

Can't believe how much live music I've seen this year. Wish I'd kept my ticket stubs or something, starting to lose track. Going to see M83 in a couple of weeks. Their remix of Depeche Mode's 'Suffer Well' is on repeat while I commute:

I'm going to see Youth Lagoon soon, too. Love this guy.

The moon has disappeared

2011-09-26T20:27:00.001-04:00

The best email (from my mother, about my nephews):

Hey man, little Brad just called - I answered but didnt want to speak to me, asked for Grandad, wanted to tell him that the moon has disappeared! Daddy is now trying to explain about horizons and how the moon can seem to fall out the sky etc to him, think he is getting there, ah man, isnt he soooo cute. And, both Ben and Brad got the rainbow award last week at school for doing the best homework! Methinks little swotbots like aunty en!!

I love you xxxx

Twenties/Thirties

2011-09-25T20:27:00.014-04:00

Last night it occurred to me, for no apparent reason but with surprising force, that I'm very lucky. It's not something I reflect on very often: I hope I'm not alone in that, hope that I'm not a horrible ingrate. Between my family, my job, my city, my health and - it's struck me particularly this past week - my friends, I am uncommonly fortunate.

I say this because I'm getting to see a lot of the people I love most over a period of six weeks or so. Last weekend, Ally and Hayley came out to NYC for a weekend of extremely hard partying with a crowd of people.

Then Ally stayed on and we went up to the North Fork and did some wine tasting and ate tons of lobster and biked around. The North Fork is an idyllic place to ride a bike. I can't imagine anywhere better. The weather was perfect, the roads were quiet, we freewheeled too fast down hills and squealed like kids, we went to the beach and picked shells; it was wonderful.

The trouble

2011-09-10T18:24:00.002-04:00

with not writing for ages, is when you start a new post there's a sense you should write something portentous that excuses or at least makes up for the long absence.

I have no such post. I haven't been back-breakingly busy, ill, miserable or traveling. I just haven't been sufficiently moved or enthusiastic or angry about something to write about it here, or perhaps that's untrue and I've simply been lazy. I've felt either occupied or happily unoccupied, but there are no tales to tell. I don't particularly like myself in Summer. I am antisocial and disenchanted with the city and people, spending whole days on my sofa with a fan directed at my body, reading, wearily rejecting offers to go out and be young and interested. Finally, Fall is whispering down the streets and into the increasingly chilly bedrooms at night. It's not quite here yet, but almost, and it's having a gladdening effect on my spirits, as it always does. The next month or two will be very busy. Friends are here next week, then I'm away for a few days with Ally, then to New Orleans for my birthday, then home to London and Newcastle and to Scotland to see friends and family. Work is picking up again after a Summer lull. I have a lot of bands to go see, and people to get to know.

One of the bands is Trentemoller, another M83. Here's a remix by the former of a song from the latter's new album.

Sweet

2011-08-11T17:29:00.002-04:00

So much music this past week. So much. Lykke Li last week, then I was at Escape to New York last weekend (music festival in the Hamptons), then Bon Iver last night - which was one of the best shows I've ever seen - then Cut Copy tonight.

Here's today's favorite song.

And a little more

2011-07-31T17:52:00.002-04:00

I'm re-reading some Faulkner I haven't looked at since university: As I Lay Dying and Light in August. I used to find Faulkner's writing unremittingly (and - obviously - compellingly) sad, but I see the humor in it more as I get older, and admire it all the more. Here's a passage from Light in August, when Joe Christmas is being chased by the sheriff, who thinks he's picked up a set of tracks:

Beyond the headtall corn was a negro cabin. “He’s in there,” the sheriff said, drawing his pistol. “Watch yourselves now, boys. He’ll have a gun now.”

It was done with finesse and skill: the house surrounded by concealed men with drawn pistols, and the sheriff, followed by the deputy, getting himself for all his bulk swiftly and smartly flat against the cabin wall, out of range of any window. Still flat to the wall he ran around the corner and kicked open the door and sprang, pistol first, into the cabin. It contained a negro child. The child was stark naked and it sat in the cold ashes on the hearth, eating something. It was apparently alone, though an instant later a woman appeared in an inner door, her mouth open, in the act of dropping an iron skillet. She was wearing a pair of man’s shoes, which a member of the posse identified as having belonged to the fugitive. She told them about the white man on the road about daylight and how he had swapped shoes with her, taking in exchange a pair of her husband’s brogans which she was wearing at the time. The sheriff listened. “That happened right by a cotton house, didn’t it?” he said. She told him Yes. He returned to his men, to the leashed and eager dogs. He looked down at the dogs while the men asked questions and then ceased, watching him. They watched him put the pistol back into his pocket and then turn and kick the dogs, once each, heavily. “Get them durn eggsuckers on back to town,” he said.

But the sheriff was a good officer. He knew as well as his men that he would return to the cotton house, where he believed that Christmas had been hidden all the while, though he knew now that Christmas would not be there when they returned. They had some trouble getting the dogs away from the cabin, so that it was in the hot brilliance of ten o’clock that they surrounded the cotton house carefully and skillfully and quietly and surprised it with pistols, quite by the rules and without any particular hope; and found one astonished and terrified field rat.

2011-07-31T17:43:00.002-04:00

Lazy weekend, too hot to face doing much, fear of being sunburned and overheatedly fractious is with me at all times. Going out tonight to a new, excellent-looking sushi place, otherwise largely and happily alone.

Love this.

Repeat

2011-07-30T10:35:00.003-04:00

Dan and I have perfected the art of irritating our parents from the backseat, an activity we're yet to grow out of. Here we're practicing our stare-off faces.

He recommended The Horrors to me. Doesn't this sound like Simple Minds? They're playing NYC the day after my birthday - wish Dan would be here for it.

Fire and Rain

2011-07-11T09:53:00.003-04:00

I got my parents tickets to see James Taylor for my mam's birthday. The show was in Glasgow last night. My mam is pretty obsessed with Taylor, whereas I couldn't have named one of his songs until I looked into him and realized I know a bunch of them. After the show I spoke to my mam and she was near-hysterical; in fact this is the email she sent me when she got back to the hotel:

BEE BEE MAN
WILL YOU COME ON SKY[E SO WE CAN TALK =- CANT WAIT TOS PEAK TO YOU, WE ARE BACK, WE HAVE BEEN, IT WAS FAB! i AM HYSTERICAL, HE TOUCHED MY ARM AND HAND!!

Bear in mind this is a woman with (usually) a very good grasp of grammar.

Apparently Taylor played half his set then in the interval he just sat on the edge of the stage for twenty minutes and chatted to fans before playing the rest of the show. Can't think of many legendary musicians who would do that, can you? So she went up and shook hands with him and he also touched her arm. She was having a hot flush when I spoke to her. Dad thinks she may be pregnant.

Weeping

2011-06-28T12:42:00.006-04:00

This weekend I was reading a book of John Keats’s poetry and letters, a birthday gift from my brother last year. I expect that most people, even if they’re not fans of his poetry – I certainly don’t love all of it – are still moved by the sadnesses he faced in his life, and the misery of his early death. (Note: If you have any interest in his biography, or indeed just want to see something beautiful and depressing, watch the film Bright Star). I was reading the letters. I’ve said many times here and elsewhere that the comfort I find in literature, particularly old literature, is the shared humanity, and that’s intensified when you’re reading the private letters of a long-dead person. You get to step across hundreds of years. They’re held there forever, the musings and ramblings and quirks and inanities of the person’s real life. Of course we’ll all have that whether anyone cares or not – the platform this is about to appear on is a case in point – but the past is different; it’s preserved in a few pieces of paper. One in particular, a letter from Keats to J.H. Reynolds on 3rd May 1818, got stuck in my ribs. Here's an extract. Try to work past the early 19th century style, because the content is worth thinking about:

I will put down a simile of human life as far as I now perceive it; that is, to the point to which I say we both have arrived at - Well - I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being yet shut upon me - The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think - We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle - within us - we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight: However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of Man - of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression - whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought become gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open - but all dark - all leading to dark passages - We see not the balance of good and evil. We are in a Mist - We are now in that state - We feel the "burden of the Mystery," To this point was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive when he wrote 'Tintern Abbey' and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages. Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore them…

… I have often pitied a Tutor who has to hear "Nom: Musa" - so often dinn'd into his ears - I hope you may not have the same pain in this scribbling - I may have read these things before, but I never had even a thus dim perception of them: and moreover I like to say my lesson to one who will endure my tediousness for my own sake - After all there is certainly something real in the World - Moore's present to Hazlitt is real - I like that Moore, and am glad I saw him at the Theatre just before I left Town. Tom has spit a leetle blood this afternoon, and that is rather a damper, - but I know - the truth is there is something real in the World Your third Chamber of Life shall be a lucky and a gentle one - stores with the wine of love - and the Bread of Friendship - When you see George if he should not have recēd a letter form me tell him he will find one at home most likely - tell Bailey I hope soon to see him - Remember me to all. The leaves have been out here, for MANY a day - I have written to George for the first stanzas of my Isabel - I shall have them soon and will copy the whole out for you.

Your affectionate friend,

John Keats

This letter made me cry. Chiefly because of the intimacy at the end, talking of his friends, and of his brother (who was spitting blood because he was about to die of tuberculosis). And we know, reading this, that Keats would die of the same disease soon after. But the description of existence as a series of chambers made sense to me. I feel like I’ve retreated into a life that's only in the first chamber for the past 6 months or so. And for whatever reason, I stepped into the second chamber again this weekend and felt that intensification and clarity, the rights and wrongs and sweetnesses and sorrows mean something again. It’s like waking up into something imperfect but better.

Related to this, it’s a year since my oldest friend’s funeral. I don’t need an anniversary to think about Lynette – I think about her every day. But this morning it was in my mind so heavily that I started crying on the subway. I’m glad I did: she, the loss of her, ought to be wept over. Again on the chambers, nothing makes you feel so alive as being in the room where grief is. She’s in a box under the ground, her two little girls will never know her, while I get to go on a date and sit on the subway and eat my breakfast and write a presentation and email my mother. There’s no justice in nature. The losses we do or don’t endure are arbitrarily dealt out. Almost comically, I can’t get the line “drive it like you stole it” out of my head today; I feel like I stole it sometimes.

