Come On Up To The House

I’m here alone, at work. I’m in the office and my last colleague has just left. I’m staying out of choice, to do something that has to be done, in order to tick something off my Remember The Milk list. I am officially sucked into the working life, the office sphere, the world of homogeneity and bland, comfortable ease. But not for long! I’m setting my sights on a better world, academia, non-office, beautiful thing.

I’ve been working in civvies today, rather than the smarth (ish) clothes I’m used to working in. I think I’ve been much more productive, which surprised me. Admittedly, the fact that I’ve moved office and my boss can now see my screen directly no doubt adds to the lack of Internet-based timewasting, but I’m sure I’m onto something with the clothes.

I’m not a scruffy oik, I’m really not. But wearing smart clothes at work feels a little like pretending I’m some sort of serious, dedicated worker, and really, I’ll work hard and I do my job blooming well, but I’m not in it for life, I’m here for the money. So I like to be in jeans and T-shirt, I feel that much more like me, less pressurised into working, and thus working better.

Cod psychology, I has it.

It has forgotten art’s lofty mission: instead of raising the crowd to its level, it has lowered itself to the crowd’s.

So says Honoré de Balzac, referring to the populist nature of the Italian music contemporary to the looming titular character in his Gambara. It’s an interesting sentiment, and one which I can well see defining the age-old question: what is art?

I like that it’s referring to music, for a start. This is something I can get my teeth into. And it segues nicely from the preceding Unknown Masterpiece in my edition, apparently Balzac’s desire. Both deal with the private madness and obsession of art, with perspective and opinion as central themes. I love the way that the mission of art is described here, not to dumb itself down to meet the simple tastes of the great unwashed proletariat, but to raise their level of expectation higher, to improve them. Art should make people better, should make them more aware and give them more desire to grow and become better.

Such was Balzac’s opinion, or at least that of Count Andrea Marcosini. And I’m inclined to agree. Art, in all it’s forms, should not be lowest common denominator. Though those in the book conducting this conversation were derided, sometimes I think it’s acceptable to take a subjective, hardline approach to this sort of thing. Music that is made to appeal to as large a demographic as possible is barely music any longer - that’s why X-Factor, American Idol et al, while entertaining, are essentially pointless. Music doesn’t have to be elite: witness deep southern soul, the music of the people (as Joey ‘The Lips’ Fagan would probably have it), but it’s still wracked with emotion, with no edges shorn off to prevent certain subgroups getting upset.

Music shouldn’t be made for an elite, either, that’s just as bad as trying to appeal to any market area. Music should be made for its own sake, never dumbed-down or diluted, it is what it is and you have to make yourself better to appreciate it. I guess in essence that’s why hardcore music fans inevitably narrow their outlook so far that they can dismiss great things because they are more interested in searching out the better and the best, the Platonic ideal in their own chosen sphere. And that’s fine. It’s great. Art was never meant for the morons, the morons were meant to attain to the art, and that’s where the best work succeeds, and why I remain happily committed to slating sell-outs and frauds and Simon Cowell and faceless suits who churn out vacuous sounds for vacuous minds. I’m happy to remain pretentious, aloof and proud of the music I listen to, just like Marcosini, just like Gambara, just like Balzac.

I so rarely post about music anymore. Despite what you may believe from browsing recent posts, I’m not a political animal, I don’t like it. It’s just that I find that I find out what I myself believe through writing, often. Not about the truly essential stuff of life: but about political stances (and sorry, I don’t consider that to be indispensable), reading, food, my own education, all these things. I don’t tend to read back what I blog before I post, whether it’s a quick note, a link, or full-blown, clever-sounding essay of a post, and so my writing is a little bit of self-exploration. Or rather, it is here - elsewhere, when I write, my thoughts are distinctly more carefully considered. But I like this style of blogging, it means I keep track on the development of my own ideas over time, and as i’ve never kept anything resembling a journal, it’s quite nice.

But I don’t often post about music anymore. In many ways, it’s a better thing than politics, than the hack and slash of left vs. right, the ideologies and the theories and the conjectures. I’ve never found a single political ideology or philosophy that adequately covers this human sphere quite as completely and satisfactorily as my own christian faith, and therefore while these things are interesting, I consider myself a little removed from them, like they’re separate things, outside of my immediate vicinity.

But music. Art and creativity and emotion and soul, that which separates us from the animals. This cuts across political boundaries (or should), all divides, all barriers. Even if it’s just the Four Tet EP that was on my mind at the beginning of the post, a bounteous morass of techno, Glass-esque minimalism and outlandish drum loops. This is a far better thing than the ructions of fractious mankind and the squabbly, myopic attempts to resolve things, far better than most things, you know.

