After The Fall we all stood about in the laneway and on the street being vaguely herded about like kittens. I hate that part of things, when it's clear that there are at least a few people who want to sit down together and have a drink or two but nobody knows where to go. It was a little like that last night, until Abdullah's friend Manometer declared that he owned a bar. He said it wasn't open on a Tuesday night but he'd open up just for us.
The bar was high on a hill, at the top of a skyscraper. I suppose it was a penthouse though I am unsure if that term is strictly residential. A gaggle of us walked seven city blocks from The Metro down through China Town and towards the water. Spencer became temporarily lost after he stopped to photograph Christmas lights but in the end all of us crammed into one of those incredibly fast marble-clad lifts. I clutched the rail as we soared skywards, I don't trust those infernal stair-replacement machines. There's something not quite right about the whole idea.
Once we were inside it soon became clear that we were in for one hell of an evening. Free drinks, a cavernous empty bar, illegal indoor smoking of cigarettes and no one to enforce the wearing of shoes. If there's one thing that makes me happy it's taking off my shoes in a bar with free drinks.
Towards the end of the evening, after Spencer and I admirably demonstrated the full range of our best dance moves, I invented a new dance called The Soggy Noodle, a mystery began to develop. Unfortunately the mystery remains unsolved, much like my headache and my sincere fatigue.
In other news, there is nothing to report, unless you count the time I got my head stuck in a bucket of water for ten seconds, Insensible Pie Day on The Peach Deck, the ongoing mystery of the sunflower seed thief and my newfound desire to become a Baltimore gangsta.
Fall
Continue reading on RHUM...
Sings pretty good for a dead man
The Holy Soul have recorded a live album with him thanks to Repressed Records.
You should read my review on RHUM.
Get your hand off my imaginary box
I just had an almost argument with a colleague from RHUM, whom I've never met, on Fspazbook. He was getting all gloaty about a positive review I wrote about an album. He even put in a 'told you so'. Naturally I told him to fuck off and then he appeared to genuinely engage and try to resolve the issue, which mysteriously annoyed me further.
I'm trying to pinpoint the exact reason why I became immediately and completely infuriated with him. I think the best way to proceed might be to write a little list.
A little list:
- He did not at any point either before or during the reviewing process tell me that I would like the album.
- I did not at any point either before or during the reviewing process indicate that I did not like the album.
- I actually requested the album to review from a list of albums that desperately need reviewing due to time constraints.
- I began to suspect that the man in question had made a decision about the kinds of things I did and did not like, which is stupid and also impossible as nobody knows what I do and don't like.
- I had just walked from The Lansdowne to The Peach and was overly warm.
- My left ankle hurts.
- I began to suspect the man in question had built an imaginary box around my presumed tastes.
- I began to imagine the box was large, made of reinforced glass and visible to a large number of strangers.
- The box began to suffocate me.
- I hate the imaginary box.
- I forgot to buy cat food and will need to defrost a sausage to feed the cat something for breakfast.
- I like to say 'fuck off' to people I do not know and sometimes to people I do know, like Spencer or a distant relative.
It might be best to admit that sometimes a list is not helpful or even interesting.
The argument seems to have been resolved. The man in question apologised despite being baffled, I made a peace offering of 'I Hate You' by The Monks, because it is a good song. 'Bla Bla Bla' by Toots and the Maytals was posted on my Fspazbook wall in return. It was a strange encounter but there is a lesson to be drawn from this, I hope. Let me know if you figure out what it is.
I'm trying to pinpoint the exact reason why I became immediately and completely infuriated with him. I think the best way to proceed might be to write a little list.
A little list:
- He did not at any point either before or during the reviewing process tell me that I would like the album.
- I did not at any point either before or during the reviewing process indicate that I did not like the album.
- I actually requested the album to review from a list of albums that desperately need reviewing due to time constraints.
- I began to suspect that the man in question had made a decision about the kinds of things I did and did not like, which is stupid and also impossible as nobody knows what I do and don't like.
- I had just walked from The Lansdowne to The Peach and was overly warm.
- My left ankle hurts.
- I began to suspect the man in question had built an imaginary box around my presumed tastes.
- I began to imagine the box was large, made of reinforced glass and visible to a large number of strangers.
- The box began to suffocate me.
- I hate the imaginary box.
- I forgot to buy cat food and will need to defrost a sausage to feed the cat something for breakfast.
- I like to say 'fuck off' to people I do not know and sometimes to people I do know, like Spencer or a distant relative.
It might be best to admit that sometimes a list is not helpful or even interesting.
The argument seems to have been resolved. The man in question apologised despite being baffled, I made a peace offering of 'I Hate You' by The Monks, because it is a good song. 'Bla Bla Bla' by Toots and the Maytals was posted on my Fspazbook wall in return. It was a strange encounter but there is a lesson to be drawn from this, I hope. Let me know if you figure out what it is.
