The Coffee Spoon Addendum

Coming To.

2008-07-05T17:26:00.002+09:30

Exposition. Rising Action. Climax. Falling Action. Dénouement.

I turn pages, carelessly, never quite reading until the end, faster, faster, never stopping.

The plane leaves in three hours.

And then I will be alone.

As for the climax - I'll pencil it in for next Thursday. Next Thursday, when my flight home hits the tarmac. There are a few things that need to be sorted out. The exposition was obvious, tragic but peaceful, but there have been too many plot twists, too many new characters to introduce, too many Maguffins, to keep sleeping through. I can't keep this rising action going forever.

Expectations.

2008-06-30T16:37:00.003+09:30

When Prince declared he would party like it was 1999 (in 1982), it is not entirely certain what he was anticipating. Alright, so he was actually anticipating a Nostradaman apocalypse (the sky was purple, there were people runnin' everywhere/tryin' to run from the destruction, you know I just didn't care). But what would that party be like? How would we react? Who would we be?

When 1999 ticked over to 2000, Prince was 42 years old, subject to litigation and label strife, parodied for his unpronounceable, hubristic pseudonym (the artist formerly known as...) and generally just being a funky, walking anachronism. I was fifteen years old, just about to embark on twelve months that would give me passage between childhood and late blooming emotional adolescence. That night was the first time I ever really drank (three beers, joy!), and spent the evening with three friends at a popular beachside suburb watching disappointing fireworks displays and listening to a poorly-mashed mix of everybody's favourite FM classics intertwined with hilarious feigned excitement by live radio celebrities. It wasn't until the following year, the beginning of the real 21st century, that I marked my final passage into adulthood, by drinking copious quantities of cheap wine, meeting people whose names would forever be forgotten, and passing out in the early hours of the morning on the back lawn underneath the washing line. The first thing I did in the 21st century was vomit. That, then, made me a teenager.

If you asked me then what you thought I'd be now, I'm sure I would have predicted more of the same. And I would have been absolutely, perhaps unfortunately right. Sure, I might have mistaken the social importance of Facebook, or the failure of Gordon Brown to carry the Blairite mantle and prevent another Conservative landslide in the UK Parliament, but I would have generally assumed I'd be a layabout perennial student living carelessly between bouts of reckless alcoholism. Only, somewhere between those two ages, I did, for a small but important period of time, think that I had grown up.

I did think that I had it sorted out. That I knew who I was, both in myself and in the world. That I knew what I had to do. That I knew what to expect.

It's funny how an incomplete Commerce degree, a sliding door of awkward friendships, a coat check filled with the remnant items of past relationships, and a large dose of enforced cynicism can prolong your adolescence. It's funny how you can go to a housewarming party and realise that, now in your mid-twenties, you're still only getting started. In fact, you can teach these young things a lesson or two in charismatic overdosing and happy self-destruction.

I didn't feel comfortable with adolescence, the first time around. Now I'm wiser and better educated, I'm travelled and well-read, I've been career-focussed (and now career-destroying) - I'm young, but I'm now aware of just how important that is. I'm going to make every possible use of my unexpected youth. I can no longer claim to know the future - and the last thing I want there are my own expectations.

My Favourite Record Store.

2008-06-19T09:22:00.003+09:30

My favourite record store is a short walk from the office. It lies fixed, 'twixt an old-people's café and an after-work pub. It has been there forever, and feels like it will be forever still. It exists only in my hometown, and it is named after one of my favourite bands. It devotes its basement - as large as the store itself - to vinyl, and on Wednesday afternoon it packs that vinyl away to let bands run loose and play loud. For quite some time, it seemed to be staffed entirely by this town's best musicians. Now I'm a little older, and the place seems to be staffed entirely by my personal friends.

My favourite record store displays that Nick Hornby quote atop one of its two newfangled registers. You know the one. "Yes, yes, I know. It's easier to download music, and probably cheaper. But what's playing on your favourite download store when you walk into it? Nothing, that's what. Who are you going to meet in there? Nobody. Where are the notice boards offering flatshares and vacant slots in bands destined for superstardom? Who's going to tell you to stop listening to that and start listening to this? Go ahead and save yourself a couple of quid. The saving will cost you a career, a set of cool friends, musical taste and, eventually, your soul. Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one." And I do believe that I owe my favourite record store my life; at least, my life as I have lived it. But even Hornby would walk into the store now and cringe.

My favourite record store never seems to carry my favourite records. There was a time when it could be relied upon, but that time is no longer. Have you got the new album? Oh, we did, says my favourite record store. But it has sold out. Really? Already? Well, we only ordered three copies. It's a shame, because I wanted one too. (They never reordered.) My favourite record store does still carry tickets to the shows I want to see, but they sold off their small ticketing agency to the interstate competitor. Now I can only buy tickets when their computers are working, for whatever fee the bastards want to charge.

You see, my favourite record store is running out of money. Downloads, they say. Competition from the majors. And it is true - all of my favourite records, bar none, are available from the giant chain store down the road. You know, the giant chain store which only opened three years ago, the one which is so big it can afford to import five copies of that strange folk album that was never released here, on one person's suggestion, only to then give them away on sale for next to nothing. But that's not the point.

I want to have a favourite record store. I want to have a record store that inspires me to buy records, that leads me down its own paths, that actively glimpses into that better life. I want to find a band, then go to my favourite record store and be able to spend a week's wages on their entire discography. Then I want to have the staff write little notes on the CD covers suggesting other bands I might like. I want to get to know the staff, even if I don't ever talk to them, by their notes and their recommendations, get to know them on taste. Because that's what the chain store can never have - it can have everything, in droves and sold cheap, but it can never claim taste.

My favourite record store is dying, and a little part of me is dying with it.

Henry Writes About the Stuff He Doesn't Write About

2008-06-17T14:18:00.007+09:30

Before Ben and I embarked upon this joint writing venture, I had already been blogging for a while on my own. All the posts were jokes, of the long, drawn-out variety, written mostly to amuse myself and only incidentally other people. They met, pretty uniformly, with thundering disinterest, possibly because they were rambling, nonsensical and generally reader unfriendly. When the idea for the Coffee Spoon Addendum came up, I decided to change my tack. After all, why do the same thing twice? I have written the odd joke-post here, but mostly I decided to go for something more thoughtful, and I have been inspired by the often entrancing style and content of m'colleague Ben.

To my complete lack of surprise, I am still no kind of blogging celebrity. Some of you fine people read what I write, and I appreciate that immensely and really don't desire any more. I have noticed, though, that a lot of the blogs that do gain wide popularity are distinctly different from my own. Unlike many people who choose to communicate with the inscrutable collective that is the virtual world, I go to pains to avoid writing about my personal life.

I had this put into an interesting light by an article that Ben sent me recently. It's quite a lengthy piece, but the gist is this: the writer (quite talented if this is anything to go by) had been a long time blogger before she was able to make a career out of it. Her posts were of a personal nature, dealing not just with herself but also with those around her. Her professional articles were of the gossip-column variety. Eventually, she discovered that there was consequences in holding both kinds of writing up to public scutiny, and as she was something of a blogging celebrity, she got plenty of that. Her experiences led to her re-evaluating the idea of putting everything about herself up on display.