Lullabies

2011-06-24T13:19:00.005-04:00

This blog seems to be morphing into a music blog? (Did I write that like an Australian?) I suppose I'm not reading as much as I customarily do, so music is my primary cultural diversion for now.

So. Bon Iver. I have this bad habit of resisting bands people tell me I'll love. I did it with Interpol for years. I am, once again, an idiot. Bon Iver are amazing. Some of their stuff teeters pretty close to sounding like a farcical soundtrack from, I dunno, The Neverending Story, or something. But then some of it is perfect. I have Calgary and Holocene on loop at the moment. I can't find reliable links to them. Just buy the album.

Good, exhausting week

2011-06-16T16:55:00.004-04:00

Junior Boys on Tuesday night. Excellent show, particularly the last 30 minutes or so when they picked up the pace a lot. The singer is impressive live, reminded me of bands in the eighties when the leads could really, really sing. Guys like Andy Bell from Erasure and Michael Hutchence from INXS. And Dave Gahan, of course. Crikey, Erasure. I need to listen to them again.

It was generally a pleasant week. Driving a convertible around Virginia, eating good food, drinking weird liquor.

Update: Erasure are playing NYC in September. (Erasure still perform?) Now I need to find someone, anyone, who shares my enthusiasm for eighties synth-pop.

Anchoring

2011-06-05T19:43:00.003-04:00

My parents have been in North Uist, a pretty remote Hebridean island, for the past couple of weeks. When they're away they inevitably go somewhere on the very edge of civilization where there's no connectivity by phone or Internet, and I miss them horribly. Anyway, they got back today and told me about their trip. Uist sounds amazing. The view from their cottage was across a bay to Vallay Island, a tiny uninhabited place that was once the home of Scottish architect Erskine Beveridge, and then his son. The younger Beveridge drowned rowing back out there one night after visiting friends and the house is now in ruins, and apparently very spooky.

You can walk across the strand to it at low tide but the idea of that gives me (and my mam) the shudders - thanks to too many encounters with quicksand in childhood reading, I think - so my parents didn't go over there. Maybe if I go back with them some time we'll ask a local farmer to drive us over in a 4x4. They still graze their cattle there.

I listened to this song 24 times yesterday

2011-06-01T13:16:00.001-04:00

Er

2011-05-31T00:17:00.002-04:00

That's probably the longest I've gone without posting here. I've been going out a lot, traveling a bit, otherwise lethargic. It's Summer again and I can't help but be miserable about it - I can't stand warm weather - even though the city is a lot of fun in Summer.

I went to Portland a couple of weeks ago and still can't quite believe how lovely it is. It's a relatively small city, and a long way from my family and indeed everyone I know, but its appeal to me was very strong. One morning I went to a garden really early and sat on a bench writing (for the first time in a while), then went for a bike ride around the city. The food was wonderful, the people were lovely, I love that the city seems to exist within its own largely-self-governed universe.

I spent the whole of this weekend out of my apartment, hanging out with people, then the whole of today in it, alone. I often wonder how healthy it is that I want to be alone so much. But for the most part I was glad to be around others, buying shoes and behaving badly.

Music

2011-05-02T08:44:00.005-04:00

Flurry of gigs last week. On Tuesday I saw The Submarines, supported by Pepper Rabbit, at Williamsburg Music Hall. My friends and I felt like we were the only people dancing, but we were in a good enough mood not to care.

On Wednesday I saw Lord Huron at the Mercury Lounge with Tyler and David. This is another guy I knew virtually nothing about - I only know that I have a serious obsession with this song (and amazing video; it reminds me of Anton Corbijn's video for Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence):

They were okay. Different sound to what we expected, weirdly Caribbean-ish. Anyway. Fun night.

Friday I went with Sarah to see Dirty Vegas. I was pretty excited about this show because their new album seems good, but it turned out they weren't playing their music, they were just spinning intense electro to a half-empty room of people who'd have needed to be on a lot of ecstasy to appreciate it. And seeing as we weren't, we left and went out in Williamsburg instead.

I slept a lot of the weekend. Saw Jamie yesterday and watched Hanna. Weird, weird film. I loved the first 45 minutes or so, then it got a little lost, and the end felt flat. There were certainly enough pieces to make it compelling. It's unexpectedly very funny (particularly the dialogue between the family who pick her up), and beautifully shot, as ever with Joe Wright's films. Especially the opening section in Finland. I love the Chemical Brothers, and their soundtrack pulsing over the first action sequence in the holding facility is magnificent. And I find any fairytale element irresistible. Not to mention Eric Bana. It didn't glue together all that well. Still hope there's a sequel, though.

Crappy day

2011-04-26T19:15:00.006-04:00

Vegas was exactly as you expect Vegas to be. We worked hard. I learned how to play Blackjack.

Flew back to NYC yesterday after a way-too-short visit home. Went to bed at 8.30pm, woke up today feeling horrific, my left hand wouldn't work properly, I felt giddy and slurry and nauseous. I opened my mouth to speak in a meeting and shut it again, worried I would start talking nonsense, like someone having a stroke. Peanut butter cookies seem to have fixed that. Then got some shit news at work about the one project I really cared about. Going out tonight; my dress has flamingos on it; things aren't that bad I suppose.

Total self-absorption

2011-04-19T00:58:00.003-04:00

Lost in my own little world of late, though not feeling entirely switched-on. So much so I'm not even blogging. Too self-absorbed to blog: imagine. Not an especially intriguing or meaningful little world, just a hum of quiet activity. I feel like I'm on anti-depressants. I'm not, but my brain has that milky, Zoloft-like fug over it, and that can be rather appealing at times. I expect it's weather-related, this torpor. The year is moving so slowly and Spring flatly refuses to roll over us. I'm highly season-dependent; it's why I love living in a city of such extremes and shudder at the thought of California or Australia or any other permanently gleaming environment.

Tomorrow I'm going to Las Vegas for work, then flying directly to the UK for the Easter weekend. It feels like so, so long since I was home and I'm aching to see my family. I found a disc yesterday with some photos of us all at the beach two years ago. I wish I'd booked to go home for longer now.

Dancing

2011-04-03T20:11:00.005-04:00

Lots of dancing this weekend. Friday night I went to see Cut Copy, a band I've loved for ages, at Terminal 5. They were so good. Everyone grinning and bouncing about the whole 2 hours they played. Here's a video I took - the sound isn't amazing but you get the general idea of the highly jolly atmosphere.

Last night my friend Cezary had a party, then we went out, then had an afterparty, dancing round his apartment until 5am. As I said a couple of posts ago, excessive socializing/drinking/meeting new people is not something I do so very often these days. It was nice to be back on/off the wagon.

Post-apolcalyptic

2011-03-27T19:00:00.002-04:00

Always having dreams of a post-nuclear/alternatively-ruined world. Usually I'm trying to call my family to get them help and my fingers are shaking so badly I can't dial the number. '0-1-9-2', no, start again, '0-1-8', no, start again, and so on. Last night we were living in some sort of refugee camp and there was a eerie McDonald's outpost in the middle of it. I was in there ordering food and hoping they'd put it on the counter before they realized I didn't have any money, so I could run away with it.

Pleasant weekend, catching up with Jamie and Victoria, catching up on emails, catching up on mail. Planning some trips: Russia, while wonderful, left me with an uncharacteristic urge to go somewhere warm and unchallenging. Still on Ulysses, truly relishing it and feeling confident I really will get through it, though it doesn't invite long, continuous stretches of absorption so it may be another month or so. Work is good and crazy. Spring keeps threatening to happen, eventually.

Do I contradict myself?

2011-03-15T22:17:00.003-04:00

Back on Ulysses. I am going to finish it this time. I must have tried more than 10 times now, never getting past the first few pages. Now I'm on page 36. I can taste success. I'm enjoying it. It's going to be different this time.

I've copied a passage below that reminds me of two pieces of writing I've read and re-read and re-read... and re-read, and mentioned on this blog before: the opening to Thomas's Under Milk Wood ("the slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea"), and the end of 'Little Gidding' in Eliot's Four Quartets ("heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea"). It's interesting, isn't it, when a writer is pulling his punches, just being witty and smart and weird but perhaps not quite magical, then he writes something like this as if to say to you, yeah, I can do that too.

Woodshadows floated silently through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

Slowly we unfurl

2011-03-13T13:20:00.004-04:00

General update, since it's been a while:

RADIOHEAD
Radiohead's new album came out a few weeks ago. I've listened to it a lot - really, a lot - since. It's very different from In Rainbows, their previous album. In Rainbows has a very strong pulse, feels purposeful. The rawness and honesty of the emotion in that album, the decipherable happiness and the sadness in the lyrics, the shoving determination of the music, is what makes it so compelling. The King of Limbs is far quieter, it meanders and enjoys itself, and showcases Thom Yorke's vocal abilities more simply and proudly. I really love it. I listen to every track on In Rainbows apart from Faust Arp repeatedly, whereas there are a few songs on The King of Limbs I'll probably never listen to. But Little By Little, Lotus Flower and Give Up The Ghost will still be on my most-played 10 years from now. The video for Lotus Flower, with Thom dancing crookedly and delivering the lyrics right in the camera later in the song, really re-awoke my love for this band and for Yorke in particular. I know most teenagers have a band or musician they identify with, but it's no exaggeration to say that a big part of all I've done and who I am (for better and for worse) is directly attributable to this band and this wonky, passionate man.

'Want the moon on a stick' is one of my favorite turns of phrase, so I was thrilled he sings it here. And the moment in Give Up The Ghost when his voice soars over the song's title made me clap my hand over my open mouth the first time I listened to it, which was on my flight to Russia. You get knocked sideways like that by a song maybe a few times in a decade.

WORK
Work is good. I like my new-ish job. I feel like I know what I'm doing most of the time. I'm glad I took the job.

