It could all change

Stephs last week, a subtle undercurrent of acceptance, or is it denial? A day of emotional uncertainty, guilt, and even regret. But the angst is dulled by the routine of impulse panes and a viral brainstorm... like oil rubbed onto a sharpened blade, still warm from the grinder. I attempt to pack and do laundry, assisted by a Californian Shiraz and a bifter. I burn CD tracks for a Breton compilation, I try to keep up with my blog. Then I wilt in the face of a Newsnight special with Sallam Pax.

A new election fiasco - Italy plunged into chaos and self-reflection. I realise I find it hard to give a shit, and find the documentary on wartime and postwar Spivs marginally more enlightening, certainly more entertaining, and curiously appropriate. A brief respite from London beckons, a rural refuge awaits, via Paris on the TGV. I learn that I've been saved from the perils of French industrial action, thanks to the capitulation of the government in the face of mass public demonstrations of solidarity.

A "culture of survival" existed in our country in the winter of 1947, and this is where the Spiv flourished... crime paid. Today we are blessed with intellectual freedoms, emotional liberties and cultural stimulation - the danger these days is that, if we're not careful, we might all get exactly what we want.

Laser Beam

The eternal mantra of the broken-hearted... is it really over?

Birdsong from the blossom, just outside my window, the paint-cracked sash like a third speaker, the lullaby trill merges with the harmonies of Low's Things We Lost In The Fire - not the most obvious spring soundtrack. Awake for 3 hours but yet fully connected to the world, the day, the new season.

We didn't really talk about it. The little discussion there was got blurred with booze, the truth of the sentiments made fuzzy by the need to substantiate feelings. We're not computers Sebastian, we're physical.

Whatever we have done, whatever we've said, and supposedly decided, we can only hope that the gain outweighs this initial loss and the pain. The loss I feel, and the pain I have afflicted on my loved one. She didn't ask for this, and if she did she didn't really mean to. I didn't want to end it, but I felt we should bring our love, as it stands, to a close.

Dear Helen, I need your grace... How can we ever hope to explain our motivation, our rationale, when we don't understand them ourselves?

April Showers

And blustering westerlies, another weekend of postponed spring.

It began on thursday when I saw Mum, my brother and his wife in Earls Court, in The Atlas. A fractured week of itty-bitty projects closed with Shwanthoulas farewell bash on Friday - a suitably debauched sending off for the first of our creative casualties, a racey-spacey night in the Comm ensued. We kicked off with an impromptu masked ball, followed by table-footy, terraza bifters, happy-hour Captain Morgans... After a near disastrous trek across a rainswept west end, we rounded the night with 3 hours at AKA, woah. A memorable night then, laced with an edge, and after the bonding and bedlam of the party, the nightbus home was a somewhat sobering experience - the potential for violence replacing the usual mellow haze of the 134 when Helen is in tow.

Crashed at 4am despite the lingering chemical reactions, and then relieved to remain undisturbed by expected mobile calls from my folks. Managed to surface in relatively good spirits, and make it out to St Albans by 2.30. Quite an absorbing and moving day, more for spending time with Aunty Eileen and cousin Sean than anything else. I won't go into details, but I'm glad I stayed to eat with them in a faux trattoria on the road bridge at the city station, a smiling Uncle John and his gastrically challenged mate 'Mav', who works for cash and drinks the house red like there's no tomorrow. On the return train I shot off a sequence of probing, cajoling and inticing let's go out tonight texts... to no avail. Within half-hour of getting home I realise I'm too wasted to actually want to go out anyway, so I settle down to Woody's Sweet and Lowdown, and it's bliss. Seems perfectly to capture something that appeals to my current existentialist itch.