I was surprised at how interesting I found this piece. The kind of writing she'd been doing - both diarising and examining the lives of semi-public figures - is exactly the type of stuff I never read. I'm not saying I object to its existence, it just doesn't interest me. I'm sure a lot of people have lives that are, objectively, fascinating, but I always feel disconnected from such stories. I can listen with rapt attention to my close friends describing what they did on the weekend, but remove the personal element and I may as well be trying to decipher a physics paper.

But reading this girl's story made me think about the way I chose to write. It's a rather trite little truism, but every time you put pen to paper you inevitably reveal something about yourself. By having the audacity to write, you are presuming that there are people who will take an interest in what you think. So given that I'm already exposing myself to a degree anyway, why not go the whole hog, dangle my personal life on the end of a hook, and see if anyone bites? It can't be because I can't write about myself: I keep a journal that I write in every night, with a kind of imagined audience (though I intend for no one else to ever read it). Additionally, and this is not any kind of boast, I think my life, especially recently, would have enough interesting experiences stored up to hold an audience's attention (I ended a night out in hospital earlier this year, you know).

My first thought, and the most obvious one, is just that I'm a private person, and I don't feel comfortable with my life being dissected by a crowd of people who don't really know who I am. While this is true, it also struck me that there's a certain amount of arrogance to the writing I do. I like to develop a particular concept in my posts, to take some random occurence and apply my mind to it to see if there's a deeper meaning to be discovered. I can't deny that this seems to me a better use of my abilities than just retelling portions of my life. "Look at me, with my fine words. I do not deal in mere recollections of events; I shape ephemeral ideals and intellectual structures into discourses, for the edification of my peers." Can't you just see me in a high-backed leather chair, swirling a crystal balloon of fine cognac in my fingers as I decide which paradigm to deconstruct next? Can I really be suprised when people feel as disconnected from my abstracts as I am from their real lives?

The truth is I'm surprised when the opposite happened. A little while back I posted a piece called 'Flirting, with disaster', dealing with the mysterious art of talking to girls. It wasn't excessively personal, apart from exposing the fact that I have trouble doing something that comes naturally to a lot of people. Once again, the idea was the thing - I was trying to look at flirting as a social phenomenon. I expected it to recieve the same amount of attention as all my other posts, which is to say: not a lot. I was shocked when more than a couple of people responded, not just to the idea, but with advice directed personally to me. People were taking an interest in my actual life. I got a sudden, small idea of the connection other people were making with their readers when they wrote about stuff that I'd always considered a bit mundane.

I don't intend to change my way of writing. And unless I get to know the writer on a personal level, I doubt I'll ever have much interest in other blogs of that nature. But my outlook has changed a bit. I've gotten a better understanding on a current phenomenon, and that's exactly the kind of thing I am interested in. After all, to quote an even triter truism, it takes all sorts to make a world.

I think this song I'll publish.

2008-06-02T22:09:00.006+09:30

I've taken to writing songs while I'm at work. At these moments, I sometimes use Blogger like a word processor. There are drafts of songs lying around the 'edit posts' admin section - Henry can read them, if he likes - but only when I want a reaction will I press the 'publish' button. Like I'll do now.

Incidentally, the girl from the first verse inspired the song by her rather violent reaction to becoming an adult. Otherwise, this is political.

She left her teenage years behind,
In a pool of polite vomit,
Delivered to the well-kept rosebushes
By the pool hall,
Midnight chimed and she chimed with it
With tears in her eyes
But no innocence lost.

And I became an adult,
Asleep in the back seat
Of a well-driven cab
On the way home,
Midnight chimed and I chimed with it
With a shot of tequila
And no innocence lost.

Oh, if only one day we'd grow up.
Oh, if only one day we'd all grow up.

And we'll come good again,
If we wake at New Year's,
To a well-driven world
On the way out,
Midnight will chime and we'll chime with it
With a brand new figure
And our innocence back.

Watching the Seahorses Dance

2008-05-23T14:46:00.004+09:30

A little while ago I decided, as I frequently do, to look up something of vague interest on Wikipedia. In this case, the subject was seahorses. I was aware, having learned it in that strange osmosis fashion by which I pick up a lot of my quasi-knowledge, that male seahorses were the ones who became pregnant, but I didn't really know how. And it occurred to me that, for animals if not humans, the carrying of children is pretty much the definition of being female. If a male can become pregnant, in what sense is it a male?

Well, I found out the answer to this question (it turns out the male impregnates the female, and then she passes the job of gestation onto him, in what you could quite appropriately call a biological egg-and-spoon type transfer). But whilst satisfying this little morsel of curisoity, I discovered something else that I found rather more interesting. This is what the article has to say about seahorse courtship:

"When two parties discover a mutual interest at the beginning of breeding season, they court for several days, even while others try to interfere. During this time they have been known to change color, swim side by side holding tails or grip the same strand of sea grass with their tails and wheel around in unison in what is known as their “pre-dawn dance”. They eventually engage in their “true courtship dance” lasting about 8 hours".

It then goes into the mechanics of the process, as mentioned above, and after that continues:

"Throughout the male’s pregnancy, his mate visits him daily for “morning greetings”. The female seahorse swims over for about 6 minutes of interaction reminiscent of courtship. “They change color, wheel around sea grass fronds, and finally promenade, holding each other’s tails.” "

(The internal quote comes from an article titled 'Pregnant-and Still Macho - seahorses', by Susan Milius, in Science News, March 11, 2000. By the way.)

Now because I'm an old softy, I did find the idea of these strange-looking creatures dancing with each other as they go through the experience of child-rearing quite touching. It's an undeniably beautiful image, and one for all the romantics out there. But, because I'm also an old logic-y, it didn't take long for my more sensible side to weigh in. The seahorses aren't dancing together because they're romantic; they don't even have the choice. They're following instinct, a pre-programmed biological operating system that has presumably come about due to some kind of evolutionary advantage. Or even, considering how fickle nature is, something that doesn't have all that much to do with helping the species but isn't harmful anough to be evolved out yet.

Being logical can be a real bastard sometimes.

But as well as being a romantic, and a realist, I also just can't let things go. I kept thinking about the seahorses. And I'm also (I like to think) an optimist. This doesn't mean, as some people think, naively hoping for things to turn out well. An optimist is someone who simply looks for a positive aspect to things. And that's what I got from learning about seahorses. Yes, I acknowledge that, to the creatures themselves, the dancing is meaningless. But it doesn't have to be that way for me.

I got something from learning about it, something that made me happy. If the world doesn't provide meaning on its own, then it is up to us to find it. Many of us do, and we can be criticised for it; we get called things like naive, childish, unrealistic, romantic (some people use this word like it's an insult). But it really is nothing to be ashamed of. Whether it's finding four-leaf clovers, climbing mountains that happen to be higher than other mountains, or watching the seahorses dance, we can make this world special. If and when we choose to.

Matt Berninger Hero-Worship.

2008-05-22T12:26:00.010+09:30

As Dave McCormack once screamed over crashing guitars in a uniquely nonsensical climax, the words are important! the words are important!*

Despite many recommendations over several years, I have only just now become obsessed with The National.

Substitute the name 'Karen' for Berninger's real-life girlfriend Corinne - who apparently looked over and corrected the lyrics before the finished product was released - and try not to be softened to a quivering paste by this:

Karen won't you take me to the nearest famous city middle, where they hang the lights, where it's random and it's common versus common? I've got five hundred in twenties, and I've got a ton of good ideas, I'm really worked up. I'm on a good mixture, I don't want to waste it. I want to go gator around the warm beds of beginners...