TRAVEL
I'm travelling most weeks. This week I was in Virginia, the week before in Arkansas. I don't mind because my personal responsibilities are nil, but if I had children I'd be miserable. Unless my children were horrible; then it would be delightful.

MONEY
I have started saving money in a focused and careful manner. I'm happy to do so, because I have an end goal I care about. But I noted with interest that the plotting made me enormously uncomfortable. My greatest fear is future planning and commitment. But it's done now, and Excel has the proof in a spreadsheet.

HEALTH
Getting older is intriguing. It's like being a child again, the process of discovery every time you take a close look at your body. Was that wrinkle there before? How many gray hairs do I have? Does the fact I frown at my computer screen mean my 20:20 eyesight is failing, or am I just getting grumpier with age? I'm far less concerned with the aesthetic elements of age than I thought I'd be (plus I'm only 29 so there's plenty of time for that neurosis to develop). But I am worried about my health. I've never enjoyed exercise, apart from swimming. I thought it was boring and only really useful as a way to stay slim, which my genes and metabolism have always taken care of for me. I still think it's boring, but I'm going to the gym anyway, because I'd like to be more bendy and lithe-feeling, and also lay the foundation for my future self, who may suddenly get sick, or fat and droopy.

OUT
Went to a bar in Manhattan on Friday, was flirted with. I don't really do that any more - put on lipgloss and stand in a group drinking beer and laughing, and allow cute boys to tell me I'm pretty. It's weird how that period of your life seems to slip imperceptibly from under you. I remember talking to a colleague in London years ago, who was probably 28 or 29 at the time, and was saying he didn't go out all that much any more. My 24-year-old self thought that was pitiful. Now I'm all: Sofa! Book! Yes!

Shiny things

2011-03-01T21:14:00.009-05:00

So, here are some 'best of' shots from Russia. Probably the most spectacular moment was on the first day, when we climbed to the top of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg for a view I hadn't really reckoned on: St. P is more stunning than Moscow because the building restrictions there are much firmer, meaning the only things that rise above the skyline norm are gleaming onion domes and steaming factory pipes.

Our next stop was Petrozavodsk, on the shores of frozen Lake Onega, from whence we took a tiny hovercraft to Kizhi. The wooden churches at Kizhi are a world heritage site, and we had the whole place to ourselves - an unbelievable (and unbelievably cold) privilege.

The final leg was Moscow. Standing in Red Square looking across wetly frosty cobblestones past Lenin's mausoleum to St. Basil's, was a surreal experience, one of those moments akin to seeing the Eiffel or Pisa Towers for the first time, or the Statue of Liberty, where the oft-televized screen shot meets reality. Reality was beautiful, both the technicolor domes and the unexpectedly Moroccan-feeling interior. And the rest of Moscow, from the soviet-era subway stations to the park full of long-dismantled monuments to Fallen Heros to the wax-dipped mummy of the fallen Communist hero, was precisely as I hoped it would be.

Interesting, Mr Bond

2011-02-28T23:15:00.001-05:00

Back from Russia, with love. Mostly thawed out - couple of my toes still a bit dodgy. Too tired to upload photos tonight.

Unpack/Repack

2011-02-18T00:44:00.002-05:00

Tipped out the San Francisco luggage. Now staring at the (not inconsiderable) contents of my closets, wondering what I could possibly take to Russia that would protect me from the -26 degree Celsius weather. Next time we're going back to Greece.

"From the files of 'better in concept than in execution'..."

2011-02-15T11:52:00.004-05:00

So spake Frank when he, Angela and I rose at 6am on Saturday to drag ourselves to the pub for a series of football (soccer) and rugby matches. Laughed as BBC America explained where Wales is:

Through judicious use of fried potato and a tactical nap, we managed to make it through to midnight. Good to be back in DC and see them. It's looking increasingly likely that they're going to do what all of my best friends inexcusably do and move to London, so I'm glad to have the chance to hang out in the capital with them while they're still there.

Also went to Richmond, Virginia, for work on Friday. What a lovely town. Sunshine and cobbles; I highly approve.

Back to San Francisco today (work), return Thursday, then to Russia on Friday for vacation. Visas are secured, everything's booked, shearling-lined boots are procured.

Neglect

2011-02-06T18:13:00.002-05:00

I don't have all that much to write, I'm just aware it's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything.

When I have admin to do, it cripples my whole life. I can't think or relax, and yet also can't just get the admin done in order to be free of it. The list of tedious things I've had to do in the last couple of weeks is long, very long and indeed very tedious. Dealing with everyone from National Grid to the Russian Consulate in NYC. And working, and being moderately sociable. There's a twinge of malaise in my stomach focused on one or two people who've been annoying me. And it feels like a very long time since I saw my family, although it was only a few weeks ago. But in general, I feel okay, just held in suspension, waiting for Spring. Normally I love winter, have always imagined I'd be a willing captive of the White Witch's Narnia, but I'm so very bored of the weeks-old snow drifts and the heavy clothing. Think the trip to San Francisco destroyed my enthusiasm for miserable weather. Yearning for daffodils and bare legs.

Pretty unstimulated by music or books, at least in the sense that I haven't been listening to or reading anything new. I got tickets to see Cut Copy in a couple of months and have been listening mainly to electro.

down like broken love

2011-01-24T21:00:00.005-05:00

Bolted through a Bukowski poetry collection - the charmingly-named The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills - on one of my flights last week. I always feel guilty for reading poetry quickly, far more so than I do with a novel. Bukowski's style is reasonably conversational and fluid, which invites your eye to skim. I'm now re-reading the poems I turned the corners on. This is one I particularly like, especially the part at the end about screaming. I'm coming to love Bukowski's poetry more and more; I think the balance of abject misery with self-abasing humor is pretty seductive, in art as in life:

'conversation on a telephone'

I could tell by the crouch of the cat,

the way it was flattened,

that it was insane with prey;

and when my car came upon it,

it rose in the twilight

and made off

with bird in mouth,

a very large bird, gray,

the wings down like broken love,

the fangs in,

life still there

but not much,

not very much.

the broken love-bird

the cat walks in my mind

and I cannot make him out:

the phone rings,

I answer a voice,

but I see him again and again,

and the loose wings

the loose gray wings,

and this thing held

in a head that knows no mercy;

it is the world, it is ours;

I put the phone down

and the cat-sides of the room

come in upon me

and I would scream,

but they have places for people

who scream;

and the cat walks

the cat walks forever

in my brain.

Scoring points

2011-01-18T23:38:00.004-05:00

Life is unsettled at the moment, has been unsettled for about 3 months, partly because that's how long it's been since I've had a solid 2 weeks+ in NYC. I think I've written before about the blanks I have sometimes; I'll be sitting on a plane or on my way to the airport and I'll have to make a committed intellectual effort to remember where I just was and where I'm going.

Right now, I'm in Bentonville, Arkansas for client meetings. Bentonville is just as you'd imagine a smallish town in America to be: pancake houses and strip malls and a street system devoid of footpaths. To walk anywhere is to dance with death. I like these parts of America very much. Not a sneering, urbanite liking that has more to do with condescension than admiration. I really do like them. It feels quiet and safe, and the people are friendly and honest and polite, not in a perfunctory way but in a kind, humane way. I like to be alone a lot, and here I can be alone in an absolute sense, without the feeling that I could very easily be not-alone if I were to make a phone call or wander a few blocks to a friend's house.

Tomorrow I'm going to San Francisco, for more meetings and hopefully a couple of drinks and some good food. And certainly lots of loyalty points and airmiles that will be spent on a vacation soon. I seriously considered moving to San Francisco last year. I'm not sure I'm ready to live somewhere so unfailingly delightful, but maybe one day.

Finding things to write about

2011-01-17T01:35:00.006-05:00

On Thursday, my friend Marla asked me if I'd like to write a companion poem for some work she's showing (she's a photographer). The show is called 'Love is a River' and I own one of the pieces she'll be using, a photograph of a dark, flat river in the forest, which she very kindly gave to me when I admired it.

I've written virtually nothing for eighteen months, a situation that's been brought about by a long period of improvement after a couple of very unhappy years - like many people, I found it much easier to write when I wasn't feeling well. I also think the vast, nebulous nature of the story I'm writing means it's hard to know where to start, or to feel momentum. So I was glad and inspired to be asked to write something different, and to have a (broad) topic. I wrote a poem in five minutes, based partly on the image, partly on the song it always makes me think of (Radiohead's Pyramid Song, the lyrics, "I jumped into the river. Black-eyed angels swam with me."), and partly on a dream I had about a forest and a river, almost exactly a year ago. And partly on heartbreak, of course. I'm happy with it. I don't know if Marla will use it, and if not that's fine. The thing I always forget before I write something, and remember afterwards, is that the validation of others becomes meaningless once you have something written that you can bear to read.

More art

2011-01-13T15:30:00.004-05:00

This is a beautiful undertaking: a group of designers created covers for Nabokov's novels, using a butterfly collector's box as the frame. It's hard to choose a favorite. Maybe Paul Sahre's The Luzhin Defense:

Quiet please

2011-01-07T12:04:00.002-05:00

Dan's latest drawing, which he's kindly offered to sell me for $100,000,000,000.

Bunny slippers are the best part, I think, included "so he doesn't look too creepy" according to the artist.

Reflecting

2011-01-04T06:14:00.004-05:00

Look, look, I dyed my hair and it didn't turn pink. Already, 2011 is an improvement on 2010.

This may as well be a year end/beginning post since you (or at least I) can't help but use the turn of the year as an excuse to reflect and plan. When I saw in 2010, I was with my dear friend Mel and we raised our glasses to a year that wouldn't be as shit as 2009. 2009 was a really bad year for both of us. Just awful. There were some very good times, of course, but a whole lot of proper, debilitating misery, too.

