Bothered

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

After spending a while deliberating it I have decided I really liked Shopgirl. Wasn't sure if at first it was a bit overdone, but it was in fact, considering it was written by Steve Martin, a great exploration of the inherent duplicity of some young women's minds. One minute you want one thing, because it seems slightly better than the other thing you wanted five minutes ago, only to decide you really wanted the first thing anyway, you just weren't ready for it. Plus Jason Schwartzman is great, ever since I saw him in I Heart Huckabees I've had a small crush on him and the slightly strange, but ultimately adorable, characters he plays.

One of the things I loved about Shopgirl was the late night phone calls - sometimes exciting, sometimes silly and sometimes sad. Most of the critical junctures in all my relationships have occurred over the phone, really late at night. The latest being this feckless exchange with an old flame after we bumped into each other at a bar.

Me: 02:50 Bare Saunce?

Him: 02:50 Yep.Ring me x

Me: 02:53 Well i'm half way home now. You missed your ride...

Him: 02:55 Bollocks we can meet up ifya want x

Us: sometime in between - slurred phone call relating directions and certainty/purpose of meeting

Him: 03:17 On way x

All of this would of been OK had I not of being going to a funeral at midday the following day, and working for the rest of the afternoon and night. Another friend told me he had let himself get caught up in a similarly inappropriate and slightly out of character encounter after the funeral. Sex and death I suppose - the numbing, empty solitude of grief compels us to seek solace in acts of life.

Monday, January 23, 2006


RIP Bryan Glancy

Spent Saturday afternoon buzzing about the possibility of going to SWSW in March only to find myself come crashing down to earth by the tragic news that local musician and kind of old friend Bryan Glancy died suddenly, and unexpectedly, over the weekend. As I gathered with other friends in the Temple everyone was either too upset or too shocked to do anything but drink and cry in disbelief. Although I didn't know him that well I knew of the loyal, legendary love felt by his close friends and my heart goes out to them and Bryan's family.

Bryan Glancy, I remember you when you were going through a weird born again Christian phase, when we worked a few hilarious nights in the Temple together. For some reason we never had the lights on, we just filled the room with hundreds of candles from the pound shop. I remember when I was stunned to see you picketing outside a Marilyn Manson concert at the MEN Arena, offering salvation and redemption to the audience and band. I remember before that when you used to DJ at Gecko, when you seemed unspeakably cool, but always smiled kindly when I would pass by. You moved out of your Christian phase and back to normal I think, but we didn't really say anything else except for 'Hi'.

I remember your songs and your performances, and still feel sick to think you are no longer alive.

http://acomfortableplace.co.uk/bryanglancy/
http://www.music-dash.co.uk/news/news.asp?item=1283
www.manchesteronline.co.uk/entertainment/music/indieandrock/s/202/202081_local_songwriter_glancy_dies.html
http://bryanglancy.blogspot.com/

Friday, January 13, 2006

Today I discovered I have a wierdly psychic werdy mouth. A young friend and colleague of mine showed up for his first engagement of the year at our place of work. "He went away a boy and came back a man" I joked as he walked in the door. Later he told me that his mother suddenly passed away on New Years Day. He said the only time he has cried was when he and his brothers carried her casket through the church. He's 19 years old. I didn't even believe him at first because he's the most notorious bullshitter I've ever met. It's so sad.

Reminded me in a way of a character from one of my favourite poems, 'Introspection of a Sibyl' by Ruth Fainlight, a prophet who understands the precision of language and the acute power of observaion.

"But I am no more conscious of the prophecies
than I can understand the language of birds.
A bird is songing now.
In spite of legend, like everyone else,
I wonder and guess at its message.
My oracles come like bird-song - or how I imagine
they must begin to sing - by instinct:
neither needing or able to think.

The most terrible phrases come from my mouth.
My profession is doom to strangers.
Already, as a girl, playing ball with my friends in the village square
or feeding my tame pigeon, I remember
being even more appalled than my parents
by what I'd say: an unfirgiveable insult
dealt out in all innocence, or a blurted sentance
like a gift to confirm good fortune."

Monday, January 09, 2006

Today's werd-up://:

James Arthur Baldwin (1924-1987)

... because his Giovanni's Room (1956), something of a celebrated gay novel, reminds me of Brokeback Mountain

(indiscriminate /subversive nature of love, self alienation via crushing social convention)


Harlem born, autobiographical writing, prominent in the Civil Rights Movement. His stories frame sexuality, race and religion in 20th century America and beyond.