And then:

Parking your car you said 'I'm overwhelmed,' you were thinking out loud you said, 'I'm overwhelmed.' You said, 'I think I'm like Tennessee Williams, I wait for the click, I wait but it doesn't kick in.' I have weird memories of you.

Even though I have no right to understand, I think I do. I feel my whole life has been lived as a mere incident in Berninger's conception of humanity.

And now I too wait for the click.

* Custard, Nice Bird - This world divides into people who think there's two kinds of folks, and those who don't. Trey's got the Feathers and a 12-guage shotgun, Volkswagons from the Reich! I've got a nice bird, I've got a nice bird. There's a stretch of road out past The Gap, where they are taking some snaps, stick to the music champ, the words are important! THE WORDS ARE IMPORTANT!

That First Accidental Meeting.

2008-05-19T09:45:00.007+09:30

I remember this weather,
The dank scent of late May,
The rain closing in, the cold far away.
I remember this weather.

I remember this building,
Your friends saw our first new hello,
A quick glance and then time to go,
I remember this building.

I remember that book sale,
All of those posters I covered in tape,
Only in turn they were all drenched in rain,
I remember that book sale.

All other words don't belong any more,
I put up a poster, you pass through the door.

I remember that party,
When strangers asked how long we had been placed aside,
And we told them how long it had been 'til tonight,
I remember that party.

I remember that evening,
When years of strained anger convinced me to flee,
To new beds to sleep in and new cities,
To new morning coffees and newfound unease,
To new innocence and new casualties,
I remember that evening.

They never believed us, they thought there'd be more,
I put up a poster, you passed through the door.

Brave?

2008-05-15T10:34:00.008+09:30

MGMT - The Youth
(Yes, this post has a soundtrack.)

Tonight I walked to the supermarket, just me and my calico bags, in the dark, in the rain. And, again, I felt brave.

Bravery is a prized human commodity, and it's easy to see why. In almost every situation, somebody needs to be brave. Sometimes we even need a hero. Sometimes somebody needs to pull the trigger, crash the landing, make the jump, the climb, the step. But most of the time, there's no burning building, no trapped children, no screams for help. Most of the time, we meet bravery with ignorant silence.

Yet we certainly still need as much bravery as we can muster. Somebody needs to drive the ambulance, wear the uniform, take the blow. Somebody needs say the right thing (however unpopular). We're not talking climbing Everest here. At some point, we will all need to be brave. Hell, sometimes to even be alive is bravery enough.

As I walked through the rain, I thought of all of my years of cowardice. But in those dark, wet streets I could have been anywhere: the archipelago of Slussen, the street stalls of Rynek Glówny, places where I have walked on my own through the night with nothing but a passport and sense of adventure. Only, that didn't feel brave at all. And sure, this is home, but everywhere is home to someone. Sometimes even to be home is bravery enough.

You know what? I am starting to change. I'm starting to change, and I don't have any idea what I'm doing. It frightens me. Most of the time I feel like huddling in a corner with my hands over my eyes. But maybe, right now I'm the bravest I've ever been.

The Intoxicated Adelaidean White Boys' Choir

2008-05-07T17:42:00.007+09:30

(Companion to Ben's 'Binge'.)

Just recently, myself and two close and long-standing friends decided we'd take a break from the freakishly large small town that is Adelaide and spend a long weekend in Melbourne. For two of us, it'd be our first opportunity to see a city where stuff, not to put too fine a point on it, happens. For the third, it'd be a chance to show off his love for a now familiar place to two trusting and eager tourists. The plans were enticingly basic: soak up some atmosphere, forget about our respective jobs and troubles, and drink heroic amounts of alcohol.

As well as doing a pretty good job on these, we had a bunch of other entertaining encounters, most of which we could never have predicted. I could tell any number of stories: the girls we found in our double-booked room the first night (who, of course, were not only from our home town but also attended the same school as Ben and I), the joys of retro clothes shopping, a set of experiences in each airport that frankly made me despair for the entire human race. But there is one incident that, for me, is a shining beacon of delight in an already deeply satisfying trip. It happens on a Saturday night, somewhere around Northcote.

We've just left a concert, aglow with musical appreciation and a modest amount of alcohol, and we're looking for a place to continue drinking and, hopefully, start dancing. We come across a small, unassuming bar. The lights are low and the people look like our sort. There's no dancing, but it certainly seems worth a drink or two. And the music, provided by a rather handsome black lady on decks, switches almost supernaturally from hip-hop to Lennon as we get our beverages - two G&Ts, one beer - and sit down.

We won't be there very long. The bar closes at 2.00 am, an hour fast approaching. The lack of dancing aside, we've enjoyed ourselves. We've been very happy with the choices of our DJ, which include songs like 'Young American', 'Golden Brown' and 'My Baby Just Cares for Me'. At ten-to-two, the DJ gets ready to play the last song. She turns to us, practically the only people left in the place, and says, "Sorry guys, but I gotta play some Etta James to finish." We assure her, with drunken amiability, that this is fine.

A moment later, a familiar orchestral swell plays. We bide our time, and then all together lauch enthusiastically into the first line: "At laaast, my love has come along..." And no sooner have we begun then our mistress of the decks bursts into immediate, uncontrollable laughter.

I wonder what exactly makes her laugh. Is it that we three are obviously very, very tipsy? Is it that our singing can at best be described as loud, and at worst would not be described at all for decency's sake? Is it simply the way we have boisterously defied her preceeding apology? Or maybe it's just that we are conspicuously a trio of white boys? Whatever the cause, it doesn't really matter. Because it wasn't a mocking laugh; it was one of pure, appreciative joy. I have rarely seen someone so delighted by something that, to us, would be practically unthinkable not to do.

We never found out the lady's name; I don't think we even knew the name of the bar, if indeed it had one. At the time I vaguely considered trying to get a photo with her, but I realise now that this would have imposed a certain artificiality on the moment. It was a sudden, spontaneous delight. And it means something special to me. Because, though I have been known to make people laugh with a witty aside, an absurd non-sequitur, or sometimes - to my slight shame - a scathing put-down, it is a rare and beautiful thing to cause pure happiness just by being who you are. The reward is as good for the bringer of the joy as for the recipient, maybe more so. It's a priceless treasure. And - let's face it - I don't often get the chance to look that funky.

Binge.

2008-05-07T11:26:00.020+09:30

Impressions from a weekend in a bigger city.

It pays to be nice, even in mid-air. But clearly we didn't pay enough, because all of these people are awful. Their ineloquent voice-overs dictate our movements, and tell us that we'll be late. Quite late. And I pity the poor boy whose machine was still whirring as he wandered through. Sure, it might be dangerous, but a quick request would surely have been preferable to a ten-minute diatribe on just how he might have killed us all.

And it really was quite late. So late, in fact, that once we found our room we were unable to get out. We couldn't be given keys, let alone eat dinner. So it was that we sat by a table of drunks, the smell of spilling beer hovering through the open window, with a packet of biscuits and an empty Vergina.

I had forgotten the rain. This isn't the steady flow of home, not at all. From empty skies come a terrible flood, causing passers-by to evacuate to the nearest entrances. It was the library's painted archways which saved us from the terrible torrent. By the time we'd seen all the ancient manuscripts, winter had retreated and these bloody Autumn leaves came to greet me once again.

Soup from a stall in a laneway, poured from a ladle in a large wooden crate. Seating upstairs, they say. May we? Why, certainly, that's what it's there for.

