Somehow, Diamanda Galas has released one album, and is about to release another, without me noticing.  This is plainly a disgrace, especially the one she’s already released has several fine blues numbers on it, and I do love it when she sings the blues.  So they’ve been added to my amazon wishlist, and I’ll get round to buying them, like so many other things, “when I have a new job”.

Well, when I’m done with this coffee, it’s off to get my hair sorted.  Nothing terribly thrilling, but I’ve got a job interview on Monday, so I figure it needs a little tidying, and dying so it’s a little less two-tone.  The I should be showing my face at coffee, some time around 4, I’d have thought.  And from there, to the pub, with a chance of clubbing later…

God, it’s just a never-ending social whirl.

Which may not be the brightest idea, given that I’ve got a job interview on Monday, and tomorrow, I need to read up on disabilities legislation as it applies to the web.  Anyone know if there’s a handy summary site out there?

What I’d actually intended to do when I fired up my LJ client this morning, was write up last night, but I got side-trackedinto telling horrible little stories, because there’s something wrong with me.

Mercifully, stu_n has written last night’s entertaiment up, and has done a better job of it that I would have, anyway. Go and read about the Taiko we saw last night.

Inspired by this, I present what I think is a more likely version of events:

—

I’m sitting in another fucking Starbucks in Camden, next to two people who are obviously on a some sort of hideously awkward blind date. Their well-meaning friends have clearly set them up, and just as clearly not thought about whether or not these two people are actually suited to each other. You wouldn’t necessarily notice them at first – they are average looking white people in a room and a neighborhood full of the same, and no-one’s giving them a second look. They are both so ORDINARY. They are both talking too fast or looking just past each other in awkward silence, both aware that it is going hideously, embarassingly, badly and neither quite knowing what to do to fix things. She knocks her pen onto the floor and he goes to pick it up at the same time she does, and between them they only succeed in knocking it further out of reach, and she gives him a look like “I can pick up my own damn pen, thanks” and has to get out of her seat to get it back.

He’s lanky, with slightly greasy brown hair and thick glasses with dated looking frames. She’s short and fat, with frizzy brown hair. They look like any other pair of not-as-fashionable-as-they’d-like-to-think twentysomethings. But because I’m a hopless sadist, as I watch them, I root for them to spend the whole day together. They should try to go to the movies, only to discover that they don’t like the same films, and one or both of them have already seen the few films they can agree on. I want them to make out awkwardly all night, fueled by a combination of alcohol, and some strange sense of guilt that makes them feel that this is expected of them. I want her to lie and say “I never do this” and undo his belt. I want him to say “me neither” while thinking of her as a slut. I want him to call a week or two later when the friend that set him up on the date nags him to. I want her to buy a new dress, in a desperate attempt to look slightly less dowdy on a second date. Christ, they have matching messenger bags. That’s just sad. She’s telling some story about her favorite children’s book, and he’s pretending to have read it, and loved it too in a sad and transparent attempt to get into her knickers, while you can see the thought in his eyes that it’s a fucking book for kids, and what’s she doing reading it?

A year from now I want them to wind up living together in the top of a tower block somewhere. She’ll talk about painting all the walls in bright colors, and he’ll grunt and agree and they’ll plan to get around to it next month. They won’t have enough room for all their books – her children’s book collection that he can’t believe she’s still got, and his graphic novels that she wishes he’d hide away because she’s sure her friends secretly laugh at them when they come round, so they spill off the shelves into little piles in the corner that make the place look untidy, but there’s nowhere else to put them. They’ll have a housewarming party and all their friends will come, and secretly wonder why they chose this dump to live in. Family and friends will surround them, wishing them luck, and making them feel pressured to stay together because everyone thinks they should. Neither of them will be quite sure how they wound up living together like this, but they’ll stick with it because it’s better than nothing, even as they rapidly discover that the other’s little habits drive them up the wall. She leaves the top off the toothpaste, he never does the washing up. She’s always on the phone, and he clips his toenails in the living room. They’ll argue over the crosswords in bed on Sunday mornings, sitting just that little bit further apart each month, occaisionally having unremarkable sex, each thinking of someone else half the time. He’ll fall asleep on the sofa watching the footy on Saturday afternoons while she goes shopping. For the first six months she’ll be forced to fake her orgasm every other time they have sex, before she just stops even bothering, and he’ll still somehow manage to convince himself that he’s the best lover she’s ever had. She’ll secretly take belly-dancing lessons at the Y out of sheer bordeom and surprise herself by sleeping with the instructor, who makes her feel like a shy bookworm transformed into a siren, unrecognizable, powerful, his, but she still won’t leave the security of her draining relationship.