All in a golden afternoon
Her sound is earnest and wonderfully simple, like a straight answer in a sea of bullshit. It is post-dreamy and threaded through with the good elements of country. If I had to choose one reason to listen to her it would be this, when she lifts you follow.
EP available now through itunes and on Caitlin's Big Cartel.
Gilded carnival chariots, six lanes of traffic, an intimate drunken embrace and Algeria
On the bus I was momentarily overtaken by the memory a gilded carnival chariot. I was reading Camus, The American Journals. My remembered giant cart was nightly towed around the festival grounds at Woodford, by the Hari Krishnas I think. One clear memory of unfettered delight. It was a heavy thing, decorated wildly in a style from last century, towed with great braided ropes by clamorous groups heaving through the thick air. A heavy air made tolerable only by the setting of the sun. I think of it as painted shining and white, several stories high with no practical purpose. A machine built for joy.
Camus slapped me with his spare prose. Every clean sentence the tip of an iceberg. I should always return to books like these, writers' notebooks of observations and ideas, like a dancer returns to the barre.
It has been about a month since I last saw Leif. I think I call him Leif here, or Leaf or Tree or River or some such name but there he was at Central Station striding towards me to wait for the same train. His beard seems incredulously long. He wasn't staggering or ginger of stride but his immediate confession, as he fell into one of his intimate embraces, was that he was quite probably still drunk from last night and running hideously late for work.
I have now the urge to leave the cafe where I sit to cross the road and be tattooed with something ill-advised. This is the same urge to write. Make visible marks representing an interior feeling.
I was on my way to a job interview when I ran into Leif. He has been having difficulty securing a lease on somewhere new to live. He said he is good on paper, same good job for years and years, steady rental history. I should have remarked that he is good off-paper as well. Though he is sometimes petulant the source is always love. I often suppress the urge to build a good fence around him, not to contain him but to provide him with an impenetrable place of safety. Most people build their own borders but either he does not know how or he is so used to being invaded he has discarded any notions of sovereignty.
He was a companionable distraction on what might have been an anxious journey. I briefly became lost on the way to the office but in a fit of calm adulthood I telephoned for directions. I was violently reminded about the land of cars as I walked around the business park in North Ryde. Six lane roads and not a fellow pedestrian in sight. As I made note of the directions I was desperately hoping not to be sucked out of the poor shade a of a young eucalypt and into the screaming traffic by the jet wash of a passing truck.
I know almost nothing about Algeria. Some places I imagine dusty and hot. I am content with a vague notion of white walls and outside, in sparse shade, some scratching chickens.
The man who interviewed me was undoubtedly delectable. He shifted between consciously projecting a businesslike charm and inadvertently revealing something of his true nature. I imagine his childhood home was solid and well-furnished. The same good curtains hanging in windows for most of his life. He has a steadiness about him, whether recently constructed or an innate feature of his person I have no idea. I have developed a curiosity about him. It itches at me to be left with only the imaginary texture of his life.
Camus slapped me with his spare prose. Every clean sentence the tip of an iceberg. I should always return to books like these, writers' notebooks of observations and ideas, like a dancer returns to the barre.
It has been about a month since I last saw Leif. I think I call him Leif here, or Leaf or Tree or River or some such name but there he was at Central Station striding towards me to wait for the same train. His beard seems incredulously long. He wasn't staggering or ginger of stride but his immediate confession, as he fell into one of his intimate embraces, was that he was quite probably still drunk from last night and running hideously late for work.
I have now the urge to leave the cafe where I sit to cross the road and be tattooed with something ill-advised. This is the same urge to write. Make visible marks representing an interior feeling.
I was on my way to a job interview when I ran into Leif. He has been having difficulty securing a lease on somewhere new to live. He said he is good on paper, same good job for years and years, steady rental history. I should have remarked that he is good off-paper as well. Though he is sometimes petulant the source is always love. I often suppress the urge to build a good fence around him, not to contain him but to provide him with an impenetrable place of safety. Most people build their own borders but either he does not know how or he is so used to being invaded he has discarded any notions of sovereignty.
He was a companionable distraction on what might have been an anxious journey. I briefly became lost on the way to the office but in a fit of calm adulthood I telephoned for directions. I was violently reminded about the land of cars as I walked around the business park in North Ryde. Six lane roads and not a fellow pedestrian in sight. As I made note of the directions I was desperately hoping not to be sucked out of the poor shade a of a young eucalypt and into the screaming traffic by the jet wash of a passing truck.
I know almost nothing about Algeria. Some places I imagine dusty and hot. I am content with a vague notion of white walls and outside, in sparse shade, some scratching chickens.
The man who interviewed me was undoubtedly delectable. He shifted between consciously projecting a businesslike charm and inadvertently revealing something of his true nature. I imagine his childhood home was solid and well-furnished. The same good curtains hanging in windows for most of his life. He has a steadiness about him, whether recently constructed or an innate feature of his person I have no idea. I have developed a curiosity about him. It itches at me to be left with only the imaginary texture of his life.
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