Only, it's empty. Vide. Barren, save for the layers of dirty plates, souvenirs of the many who had come before. And the sign reading 'Home Made Ice Cream'. Yet no sign of Ice Cream, and thankfully, no sign of Home. A fully stocked bar, with a door wide open. Galliano, Bombay Sapphire, and the quiet hum of the fridge below. And there is nobody around. Not a staff member in sight, and it seems like nobody has cleaned up here for a while. Do you think we - think we could? I mean, couldn't we?

This is not just hospitality. This is war. Each restaurant a competitor, facing one another in a deadly game of conquest. Each hungry pedestrian a target in this pavement battle. Our first challengers seemed to come from the developing world, quietly mumbling to us in a language we could not understand. A plea, but never a bargain. But suddenly, we are arrested. We are held still by flowing words, laced with a magic not one of us could refuse. We huddle, like a football team before the last play of the third quarter. Our decision is made in an instant. We accept.

Two free bottles of wine. Score.

Oh, shut up. This is a supermarket, you can't go here. Go piss in the alleyway.

This place is full of bars. Not pubs, and certainly not clubs - bars. Where the lights are dim, and the clients wear coats and hats. And gloves. And the beers all arrived by sea from the continent, and the vodka came from beyond the Iron Curtain (cellared since before the Iron Curtain's demise. I can see this history in their eyes). I guess we'll stick to gin, hey? Gin it is. I shouldn't have drunk so much wine. But it was rather nice. Oh, this chair is comfortable. Seems to have come from the Victorian era, too, all wooden and padded and embellished with curves and edges. So comfortable, so...

... how long was I out for? You took photos? Fuckers.

Yes, bouncer, I slept well. Thanks for asking. Taxi.

I've been here before. Its blackened walls close in on me as I draw nearer. It is full of space - luscious, carefree space. Inside, glass jars reveal an unfamiliar face. Why this face? Why photocopied onto sheets of paper and placed inside glass jars? And why this tarantula light-fitting, without even a single light? And why all this space, for so few items of clothing? Why $250 for a black cotton t-shirt? Why?

Why does home seem so barren, when here is a playground of imagination? A satchel made entirely from the canvas material rescued from the roof of an impounded convertible. Score.

He's the singer in the band. I know him well. His voice echoes through the room, searching as always for notes which seem beyond reach. The voice is the same, but the songs are unfamiliar. And when I look at it, so is he.

He used to be so handsome. I once took a ladyfriend to see him, only to have her spend the hour relating just how much she desired him. I've seen him on the dancefloor, stumbling in circles, the remnants of a night's drinking carrying with each step, and yet still he left on the arm of a girl he hadn't even wanted. Now he's all blocked hair and porn-star moustache. Like he's trying his hardest to keep chaste.

She, however, is beautiful. And every one of us would marry her, without saying another word.

The question came suddenly, a soft voice from behind the locked door of the unisex toilet cubicle. Her name was Anna, but I never saw her face. I may forget her, but her wisdom will remain forever.

"What if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?"

At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are gone.

Don't laugh. Just because we're three white guys drinking German beer and gin don't mean we got no soul.

This was her city, and even now I can only see it through her eyes. These markets, these stalls, this coffee, were all hers to share. But that's all over now. All that she owed me has now, finally, been returned. She might not even know I'm here. And so I can reclaim this, this city, this life. I can take what I've been offered. Her shops, her clothes, her memories. Even vegetarian dumplings, though not the same ones. And it's not just the dumplings, either. It's the company. I'm sitting here, with her friends. Only, apparently they're now my friends. She might not even know that they're here with me. They are such lovely people, and the fears and tragedies that tumble through me never get in the way when we talk.

And we talk, although we don't mention her at all. That, at least, is all over now. Now it's about spaces, and times, and opportunities. We talk of things we can share, and ways we can hide. How can we circumvent the world, to do exactly what we want despite everyone else's expectations? It might be difficult, but it is possible.

And where have they taken me? This museum is quite odd, a collection of video games, just a history of my generation's wasted time.

And I think again, despite everybody else's expectations. Not hers, and not even my own. This is my city now. And I don't even live here.

This is my life now, too. If I can reclaim that city, I can reclaim myself. I'm not just passing through. I'm here, I'm home, and right now I have things to do.

And I have someone whom I want to see. And she even wants to see me.

So...

... what if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?

Swing Dancing.

2008-04-21T08:59:00.006+09:30

(In response to Henry's 'Flirting, With Disaster' post below.)

Rock-step, kick-step, kick-step.

Once you have the footwork in order, you can turn to your partner. Who your partner is, well, that's of no importance here. Make sure you feel comfortable. Turn to her and assume the closed position. 5, 6, 7, 8. Rock-step, kick-step, kick-step. On the next bar, a subtle movement of your left hand will show her your intentions. Tuck-turn, open position. Pass-through. Now you're playing the game, following the pattern. All the other people in the room, gathered in a circle facing each other, are playing the same way. New song, new partner. The girls stand still, while the boys shift one partner clockwise. New girl, same moves. A subtle movement of your left hand will show her your intentions. You're the boy, you have to lead. You know all the moves, and it's up to you. Whether she likes you or not, she'll follow. Whether she likes you at all, you'll never tell. New song, new partner. Dance as metaphor for life.

Of course, life never works quite that way. The boy may not want to lead. The boy may not want to make decisions. The boy may still be having too much trouble finding his feet, searching too hard for the kick-step after the rock-step, to choose the next move. Even as he makes up his mind, he may not be gifted with the subtlety that allows his left hand to show her his intentions. New song, new partner, a smile and an apology. Life as a metaphor for dance.

It was only a one-hour lesson, but it taught me something very valuable. Sometimes I will have to take the lead. Sometimes I will have to show my hand - only a subtle movement is required to show her my intentions. The lesson was on Thursday night. I had the whole weekend in front of me. It is now Monday morning, and over the last three days I think I might have turned a corner. But on this side, the world is full of madness.

Flirting, with disaster.

2008-04-18T19:18:00.006+09:30

I am currently single. To be more specific, I just recently became single again. There's a difference between being single for a long time and coming out of a relationship; it's like the difference between being constantly short of money - where you'd like to have more but you're used to doing without - and losing a fortune on the stock market overnight. So now I am, as they say, back on the market (somewhere in the bargain bins, I'd say). This is a place I really don't want to be, mainly because it means I'm grouped amonst other singles, and it seems the accepted way for singles to interact is to flirt with one another. This is a problem for me, because I can't flirt to save my love-life.

I can't say I've practiced the art much; they say if you've got it, flaunt it, but I never thought I had so I don't. But even assuming I had the bravado to go up to a girl I fancied and try my hand at impressing her, I actually do not know how to flirt. More than that, I don't understand the concept. That is to say, while I get its purpose, and envy people who can do it, I can't grasp the fundamental principles. I have no idea how to select those words that are flatter, entice, tease, even test the boundaries a little, all while making the recipient feel as if they are the most important person in the room. I love talking to people, but I'm more likely to discuss politics than tell them they're wearing a fantastic dress. To me, going up to a girl in a bar and flirting would make as much sense as attempting to broker a corporate merger on the dancefloor.

More than the words, though, I'm fascinated by the way two people who know each other only a little settle into their corresponding roles. It takes two to flirt, after all, at least to do it properly. How do guys and girls figure out the correct level of back and forth that separates flirting from, well, sleazing onto someone? Maybe it's because I'm not a very rhythmic person (as anyone who has seen me dance can attest) that it impresses me so.