Today I walked out with Mrs Delaney, my hand on her back when a mini-typhoon blew up Kentish Town Road and threatened to knock us to the pavement. Her physical frailty echoed by the simple repetition of her attempts at conversation... her childhood friend in County Sligo, the continuing winter "Will it never end! Just look at those trees, dreadful it is". I walked her home and grabbed a shower-proof jacket. More humanity at large than I could take awaited me in Camden, the crowds animated, their movements and gestures accelerated by the swirling skies. I took refuge in the cultural downtime zone of Cafe Nero, a haven of euro tourists and hobos, smoking and eating organic cake with their Grande Lattes, within spitting distance of the corruscating din of the High Street. A couple of druggy thieves stand silhouetted in the doorway, speculating on easy pickings among the small round mockogany tables. I walked along the canal to the park, I thought about Brittany, and my screenplay.

At home I eat a supper of bean salad, beetroot, cheese and french bread. I briefly visit Eorostar.com but again don't actually book anything - what's holding me back? I roam the web, half-heartedly (r)esearching, stumbling over little narrative nuggets and nuances. The memoir of a GI who fought near Lorient, an account of the raid on St Nazaire, the 133 fishermen who sailed for Portsmouth at the outbreak of the war. The sunday movie is Fight Club but I decide I'll pass, too heavy - I'm juggling enough mixed metaphors, motivations and messages already. I leave the TV on while I surf, the first half of the plot is just metaphysical wallpaper... but it becomes psychological touchpaper in an instant, and I'm hooked. I do stick it out, right through to its conclusion, the twisted trance of Project Mayhem. So that now at 2am I'm still wide awake, firing endorfins instead of zeds, drifting in the wake of the PTB that never really limped through the swells of Finnistere, nor ran aground, dashed against the craggy coast of La Belle Ile.

Never Take Risks With Stability

It's good to be writing, unedited or expurgated, direct entry, into the main artery of the blogoshere. A coupla beers in the Comm with Leif and Paul, a dreary week of extended cold-snap, emotional inertia, professional cesspit. I genuinely love and respect my peer group, and yet I am bereft of genuine friendship, love, belief. Immersed in the knuckledusted life of the Cult of Imagology. Iminently booking the next adventure to Kerarno, this time perhaps via Paris, with Eurostar and TGV, no flights. Spurred by a desire to escape the recent winter drudge-repetition with a bold gesture. Far from the infernal loop of corporate office existence, the sporadic bursts of loose hedonism, contorted emotional responses. Am I being unfair on myself - is my 'intuition' in some sense an inhibitor, or a catalyst, of the truth.

It doesn't really wash when Gordon Brown suggests we all play safe with stability. Hand drumming and sliding up and down the lectern, his 10th post-budget speech, heralds an evening of voodoo economics and ghosted cameos, viewed from the cheap-seats. Gordo, pretender-elect, puppet, foil, fastidious fidget. Hey growth isn't everything, whatever happened to the great social policies. The situation at Stamford Bridge eerily mirrors that of the House... the biggest wobble of the Mourinho era confirmed, despite the quarter-final cup win over Newcastle. This much possesion and pace, against Barcelona at Nou Camp would have gone down as inspired and feisty in defeat, but not as a home victory, not in the F.A Cup. Motty and Lawrensons closing commentary vindicated the suspicions of all but the absurdly myopic Blue - yes a flourish of fluid brilliance, bordering on Dandy, rarely looking rattled, superlative subs on the bench. But the gnawing, grating fear of all football fans, the slow-mo view of a derailed train, doggedly dragging a motley carousel of overpaid apathetics in its wake. A slow, suffocating paucity of ideas, a fundamental lack of self-belief among the players, and worst of all, a stadium void of supporter empathy or spirit.

Listen up Tony, listen up Roman, and Jose, and Tom: With money and dark magic you can manufacture a team, and a media-myth of great prospect, but you cannot manifest a living culture. In this fallow field we are lucky to have the buffer of a dozen point lead, and only Carvalho, Terry and Makalele are what keeps it ticking, even when luck and friends run dry, and when time itself seems to desert us. Who are their equivalents in the Labour ranks, or at my place of work.