On a similar skein; today's gay quote is by Baldwin:

"Love takes off masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within"

Sunday, January 08, 2006













So, the inevitable lists appear to helpfully sum up the last twelve months.

Best gigs of 2005 (in chronological order, out of 52)

Snoop Dogg @ The Apollo
Two and a half
thousand white kids having the time of their life whilst Snoop strategically wore both the City and United strips at once.
Willie Nelson @ The Apollo
I've never seen my father so escstatic, three rows away from the original outlaw.
Juliette and The Licks @ Academy 3
Pretend punk rock but Juliette Lewis does have amazing presence, although off stage she did look slightly rough.
DFA 1979 @ Academy 3
Probably my favourite band of the year, had a lot of fun after the show following JFK around trying to start conversations about vintage Gibson guitars.
Kristen Hersh @ Primavera Festival, Barcelona
Just beautiful. While extremely drunk the sight of Kristen backstage holding her young, blonde haired son in her arms made me cry.
Micah P Hinson @ Primavera Festival, Barcelona
If only arriving half way through with the bass players girlfriend, shouting "We're here!" to our men onstage.
Eagles of Death Metal @ Life Cafe
Sex rock at it's very best, was bummed out I didn't get onstage to dance. Funny time after the show teasing former Distiller Tony Bradley from a balcony, and politely refusing his invitation backstage.
Wolfmother @ The Roadhouse
Sabbath meets Led Zep meets three lovely Australian boys. Hopefully 2006 will be their year.
Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster @ Dry Bar
Sweaty, dangerous (two lone girls shoulder locked, in heels, protected the engineer's desk as the over excited crowd threatened to push it over) and amazing. People were hanging off the fucking walls. As usual the first thing all the band asked me was if I had any drugs.
Casual Saints @ Font
Similarly busy, but much less dangerous. Cheek to cheek with the band. They split shortly after, which is a bit of a shame.
The Whip @ Club Academy
Electro sex rock featuring the best ever girl drummer. I am personally going to make this band famous.
The White Stripes @ The Apollo
Much better than I ever imagined it could be. Great because it was LOUD. Felt a bit uncomfortable when Jack made Meg sit on the floor and play bongos, seems like he might be a bit of a dick.
LCD Soundsystem @ The Ritz
Another sweaty affair, perfectly homed in the cavernous jewel that it is The Ritz. Best moment was when the crowd carried the flimsy barrier off over their heads.

My Best Things of 2005 (in no particular order)
  • Living alone
  • Drinking frozen margaritas with my father on Beale Street, Memphis as bikers rolled by and the heat diffused into darkness.
  • Being inspired by DFA1979 to take up bass guitar and being OK at it.
  • Forming a band and naming it Pocket Knife. "Could you just turn down the drums? I can't hear what I'm playing!"




Bothered wander trevor and bramhall @ the weekend

Saturday, January 07, 2006

notes from a saturday night in://:

lindstrom & prins thomas eponymous. lush..
blurt : 80s. dirty groove: grit in the sax
pixies: surfer rosa nuff said
mercury rev - yerself is steam, from '91. still haven't decided about these. i like the fact one of their albums is called BOCES, reminder of work trip to New York State last year, US version of special school. 'retarded' etc...

cinema werd-up://:

Brokeback Mountain: Beautiful, tragic, occasionally electrifying cowboy film; forbidden love erupts on a lonely mountain, a world away from the rodeo, ranching and roughnecks, and later the oppressive conventions of small town life. Another mesmerising meditation on the failings of the not-so-all american dream, and on a par with Paris, Texas for breathtaking big screen big country; I dreamt about sex and mountains.

speaking of southern state bigotry: check this

day trip to Llangollen ://:

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Best quote from 2005:

'The white is the life' (walkerbelm)

so... Steppenwolf

Magic Entrance Not For Everybody
For Madmen Only

So I resurrected one of my avatars for a while over the winter celebrations... well not quite, just some of her attributes. I’d kind of laid her to rest a bit in 2005, letting her slip away quietly into a thousand healthier permutations before she became too much of a fixture. I was scared enough of her reality to know I didn’t want her to be any more real.

She became my alter ego fairly quickly, as I quite liked the idea of having a dark twin. This was somewhat careless, since she wasn’t particularly dark; she was simply a woman of action. Looking back she was a spell incarnate; the personification of a desire; one I’d wanted to explore for some time. I mean why bother with therapy when (melo)drama, drugs, and dressing up are so much fun?