Then again, maybe I'm not the only one. Not everyone manages it successfully. One person's red-hot moves are another's sad blunders, and I doubt anyone has a 100% success rate. Which leads me to wonder if you can flirt by accident. After all, if you don't know what you're doing, you wouldn't realise if you somehow got it right; a million monkeys on type-writers will probably bash out at least one line of Shakespeare. Find me in the right mood, on the right night (and a few drinks inside me will help) and suddenly talking to a pretty girl doesn't seem any harder than talking to my oldest friends. I don't know what kind of effect this has, but I've never had a restraining order put out on me.

And I'm always encouraged by, and appreciative of, those people who don't play by the rules. I'll long cherish the night I spent at a bar, drinking with some new acquaintances, when one of them said to their neighbour, in the middle of a completely different conversation, "You have such gorgeous eyes!" True, it was a straight (and married) girl saying this to another girl, but the fact that the comment was entirely unexpected, and completely genuine, gave me such a wonderful warm feeling inside. Because I'll never be good at flirting, like I'll never be good at spot-welding. But there's always fun to be had when you meet the strange people that make up this world and take them as they are.

Watching Grass Grow.

2008-04-11T15:46:00.002+09:30

I can see my reflection in my office window, shadowed in the glow of artificial light fighting hard against the darkness outside. Beyond the pane, clouds have gathered, an ominous army of dark grey firing shots of water at the ground below. The war zone outside looms dangerously, and I feel it, despite the comfort of my temporary sanctuary. And yet, despite the risks lurking beside me, I can be nothing but excited. Rain in a drought-ridden city, although annoying, is a truly wondrous thing.

Because I have discovered that, contrary to perpetual English cliché, grass grows eerily quickly. Both my front and back yard were a cemetery of yellow not two weeks ago, and now they are alive with sweet, lush pastures of green. I have spent the last fortnight watching grass grow, and it has truly been a riveting display.

In other news, it took me a worryingly long time to realise that the Nice Jazz Festival was to be held in the quaint French city of Nice, and not just a festival dedicated to jazz in its most polite forms.

Singsongs.

2008-04-09T16:03:00.004+09:30

Two years ago, Rickard Falkvinge, a Swede working for Microsoft, quit his job to establish the Piratpartiet: the Pirate Party. As its name suggests, the Piratpartiet is a single-issue party based around the issue of piracy, and in particular, encouraging legislation to decriminalise file sharing. At the 2006 election, it secured 35 000 votes in the Riksdag; not enough to win a seat, but enough to mark its place on the electoral landscape. Like any advocacy party, the Piratpartiet need not actually win a seat to pursue its agenda. Its electoral legitimacy - the potential for it to gain more votes in a subsequent election, away from the mainstream parties - gives it traction. Whether or not as a result of this traction, two days ago the Left Party reversed its support for anti-piracy laws, joining the Greens and the Centre Party.

Pirating copyright reform (On Line Opinion)
Left Party supports file sharing (The Local)

Of course, sharing of music was occurring long before the advent of broadband Internet. When I was a youngster rationing my pocket money, all I needed to do was borrow my favourite CDs from the public library, and then make a copy that would last me a lifetime. (I am still yet to own a copy of Nirvana's Nevermind.) File sharing has exacerbated a problem, of course, but exactly what is that problem?

The problem is that people are spending less money on CDs, and pay-per-file downloads are so clumsy that they are never going to reclaim that ground. There are two groups of people who are significantly disadvantaged as a result: record labels, and high-earning artists. When Metallica's Lars Ulrich successfully sued Napster, he wasn't just spoiling a party. Metallica is a highly profitable business able to attract a seemingly endless slew of new, young fans whose natural obsessiveness encourages them to spend every cent of their pocket money on the band's entire back catalogue. However, these kids are also fickle enough to not care greatly about the band's tactile art, and are unlikely to be interested in having the tangible package for its own sake. In the post-Napster world, one click and they're done.

Metallica, however, is in the minority. Those musicians whose work is entirely an artistic product and who attract a small but nerdy audience - Shellac, for example - will continue to sell their old albums on 180-gram, 12" vinyl. Bands who continue to release albums with relevance and vitality, such as Radiohead, can take advantage of the new distribution technology to actually increase their profitability.

The initial argument that less money on CDs will result in less music being produced is, as it turns out, absolute garbage. The myspace world gives us access to more music than ever before, more-than-occasionally of exceptional quality. So what is actually happening here?

Well, the same technology that makes file-sharing cheap and easy enough to destroy the music industry is also making recording cheap and easy enough to save it. Any fool with a computer can spend a few hundred dollars on a studio-quality microphone and record an album to match any commercial masterpiece. And they do: several of my favourite albums of last year, including El Perro Del Mar's amazing debut, were self-recorded.

(Trailblazers of this tradition were managing it in the 1980s: Big Black, for example, followed in the 1990s by Sebadoh and Elliott Smith. Electronic music then dominated the self-recording world, and with records such as Air's Moon Safari, it was well worth it.)

Many of the most prolific studios are housed in sheds or lounge rooms. Almost any band able to extract a sizeable record label advance - Radiohead, Wilco, dEUS, etc. - will no longer spend the money going to Abbey Road. They'll simply buy enough gear to build their own Abbey Road, wherever they like.

The effect of mass-file-sharing will not be the end of good-quality music - it will be the end of commercial monopoly. Over the last sixty years, a handful of large record labels has worked in concert with a handful of commercial radio stations to limit most listeners to only a handful of artists each year. The money they made from this was then spent 'finding' their next key artist; spending thousands of dollars buying the songs and the producers to make a 'quality' record; then spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing. Now the days of A&R tyranny are numbered.

The major labels are hitting back through the one medium which is still both popular and monopolised: television. Idol shows are simply easy ways for a major label to remain profitable through democracy.

For the rest of us, it is exceptionally cheap to record an album - once you have the basic gear, the unit cost per record is practically nothing. As for the distribution of music, and the potential of making a living out of it, the options there are opening wide.

I have spent the last six years writing music articles for independent magazines. For the last two years, I've been contributing to a magazine in a foreign city, having been recommended by a former home-town colleage. Two weeks ago, that colleague switched employment - as a result, I now write for a magazine whose entire staff are strangers to me. I realise that the days of getting 'care packages' consisting of new albums by Low, Arcade Fire, The Decemberists and The Hold Steady, for no reason whatsoever, are gone. I need to find another way.

And so I have come, belatedly, to blogs. There are an amazing amount of music blogs around, offering great diversity in taste, opinion, language and geography. Blogs can also support new distribution techniques. Denovali Records, a small Swedish label, offers downloads in lieu of attracting support for their operations. On the downloads page for French post-rock/metal band Celeste, is the following message:

" we have started the preorder for the new CELESTE - NIHILISTE(S) CD/LP to gain some money in order to pay for the pressing. But since you probably would not like to preorder a record you haven't listened to before, we have decided to make the full album available for download from our side. we support downloading music, especially as a way of getting to know unknown releases. But of course we are also record lovers, so if you want to be our personal heroes, you can preorder the record and help us releasing it faster."

Music can be art. Art can be loved. Money will still change hands - fair pay for fair art. File sharing may just open music up to the people, and allow mass audiences to be more discerning, and have more investment - financial and otherwise - in the music to which they listen. In the meantime, go searching - you'll be surprised at what you find.

