Culture - September

Books Read:

John Fante - 'Ask the Dust'
Charles Bukowski - 'The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966' (poetry)
J.G. Ballard - 'The Kindness of Women'
Charles Bukowski - 'Factotum'
Irvine Welsh - 'Reheated Cabbage - Tales of Chemical Degeneration' (short stories)
Jean-Paul Sartre - 'Nausea'
Charles Bukowski - 'Women'

Films Watched:

'The Bucket List' (Rob Reiner)
'Apollo 18' (Gonzalo Lopez-Gallago)
'The Wrestler' (Darren Aronofsky)
'A Short Film About Love' (Kyrstof Kieslowski)
'Stalker' (Andrei Tarkovsky)
'127 Hours' (Danny Boyle)
'Dirty Harry' (Don Siegel)
'The Sacrifice' (Andrei Tarkovsky)
'Paranormal Activity' (Oren Peli)
'The Black Dahlia' (Brian DePalma)
'Naked Lunch' (David Cronenberg)
'Leaving Las Vegas' (Mike Viggis)

Gigs Attended:

LA Guns @ Whisky a-Go-Go, Los Angeles

Culture - August

Books Read:

Friedrich Neitzsche - 'Beyond Good and Evil' (non-fiction)
Bret Easton Ellis - 'Imperial Bedrooms'
Charles Bukowski - Tales of Ordinary Madness' (short stories)
Will Self - 'Walking to Hollywood: Memories from Before the Fall'
Hunter S. Thompson - 'The Great Shark Hunt' (non-fiction)

Films Watched:

'Rocky' (John G. Avildsen)
'Toy Story 3' (Lee Unkrich)
'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' (Jim Sharman) (Naurt Theatre midnight screening, with 'Sins Of The Flesh' live cast)
'The Fighter' (David O. Russell)
'The King's Speech' (Tom Hooper)
'One Day' (Lone Scherig)
'The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter'
'Frost/Nixon' (Ron Howard)
'Stagecoach' (John Ford)

Concerts Attended:

John Williams & LA Philharmonic Orchestra @ Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA

Culture - July

Theatre:

'Spiderman - Turn off the Dark' (Foxwoods Theatre, Broadway, NYC)

Books Read:

J.G. Ballard - 'Crash' (re-read)
William S. Burroughs - 'Junky'
F. Scott Fitzgerald - 'Tender is the Night'
Charles Bukowski - 'Mockingbird Wish Me Luck' (poetry)


Films Watched:

'Midnight Cowboy' (John Schlesinger)
'The Adjustment Bureau' (George Nolfi)
'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' (Howard Hawks)
'In The Heat Of The Night' (Norman Jewison)
'The Tree of Life' (Terence Malick)
'Factotum' (Bent Hamer)
'Monsters' (Gareth Edwards)

Gigs attended:

Jon Hopkins & King Creosote @ Mercury Lounge, NYC
U2 '360 Tour'@ New Meadowlands Stadium, New Jersey

Albums been playing:

AC/DC - 'Back in Black'
U2 - 'The Joshua Tree'

Untitled

The weight of responsibility has been shifted; I’m left spinning like an avalanche of wheels. A loathsome 4 year bed of nails has been endured and now been reclaimed. But a bed nonetheless, and one I fear I seek to debase in exaggerated overtones. This was not tenacity’s work, nor grim determination, but fear of the failure and hence an instinctive grip onto my circumstance. I learnt to shift my weight to ease the pressure of the nails.

But now that is over, and yet I am more hopelessly lost than ever. No, I never lost my grip but my parapet has evaporated and into thin air I am cast after all, legs pedalling like a demented cyclist, fingers chasing elusive rungs.

I’m left in an overpriced cave of a room with a tiny window that hangs the sky in its portrait frame. I lie with the familiar acrid taste of having gone too far; outside the trees are alive with a riot of birdsong. My head hurts like bare feet on a pebble beach; my nerves are piano-wire taut.

I spend minutes or hours combing the shoreline of my memory, trying to locate detail from amongst the washed-up debris. I cling to odd fragments in an effort at stitching them into some kind of sense I can feel sure and ashamed of.