Now they are getting ready to leave….I can see and hear the strange resignedness in each of them…”Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?” “Not really, no.” “Well, d’you fancy maybe seeing a film, or something?” “I came on my bike – I’m not sure I can lock it up by the cinema.” “Oh.” “Sod it, I can just come back and pick it up from here afterwards.” Already there is something possessive and selfish in the way he behaves toward her, leading the way out of the place, looking back over his shoulder to check she’s following. He figures she’s the best chance to get laid he’s had in a while – after all she’s desperate enough to have agreed to the blind date. He will always open doors for her because he walks that bit faster, and gets there first, and even he’s not rude enough to just let it swing back in her face, and he’ll let her have the window seat on airplanes because the aisle has that bit more legroom, and wake her when she falls asleep on the couch because her snoring is drowning out the telly. She will nurse his colds with cupasoup and asprin that she picked up on the way home from the office, stand in line to get a book signed by his favorite author, only to discover that she’s mixed up Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler, and they’ll both be awkward and resentful about it.

All their neuroses and annoying quirks will become even more annoying over time – he spends too much money on CDs, she’s always 15 minutes late. They will rapidly come to take each other for granted. Day jobs, the cable bill, dirty cereal bowls, global warming, international strife will go on and on with no end in sight. When they announce their engagement, everyone will be astonished – their friends and family thought they were about to split up, but then she got pregnant, and they felt they had to do it. These two will be stuck with each other their whole lives – she wishing she’d found someoneelse who loved Le Petit Prince, him wishing he hadn’t wound up with someone who hates getting all dressed up, but who’d make an effort to look nice occaisionally, or someone who can talk about politics without getting shrill and angry, she wishing for someone who thinks deeply about things and tries to be a good person.

At 40 they will be faced with the realisation that they’ve wasted their best years, and decide to divorce before they waste any more time on each other. The kids won’t understand, and will grow up bitter and resentful, damaged by the rows and the screaming over the years. This is what I wish for these two people who are geeking on each other across a cafe table littered with badly-done crosswords and half-drunk mochas, with me sitting by, a silent twisted sadist, unable to form a stable relationship, and wishing misery on everyone else, stewing in my own bitterness. Right now, I’m going looking for a puppy to kick.

—

I don’t know the poster of the original, and I’ve got nothing against them. I’m glad they see the world the way they do, and honestly, I hope their version comes true. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel briefly warmed and uplifted by their account, but then my natural bitterness got the better of me. I am a basically horrible person, it’s true.

Me, I think I may be sick. I mean, I’m as big a sap as the next man, but christ. Are these the same people that kept “Everything I Do” at the top of the charts for like, three years? Have they grown up now? Is it legal to cull them?

I am so tempted to re-write that….

Went to a Menlo Park gig last night.  It was unsurprisingly, excellent.  Any gig that requires you to wear a domino mask and cloak, and provides you with free (and quite decent) brandy is off to a pretty good start, in my view.

Menlo Park are the sort of band I think a few people on my friends list would like.  Live, they remind me of early-era Bad Seeds in the best possible way.  Strange, loud, thumping music from a black bayou, a melodic cacophony of sleaze and terrible weather.  Cajun-punk.  Alt. country on amphetamines.

On CD they’re a little slower, swapping out some of that visceral intensity and volume for a slower air of menace, like something skulking around a Southern town where the people all have mean eyes and shit in their souls.

Yes, I know my head is rapidly vanishing up my own arse with these descriptions, but I can’t come up with anything better.

I’d be surprised if there were tickets left for the next couple of nights, but I’ll try and provide more warning the next time they play, although it may be a more conventional gig.  Without the free brandy…

Long-time readers of my blog my remember that a little over two years ago, I wrote this:

“It’s been a good day today.  The sun has been shining down from a beautiful blue sky.  At lunch, I sat in the beer garden of a pub, drank an ice cold lime and soda, and enjoyed the summer.  I took a walk in a park this afternoon, and strolled underneath trees, before visiting my family for dinner.  As the sun set, and the sky turned an amazing red, shot though with silver clouds, I hopped on a train to see some good friends I haven’t seen in months, visiting from the states.We sat about and laughed and drank gin and tonic and ate great food and we had a wonderful time.  It’s been a really good day.”

Today, the sun did not shine, until I left the office to meet up with Andrew, and an American friend I don’t get to see enough of.  We walked through the backstreets of London, which are pretty much my favourite place to walk, and despite the day’s unpromising start, I found myself enjoying the early evening sunshine.  We went for good food, and enjoyed pleasant conversation.  I’m home now, and the sunset through my window is a beautiful as any Tooting has ever given me (and it’s given me many) cresents of cloud burn gold against the pale blue sky, lit by the sun.  All things considered, I’ve had a good day.