Another Post About Drinking.

2008-04-06T10:50:00.005+09:30

Of course, I could start this off by apologising about my recent absence from the regular-posting game. I could detail the many busy activities of my futile existence, each more stressful than the last, and declare that I wouldn't forsake you lovely people forever, and that I'll be more diligent in future, and please, please don't hate me for hiding in the corner for a while. But the truth is, if I don't have a story to tell, I'm not going to write. My quotidian life, with all of its breakfast-eating, work-going, lunch-eating, work-finishing, dinner-eating and all, is not a terribly amusing adventure for onlookers. It is rarely an amusing adventure for myself. But, having turned a corner in the last few days, I figure it's time to tell my not-so-amusing story for the week.

Another reason why I haven't posted for a while was that I spent all day Friday sick in bed. And it was entirely my fault.

I was suffering from The Worst Hangover, Ever.

In fact, I doubt anybody in the world, all through space and time, has ever suffered a worse hangover than mine.

So now it is Sunday, and I have slept an entire night, and I am again able to hold my food down. I will present you with a recipe for how to achieve The Worst Hangover, Ever.

Go out somewhere you would rarely go, with people who, on the whole, you have never met. (In my case, a surprisingly good French film called UV, with members of my university's French club.)
Go for 'a drink' afterward, and begin buying rounds with the guy sitting next to you.
Feel like a third wheel while sitting with your drinking partner and the girl who invited him. Get progressively drunker as not only the rounds keep coming, but other French club members keep going home, leaving half-full carafes of potent house red at your disposal.
Begin talking to drinking partner and his prospective girlfriend about pretty-well everything you shouldn't talk about. Religion, for one. Where your family comes from. Why you may, or may not, want to live out your life without ever having children.
Realise that drinking partner and the girl have no romantic intentions toward each other when, in the course of a conversation, the girl inconspicuously mentions her boyfriend (yet only once, and only in context).
Wait for the girl to go home, leaving only you and drinking partner left at the table. Wait for her to just reach the door of the venue before he earnestly, dumbfoundedly, asks: 'did she actually say she had a boyfriend?' Become privy to a moment's emotional turmoil as drinking partner realises he was only invited as a platonic film friend.
Encourage drinking partner as he decides that, on that basis, he needs to get really drunk. (Disregard clear fact that drinking partner is already really drunk.)
Go to an awful nearby nightclub, the kind you have sworn for years you would never enter. Switch from the clever combination of beer and wine to gin (or in his case, scotch), and enjoy as he complements his next round with a bonus round of shots of vodka. When it is next your round, make sure to reciprocate. Seeing as the music, and the clients, of this nightclub are all awful, ensure that the very act of drinking is the pervasive feature of your evening. Celebrate this, and compete with fervour.
Laugh when the girl with whom you now find yourself dancing guesses your ethnic background, and exclaims, 'I can marry you now!' This despite her being pale and blonde and not exactly a stereotypical example of the ethnicity she purports to share with you.
Realise you probably don't want to marry her, leave and catch a taxi home. It is now 3.30am. You started drinking at 11.30pm, and have consumed anywhere up to 15 standard drinks, of all sorts, in this time.
Despite intending to go to work on Friday, only wake up at 11.30am. Your head will not lift from the pillow, and your stomach will accept neither food nor water. You will not have a headache so much as a dull thud consuming your every limb. Spend the day wishing you were asleep (and, for the most part, being asleep), and declaring that you will never, ever do that again. Rather than, say, see one of your favourite bands on Friday night, end up nursing your head while staring blankly at a football match.
Sleep well Friday night. Still, wake up dizzy and disoriented on Saturday morning. Realise that you're a fucking idiot, and you deserve everything you get.

Oneironautics

2008-03-31T21:50:00.004+10:30

In the interest of actually doing this thing that we said we'd be doing when we started doing this thing, the Coffee Spoon Auditorium has posted a new story of mine called 'A Little Dream of Me'. Though, in point of fact, "new" is not a very accurate description, as it was written at least a year ago, probably more. The fact that it is only now available to the public tells you something about me as a writer.

You see, I'm not a very good writer. You might be compelled to disagree (and, hey, you might not), but when I say that, I'm not referring to the quality of my prose. I simply mean that I'm not all that adept at consistently producing actual writing. You'd probably think that a carpenter wasn't very good at his job if he took a couple of years to make a table, abandoned a set of cabinets halfway through making them, and went months at a time without picking up a saw. Well, that's me. I give up on ideas, some of them (if I do say so myself) quite good ones. I allow myself to be intimidated by the sheer weight of words I know a certain tale requires. I'll nitpick a sentence to death while key plot points are waiting to be sorted. It's a wonder I write anything at all.

But 'A Little Dream of Me' just sorta happened. It started as a dream itself, which is generally a less promising prospect than it sounds. But the idea got into my head, and rattled around, and took up space that I needed for witty one-liners. So in the end I wrote it down to get rid of it; my word-processor acting as a couple of Panadol to deal with the headache of an unwritten story. And that was it, as far as I was concerned. I never planned to show it to anyone at all, apart from maybe a friend or two if they ever seemed interested, which they never did. It had served its purpose and could now retire.

Until Ben says that we should give this writing community thing a red-hot go. First off I had 'Schlomo's Act', which I legitimately wanted to show people. Good enough, but where do we go after that? I have an idea developing, but can we wait till I'm fifty, when it'll hopefully be done? So I showed Ben 'A Little Dream of Me', and to my shock he likes it. Up it goes, and I have to write a blog to introduce it. And what do I say about a story I wrote almost involuntarily?

Normally, when I conceive of some idea that I think is worthy of writing down, I'll have some purpose behind it, some theme or message that mortars all the little syllables into a big strong mass. It helps to impress people who liked it, and you can use it to embarass people who got it wrong. But as far as I know, I wasn't thinking much of anything before I wrote this one. I guess if there's any meaning it's that we do have to fight to make ourselves happy, because the barriers come from all over the place.

Of course I can pull that cheap cop-out trick that writers loves where they say, "Well, what I thought the story meant doesn't matter; the true meaning comes from the readers." So if you've got a meaning for me, lay it out. I'd love to hear from you.

About Me.

2008-03-27T18:38:00.003+10:30

I have decided to update the about me section of my Blogger profile such that it is actually descriptive. This is, of course, a pretentious exercise. But I think it's something we all should do from time to time.

I ride my bike to work, and always gather speed before the long downhill slide, so that the full force of the river's breeze will hit me. I'm easily distracted, but easily amused. I'm becoming addicted to Murakami, having briefly exhausted my addiction to Kafka. I listen to music, not for the beat, but for the force of the sound and the beauty of the poetry. I get ecstatically lost in noise. I'm beginning to identify with Mark Kozelek, just as I once identified with Holden Caulfield. I'm no smarter than anyone else, yet I feel my only strength is in intelligence. I do tend to brag, but never about the things that make me most proud. I feel I often lecture people unnecessarily, yet they really do need to be told. I involve myself in everything new, hoping that in doing so I will paste over old mistakes. I look for opportunities. I'd rather be honest than enticing. So I let most romantic possibilities pass like brief, alluring whispers I've pretended not to hear. I feel no victory in being compromised. I've never felt attractive, yet I've known love, and I trust I will know love again. I often live in memory. On weekdays I rise at dawn, yet on weekends I'm rarely home before sunrise. I long for night surprises. I'm happiest when alone, yet saddest when lonely.

