Yes thank you life, it ticks along, stuff happens, though it feels it has to be forced a bit. In the last 48 hours I've walked for hours to be with others, and though no one's company was unpleasant, none of it was worth extending a moment beyond that moment when you're relieved that it's come to a Goodbye. Food has been better than expected. For a boring half-hour I stood in a bar where musicians can play ad hoc unannounced and unskilfully - a few minutes of the accordion and acoustic gtr and I had my excuse to leave and catch the last of the sunshine on the long walk home.
Yesterday in London the sun lit everything up to a happiness I never feel hereabouts. The concert in Wigmore Hall was the most boring I've ever been to - I think I'd booked the wrong thing. About nine musicians playing early instruments and a beautiful woman singer doing things midway between arias and liede.
It was tolerable almost up to the end - but for their second encore (two encores too many) they did a modern song - it was about how we are all drops in the ocean and all connected and must all love one another. I love the irony of the fact that the ones who smile along at such hypocritical hippy bullshit are the most unpleasant people you could possibly meet - whereas cynics such as myself are so much nicer. Truly. "Never trust a hippy" has all my life been the best bit of advice anyone ever gave any of us. They are phonies.
As ever, the best bits of yesterday were the things I never came for. Sitting on Platform One at Soton Central waiting for the 9am to Waterloo, there were lots of police about. At first I thought they were hanging around waiting to arrest some high-level terrorist as he stepped off a train in a minute. But later I realised they were on a PR exercise. They were handing out little leaflets and being friendly and proving that the police are nice people. Everyone got a leaflet and a chat - except me. Several times they quite deliberate ignored me as I sat goodly on a bench reading my book.
And I think that was it. I was the only one on the platform who wasn't staring at a mobe. Initially I thought that the police assumed that I was already on their side and didn't need any smiles to make them like me. But later I realised that maybe they thought I was a lost cause. Age again reared its beautiful head on the train. The guard came slowly down the aisle making apologetic noises to alert us - as he drew level with our seats he said "young people can I see your tickets please" - the man near me was of indeterminate age but probably about 40-ish, the woman opposite me was a bit younger than me, and me myself I put the kybosh on the whole thing by showing him my ticket and the necessary Senior Railcard.
Walking along the South Bank I fell into accidental lockstep with a young couple (both male) and they asked me if London was always as quiet as this - and I played along at the Dick Van Dyke act like the lifetime Londoner that I will be in a future life and told them that no, London is extraordinarily quiet at the moment - they said that London reminds them of their hometown of Stockholm. I smiled. What can you do with such information ? I pass it on for what it's worth.
Back in Southampton I was only in Asda's self-service area for about 2 minutes - enough time to experience far more rudeness and sullenness and the defeatedness-of-young-people than in a whole day of Central London. I was in time to catch the Macmillan charity shop before it closed, where I bought two hats and two 12 kg weights. I made it as far as the Sprinkles on the corner, where I had to sit down and admit to myself that I'd been a fool.
A man sitting near me said something to me. I had to say "Sorry - what ?" and he looked at me properly and said that, no, don't worry, he was only talking to himself. Whatever he said, it was probably more interesting than anything I had said or heard in the previous 48 hours. Nothing bad had happened to me, but nothing very good either - nothing worth doing again. I am continuing to try to get joy from the very real feeling that absolutely everything is disappointing, there is no hope that anything ever will be different in the future.
Back here I watched a Korean film - Burning. A character talks about the bushmen of the Kalahari - she says that they talk of two different types of hunger - Small Hunger and Great Hunger. Small Hunger is the hunger we all immediately think about - hunger for food to give us energy to reach the end of the day. But Great Hunger is hunger for life's purpose. Somewhere in the last 48 hours I also went to the cinema to see The Fabelmans. Apart from Jaws and The Terminal, I've never liked a Spielberg film - coming from a miserable family upbringing I find his whole happy-family sentimentality totally unbelievable and ridiculous and almost nauseating - guess I was mis-brought-up to believe that family life should be shit so that all life outside the family can feel so good, and it does feel good, and it just has to be enough. which it is, and that is my message to my younger self, that it all slowly gets better even as you realise it's getting worse.
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music remixed and rehashed today, photo London yesterday morning
Free-flowing, loosely structured songs that borrow lightly from jazz and ambient but expand in directions all their own. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 7, 2023
Hong Kong's Enor D reinterprets nursery rhymes as noise pieces with elements of musique concrete on this playful new album. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 5, 2022
Producer Yoyogi Koen takes inspiration from five demons from Japanese folklore, creating spooky, surreal soundscapes for them to inhabit. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 20, 2021
A glimmering ambient suite from Swedish composer Tomas Nordmark draws connections between the NYC avant-garde scene and classic film scores. Bandcamp New & Notable May 5, 2021
