There's a Storm A'coming..... You'd Better Run...

Well, I know dear Reader (s) that it's been a good few months. What can I say? I've become the queen of self destructive procrastination and possibly self destruction itself. Maybe I've been busy who knows.. anyway I'm back and I've decided I need some kind of structure to write something useful as I'm still in the same nonsensical customer driven job that nobody really cares a bit about (mostly me) and I feel the need to reach into some kind of atmosphere of creativity, however futile it might be (lack of readers and possible self reflective narcissism haha) 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

a celebration of the harvest and impending death of the crops the reap to sow. This and Byron's We Shall go No More A'Roving are filling my mind at the moment. I just hope to one day be able to write my own thoughts in some vague way as exquisitely beautifully. there are no words for how much I want to share my own work on here but I think I'm still a bit scared.

So.. I won't dwell on the last few months or should I? I'm not sure.. What have I done with myself.....? The mighty British Autumn has flown in and turned to Winter (albeit with many an afternoon spent reading Keats to myself and dwelling on the weather and it's, eek Alevel, pathetic fallacy) I don't want to start this off in a miserable light but I must admit there are certain things lacking.. certain people missing and certain things seemingly unattainable. An interesting job providing me with some kind of useful life experience (not one where one is consistently screamed at for something you have no control over... ) 

There have been several gigs.. mostly of friends of mine though most notably Of Montreal and their excellence and bizarreness.. We trekked (ok from Liverpool to Manchester it's not that far but you try waiting for the last train when it takes you to somewhere randomly in the suburbs of Liverpool and you have to wait for a myriad of taxis named after Greek letters to come and pick you up in the cold with your post gig sweat on.. not so pretty) to Manchester and squeezed into the smaller bit of the Academy student uniony place to be confronted with a giant Koy carp with AK47s attached to his arms, skeletons in trainset footie pjs.. men in zipped up onesies. and Kevin Barnes in all his bouncy glory wearing the most gorgeous appliqued jacket, turqoise cowboy boots with um tights and a pinny. That's all. sigh. What a treat. 

With incredible live tunes Suffer For Fashion and the ecstatic Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse bouncing off the walls. Ironically the subject matter, no matter how depressing never fails to cheer you up, never fails to unite you with the two rather young indie pseudo emo boys behind you who seem to know every word to every song and the annoying girl in front of you who keeps elbowing the camera.. no matter.. everybody's been depressed and living vicariously through Barnes' self analogy of the pill popping approach to cheering up... C'mon Chemicals indeed. 

On this Remembrance Sunday, unfortunately being a bit ill I wasn't awake at 11 to be silent but I was Silently asleep, I always feel rather melancholic. As much as I'd describe myself in a pacifist light and am rather against war as a method for retrieval of any kind of semblance of humanity I always think of those without a choice, the two World Wars of those celebrated poets and those totally anonymously strewn somewhere in a foreign field.  The futility of those deaths due to negligence makes no sense to me, the deaths themselves were for us I understand that but were so many necessary when better judgement for those at the top could have saved the human lives that they probably saw as necessary fodder. I don't know I can't help it. I can't stop myself buying poppies I can't stop myself thinking of those that died and those that survived. For years after my family and I travelled to Arnhem in Holland from our suburban home in Naarden to take my Grandfather back to the site of his paratrooping, the site where he saved and helped so many and each year there were fewer men and women smiling proudly and staunchly in the Dutch fields.  Being taken over as a country itself the Dutch lacked no humility in parading these heroes that helped rescue them from Nazi regime and it always filled me with an immense sense of pride that they still cared. 

But this is also a day of Burmese freedom with such grace.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/14/aung-san-suu-kyi-burma-democracy

Anyway, I know I"m rambling about a bit but frankly I don't care, I'm rather enjoying have some kind of small vent to discuss with myself things in my own head haha and listen to 6music on a coldy and chilly Sunday afternoon. 