The Adventures of Humble Bee.

2008-03-24T12:58:00.004+10:30

Easter Saturday 2008: Humble Bee plays its first show, to an enthusiastic if perplexed crowd of friends and various associates. Its two members decide that, seeing as how they've now made the transition from wooden toy to real boy, they should offer all of their recordings to the world, and offer proper, respectable press releases. Here, then, is a first draft of a real, sensible biography of Humble Bee.

February 2007: At a small gig in a tiny venue, Ben, frontman of noise-pop act Meanwell College, escapes the racket and retreats to the beer garden. There he is introduced to various friends of friends, including a shy stranger called Carly.

April 2007: Ben and Carly continue to see each other throughout various places and times, brought together by a mutual acquaintance - for the moment, let us call him he - who, for varied and different reasons, is starting to give both of them the shits.

May 2007: A conversation occurs between Ben and Carly, which goes a little something like this:

Carly: You know, you should really write a song about him.
Ben: That would be hilarious. Although, it would make him rather too proud. Besides, he didn't really do anything to me. You know, you should really write a song about him.
Carly, cheekily: Well, maybe I will.

Later that week, Carly sends Ben an e-mail with the words to Perfect On Paper. Ben, bored and curious, begins the process of twisting guitar parts together, and using his incredible microphone abilities records the song and sends it back.

June 2007: Carly eventually records her lead vocal, takes it home, and creates a myspace page. She uses the name Humble Bee, which she reclaims from her previous, unreleased musical efforts. Seeing as he knew about the old Humble Bee, it would be easy to expect him to discover a Humble Bee myspace attached to Carly's own, and from there hear her scathing, vicious (but still cute and chirpy) song.

Yet, if he did discover Humble Bee that way, he decided to keep all of his thoughts to himself.

July-August 2007: Ben travels through Europe, occasionally stopping by Internet cafés to keep in touch with the outside world. By the end of his journey, he has received two more song/poems from Carly.

November 2007: Ben finally decides to get around to recording music for the next two songs, and they appear on the Humble Bee myspace. Carly finally gives him their myspace password.

December 2007: Ben and Carly sit in the beer garden of yet another cosy establishment, where Ben lets slip to new musical friends that the two of them are "in a band". Carly laughs so hard she nearly spills her drink. The others actually take them seriously, add Humble Bee as online pseudo-friends, and begin to talk about gigs. On New Year's Eve, Ben is actually introduced to someone as "Ben from Humble Bee."

January-March 2008: Despite this new attention, Humble Bee lies silently still, without doing or saying anything. Perhaps they were waiting in the darkness for a clear approach to attack; more likely, they were slack and careless and harboured no ambition whatsoever. More people, however, find the band, and all strangely assume that it is more than just a musical wooden toy created for their own quite nasty amusement.

In the meantime, he begins again to talk to Carly. In one angry conversation, he quotes lines from Perfect On Paper. Ben's and Carly's original mission is complete.

March 2008: The headlining band pulls out of the first ever Wish, an indie night at Producers' Bar featuring bands, DJs, videos and, given the season, the Easter Bunny. Rather than attract a new headliner, the event's organisers genuinely, seriously and fearlessly approach Ben and Carly as an opening act. At 11.30pm on a Friday night, Carly calls Ben, possibly wondering how they can get out of it. Ben, already quite drunk, instead insists that it will be fine, they can totally play a show in eight days' time, and to accept with glee.

This despite the fact that Humble Bee had only three songs, and that despite their recording prowess, Ben and Carly had never played a song in the same room at the same time, ever. Ben and Carly finally gather around, and in the space of one week write two more songs from scratch, record, and rehearse three full times. Carly begins to play glockenspiel, something neither of them had any idea how to do.

22 March 2008: In the face of adversity, Humble Bee's first ever performance is a rolling success.

To Be Continued. (Hopefully.)

Humble Bee on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/humblebeecarly. Humble Bee will be playing Popsicle at the Edinburgh Castle, Friday 6 June.

All My Friends Are Fuck-Ups, But They're Fun To Have Around...

2008-03-19T20:48:00.004+10:30

I've always had a fair bit of trouble making friends. This is because I can be considered something of an oddball. So when I did befriend people, they tended to be slightly off-centre themselves. High school was a time of particular difficulty; the first couple of years saw me bouncing around amongst all the usual adolescent suspects and never completely fitting in. And then one day, I found some people just as strange as me, and it felt like coming home. I wasn't especially academically gifted, I wasn't a sportsman, and I was too timid to even find out whether I'd be popular with the opposite sex (my guess: no). But my mates respected me, shared my interests and laughed at my jokes. What else did I need?

I prided myself on the fact that my friends were crazy: every single one of them. When I say that, I don't mean that we went nuts and jumped off buildings, or had parties that involved the police being called, or blew anything up. We were actually pretty tame in that regard. When we got together we saw local bands, went to the movies, got drunk at each others' houses and walked around the neighbourhood late at night. (On some of those walks we may have been half-naked, but that's as far as it went.) And that suits me fine, because I think an evening that doesn't end in you sitting in a police cell is a fine one indeed.

No, my friends were crazy in a quieter, but I think much more genuine way. We came up with our own language, which half the time we didn't understand. We danced as badly as we dared in public to make soon-to-be-forgotten local bands feel good. We invented insanely complex games; one of these we played at our school, which at first simply puzzled all our classmates until they decided they desperately wanted to learn how to play. In one of our finest moments, we created something approaching a philosophical movement based on the words "cake" and "non-cake". We were crazy because we pooled our collective imagination and didn't see why we had to keep it to ourselves.

The effect this had on me was huge. I started to come out of a shell I'd been living in all my life. I had an identity that was confirmed and encouraged by the people around me. And I somehow believed that it would last forever. It didn't occur to me that we were all teenagers, and that what seems fulfilling in a school environment is less exciting when you encounter the real world.

Long story short, I started to feel my friends were less cool than they once had been. I still liked them, enjoyed their company, recognised that, compared to a lot of people who really were the same as they'd been in high school, they were an incredible collection of personalities. But the odd sensibility I'd always identified with was being replaced with hobbies that I didn't share, worries that I didn't want to think about and concepts that - would you believe? - other people would understand. I felt like everyone had changed while I hadn't. And, as I've learned to my benefit, that is exactly what had happened.

My perspective altered last year, when I did something I'd pretty much promised myself I would never do: I grew up. Not entirely, mind you. I'm still something of an insecure man-boy. But for the last twelve or so months I, almost by accident, have been trying things I've never done before. I started taking chances. I met new people. I stepped out of my comfort zone - in some cases, way, way out. I got dissatisfied, which is not a first for me, but this time I started asking myself why and how I could change it. I made some mistakes. Some things happened that were really great, and some things happened that really sucked, and some of them were the same thing. And it was only when I thought about writing a blog about my friends and how they used to be that it dawned on me: "Oh, that's it. They all did this years ago. I've just caught up."