We hide behind the veneer of woe we suffer in the face of the mediated, material world, and yet these events are also a parable of current life and times. The office situation doesn't bare discussion or analysis right now, it's too close to bed - all too likely to inspire torpid and perhaps traumatic dream scenarios. Resolute and unafraid, but can't help feeling I'm selling myself short. Too many distractions, too little support, not enough spiritual conviction. I don't doubt myself within myself, and yet I sense I'm losing sight of the path I once aspired to live. Is this the life I want to live?

Little Black Book

That explains the scarcity, and posthumously published, entries. I didn't stop writing completely but what I did write down was usually long-hand, completing my most recent moleskin in the process. In the fickle grip of a sophisticated virus, and/or plain exhausted. Despite a 'christmas holiday' there's been 3 months of hard graft and hedonistic weekends. Then of course there's the extra pressure of assuming the driving seat, the creative energy, the social buzz and the carrot and stick motivational theories of earning the daily bread.

Thought I might make it back to work today, but awoke exhausted and aching around the knees. When I eventually came to again around midday, a shitty-cold rainy day greeted me. The long weekend of essentially dry, bright winter days is long gone into the gloomy horizon. Spoke with Helen, again from the shelter of a doorway and a brolly, she's enduring a difficult time away with Charlie and her Dad, away now for the fourth night in succession.

A new camera to inspire a new creative edge, a minimal or micro-narrative aesthetic. All this stay-at-home dirge and drive fused by the frivolous but thrilling expectation of sporting glory, tonight being the night Chelsea attempt the arduous and difficult assault on the Catalan bastion of the Nou Camp.

Oh babe believe me

22.11 | 30/12/05
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...I'd hate to miss the train, oh yeah.
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This was my last typed entry for the year. Except of course it was longer, and somewhat deeper, than I can include here. And having typed it up on the train from Cornwall, I continued the theme in my notebook when I got back to the flat. Maybe I'll add some of that later.

Deadweight

00.40 | 13/12/05
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A weekend that kicked-off with a pay-review and an energetic xmas party closes under the pall of an aerial oil-slick. The noxious cloud formations, sandwiched-up from Herts to the estuary, now stacking over Hampstead. From Parliament Hill I watched transfixed by, and yet resigned to, the message within the spectacle. Watching the steady progress of the great curve of filth, rolling across north and east London, like a vast shroud, I felt I was witnessing a fore-warning of the future awaiting this great metropolis. I finally broke away from the small crowd breathing in, and then tasting the soot, drifting down from 2000ft overhead. Like a Hurricane plays on the Magdala's sound system. Helen is away to another family wedding, I nurse a pint and a prize a clear concsience.

Blizzard Conditions

21.12 | 11/12/05
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I remember driving, out through Rochdale and Oldham, the slush at the side of the road splashing the sils of the Mini, and the snow-dust covering the high ground of Saddleworth Moor. Pol in B, by Vini Reilly. I think of Pat, as a very young man, and Freya, a mere slip of a girl, but an earth mother before her time. A roadtrip I dubbed "a Day of Long Shadows", and lived to feel the weight of the words, watching those shadows edge their way to totality, in a kind of existential oblivion.

Winter city life, and an attempt to capture the story never told. I've been back there twice in a fortnight, and it still grabs my imagination. Lost in the hills, skidding around on the film of ice and snow beneath the wheels. I wanna change so much, but I'm slipping, and I slip too easily into lazy-mode. Is the best I can achieve a lazily objective study of the apathy that is the scourge of my creative and spiritual life?

Tongebirge, Twilight

15.17 | 03/12/05
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The loose fan-belt on the passing car synchronizes perfectly with the soft swirls of Kraftwerks Tongebirge. The wreckage of another failed attempt to sort my room is lit beautifully by the winter light, filtered through thinning clouds. That's all...

Truth, like love, is hard to pin down

A new series of progs on Ch4 kicks off with Peter Osbornes Reckoning, candid and well made on a miniscule budget, reflections on the factional war ravaging Iraq, like a sandstorm, swirling with desert ghosts. A political a maelstrom born out of tribal feuding, centuries old, embroidered with tales of kangaroo Shia courts and blind hatred, of raging militia gun-battles in Sadr City and Basra, the Sunni-Insurgent axis in the western deserts. In one hit, Osborne deftly blew away the gossamer threads of a new democratic Iraq.