2010 was a lot better, and I only really recognized that in the last few weeks. It's been pretty tumultuous: a lot of travel, a new home, a new job, some new opportunities peeking out alluringly, and a couple of major disappointments. And I hadn't taken all of that and distilled it into any sort of impression or intention. Then a conversation with a stranger in December, who was explaining how she's chosen to change her perception of life, combined with all the thinking and reading I'd been doing about what makes us happy, drove me to a position of unnatural contentment and gratitude. So, yes, I'm extremely unhappy about some things that happened this year - barely writing at all, close friends leaving the city/country, people I cared about being repulsive. But on the other hand, I live in a city I love, I have a beautiful home, a job I find both interesting and low-stress, some fantastic friendships, and I don't have to worry about money. I feel calmer and quieter, and I'm sleeping properly. And while I've always been pretty impulsive, I feel even more willing to take risks. I'll be 30 this year, and I'm old enough to know I'm young, and won't be young for that much longer. And that gives me the impetus not to be lame and waste this time when I have freedom and opportunities. I fear this post makes me sound like a therapy-attending asshat. And obviously that's less than desirable. But I do feel okay, not just optimistic about some distant point in the future but optimistic about tomorrow, literally. Put it down to new year zip.

Ringdingaling

2010-12-22T12:26:00.003-05:00

So much snow! I remember saying this last year, but GOD when it snows in the UK, the usual persistent chatter about the weather becomes tediously pervasive. Every news bulletin starts with a stony-faced presenter going, "Chaos across the country as airport authorities fail to deal with the latest blizzards..." as if some poor bugger in Heathrow is to blame for the shocking weather. I was very lucky to get into the country just before the horror show kicked off (many friends are stuck on one side of the Atlantic or another), saw a couple of friends, sorted my new visa, then came up north and settled into the traditional, happy rota of eating, cuddles and Christmas shopping. Took the little Newbys to see a terrible film - they didn't think it was terrible - and Santa Claus:

And all is well. No news is good news. Merry Christmas.

Discovering

2010-12-08T23:01:00.004-05:00

Head spinning this week. Travel (lots of), travel planning (expensive), admin (tedious) and Christmas (imminent, exciting). The work I did last week was fascinating and moving. I can't really write about my work because of client confidentiality, but I got to meet some people for research and I was reminded of two things. One that I'm very lucky to be in the financial position I am. Two, that said, happiness is not, until you start teetering on the brink of real need, linked to money, to things, at all. We talk a lot about the nature of happiness at work. I just read Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord, a charmingly-written, uplifting book, and now I'm starting on Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (Ted talk here), which I'd recommend on the basis of the first three pages. Gilbert's insight - that we're generally wrong about what will make us happy a few seconds, days or years from now, and generally contemptuous of who we were when we made those decisions; essentially, that temporal gaps render us incapable of understanding ourselves - is truly worthy of the term 'insight', in that it feels revolutionary and screamingly obvious all at once.

Land of enchantment

2010-11-29T16:55:00.007-05:00

I've spent the past week in New Mexico, visiting Frank's wonderful parents for Thanksgiving and seeing the bit of the world that Frank and Angela come from. Having grown up watching John Ford westerns, it's been amazing to find myself standing in that vast, dry landscape. We visited the Acoma people, Sky City and Santa Fe, and ate a ton of burritos. Here are a few photos.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Atlanta for work, and will hopefully get a chance to see the city (another new place for me, and one I've always wanted to visit, not least because my late friend Lynette spent a year there when we were teenagers). Back to NYC on Sunday. It's almost Christmas. I have so much to think about and organize. Life feels unstable, but positively so.

Everyone calm down

2010-11-20T23:50:00.003-05:00

I'm still here. Just busy.

So. I started my new job this week. I like it so far. I like that the office is open plan, I like my lovely new computer, I like the coffee, which tastes better than at my old agency, but mostly I just like having the feeling of working at a proper ad agency, where people are young and smart and funny. Perhaps it will keep getting better. Or maybe it'll all go wrong. But for now, it feels like progress.

I have also been busy being sociable. Frank and Angela were in town earlier this week, ensuring I took a hangover to my first day at work. Today I spent a great deal of time covering a great deal of New York, getting up at 5.30am to go shopping (don't ask), and for breakfast with Michala, and then walking uptown, then having brunch with Kyle, then facing the hideousness of a very messed-up weekend subway system to come home and take a nap, then meeting Victoria in Cobble Hill and going to a party full of charming people in Williamsburg. On the way there, our cab was pulled over for making an illegal turn by a horrible policeman and we (Victoria is also from England) marveled anew that he had a gun. Americans don't notice this, of course, because here it is normal. I have never adjusted to being in the presence of firearms.

Observing & avoiding

2010-11-12T18:18:00.003-05:00

Holy god, there are some messed-up people in this city. The number of violently unhinged characters one encounters during the average day is both tragic and alarming. My friend told me the other day that on her morning subway ride a guy threatened to rip her head off and no one else in the carriage even looked up. It's just normal, and the venting of an unwell person is rarely taken seriously. I guess that attitude is for the best, or most people would be scared to leave the house. This is on my mind today because I went up to my new agency to meet with my new boss for a chat. My agency is in Hell's Kitchen, a few blocks from Times Square. Because homeless people tend to be ushered away from the tourist-heavy neon by the police, there are a lot of them in my new work hood. Needless to say, most of them are both sane and completely harmless. However, today Mukund (who works at the new place) told me to avoid a particular subway entrance because, "People just take a shit in public there." The C train - my train - also seems pretty heavy on the crazy, in my experience. Today a well-dressed woman got on in Soho, carrying a bag from Uniqlo, looking pretty regular until she started saying (to no one), "Shit, Shower, Shave, Shit, Shower, Shave, Shitshowershaveshitshowershave." How are these people not being helped, how are they out in Soho buying $200 coats and drinking soup from a takeout place, and then just losing it on the subway? After her, a guy got on and asked a pregnant woman for a bite of her sandwich, then began jumping up and down and banging his feet together with violent force. Is it funny? I guess you have to try to find it funny.

Re-injection

2010-11-08T23:18:00.003-05:00

I was talking to my best friend yesterday. She moved to London (from here) recently and we were discussing the complex appeal of cities, and the weirdness - and, for us, misfortune - that she, an American, is so at home out there and I, an Englishwoman, can't imagine living anywhere but here. I'm not remotely bored with New York. After all this time, I still feel lucky and kind of astonished that I get to live here. It's pretty fantastic to be at the quietly pleasurable point where there's a balance between deep familiarity with the place and deep gratitude that it's my home.

But sometimes a small thing happens to hammer that pleasure home and re-surprise me, like last night, when I went to see Fair Game at the Angelika in Soho. It was Sunday night, I'd met my pal Mukund, we'd had good sushi and plonked ourselves down in front of one of the smaller screens with maybe 25 other people - it was late Sunday night and the theater was pretty dead. Then this guy in an overcoat holding a cup of soda wanders down the aisle with a microphone and goes, "Hi everyone, my name's Doug Liman and I directed this film. I live round the corner so I wanted to pop in and say thanks for coming to see it..." then spends a couple minutes talking about his movie. Then leaves. And while the phrase 'only in New York' is irritating, it's hard to think what else to say. Doug Liman dropped in to introduce his movie to me. Pretty cool. (The movie was good, too.)

What

2010-11-07T16:13:00.002-05:00

is wrong with me, I do not know. I just read through the posts on the first page here and considered how crashingly dull I've been of late. Spent most of this weekend with my laptop on my knee, dicking around. No reading, no writing, minimal socializing. I am going out tonight, seeing a movie, getting dinner with a friend. Between this coming Tuesday and the one after I have no job and therefore an opportunity to do something worthwhile with my time. I need to start writing again - I can feel my enthusiasm and already minuscule self-belief waning, and it seems this will be my only opportunity for some time to sit alone for a few days and get on with it. I have a bookcase of inspiration if I'd just walk across the room and pick something up. How's about Blake? *getting up... opening at random...*

"Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl?"

Okay, nice.

Uninspired

2010-11-04T23:55:00.002-04:00

Haven't had much to post about this past week. And I'll tell you what, it's Thomas Wolfe's fault. I've been trudging through You Can't Go Home Again for what feels like months now and it's killing me. For every wonderful paragraph there are twenty pages I find intolerable. I should get into the habit of abandoning books I'm not enjoying, but I can't, especially when it's a book I can't help feeling I ought to be appreciating. It's faintly embarrassing. This is a writer William Faulkner described as the best of his generation, that is, Faulkner thought he was a lesser writer than Wolfe. I'm so confused.

New things

2010-10-30T23:40:00.006-04:00

I resigned my job on Tuesday. I'm going to work for a different agency in New York. While I've known this was coming for some months, the news that I had my visa and could resign immediately was not expected this week, and I guess I spent the first day or so feeling stunned that it actually is happening. But it is. I'm now really excited. One of the frustrations of working in advertising is the wall you hit when it comes to doing something rather than just saying it. The new place is a different type of agency that thinks up then actually makes them happen. It's a bit more physical, although a lot of it is virtual. If that makes sense.

Bought some beautiful clothes and shoes recently. I always buy more clothes at this time of year, but it's strange and pleasurable to buy something gorgeous and not feel too much guilt.

Saw The Social Network tonight. I tend to get excited about anything Aaron Sorkin is involved with, but I wasn't sure how compelling I'd find the story. Wrong, obviously. It's sort of Shakespearean; I suppose much older than that. But the anger and guilt and ambition and envy and betrayal made me think of Macbeth.

Unravelling the ripple

2010-10-27T00:35:00.003-04:00

Came home tonight to find that a beloved friend had sent me a book about "the sea that always seems like a metaphor but one that is always moving, cannot be fixed, like a heart that is like a tongue that is like a mystery that is like a story that is like a border that is like something altogether different and like everything at once... the treasure that always runs through your fingers and never runs out."

Not where you expect to find cool stuff

2010-10-26T15:24:00.003-04:00

Felt a brief, morbid flutter of envy when I saw this.

Tony Wilson was a central player in the Manchester music scene that brought the world some of the best bands ever, including The Smiths and Joy Division.

He's a divisive figure to say the least, and is portrayed as a bit of a cock in both 24 Hour Party People and Control, but his death was pretty unpleasant. The medicine he needed was denied him on the NHS: "When they said I would have to pay £3,500 for the drugs each month, I thought where am I going to find the money? I'm the one person in this industry who famously has never made any money. I used to say some people make money and some make history, which is very funny until you find you can't afford to keep yourself alive."