So what I'm saying, in a long-winded fashion, is that they're not the same people they used to be, and finally, neither am I. Whether or not the process ever truly ends, I don't know, but I'm sure it hasn't for me. I am, happily, still trying new things, and I'm most definitely still making mistakes. (A recent one landed me in hospital and looks like costing me quite a bit of money.) I'll always cherish the old days, and I'll always miss them too, but there's a trade off. I may no longer be able to spend an hour or two talking with my mates about "Sex: The Musical" (an idea I think still has merit), but next time I get broken hearted or fired or realise I don't know what I'm doing with my life, I know I have people to turn to. With all that in mind, I have a couple of messages to give out. To my old friends: I couldn't have coped without you then, and I doubt I would now. You always have in me, a friend, a confidant and an admirer. And you're still all fucking nuts as far as I'm concerned. To new friends and possible future friends: if ever I do or say something bizarre, or something that you'd expect from an adolescent, I hope this all explains it.

Here's to being a little bit strange, forever.

Out Of Touch

2008-03-19T07:31:00.002+10:30

For four days, over the weekend, I found myself completely detached from The Internet.

And for four days, my life had to completely change.

And no, I wasn't completely detached from society. For one thing, I still had a mobile phone. I had already made my weekend plans, and they came off stunningly. (For example, on Saturday night I went to a party, which spilled on to the street, and ended at 5.30am in next door's lounge room discussing JP Shilo and his band Hungry Ghost with my friend's neighbour. As a result, I can now get exceptionally good pizza, walking distance from my house, at a fraction of the cost.) Little annoyances - not being able to send proofs of the first Coffee Spoon zine, about which more will be revealed later, via e-mail - were solved by taking my laptop computer to the top floor of a city café and abusing its free wireless access.

And then there is the thing where I have 24-hour access to The Internet in my office. This would have solved each and all of my problems if only my office were properly air-conditioned, or if my city had not been involved in breaking the record for the longest heatwave - 16 consecutive days of temperatures above 35-degrees-Celsius - in Australian history.*

But it is amazing how attached I have become to The Internet, how much I use it to determine my identity, and how I feel incomplete, inhuman, without it. Without The Internet, I had to do things differently. I had to watch the news, on television. I had to call people to discuss things, rather than simply blather to them in e-mail and carelessly await their response. I had to resign myself to not being on call as a freelance writer. I couldn't be an expert on every topic at a moment's notice, but had to live with whatever knowledge I have been able to retain from my seven years at university. But most of all, without The Internet I actually felt alone.

Not lonely, per se. But alone. I was in my bedroom, reading a book, and the world was happening without me. I couldn't peruse my friends' social lives, or read French-language discussions of the protests in Tibet, or discover some new band from Albuquerque whose only instrumentation is a musical saw and a marimba. It was just me and Solzhenitsyn, the two of us alone, locked in tense debate, trapped within the walls of my house.

And you know, being contained like that, shut off from society, cordoned away and left to my own devices? It actually felt a little like freedom.

---
* As an aside, it is amazing how useless Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare can be. At the beginning of our Record-Breaking-Heatwave, we began to feel, well, a little hot. We called OHS&W to measure our office. Our OHS&W representative, a lovely specimen of humanity, presented us with wonderful new contraption called - now let me get this right - a Thermometer. It was placed against the single vent in our room. The air coming out of the vent was recorded at a lovely, cool 18-degrees. Then, this Thermometer was moved to measure the temperature one metre away from the vent. This time, it was a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here 34-degrees. Sure, the air conditioner can only force cool air a few centimetres into our office, but the air conditioner works, so there's Nothing We Can Do, Sorry.

But no, they did do something. They sent an e-mail telling us to drink more water, and consider whether we could work from home. Or, in my case, simply not bother working at all.

Remembrance of Things Past.

2008-03-13T09:58:00.012+10:30

Old books are some of my greatest loves. You may often see me trawling through church-run op shops, not only for spice jars and warm winter scarves, but for books, whether well-kept and pristine or abused and tattered. There is an amazing sense of history, of purpose, wrapped up in an old book. Not only the history of the work, of its author, its context, and its place in the world of literature. But also the history of the book itself: where it was published, where it was first bought, by whom, for whom, and how many hands it went through before it ended up on my well-stocked bookshelf.

There is a mystery behind old books, a story completely separate from the story found within. One of my few criminal acts while travelling was to steal a copy of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way from the exchange library at a Stockholm hostel. (I had nothing with which to exchange it.) Not only is this a classic piece of early-twentieth-century French literature, but the book itself has a story, a gift from Rachel to Lucy in December 2006. The book may have changed Rachel's life, but through Lucy it somehow found its way to a small shelf in a Sweden, and then with me throughout Europe and back to Australia.

This is one of the great things about old books - in our modern, consumerist, price-mechanism world, old books appear to have no currency. How is it that I could find a copy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, one of the classics of contemporary literature, in a Vinnies' store for the princely sum of $1?

And last night, just as I was about to reach the thrilling conclusion, out dropped this note.

What Father Angelo thought of this now-discarded treasure is anyone's guess.

Many of the books I bought while travelling are now lost to me. They were bought as gifts, and although regrettably none of them were inscribed, I did send them away in a box with a hand-written letter. I wonder what might have happened to that letter. I wonder how long they will stay on that bookshelf. I wonder whether anyone will ask their current owner how she came to have so many books, from so many countries she has never visited, in so many languages she has never spoken. And I wonder how much of the story she may tell, and whether her story will be told with sadness, with pain, or even with the memory of joy.

Hey, boss, look here!

2008-03-11T22:51:00.006+10:30

Hey, you know what? Yes, I know, I know, you've been disappointed in my work in the past. And I realise that I haven't been the great advertising genius you expected when you employed me. But that was two months ago, when I was a shy little youngling, straight out of finishing my credit-average marketing degree. Now I've got something that will really blow your skirt up. Wait for it, wait for it... it's a horrendously cheap pun and a ridiculous phallic symbol, both at the same time!

I knew you'd be excited.

Sitting Here, Debating Math.

2008-03-10T09:39:00.006+10:30

Low, Malmö, 7 August 2007. More of my photos from that show are available here.

It is no secret that for some time my favourite band, on this planet or any other, has been Low. The musical reasons for this are too great and many to mention, however there are also incidental reasons. Like how they don't ever seem to mind, and in fact encourage, show-goers to record sets and upload them to Internet Archiving sites.

Like this: http://www.archive.org/details/low2007-08-08.akg391.flac16.

When I was travelling through Europe last year, I sat in a small, poorly-ventilated Internet café in Prague, Czech Republic, and discovered that Low would be touring Scandinavia in three weeks' time. I immediately jettisoned all of my plans and began catching trains through Germany so that I could arrive in Malmö, Sweden, to catch them. I kept a travel blog at the time, and was still so captured by adrenaline that upon returning to the foyer of my hotel, I jumped straight on to the computer and wrote this.

Listen to Over The Ocean now you can actually hear Alan Sparhawk's amazing assessment of Mitt Romney. You can also hear me scream for Sunflower (among a crowd of people screaming for other songs), and then yell, 'I think it's your choice.' They proceeded to play my request. Oh, I was so proud.

Also, the Retribution Gospel Choir (the band which on record features every single member of Low, just with a skin-pounding 'real' drummer) is about to release its debut album. And the debut single? The original kick-arse, dirty-punk version of Low's Breaker.

Or for the Low version, please see one of the greatest filmclips ever made.

Or hell, you could watch this amazing live version.

Best thing ever.

I think the term is "Special Needs"

2008-03-08T13:21:00.003+10:30

This is a sign I found within the grounds of a primary school:

Seems a bit harsh to point it out to everyone. I'm sure those kids are doing the best they can.