After several hours or maybe days, I start to wonder whether the world still remains beyond my postage stamp of sky. Maybe the world ended and in my sordid lethargy I missed the roll call, was unable to respond to my name on the register as civilisation lined up to be neatly packed away into storage. Maybe the world was silenced by an agitated voyeur flicking through video clips on some far-flung web channel.

Outside, the trees have limbered up from the ground and begun an improvised ballet on the tiptoes of their roots. The buildings have given up and laid down their weary concrete heads in sporadic retirement. Bridges and railway lines have started to rebel, bulging and contorting in a structural tsunami hundreds of miles in length.

Outside, still success is a top-shelf commodity, power still caressed and cajoled by lovers anxious should anyone receive more of a share than they. The hungry still long to be fed, the lonely still long for love, the righteous still believe they’re right. The mad still think they’re sane, the sane still think everyone but them has lost their minds.

And still here I am, alone and waiting for my name on that register, still waiting for that next comforting bed of nails to be delivered, because without there is only nothing. And I fear I have not the time to wait for nothing to fall back into favour.

Culture - June

Gigs attended:

41st Glastonbury Festival

Films Watched:

'The Big Lebowski' (Joel Coen)
'There Will Be Blood' (Paul Thomas Anderson)
'The Bicycle Thieves' (Vittorio De Sica)
'The Firm' (Alan Clarke)
'Elephant' (Alan Clarke)
'L.A. Confidential' (Curtis Hanson)
'Lost in Translation' (Sofia Coppola)

Books Read:

Charles Bukowski - 'The Last Night of the Earth Poems'
J.G. Ballard - 'Concrete Island'
Franz Kafka - 'The Complete Short Stories'
Jack Kerouac - 'On the Road' (re-read)
Charles Bukowski - 'Hollywood'

Albums been playing:

Queens of the Stone Age - 'Songs for the Deaf'
Chemical Brothers - 'Singles 93-03'
U2 - 'Achtung Baby'
The Fall - 'Fall Heads Roll'
The Joy Formidable - 'A Balloon Called Moaning'
Dry The River - 'Bible Belt'
Anna Calvi - 'Anna Calvi'
Foster the People - 'Torches'

A Happy Family

Burrowed away in every room
Hiding from the world
and from each other,
they immolate themselves again
with their private chaos.
Trapped inside their own lives
Scorched by their close proximity
Searching for a fleeting glimpse
that might offer respite
from the shards of animosity
once again firmly in flux.
The doors are all closed
Whilst silence shrouds each room
Every ear remains alert
to any adjacent twitch
As if the smallest sound might hint
at the regret and conciliation
languishing within.
Another day buried in the
same old bitterness
Pushed out to sea
on the raft of ennui
and recrimination;
steered by expectations so misguided
and listing with heavy words
spent with such ease.
Each folds into harsh twisted sleep
Hoping to at least
play host to dreams
of happier times.

Culture - May

Gigs Attended -

Roger Waters = 'The Wall Tour', Manchester MEN Arena

Films Watched -

'Stroszek' (Werner Herzog)
'Alphaville' (Jean-Luc Godard)
'Lolita' (Stanley Kubrick)
'Audition' (Miike Takeshi)
'Nostalghia' (Andrei Tarkovsky)
'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' (Robert Enrico)
'Pink Floyd - The Wall' (Alan Parker)

Books Read -

John Steinbeck - 'Travels With Charley' (non-fiction)
Jorge Luis Borges - 'Labyrinths'
Franz Kafka - 'The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika)'
J.G. Ballard - 'A User's Guide to the Millennium' (non-fiction)
Yevgeny Zamyatin - 'We'

Albums been playing -

Eluvium - 'Similes'
The Fall - 'Hex Education Hour'
The Fall - 'Slates EP'
God Is An Astronaut - 'All Is Violent, All Is Bright'
Friendly Fires - 'Pala'
Amon Duul II - 'Tanz der Lemminge'
Pink Floyd - 'The Wall'
Can - 'Delay 1968'
Brian Eno - 'Music for Films'
Brian Eno - 'Discreet Music'
Arctic Monkeys - 'Suck it and See'
The Prodigy - 'World's on Fire' (live)
Paul Simon - 'Graceland'