From Marbury:

The headstone of the ex-Factory Records boss was co-designed by the great Peter Saville. It took three years, most of which would have been taken up in a debate about fonts. Worth it though.

The quotation in the bottom right is from a 1876 novel called The Manchester Man, by Isabella Varley Banks:

Mutability is the epitaph of worlds

Change alone is changeless

People drop out of the history of a life as of a land

though their work or their influence remains

Smoky, boozy, busy

2010-10-25T15:01:00.003-04:00

This past week was nuts. Had a lot of people over for dinner, caught up with a few friends, had a ton of work and meetings, got really irritated with someone I work with (not at my agency) and felt a bloodthirsty competitiveness brewing in me that I'd forgotten was there. Went down to DC for Frank's 30th birthday and had a perfect weekend with him and Angela and Marcus. We haven't all been in the same room together for about 18 months. I wish it was always Autumn; I love this time of year, these few weeks when the light and smell and temperature and color all teeters on that temperate, glowing knife edge before winter comes. The leaves were red and crispy, the sun was shining, whiskey flowed and cigars were puffed upon.

I'm absolutely exhausted today and I'm working from home, gulping coffee and trying to get a few things out by tonight so I can get a decent sleep. My parents are back in Scotland this week and I wish I could have gone with them. The rest of this week should be pretty enjoyable - a concert on Friday, night time fairground on Saturday, other good stuff.

Reason is the slave of the passions

2010-10-18T13:26:00.007-04:00

What a wonderful article.

A few years ago Sarah Brosnan and I demonstrated that primates will happily perform a task for cucumber slices until they see others getting grapes, which taste so much better. The cucumber-eaters become agitated, throw down their measly veggies and go on strike. A perfectly fine food has become unpalatable as a result of seeing a companion with something better.

We called it inequity aversion, a topic since investigated in other animals, including dogs. A dog will repeatedly perform a trick without rewards, but refuse as soon as another dog gets pieces of sausage for the same trick. Recently, Sarah reported an unexpected twist to the inequity issue, however. While testing pairs of chimps, she found that also the one who gets the better deal occasionally refuses. It is as if they are satisfied only if both get the same. We seem to be getting close to a sense of fairness.

...and another thing

2010-10-14T20:24:00.004-04:00

Don't think I haven't noticed no one comments on my posts these days. I DON'T CARE.

A big box of books was delivered tonight, my birthday present to myself. I'm seeking inspiration after a writing lull that's starting to look like a hard stop, so I replaced some of the stuff that's strewn around attics and closets in the homes of family and friends in the UK (Shakespeare, Milton, Faulkner) and got some new or long-neglected stuff (Bukowski, William Blake, Shelley, Keats). I'm also returning to Whitman since he had a catalytic effect when I was in the Catskills last year. I bought this today to hang next to my writing desk:

It's an excerpt from the 1855 prologue of Leaves of Grass, a succinct paragraph of life guidance that's immortally relevant:

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Treachery

2010-10-14T14:24:00.003-04:00

Going to start a new blog, for things of frivolity. This one will continue.

This blog is "indulgent," according to Tyler. Not so much an insult as the definition of a blog, no?

Song for today:

Friends

2010-10-11T15:20:00.002-04:00

Ally was in NYC this weekend, ostensibly for a wedding but I had her to myself much of the time. We've been friends since we were sixteen, and while I'm lucky in having a hearty portion of close, old, friends, there are few I can talk and laugh with incessantly for 12 hours straight. It's why she's my favorite vacation buddy. We may take our special brand of unselfconscious chortling to Iceland early next year - I hope so.

Also got to see Roh and Jamie and cook a pretty good meal involving figs - I love figs - and see The Town, which I really enjoyed despite its flaws. Managed to track down some halloumi cheese. It's so hard to find here. I can't believe I'm rounding out my summary of the weekend with halloumi cheese, but it's really good.

Holy shit

2010-10-07T17:15:00.004-04:00

Haven't posted music for a while, and don't usually bother to post stuff that I've already linked on my facebook page, but this is good enough to make you wet your pants.

UPDATE: Hat tip to Tyler, who introduced me to this song along with several other excellent tunes of late, and who also lets me borrow his iPod charge lead with patient regularity. I like to tease him that his blog is crap, while checking it about 6 times a day.

29

2010-10-03T19:20:00.006-04:00

Despite expectations to the contrary, this weekend turned out fine. I hate birthdays - not the ageing aspect, just the feeling that I should make a spectacle of myself and gather people together to celebrate me. So I intended to go away and that didn't happen, and I was irritated and disappointed. But I woke up feeling good. I spoke to my parents and opened my gifts from them on skype video. It was really sweet; they sang to me and I pranced about with my laptop showing them my apartment. They bought me many lovely things, including a pink hat that I'm still wearing indoors because it's so soft.

Mukund came over and gave me flowers, and we got drunk and ate eggs and bought books.

Later I drank champagne with Andrew. I love my new apartment and feel very at home.

Tonight I'll eat crumpets and go to bed early. It was all okay.

Color

2010-09-29T13:12:00.004-04:00

We tend to imagine the world pre-World War I in black and white, don't we? We know it wasn't, but our imaginations are steered by the films and photographs we have of that era, and picturing life then in our own technicolor is difficult. So this series of photographs from one hundred years ago is magical. Weirdly Wizard of Oz-ish. You can read the article and see them all. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Every human

2010-09-26T00:12:00.008-04:00

spent about half an hour as a single cell.

Apartment looks and feels good.

Cooked a lot this week, including for James on Tuesday and for Victoria today - hollandaise sauce with some success - and had my toenails painted blue. May go upstate with Marla tomorrow to her new place, definitely going up next weekend to hide from my birthday.

Reading

2010-09-20T11:01:00.003-04:00

To answer Ian's question, the books I read in Scotland (I thought I'd read 5 but I can't remember more than 4 now) were:

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

I finished this the second day there. I first read it as a teenager, and then went over it a couple more times when I wrote my thesis on American literature at university. I hadn't picked it up for about 8 years. There are passages in Faulkner, particularly in this book, that I have to re-read dozens of times and sometimes write out myself just so I can wrap my head around how it feels to have put those words on a page. I don't know if that sounds ridiculous but it's true. It is the best book I've ever read.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

I read the back of it in a bookstore in an airport a while ago and thought it sounded pretty good so I ordered it from Amazon, but it went astray in the mail. Happily, there was a copy in the cottage we stayed in. I really enjoyed this book. It's based on a tragic but believable story, about a very elderly woman who's been locked in a mental asylum most of her life owing to the repercussions of one poor, but not evil, decision. It's also partly narrated by her doctor. It's hard to describe. It's historically and culturally fascinating, and it's got a good chunk of classic drama and romance. But: the ending is unforgivably predictable and awful. There's a point about 30 pages from the end where you realize what's going to happen and you're mentally screaming at the author, "No, no, no, NO! Don't do it!" Such a shame he couldn't resist because it leaves an overwhelming taste of the ridiculous in the reader's mouth. Despite this, I'd recommend the book. It's beautifully, really movingly written and sits in that pleasant space between excellent literature and excellent page-turner, which is exactly what one wants when curled up in an armchair in a cottage.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I found this in the charity shop near my parents' house. It's difficult to categorize. A mystery/thriller/romance with a good whoosh of gothic. Some nasty murders and naughty sex scenes and quite a lot of very funny lines. I didn't feel it was brilliantly written (although that's always hard to say about a translation), but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a confection, reminiscent of the later Harry Potter books with a young, principled male narrator caught in the center of a big and frightening story. Far more enjoyable and less predictable, though. It's a book about books, about the power of literature, the pleasure of discovering and holding and smelling a book.

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

This reminded me of The Collector by John Fowles, partly because of the subject matter and setting, partly because the protagonist is so hateful. It's better (you feel glimmers of sympathy for the narrator), funnier, and gives an accurate and depressing portrayal of modern Britain, spanning the late sixties to the present day. Faulks said, "Contemporary Britain seems to me frivolous - apt and ripe for journalism - but it is difficult to see much grandeur in it." I wholeheartedly, sadly, agree with him. There's something missing in my homeland, particularly England. Scotland still has its poetic beauty and offers enough remoteness that you don't feel you're walking through its ghost. But England, I feel it's lost something; too often it feels, even in its little villages and quiet spots, like a parody of itself. Anyone who feels that way will find a lot to empathize with in Engleby, but it's not strictly enjoyable.

Boxes boxes boxes

2010-09-17T15:02:00.002-04:00

Unpacking, bit by bit. Found the scissors and my laptop cable this morning, 2 days in. Quite a relief. Can't get over the fact I have an actual kitchen. And enough un-furniture-inhabited floor space to make rugs a real possibility. Also I have so many clothes/shoes it's embarrassing: having yet another determined and ruthless sort-out and piling up stuff to chuck out. This weekend I'll be wielding a power drill in the name of bookshelf construction.

Scotland, peace, return, frantic

2010-09-13T13:03:00.022-04:00

I've been away for 10 days, most of the time on the north coast of Scotland, where there's no cell reception or anything else, really, apart from hills and heather and empty beaches. At night you could see the Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon, shooting stars, and - wonderfully - the slow orbits of satellites circling the earth. I read five books, never looked at a computer, sat in front of a coal fire most evenings and just enjoyed being with my parents. I think one of the upsides of me living abroad is that we really do appreciate the time we have together. I love going away with them; it's like floating on your back on water for a week, slowly unknotting.

I'm back in NYC now and happy to be so, lack of family and greenery notwithstanding. I'm moving apartment in two days and haven't packed a thing, and have other administrative irritations to deal with. Anyway. Here are some photos.

Packing sweaters

2010-08-30T21:34:00.002-04:00

Or jumpers, as we call 'em back home. Or, accurately, unpacking (from winter storage) then repacking (into my suitcase) sweaters/jumpers, and other Scotland-worthy clothing. Also musing on the fact that I have three days until I go to Scotland, and when I get back I'll have two days until I move apartment. So I should be doing a lot more packing, of the wrapping-things-up-in-bubble-wrap type. I'm not, of course.