I have friends who believe this should be some kind of confessional, a sexcapade of sorts... a sort of Belle Du  Jour.. but 1 that would require a formal sense of prostituting myself which I'm not quite prepared to do.. yet. and 2. might require a lot more sex than there is though I must say the recent weeks have foretold some interesting shenanigans. If only I were to put them aside as one offs and decree that each and every man or woman I meet is a potential. Potential what I hear you cry? I'm not sure.  A potential lover, a potential lifesaver, a potential poet or perhaps just lacking in potential. I know I must come across as a massively um.. technical term for this might be Fucked Up Bitch.  After giving yourself away I found myself the other day deliberating why I felt so selfish of late, I always seem to want to do things for others and yet recently self preservation has kicked in two years too late.. haha. I don't like it. I liked not being a fucked up weirdo but selflessly giving away bits of self to make others feel better. I hope I still do sometimes I'm too honest I suppose. and self obsessed but who else have I got to be obsessed with at this point? My lovely flat is lovely yes but not  person, the men I pine for (the one who I sometimes catch myself staring at and then start an argument with instead of making any sense with, the one I flirt mercilessly with, the one well I can't think of anymore really...) well saying that I can think of one I wanted to see again.. 

The scene, so I don't forget in my latter years of dotage, a rather lacklustre Halloween party where everyone seems to be obsessed with their own medical semblance instead of enjoying themselves. giving into their own labels and not dressed up. We'd given up our own labels for the night, Zombie Sherlock Holmes and Wonder Woman respectively. So we sneak away, stopped briefly by cracked up looters and make it into town with little to no money and sneak into our favourite boat shaped club in the centre of Liverpool.  This is where we gatecrashed a stag weekend. What had been about 17 lads from Manchester had deteriorated into a motley group of about 5... and one had the beard of a devil and hair of an Angel.. blonde and blue eyed with a handwash only jumper that was about to get (fake) bloody.. And this is the reason I now own a moping version of eek Mumford and Son's Little Lion Man. We kissed briefly to this nonsense, very suitable as frankly he was like a little baby lion. Well to cut a long and self absorbed story short we ended up in the most depressing of venues, a strip club full to the brim of half naked girls selling their wares shaking their money makers and confusing my loins... should I find women like this attractive even when they break the fourth wall and bellow for some bog roll in the toilet... and whatnot but not getting very far as I had no money, didn't even pay to get in frankly... There was possible outing of colleagues and a frogmarched lion man kicked out.. So we retired to their rented flat (bear in mind there were a remaining 12 men somewhere stashed in there) and continued our night of serious drinking into the small hours discussing Joy Division and each other.. Getting to the point of talking and staring that you know things might happen the fluttering of blonde eyelashes and the meeting of moistened lips and gorgeous soft furry cheeks.. mostly when you sneak off to the toilet and get a slight little knock on the door and open it to find a wide eyed bearded man gorgeously kissing you.. and then running away in a pair of blood streamed brogues into a lift. Now to be graphic or not who knows. Mirrored walls make for interesting viewing when you're trying to stop concierge from getting into the lift with appendages throbbing in your mouth. Were their cameras god I hope so.. Having this bearded Joy Division worshipping fiend at my disposal in stopped lift was something beyond. and watching myself give him long and slow orgasms was heartstopping and moist making beyond belief.. yes beards are sexy and I'm deep in the depths of a Pogonophilia (look it up) frenzy but the nipple ring and tight pert everything was too much for me and we got a good look at the mirrored walls as we stopped only when the door opened to a ghost in the hallway, the only ghost at the party where those taken were taking others in deep and hallowed flicks of a tongue. 

but this was the moment of more than just passion when someone warms you up, sits on your feet curls up next to you and holds you sleeping in front of his friends (despite apparently having someone) then you want to hold onto them forever and not let go. keep their taste in your mouth as they sing 90s dance tunes to you in the haze of the midmorning Sunday morning cooling on the breeze as I stare out at the hazy Liverpool city centre and then back to the floppy haired creature curled up under Holme's cape warm and calming. 

and that is my obsession down in writing so as to stop it going around in my head. constantly. Like so many other things that I've tried to forget.. Sat inside on this cold and what looks like now rainy Sunday listening to old Blues songs and staring at the clouds, if you remember I do love clouds, they always look beautiful and are the one thing I cannot capture no matter how well I want to, I miss people and not just the general population but specifics. friends lost. and honesty. and fairness. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b84zfPEe_g the Guitar is perfect.. I look for you in every passing car... the most heart ravaging loss in Win Butler's eyes.