So insightful and rigourous was his report that I felt awakened from a dream, that I too had fallen foul of a tendency to suspend our disbelief. It's one thing to oppose the war, it's harder to digest the sordid details of the dystopia that follows in the wake of the supposed Shock and Awe. Far easier to anaesthetise yourself with the fictive reports of the embedded, the networked and the second-hand. No a more pertinent and incisive despatch would be hard to find.

Nic Cage singing Love Me Tender, sitting here in the pale blue velvet of the USB lamp, wondering if I should text H. We blew-up this weekend, like a car that stammers and sputters with the sudden onset of winter. A weekend of frosty mornings, outside in, gently thawing afternoons, all culminating in a showdown on Shoreditch High Street, where else... But it was far from all bad - shot through with spectral winter-wrapped moments at Somerset House, Brick Lane and The Golden Harte. We got up earlier than usual, and we spoke our minds, and as is sometimes the case we sometimes got ourselves misunderstood in the process.

A Kinda Hush...

Tuesday, Katjas birthday: wonderful dinner at Andrew Edmunds - coupla beers, champagne, homemade wrapping paper, scrumptious food, a few bottles of the house 2003 Minervois, and great company. Always lovely to see Alex and Kat, and Anna met Helen for the first time - they got on like the proverbial house on fire, arm in arm as we swayed across Charing Cross Road. There was a time at Forma when this kinda mid-week social was quite common, but nights like that are very rare these days... fuck me, still dancing at AKA bar at 4am.

The post-wedding week signalled a marked dip in spirits, and it didn't improve much this week - Jake and Wayne drawing the short straw in an elaborate management game. Only the project, semi-hatched with Paul, lunching on a gourmet burger southwest of Harrods, provided a rare moment of enthusiasm and belief. And I gotta get a Plan B.

Tonight too I spoke to the Glenmore posse for the first time in months, and it's Lloydys birthday to boot. They seem a little closer for the call, but not close enough. Later, and Helen calls to say she's down with flu symptoms, a reaction to the jab administered at work today. Mine is scheduled for next week, and I really should be looking out for myself. I suffered for Tuesdays debauchery, big-time, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy myself - it was worth every minute of physical pain and mental anguish that followed. I can't recall the last time I dined so well, or was out on the town with a pair of sexy women for company. I guess it reminded me of a similar night, 2 years ago, at 333 - little wonder I felt so high, and it felt so tender, and so naughty...

Do You Expect Me to Talk?

A TV ad for a new console game used to be quite an event, but you have to go back a coupla years to recall one that really grabbed your attention. Metal Gear Solid, Medal of Honour, even the GTA series... and of course the Bond games like Goldeneye. One aired in a primetime slot this evening. Interestingly it's another Bond-movie game, but this is not just a new game, it's a new game based on an old movie. It's not the first game that's been spawned by a movie that predates it, but From Russia with Love is positively retro, and perhaps the first seriously retro game.

And it certainly won't be the last. Just as the DVD market, having exhausted the '1990 to current' Hollywood blockbuster catalogue, has suddenly erupted into a frenzied release of foreign, fringe/cult and softporn free-for-all, so the games industry seems set to embark on a retro-fetish that will undoubtedly make a lot of people very rich. The Eurythmics perfom 'live' on the incredibly schmaltzy UK Rock Hall of Fame, confirm this supposition: Ours is a culture moving so fast, with such exponential momentum, that it is destined to regurgitate its own until every cultural artifact we consume is a simulacrum of its former self.

So many of the Connery-Moore era Bond series are certain to follow, with tasks and levels that echo the (already spongey) plots of their namesake... Not that I'm neccesarily complaining, it's just that my PS1 is gathering dust, in storage under the stairs.