"Read it if you like or dont read it if you like."

2010-08-27T15:46:00.003-04:00

Three flawless sentences. For me, this passage is the quintessence of Faulkner, that cluster of despair and hope and tirelessness. I also feel, each time I've read it, that as much as it's Judith's explanation of why she's handing over a private letter to a stranger, it's also him (Faulkner) trying to explain why he writes.

"Because you make so little impression, you see. You get born and you try this and you dont know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they dont know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it cant matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while they dont even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter. And so maybe if you could go to someone, the stranger the better, and give them something - a scrap of paper - something, anything, it not to mean anything in itself and them not to even read it or keep it, not even bother to throw it away or destroy it, at least it would be something just because it would have happened, be remembered even if only in passing from one hand to another, one mind to another, and it would be at least a scratch, something, something that might make a mark on something that was once for the reason that it can die someday, while the block of stone cant be is because it never can become was because it cant ever die or perish."

Crystal Castles, Oysters, Faulkner

2010-08-23T13:38:00.004-04:00

Pretty lovely weekend. It's raining! I love rain.

Went to see Crystal Castles at Terminal 5 on Saturday night. Wasn't sure what to expect, but they were much better than I imagined. There were no lights on the audience, the stage was only half-lit, everyone was smoking and it was pretty heady and tribal-feeling. They were way more intense and trancey than their released music would suggest.

(Update: just found this recording on YouTube. The sound quality is appalling but it's worth the first 30 seconds to hear the crowd's reaction as they realize they're going to play 'Crimewave' then see the lights come up with the bass. I was in the pit, this was taken from the balcony which was likely a lot less sweaty but a lot less fun.)

Yesterday I went to see Andrew's apartment again because I might sub-let it, then we got oysters and beer. I really hope I get the apartment. It's twice as big as mine, and there's a proper kitchen.

I bought another copy of Absalom, Absalom! (my original has gone astray) and had to force myself to close it and get off the subway this morning. I could have sat there reading all day, so happily. The second chapter, where Sutpen is properly introduced, is the most extraordinary piece of writing.

Accidental meat-eating

2010-08-22T16:03:00.001-04:00

It's hard to elaborate on the title. I keep accidentally eating meat, finding it in dishes I thought were vegetarian. I think I just ate pork dumplings.

Movement

2010-08-15T18:05:00.007-04:00

Today's a weird Sunday. I'm in the office, trying to summon the energy to finish a presentation that just won't go to bed. It's ugly and arduous. It's a gray day outside, the first in weeks and weeks. I wish Autumn would get here, with its legitimate, chilly grayness and crunchy leaves, instead of this soggy, balmy gloom. Wish I could wear something that wasn't primarily chosen because of the lightness/spareness of fabric.

But some things are good. Several things, in fact. So I should chirp up. Tweet tweet. A conversation about Attenborough last night made me think of this piece of film. It's actually from one of the BBC's other naturalists, Bill Oddie, a presenter who specializes in birds and who is different in style from Attenborough but quite charming, and also worthy of much respect as someone who's spoken openly about his tremendous battles with depression. He's often rather garrulous and emphatic, but it's lovely to see him here, awestruck by such a common bird, reminded of the perfect, unfathomable beauty in nature. I really dislike Starlings in individual form. They're oily-looking, and they're so ill-tempered and cruel to the littler birds. But here, as a flock, they're mesmerizing. I like what Oddie says at the end, that of all the creatures he's seen all over the world, this is the most memorable sight. Once again, YouTube clips are cropped when I embed them, but do click through and watch full screen. It gets better and better.

Words

2010-08-12T10:39:00.001-04:00

This is beautiful. I stole it from Ian.

Note: I'd click through to YouTube to watch it; my blog is cropping videos this month for reasons unknown.

Larks

2010-08-09T17:38:00.006-04:00

Gerard Manley Hopkins was one of my favorite poets at university. I haven't really read him for years. He lived a very sad, lonely, confused life and died young, away from friends and with no sense of how special his writing was or of the influence it would have. If you like Dylan Thomas, you'll love him. He's Dylan Thomas in the pit of despair. Some of his work is ecstatic and wonder-filled, too, as befits a Jesuit priest. But primarily it's his struggles (probably with bipolar disorder and suppressed homosexuality) that weave through the poems. One of the loveliest things I've ever read is that his last words were, "I am so happy. I am so happy. I loved my life."

This is the second verse of 'I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark,' a poem about insomnia and depression and loneliness and unworthiness before God:

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

I don't know why I'm surrounding myself with wonderful poetry on a day when I have so much work to do. It makes the groan of the infinitesimal progress of my PowerPoint presentation all the more unbearable. But I also remember this, 'The Sea and the Skylark', as one of the poems I liked best when I studied him:

On ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour
And pelt music, till none ’s to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime:
Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.

The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams is - I despise my overuse of the word "favorite" on this site but it can't be avoided - one of my favorite classical pieces of music. Although it wasn't actually inspired by Hopkins, but by George Meredith's poem on the same subject. I prefer Hopkins. I think he communicates as much, more, in his 14 lines. I also think Hopkins' style is the more natural partner of the stutteringly beautiful melody of the music. When Williams premiered the work, a critic wrote, "It showed supreme disregard for the ways of today or yesterday. It dreamed itself along." Here's part one:

Here's part two:

"I want a daughter while I'm still young...

2010-08-05T14:37:00.004-04:00

I want to hold her hand, show her some beauty before all this damage is done."

Listening to the new Arcade Fire at David's the other night, I may have said something really fucking stupid about it being a bit same-y/not that great. I'm a colossal idiot - I just listened again and it's wonderful.

They're playing in NY tonight but the tickets are searingly expensive and I saw them in London a few years ago so they're not quite on my 'would-pay-anything-to-see-them' list. If you live somewhere they're touring, and you get the chance to go see them, please do. They are the type of band that make your hair stand on end.

Inner shit

2010-08-05T12:26:00.002-04:00

God, weird few days. I've been feeling awful for a couple of weeks, virtually no sleep, no appetite, no goodwill. But I'm feeling a bit better now, not because anything has improved significantly but just because I decided it wasn't as bad as I thought.

I have a friend, V, who's supernaturally funny and beautiful. That aside, she's a bit like me, in that she's much better at fixing other people's problems than her own. She'll forgive me for saying that. I like to think I know myself pretty well, even if I'm not very good at doing anything productive with that knowledge. But during an email exchange this weekend, she said something unexpected and frighteningly perceptive about me: "I feel New York is a prism that amplifies whatever one's inner shit is comprised of. Mine is comprised of grief, yours of volatility." My inner shit is my volatility. Yes.

I hit 'off' instead of 'snooze' on my alarm accidentally this morning and fell into a deep sleep. Had a dream that I woke up from saying, "Oooh someone should make a movie of that." I was part of a clan of time-and-space travellers comprised of people of many ages, including Johnny Depp, who made out with me in a rock pool in the dream. Not bad.

"But I don't weep. Do you?"

2010-08-03T11:23:00.003-04:00

I read Ham on Rye a while ago now, and meant to pursue the rest of Bukowski's work, but his prose didn't really do it for me and I never got round to it. His poetry is different. Still brutal and funny and smart, but clean and sweet as a bell, and often very moving. I love this poem, 'Bluebird'. I think I've posted this recording of him reading it before, but it bears repetition.

Burning in the face of love

2010-08-01T12:28:00.004-04:00

I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks replacing tracks on my iTunes that were either corrupted or lost when I (Andrew Breeze) accidentally wiped it ages ago. Obviously at this point I've replaced most of my music, but there are still maybe 200 files, most of them irritatingly obscure remixes or live recordings, that I need to track down. It's been fun, though, listening to the stuff that was my most-played around my last Summer in London, or before. Also I have a friend who's given me a ton of music recently, almost all of which was new to me and really, really brilliant.

I've been listening to Cut Copy a lot for I suppose a few years now. They feel like Depeche Mode's natural successors. A bit chirpier, and - like DM - ludicrously remix-friendly. This week 'Nobody Lost, Nobody Found' is my favorite tune.

Other than happiness in music, I feel pretty busy and very up-and-down of late. I think it's a lot to do with so many close friends leaving the city recently, especially Mel, Frank and Angela. I also think I'm still feeling the impact of Lynette's death very intensely, sometimes in a positive way (stop feeling sorry for yourself, you're breathing) and sometimes just feeling indiscriminately shit. I've spent time with a lot of friends I'd been bad at seeing. I find men confusing and often irritating this year. I'd like for that part of my life to be clearer, not as fraught, not as vacillating.

lost in the forest

2010-07-29T13:39:00.005-04:00

Marla and I took the day off on Monday and drove up to Boscobel/the surrounding area, wandered around the woods in 5 inch heels and scanty dresses, and took a load of pictures. It was an extremely pleasurable day. Dancing through a sunny woodland glade while your friend yells, "FROLIC! FROLIC!" and shoots photos is fun enough...

...but it's easy to forget in this fast-walking, slow-driving city that hurtling along an empty road with the windows down and music blasting is unalloyed happiness.

Delicious weekend

2010-07-25T17:50:00.003-04:00

Friday night there was a thunderstorm. Marla and I got well-timed drinks while people dashed, soaking, into the bar, then we sat on the swing on her roof once it cleared. Talked and somehow found the will to laugh about failed and failing romances. I miss Williamsburg sometimes. Thinking about moving back there. Yesterday I saw Andrew for the first time in ages and we drank too much wine and ate oysters followed by mac and cheese - best menu ever? - and I considered moving to Fort Greene instead. Same rent, twice as much space. Today I've been watching French movies. Netflix has declared my primary cinematic interest as 'foreign steamy dramas', amusingly. Tomorrow I'm driving upstate with Marla to take photographs in the woods. Right now it's raining gently and the air feels breathable for the first time in weeks. Might be able to summon the reserve to walk over to Andrew's and pick up my sunglasses and hat if it stays cooler tonight. I've been strewing my belongings all over the place this week. Also lost my favorite hat on Friday night, and my phone in Texas on Tuesday. I'm expensively negligent.