Labels though are those things applied to them, they can't be objective. always subjective and the lost love are things that are always subjective. I think I've been watching too many films (I've gone on a bit of a French binge and bought Jules Et Jim, Les Enfants du Paradis, amongst others despite having no money) but for the first time yesterday, I watched, the Breakfast Club.  Not only does Simple Minds make me want to wail and dance simultaneously but Judd Nelson and their given honesty makes me cry inside. and out. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAdaQhitdKg the first few beats of this song and the wail cannot be beaten.. I have been singing it all day and I don't want to diminish it by saying it's the best song to sing in the shower ever but it is. Retribution and loss 80s bratpack synth stylee.. What could honestly be better? Nothing. that is the Answer nothing! It makes me want to punch the air.. oh wait Is that the point?

Jarvis Cocker .. we are having a party myself and I.. I don't know what I'm listening to but it's incredible I might have to leave this poetic justice and find out.. I'm looking for it and I can't find it online damn you and your incredibly beautiful music. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1bB7aIrWhs I'm totally and utterly in love and my heart has stopped momentarily listening to this.

Sorry slight 6music interval there. I do tend to write in stream of consciousness and I'm confusing myself listening to Jarvis Cocker and his exquisitely deep tones. 

for example now There's A Storm A'coming by Richard Hawley has filled my small living room and I'm dozying around in the dark glutting my sorrow on the old men's blues. 

I can't help it, I seem to enjoy being melancholic, all I suppose I need is my Gin instead of my bottle of Night Nurse, a ripped blue velvet gown and a fag. and to be leaning and screaming out of my small balcony window. but instead I'm going to go and paint. You see I have this plan to get out of the banking gig and become an artist of great unappeal. See what becomes of me when I get to do something I actually enjoy. God forbid haha. 

Things I have been avoiding: Gym (though I have been) the emotional roulette that is my Ipod (listening to some songs on Arcade Fire's the Suburbs bring back forgotten and missed well things, and Suburban War and Ready to Start are achingly amazing..) bills.. though thankfully the last bit of post I got was the ticket I ordered for an Interpol gig and not my council tax overdue evilness.. 

painting.. I'm finding myself more and more annoyed by my own painting and I want to radically change it. hmm.. and writing this. but now I've started I'm so excited and much happier than I could possibly fathom. applying for my postgrad course (though since the protests I"m rather looking forward to being a student again)

and I'm going to ignore the remnants of la Fete Du Fromage a Friend and I had for well I'd say Dinner, but it was all through the day... Breakfast Club and cheese, Julie and Julia and cheese, Blue velvet and cheese (and slight freaking out. though I watched Mulholland Drive on my own.. melty man how you haunt my dreams and nightmares... so in comparison Blue Velvet was surprisingly normal.. Though Dennis Hopper you erstwhile genius you had the Suave fucker down.. only in dreams...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UWo8LJnqLc the hooker on top of the car is a vision of uncoordination.
Also if you happen to be in the Liverpool area and haven't done so yet go to the Biennial it's only on for another week or so and the entirety of the old Rapid building on Renshaw street is full of incredible items. The Rooms are thematically adjusted to be so creatively inspiring. There's a room of flags, every item has a flag painted on it or originally bought with a different flag on it and a mini UN children's set of chairs and tables painted with the flags.. a Marxist lounge full of books amidst the red walls and black sleek sofas, the heaven and hell of the mirrored ceiling (unlike previous ones I've mentioned) with people everywhere. a Hipster video.. that has to be seen to be construed They want everyone to be beautiful.. just stick with the madness it's worth it for their conceptual itemisations.
But my favourite room is one with thread attached to the walls where you bring in something to be fixed. but it creates its own pattern around the wall as the items are labelled and left on the desk still attached to the thread. The thread creating a creative web of illusion. I'll put a map in but go to the Bluecoat too (the ribbon room.. I don't want to give it away but if you are a ribbonophile like I am this room is swimming with heavenly goodness)

and just to point out that Jarvis has just put on quite possibly the sexiest song ever.... Down in Mexico... I have goose pimples and for a myriad of reasons linked to this song. and Dear readers, I'm running down to Mexico.. apparently there's a cat named Jose Cuervo who will make you forget all... I"m going back to the 50s.. See you down the diner. xx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
and if you tune in now he's playing the soundtrack of Clockwork Orange.. oh be still my synth sodden heart. xx