I end this post with the same sentence I ended that post with, two years ago.

I was laid off this afternoon.

I don’t normally do the “sharing my dreams with the world” thing, not least because I generally don’t remember them. But for the last week, I’ve been having what I can only describe as a continuing dream, and a really vivid one. I’m sitting crosslegged in front of a low coffee table in the flat I lived in until I was ten. Someone is sitting opposite me – I have no idea who they are, but we’ve been having a conversation about life the universe and everything, over the last week. Over the course of this discussion, we have, from time to time, left the table to pop back into my memories and also into a few things that haven’t happened, but it really isn’t hard to see how they might have, or what the particular set of feelings that inspire the fiction are. Generally, the point is to explain what I did wrong at that time/would have done wrong – not always, but generally.

Every night, the dream more or less picks up where it left off the previous night. I’m really not sure what I’ve done to mean that my subconcious is giving me this kicking/sage advice in such a peculiar way, or why it’s such a miserable bastard. (Shut up, the lot of you – I am not miserable, and not generally a bastard. I am a happy and nice person. If you disagree, I will have you eaten by trained squirrels.)

Last night’s particular gem (the gist at least):

“No-one ever promised you that you’d get anything you want. If get even one thing, consider it a bonus that’ll last for a short while and enjoy it. You’re not alive to be happy. You’re alive to be alive. Anything else is your own idea, and means fuck-all. Being unhappy about the nature of life is completely pointless, and the sign of someone who hasn’t grown up yet.”

I’m hoping to talk to a more upbeat bit of my subconcious tonight, because while I can’t disagree with that lot, I like to start my day with a little less bleak reality than that. I’m really not ready for stark existential horror until I’ve had a coffee.

—

In other news, I’ve been meaning to mention Flipron, a band I caught quite by chance at Glastonbury. I’m listening to their album “Fancy Blues and Rustique Novelties”. Their website has a review that describes them as “easy listening for the uneasy”. They’re like hawaiian music gone strange in places, weird little Tim Burton-esque bits of song. Ace.

I’m back from Glastonbury – mamaged to get a coach just after seven, was back in London by lunchtime. 

Had a cracking time, thanks to davebushe, rockoctopus, Sandi, Nathan, Ciaran and Jason.  But I am never doing that again.  I’ve never liked camping, and I like it even less when I am, for instance, woken at five am by people doing lines of coke behind my tent, or even more excitingingly, woken at 3am by a bunch of people returning to a tent somewhere nearby in order to party until the sun comes up.  Also, mud is over-rated.

But lest you all think me a miserable old sod (or rather, lest I confirm your view of me) I re-iterate, I had a good time, and I’m glad I went.  A small stack of sublime moments – watching Menlo Park playing the bandstand while drinking a hot spiced cider, and the strange over-shoes that Jason and I bought, that were a pain in the arse, and yet I was still somehow sorry to dispose of them.  Watching Jason unfailingly get a good portion of his crowd on their feet and singing by the end of his set. 

And more: stumbling back to my tent at 1am, only to hear a band playing in a nearby bar, stopping in to check them out on a whim, and ending up buying one of their CDs or the double rainbow over Supergrass as the weather changed from shine to rain to shine in a matter of ten minutes, and y’know, just generally having a reasonably chilled out time. 

Oh, and one of those little moments of perfect beauty that’ll stay with me forever: watching an enormous soap bubble from a child’s bubble sword catching the last rays of the setting sun as it drifted on the breeeze, and seeing it explode into a hundred smaller bubbles lit like fire.  Worth it all on it’s own.

And I think the whole thing has taught me some lessons, which is really all you can hope for out of life.

(I’ve just read that last sentence again.  I think I may have caught something off a hippy while I was there.  If I start talking about peace and love and how we should all be nicer to the planet, man, please have me humanely put down.)

[Edit to add: I cannot be arsed to wade back over that many posts – if you’ve posted anything I need to know about since Wednesday last week, leave a comment pointing me at it.]

Downs: Have failed dismally to catch up with dr_dastardly and halloqueen will call tomorrow and apologise.  Getting home, having dinner and getting to the gym took me longer than I thought it would.  Well, no, it didn’t, but I became slightly distracted, and wound up running an hour behind myself.

Ups: M&S one cup filter coffee (those little mini filter things) are fucking fantastic.  A convenient amount of nice coffee, without the hassle.  Hurrah!