Star-spangled town

2010-07-20T14:04:00.005-04:00

It seems Dallas is exactly what you imagine not-NYC American cities to be like. Big buildings, big roads, big cars, big smiles. World's biggest engagement ring store.

I've hardly seen it; research all day both days. The food has been good, though, and there were a few hours by and in the pool yesterday that were pleasurable. Back to Brooklyn tonight. Nothing more to tell.

"Freedom

2010-07-16T01:17:00.002-04:00

is what you do with what's been done to you."

Perfect, no? Thanks, Mukund.

Switzerland

2010-07-13T14:53:00.004-04:00

You fucking, fucking bastards.

"The justice ministry added that national interests were taken into consideration in the decision."

National interests eh? Presumably the people who decided this, along with all the hateful film industry people who signed the petition for his release, would be cool with having their children drugged into unconciousness and anally raped so we can all get together and watch a few good movies. Cretins of the most repulsive order.

I like Sting

2010-07-13T11:02:00.001-04:00

“I have a feeling that all New Yorkers, no matter what they’re doing, are in their own TV series with their own theme music, and you are merely a guest on their show,” he said.

Slipping into a raconteurish American accent, he said: “Hey, I’ve got Sting on my show tonight, folks.”

Returning to his natural voice, he added: “We’re all celebrities in this town. I find it very comfortable.”

From an interview in the New York Times today.

Where's Newby

2010-07-07T00:50:00.002-04:00

I'm back. Right now, at 1am, it is 90 degrees with 52% humidity. The whole time I've lived in New York I haven't had an air conditioner. I am not feeling too happy about that situation tonight.

I had 10 days in Newcastle, a wedding, as mentioned, the funeral, which was horrific. I've never been present at a burial before - the few funerals I've been to have been cremations (my grandmothers, my uncle) or private burial (a boy from my high school). Seeing a box lowered into the ground, unbelievably containing the body of your friend, is frankly appalling. The whole process, which only takes a few minutes, is undignified and faintly, sickeningly agricultural.

Had one day in London, some of which I spent sitting by the Thames reading a book and occasionally looking up at Tower Bridge and thinking, "I could live here again." Then I got on the Tube, when it turned up, at rush hour and thought, "I will never live here again." Then I met a couple of friends on a deserted rooftop bar under pink clouds and thought, "I could live here again." But on aggregate, I couldn't. London gets under my skin and makes me murderous.

Back to work tomorrow. Air conditioning.

Magic and loss

2010-06-27T16:06:00.004-04:00

Last Sunday as I was about to get on a plane back to NYC, I was talking to my dad to wish him happy fathers day when he broke the news that my oldest friend, Lynette, had died that morning. She was 29 and had two little girls. It was a blood clot; apparently she wouldn't have felt or known what was happening so she didn't go through anything painful or frightening, she just passed out and was gone. My parents have lived next door to hers for 30 years so we grew up together and were inseparable as children. These days, Lynette and I only really spoke if we ran into each other in the street - so we'd generally see each other a few times a year, and briefly. Needless to say, I was devastated by the news. There's the shock and horror and fear because she was young and healthy and a mother. But because she's linked to my childhood so tightly, I felt the purest sorrow. Not for her role in my life now - as I said, we didn't see each other much - but because I immediately recognized, and then sat on a 6-hour flight recognizing yet more, how much of my infancy and childhood involved her. Nothing especially profound, but innocent and silly days growing up and being kids. One of my earliest memories is being two years old and sitting in the bath with her because her mother was looking after me while my own mother gave birth to my little brother next door. We would cook together in the school holidays while her parents were out at work. Play on our bikes, play with dolls, play with make-up. When they moved to Atlanta for a year for her dad's job, we wrote letters to each other the whole time. She told me recently she still had all of mine, but I must have thrown hers away years ago. What I've realized with reflection, and should have realized long ago, was what a generous, nonjudgmental, and - in the best possible sense - simple person she was. She was simply a good woman and a good mother, and without going very far or doing many of the things by which success is often measured, she had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the lives of many people. Her daughters, who are too young to have much chance of growing up with any of their own memories of her, will certainly get to discover that from the people who knew and miss her.

I'll be at her funeral on Wednesday. By chance, I was coming home to the UK this weekend anyway as, in far happier news, my dear friend Andrea was getting married yesterday. So I was busy flouncing around in a poufy bridesmaid dress and drinking bank account-emptying amounts of champagne with my crowd of six best friends from high school. I'm not much of a crier, least of all at weddings, but between the horrible week that preceded it, the drunkenness, the happiness for Andrea and her new husband, and the pleasure at reuniting with my pals, I spent a lot of the day with tear-glazed eyes. Good to see two people so thrilled to be together and so aware of their good fortune.

"A gold and white acropolis

2010-06-19T22:11:00.004-04:00

rising wave upon wave against the blue of the Pacific sky."

Mooching around, having a long, hard think and a long, hard bike ride.

Frankfurt: actually really nice

2010-06-10T17:04:00.003-04:00

I do like Frankfurt. It's so calm. I have no idea where all the people who make it an alpha world city/major financial hub are - perhaps they're just working all the time - but I've found it to be spacious, green, friendly and warm. Warm in the temperate sense. Eating dinner outdoors tonight I was reminded of a trip to Paris in June, just before I moved to the US. Same perfect languorous climate. I'd gladly come back.

The language part has been fun. I studied German for a year in high school, so I have my manners (please, thank you, excuse me, good day, good night, could I have the check please?) along with a few disparate and generally useless phrases (cross the bridge and turn left, my brother works at a bank, where's the town hall?), just as I do for French, Spanish and Italian, and to a lesser extent Korean. The trouble here is none of the restaurants are German, for - let's face it - obvious reasons. Sorry, German food-lovers. So I've eaten Italian every meal. And as they do in all countries, waiters in Italian restaurants insist on speaking little bits of Italian as they seat you and bring you your menu and whatnot. And I automatically answered in Italian because my Italian restaurant chatter is passable (or at least it is when I'm in a remote part of Italy and the staff don't speak anything else). And they'd mistake me for being a German who was trying to be polite despite being really shit at Italian, and started speaking to me in a stream of indecipherable German. Then note my sad, desperate stare and eventually ask, "Where are you from?" in English. Then we'd resort to English with little German touches for the remainder of our interactions.

Where in the world

2010-06-09T17:03:00.005-04:00

Now I'm in Frankfurt. Heidi was one of my favorite books when I was little, and in it she goes to Frankfurt for a while, so I've been pretty excited to come here. Of course, Heidi was written before WWII and the commitment to destroying pretty buildings displayed by the air forces of both sides. But some of it is nice, and I suppose the often awkward juxtaposition of new and old architecture is one of the reasons it reminds me of London. If London were quiet and full of unfailingly polite people.

This weekend I was home in Newcastle for the wedding of my dear friend, Ally, to the lovely Piers. I had to read at the service and was uncharacteristically nervous, but I think it went okay, apart from me mistaking the pulpit for the lectern. Should have gone to the church early to check things out instead of going to the pub. The reception was fantastic: there was a relentless ceilidh from which my arms and calves are still hurting, and I got to catch up with a lot of friends - some of whom I haven't seen since I moved to the States three years ago - and to meet the twins my friend Anneli recently brought into the world. Held tiny baby Lucy for ages and marvelled, as one always does with newborns, that any child could ever be so small. She gave me a tiny hickey in her furtive attempts to extract milk from my neck. Too many friends marrying and doing grown-up things.

I also saw a lot of one of my best friends from secondary/high school, Andrea, and was fitted for my bridesmaid dress for her wedding, which is coming up fast. And I had, for once, enough time for my family - Brad and Ben were over nearly every day, giggling and getting excited about their new bedrooms in their loft conversion, I saw Molly three times; she noted that we're both left-handed redheads with our toenails painted pink, which is undoubtedly the best way to be. Then Charlie on Monday night, whose cuteness knows no bounds. He is stringing little sentences together now - "How do?", "Daddy, where are you?" - and revelling in the squeals of delight these miracles of vocabulary elicit from all the adults in the room.

Back to NYC on Friday. This travel over the past 4 weeks made me recognize with particular clarity that I miss a lot of people who are scattered about in a lot of different places, and one of the unavoidable realities of my life, forever, will be missing them.

Let me tell you something

2010-06-02T10:28:00.003-04:00

Getting an autorickshaw in Mumbai is almost EXACTLY like riding one of those boneshaker rollercoasters, except the threat of death is very real.

Bang

2010-05-31T16:33:00.005-04:00

I'm in Mumbai now. I can't keep up with myself, either. I just arrived at the hotel; it's 2am. The baggage collection process at the airport was overwhelming, and pretty fun, and played out with the minimum of air conditioning for extra sweatbeads of frenzy. The baggage carousel moved at about 15 miles an hour, I'd estimate, which is FAST for a baggage carousel. The luggage came through in piles, all inevitably dangling on the outside edge of the belt, which had numerous Formula 1-like twists and turns, the result being that enormous pieces of luggage were flying off the belt at dangerous speeds every few seconds. And there was a crowd of I'd guess 2000 people pressed round this one carousel, whole families with their kids and grandparents inexplicably pushed right up to the front, eagerly looking for their suitcases and lambasting the staff smilingly for the wait and the mess. When I got outside and got my taxi ticket and walked to the prepaid taxi area, a guy took my case from me, lifted it into the back of the car, then promptly suggested I give him US$20. For reference: the taxi ride total was US$3. When I laughed and declined, he shrugged goodnaturedly and wandered off. We drove just outside the airport then the driver jumped out and walked off to some hut. A young girl with a baby strapped to her chest leaned in the open window gesturing to her mouth and repeating, "US money, rupee money, coins, eat chocolate, eat chocolate." Then the driver came back. I got to my hotel through exhilarating, grip-your-seat-and-pray traffic, and it's of course super-plush, just to twist the dagger of guilty self-reproach a little more. They gave me roses when I arrived and upgraded me to a suite with the biggest bed I've ever seen. This is the typical Mumbai experience for any traveller, I suppose: the aesthetically arresting wallop of luxurious colonial-feeling plenty on one hand and spiritual deflation of unfixable, unbearable need on the other, and there's no way to weave your way through it without having moments of feeling pretty appalled at yourself and the world.