And anyway, when she’d been around a few months, with interesting results, my pisces sister, who’d been living in Bristol, called me up to tell me about her new project: making up and acting personas to help further her photography career. I wasn’t that surprised, I rarely am any more by our parallels, but marvelled nonetheless and took it as a sign that we were on the right track in our experiments.

I read Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf that winter, recommended by my ex. The tale of the saving of a lonely man’s life through the freeing of his soul from the intellectual ands moral constraints of the age, and the prison of his self. Although, perhaps less kindly, you could also describe it as the autobiographical account of a 30s German novelist’s mid-life crisis. Middle aged protagonist Harry falls improbably easily into a life of sex, drugs and rock & roll having spent his entire life previous worrying about its meaning during loftier intellectual/spiritual pursuits.

Like Hesse, jaded, suicidal Harry despairs of the soullessness of the triumph of the mechanical and functional in the industrial age (long before most other artists were even getting to grips with it). Thankfully Hesse was also a student of eastern mysticism for whom the usual western good/evil, culture/nature, mind/body dualisms didn’t hold much truck, which is why I suppose the book is aeons ahead of its time, still has such resonance and cult status.

So during a Russian doll's nest sequence of events, all very David Lynch, various gatekeepers and key-masters introduce us to the Steppenwolf: Harry's inner demon, alter ego... mortal enemy. Summoned to terrorise the bourgeois world Harry detests and critiques [but can’t help loving, like all good blasphemers & rebellious children] the lonely wolf of the steppe lives inside him; everything savage and unrestrained Harry fears, has purportedly had educated out of him, but knows that he is also made of.

Then he's invited out, into a world of earthly delights: jazz, dancing, shagging, opium. His senses awaken and the tediously tortured self-image begins to fracture.

The finale, fittingly, takes place at the end of a masked ball, an all-nighter: most appealing at the time, what with our preoccupation with masks and dressing up and with the vogue for the burlesque seemingly enjoying a style revival in 2005; everywhere from the self conscious ‘risque’ of Beechwood Hotel cabarets at the Mint Lounge in Manchester, modelled on London’s Whoopee Club, to the messiness and pretension of the Lost Vagueness Ballroom at Glastonbury.

So after a false start, Harry loses his self in the bacchanalia. During the whirling communitas of dance, carnival and orgy, he finds and falls for his soul’s mate, his real other half in both male & female form; the wise woman courtesan who has been his guide throughout. Finally he is admitted to the surreal magic theatre of his own soul by louche jazz supremo and homo love interest Pablo. Wandering through rooms suffused with all the fantasy, timelessness and peculiar juxtaposition of a K-hole, Harry watches wolf and gentleman finish each other off and finally discovers a sense of humour, thank fuck.

And as for my 'alter ego'? Well I suppose the cautionary tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was less about the dangers of unleashing the inner beast than about the perils of constructing such polar characters and moral chasms within the personality and soul to begin with. Still pretty relevant while the judaeo-christian orthodoxies and limiting scientific positivism that dominated the Victorian era still permeate western culture, albeit perhaps on subtler levels.

What scared the shit out of me was when the divide between our worlds dissolved unexpectedly. It didn’t take much, just a misuse of props at a masked ball. No longer safe and sane, things inside and out became dangerous, out of control… I teetered on the edge as alter ego and I exploded into each other. Null and voided. I had to go to London soon after, and have no memory of the trip… descending into darkness with the subway, I rode the tube round in a fog, missing my stops for days. At some point I comprehended the power of what I’d been messing with. Fire walk with me ... and she'd smiled and complied without me even noticing how sharp the teeth of her many-headed dog...

Lol, how ridiculous. There i go again, slipping into the fire and brimstone vernacular of the worldview I was trying to fuck off... way too serious. So you see, it can be tricky...

So the moral of the story is:
‘Don’t be too serious’

Or, maybe it’s:
‘Therapy: do it yourself, it’s more fun than shopping and TV’

Or …
‘Masks: well good, if a little creepy…?!’







Here’s to 2006 anyways: to everything and to nothing. x

P.S. My Pisces sister and I met for a brew on Christmas eve. She’s glowing with Buddhism, well on her way down a particularly tantric path to ordination and enlightenment.

# I fucking hate NYE.
though the Greg Wilson / El Diablo Social at the Kings Arms and the ensuing mess at Islington Mill was pretty good from what I can remember.