Freestyle

Nothing particular to say, just something to say. Feeling a bit jaded, late home from work. Watching Blair sweat out the studio lights of a Question Time pre-election Special, and realise I have yet to muster an ounce of enthusiasm for the prologue to polling day. I missed his defence of the Iraq debacle, but I can guess what he said, and I have no intention of boring you with it here... you probably know it anyway. After Dimbleby comes the news, Goldsmith's reasonable cause in the case for war tops the news. 3rd night running by my reckoning, accompanied by images of exploding ordnance in Baghdad, raining down through the night from high-altitude.

It's been a frustrating day, and for the second week I'm feeling a particular lethargy, born out of tiredness more than any deeper anxiety. I'm looking forward to escaping the city for a long-weekend, drinking-in some country air, listening to great music on the stereo of a hired car, window down. The news concludes with a 2 minute piece on a new concert hall in Porto - a Rem Koolhaas project. Hard angles and softly moulded glass 'curtains', resulting in a cool light and large expanseive space much more Dutch than Portuguese, which is what Mr Carvalho the local shopkeeper was trying to say. It's an architecture, and art, we associate with the avant garde of the 1930's, but the report broke the spell, the spell of a day I'd decided I wouldn't, or couldn't, be bothered to think about. It's not a beautiful building, but it made me think about things that, unlike British politics, and some days my job, I actually have a stake in, something I believe in. To create, not destroy... but that's a fantasy - high ideals, dreams and integrity don't have a lot of currency in this world.

Infinityblogs

This is all so new to me... and everytime I browse a few blogs I'm struck by the range of motivations 'blogsosphere', more than the numbers. It feels like I'm looking into the cosmos, or into those beautiful firework images by Matts mate. It feels like a deep, brooding presence in the dark, a darkness permeated by an awesome stillness. It twitches and moves, but so subtle as to appear inanimate. All the old cyberspace cliches resurface, it is indeed a labyrinth.

Within this infinite intangible mass, in the LiveJournal Galaxy, one of these entreis spooked me in particular. I found a brief series of entries (summer 2004) from an American teen, although her name already slips my mind, Shelly maybe, and something about having 'her own hell to raise'... she talked about Justin, her new boyfriend, her summer job, shopping at The Gap, going to Bar-b-q's, the usual school vacation stuff. But then it all ended, abruptly, in August. It was like a telephone line going dead on you, and it felt like something terrible had befallen her.

So now I'm sat here, a little dead-legged, feeling a little small in this infinite-nothing-space of a million-trillion type written characters. I know I still want to write, and I'm not concerned that I have yet to identify what I want to write, or compose anything of any merit or purpose. Despite years of writing journals and such, I'm feeling my way around a new world.

A Night of Street Theatre

One of the things it's very easy to write about at the moment is friendship. After a long, slow-mo and relatively unsociable winter, it's good to reconnect with some dear friends. It's happened a coupla weekends in the last month or so now, just good chilled times with Jake, Matt, Guy and Helen, sometimes all at once - bonus. Quite a motley crew, but there's no disputing that we have some laughs. This posse were out last night, Diego too, on the guestlist at the premiere of 'Burlesque' at the Art Centre on Great Newport Street. The supposed star of the show is Immodesty Blaize, a buxom beauty of the old-school variety, but it was the supporting cast, and the lighting and sound production, that made it a great show. The consensus was that we'd have preferred it a littler sleazier, a little more Lynchean, but this isn't a review of the show... it's more important that it made for a warm and groovy evening out with friends.

Radio on(e)

It's not so long ago that I've rediscovered a love of radio, but this is one of those moments. I guess it was initiated by a triumvirate of summer festivals featuring Rob da Bank, further assisted by home broadband and the BBC radio-player. Lazy Sunday, hook up with yesterdays Blue Room and first thing I hear is a nicely fucked-up tapdance around a single loop from Wings' 'Live and Let Die'. An almost perfect way to kick off the day.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance/blueroom/tracklistingssat.shtml

Warped facades...

and faded grandeur. A riverside walk, a time to collect thoughts, and then abandon them, to set them adrfit upon the afternoon Spring Tides, one of the last of that particular vernal variety. Just 3 hours ago I sat with Matty Dread in the tacky cafe, situated on the far side of the suitably plastic 'public space' at the head of Butlers Wharf, almost underneath Tower Bridge. Radio 5 Live blared from the owners stereo, punctuated by the sound-splurge of the milk steamer, the pre-match round-up heralding the second-half of the afternoon. As the plates of scrambled egg on toast emerged, I pledged again to do this, to finally publish something online.

There is no point in waiting to 'launch' the elusive j2b website before I begin to create content for it, and there's no point continually recording entries in a notebook when I can publish them here, if only to copy them over later. And so I've returned home, ostensibly to put my room into some coherent order, and to publish, and be damned. So here is the prologue, and who knows what will follow, but it has begun at least, and at last.