Capital, capital

2010-05-29T23:41:00.005-04:00

My good friends Frank and Angela are moving to DC from NYC. This is going to have a devastating effect on my having-of-fun, and an excellent effect on my bank balance. This weekend, my good, long-time friends Marcus and Christie, who moved to London last year, were in DC for a wedding, so we had a reunion. Without Frank, who was at a different wedding, in Texas. This preamble is pretty well unnecessary, but I wrote it at an awkward angle lying on the sofa with my laptop on my stomach and I can't bring myself to delete it after all that effort. The point is: I went to DC and had a very good time. We got the bus down on Thursday night. When I told my mother I was getting the bus she burst out laughing before explaining that the idea of me getting a bus somewhere was hilarious to her. It's more than concerning that even my own mother, who of course knows that I grew up in a family without a car, thinks I'm a snob, but we'll put that aside, mainly because she's right. We got the bus, Angela and I. When we got to DC we got a taxi to her new apartment and I realized when we got inside that I'd left my wallet in the cab. The driver called me first thing the next morning after another passenger handed it to him, and drove over to give it back to me. So the first thing to say about DC is people are really nice there. Not just those two people, but everyone, seemed content and just decent, really. The next two days we spent eating and drinking, mainly with Marcus and Christie. It was wonderful to see them. We ate twice at a fantastic restaurant-cafe-book store, the sweetly-named Busboys & Poets, and Marcus took us to Central Michel Richard, which felt pleasantly The West Wing-ish, and its tolerant staff didn't throw us out even when we ordered whiskey after every other customer had left. I recommend both these places very highly, should you find yourself in DC.

Today I dragged myself around the necessary sights, and it was a drag because it's Memorial weekend which apparently means DC becomes the meeting point for every person in America who owns a loud motorcycle.

But I got to see the pretty stuff and admire the pleasingly orderly and compact layout of the city. It's a strange place, big and important-feeling but calm, unbustling and spacious, unlike anywhere else I've been or know of, perhaps most reminiscent of Whitehall and Westminster in London but with less consistently ornate buildings and less traffic.

At Union Station (which was my favorite building), I saw a tour bus that was badly lost.

Oooh, clever

2010-05-29T17:30:00.004-04:00

On the bus from DC to NYC. They have wireless on the bus! Not sure why wireless on a train seems normal whereas wireless on a bus! gets an exclamation mark, but it's quite remarkable as far as I'm concerned. Sadly, I forgot to bring my laptop lead so I'm nowhere near as smart as the bus. I love the driver, too. Her use-your-cellphone-considerately speech: "On a good day this is a four and a half hour journey. Don't nobody wanna hear your drama."

Repose

2010-05-23T19:42:00.002-04:00

I won't write about Singapore now because I'm yet to upload my photos. Not that they're very good, but pictorial city reviews are more engaging, I believe.

I returned on Thursday night and have been sleeping, or not sleeping, like a vampire - wide awake until 5 or 6am, then knocked out for 10 hours. But I feel much, much better. I was feeling like a little ball of wretchedness before the trip, and not just because I blew my chance of marrying Paul Banks.

Life is a bit up in the air right now, largely because I'm travelling a lot the next few weeks, so I can't get settled. But there's underlying unrest, too, a feeling shared by almost all my friends. I don't know if the wind changed direction or what but everyone seems to be musing over potentially major life shifts. It's partly an age thing, I think - 5 or 6 years out of university and thinking okay, so here I am. Knowing our future selves will forgive us a relatively aimless mid-twenties but not much beyond - time to decide what and where we want to be and make it happen. This will require more than pilates, I suspect, but I'm starting there.

Far, far, away

2010-05-17T19:32:00.002-04:00

I'm in Singapore. This is pretty much as far away from NYC as you can get, and I had to come for one meeting. I haven't seen the city yet - I arrived at 1am, got into a car to the hotel, stayed up working until 4am, got up at 6am, and am about to go to the meeting. It's so humid that stepping outside or even into the hotel lobby with its churning, desperate air conditioning, is like walking into a warm bath.

Paul Banks _ Interpol _ Brooklyn Bowl

2010-05-16T02:24:00.007-04:00

I'm on a bunch of 'this is happening tonight' email lists in New York. I usually ignore them, but I got one today that mentioned Paul Banks in its title. Since I've listened to Interpol probably more than any other band for the past 5 years, and love them more than any band except Radiohead, I replied and got on the guest list: he was playing a dj set at Brooklyn Bowl. So I went with Marla tonight. I already felt spaced out because I'd been for brunch with Frank (who just returned from the UK election) and then napped for longer than intended. I don't know what I was expecting, but god it was awful. He was playing for a while and he was wearing a baseball cap and I was watching, thinking, "This cannot be Paul Banks." To the extent that I Google image searched him to be sure I wasn't mistaken. He was playing hip hop, which okay he's clearly into, but there was just no attempt to respond to or cater to the crowd. He was playing cds, one after the other, not vinyl, no mixing. No one was dancing; the place was pretty empty anyway but it was terrible. Marla left and I was going to leave, too, and was near the dj booth and took a couple of photos of him. Then this guy came up to me and asked, "Do you want a photo with Paul?" And I really didn't, and said so, but this guy was super insistent and made me get into the dj booth and took a photo of us.
And I was embarrassed and drunk, obviously, and felt compelled to talk to him (Paul) then so I said, "This is really weird, huh? [gesturing out over the vacated dance floor]. I mean..."
"No one's dancing. Yeah," he said.
"Is this really what you love?" I asked. "Is this what you listen to?"
"All I listen to is, like, eighties hip hop," he said. "That's all I listen to."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Cos for the purposes of djing you might like Eurpoean electro, there's some stuff I'm sure you'd..."
"Okay I like need to focus, you know?"
"Okay."

Interaction with one of my heroes ends. I essentially hopped into his personal space and pointed out that no noe liked his set. It's odd that he didn't immediately try to make out with me, no? In the cab on the way home all I could think was that's the guy who wrote Narc, and The Lighthouse, and PDA, and Hands Away. And it won't compute. I know that people are people and the reality of the ones you admire is just as human as you are, but listening now to the songs I love most and trying to align that voice with the guy in the booth tonight is impossible.

This excited me

2010-05-12T22:55:00.004-04:00

The more people I talk to about dreams, the more I come to realize I'm both blessed and cursed by my dream life. I've had dreams of such tangible, sense-dousing realness that they've melded with my memories, so I now can't remember if they happened or not. Dreams that have left me to drift sobbing into consciousness and spend the next day with my skin crawling. Dreams of a post-apocalyptic, ruined world, my shaking fingers typing my parents' phone number incorrectly again and again. Dreams of my family and myself (I see myself in dreams, apparently that's rare and wrong), behaving in inexplicable ways, no longer recognizing one another. And I dream many dreams every night.

Well the heads that turn...

2010-05-11T22:40:00.003-04:00

It's been stuck in mine for 2 days and this might purge it.

Our youth is fleeting

2010-05-09T22:01:00.003-04:00

Escape

2010-05-04T21:43:00.002-04:00

Had an amazing dream about a hot air balloon recently, but can't really remember it now. I was telling Dan the next day and he mentioned he was working on a picture of hot air balloons. Here it is.

Heartbreaking conversation

2010-04-28T16:50:00.001-04:00

Me: "So is Grandma going to do you a birthday tea?"
Brad: "Yeah! On Saturday."
Me: "Is she making you a cake?"
Brad: "Yeah! Auntie Erin, are you coming home for my birthday party?"

Pale Fire

2010-04-24T11:41:00.002-04:00

Despite initial irritations, I'm loving this book. I have no idea how to read it - I keep jumping between the poem and the commentary, then I'll read too much of the poem and have to go back and catch up on the commentary. The construct forces you to read it slowly and piecemeal and with concentrated attention, which is a bonus for me since I'd normally inhale a book of this length in a few hours, whereas I've been on it for over a week now. Here's one of my favorite passages from the poem with the accompanying commentary to the passage just before it, which foreshadows it, at least if you're reading it the way I am. Remember the poem is written by one character, the commentary by another, and the commentary deviates regularly from the subject of the poem and its murdered author to the commentator's own concerns and stories:

"The secret passage seemed to have grown more squalid. The intrusion of its surroundings was even more evident than on the day when two lads shivering in thin jerseys and shorts had explored it. The pool of opalescent ditch water had grown in length; along its edge walked a sick bat like a cripple with a broken umbrella. A remembered spread of colored sand bore the thirty-year-old patterned imprint of Oleg's shoe, as immortal as the tracks of an Egyptian child's tame gazelle made thirty centuries ago on blue Nilotic bricks drying in the sun."

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.
I had a brain, five senses (one unique),
But otherwise I was a cloutish freak.
In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps
But really envied nothing - save perhaps
The miracle of a lemniscate left
Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft
Bicycle tires."

Saw Clash of the Titans with James last night. It was awful. Liam Neeson looking faintly embarrassed in a glowing suit, Ralph Fiennes cringing around in eyeliner as Hades, Gemma Arterton running like a girl, Mads Mikkelsen making me go, "Fuck, is that Mads Mikkelsen?" I haven't seen the original for years but I remember, for all its hokey special effects, that it was pretty scary and that I was enraptured, especially by the three witches with the shared eyeball, and the scene with Medusa. This whole film was giggle-worthily ridiculous, not in a good way, and the 3D made it more so - action sequences a dizzying blur of close-up limbs.

Had a fantastic meal at I Trulli. Just recently started eating eggs again (I was formerly a vegan, then a non-eggy vegetarian) so had the special - a sort of carbonara with ramps instead of pancetta. And made with duck eggs, not hen eggs. What are ramps? Ramps, let me tell you reader, are apparently a cult vegetable. Somewhere between leek, garlic and spring onion (scallions). They are good, they are in season, and I am going to find them and recreate this dish for my dinner.

I have lilac in my living room. I wish the whole world smelled of lilac, all the time.

And finally, I love coffee.