Each morning as I wend my way to Turnpike Lane tube station, I’m inevitably faced with a barricade of elderly Freedom Pass holders - this morning there were more than usual, poised with one eye on the clock (waiting for 9am, the earliest the cards can be used) and one hand tapping the card on the reader. When the big hand hits perpendicular, a wave of purple rinse and shopping bags floods through the gates and engulfs the platform.

Usually, I just manage to make it through while the crowd is milling, uncomfortably, on the station concourse like a group of urban meerkats. Today, they had edged closer than ever before and were crouched, today more like leopards in the chase than the chased themselves.

I often envy the old. As a man once sang, “the old folks are losers,” but he was wrong. I have to come to work today, to do the exact same thing as I did yesterday, while meaningless bickering rages around my ears. I have this to look forward to for the next forty years or so. If I was old, I wouldn’t have to go to work. I could get up when I wanted - although I think it may be a rule that one has to get up really early when one is old, even if one has nothing to do - I could swamp the tube station, I could hit children with walking sticks (probably) and I could bribe love out of relatives with biscuits. I think that’s a pretty good deal.

It’s been some little time since my last update, a good few days. Weekends are never the ideal time for this - there’s so many better things to do than to blog. But, back at work, and blogging is Go.

The job description for my immediate manager’s job is now available to apply for. I’m tossing it up as to whether to apply, although I almost certainly will. I have to decide whether to stay here and go up a notch, or to move departments/places of work after the summer. Not sure yet. I need, as usual, someone else to tell me what to do. As with my car, which has just this moment been broken into. Accursed teefs of North London.

The most pressing thought on my mind over the last weekend though, atypically, is morbid, and sad, and not a little confusing, and not a little beyond the scope of mere words. I ended up with friends from the internet - some I’ve met, some i’ve not. I met one in New York, I’ve met a pile from this country, I met a Canadian, I met my best friend. It was never my intention. I also know people that I wouldn’t consciously call my friends, but I hold a deep-seated affection for them despite never having met, face to face. A Strange New World, to be sure, this web lark.

Over the weekend, an internet acquaintance - one whom I often disagree with but whom I respect greatly - died. More to the point, he took his own life. The thought crosses: how would anyone outside of regular societal contact know? This complex, individual man took the time to send out packages of possessions - cd’s, posters, etc. - to those with whom he’d become acquainted, at least online. I haven’t received one. I don’t know if I will, I’m waiting to see. The thought, and planning, and interest this man had in his own death is a sight to behold, and perpetuates his own, enigmatic persona. I’m using long words in honour.

More than this though, it’s sad. It’s good to know that a bunch of people he met, with whom he shared just one tiny facet of his life, had some sort of effect on him enough to inspire a reaction. But I’ll never understand what he did, or respect that, I don’t think, and although I still don’t understand it all - least of all my own reaction to the whole bizarre affair - I have a feeling this whole concept will float uncomfortably before me for a few days yet.

How well can we know people whom we’ve never even looked in the eye? Not well, it would seem.

Unreal City, by Lady Vervaine 

As I wandered through Noel Park again this morning, the fog was so dense it felt like everyone in the world had breathed their hottest breath into the cold air, all at once. Visibility was as low as I’ve seen it in London, and while the days of the peasouper are past - my granny used to tell me about how she’d ask directions home, only to find she was stood outside her front door - the novelty of the fog is still fascinating. Words like ’shroud’, ‘envelop’, ‘hang’, all these are lovely.

Into this mysterious scenario came the frenetic sounds of Strategy’s Future Rock. First brought to my attention by George Brooker’s review, my post-Christmas bonus enabled me to finally shell out on a few new cd’s, one of which was this. This is an album that’s completely full of sound; quite different to a Low, or even many of Strategy’s Kranky labelmates, paucity of sound is not on the menu here. Rather, Paul Dickow (sadly not, as I had hoped, former Blackburn and Brighton & Hove Albion legend Paul Dickov), who is Strategy, has melded together a carnival of sound. It’s feet are in the roving basslines and wilful experimentation of dub; the steamy, exotic afrobeat of Fela Kuti; the funky jazz of Herbie Hancock; the artful electric piano of Stevie Wonder, circa Innervisions.

To accompany my study of the arch-pessimist of philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer, then, was an eclectic, bewildering, swirling electronic sound, which was absolutely beautiful. Calm down Arf, it’s not all that bad.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Neil’s dad in Dead Poets Society is the ultimate movie villain. The film actually epitomises the life of a lot of the students that I have to work with, and while they didn’t all go to prep school I’m sure, still the majority are North-Eastern, very well-to-do, highly motivated and/or pressured individuals. And if you believe the film, despite the best efforts of those trying to inspire, family pressures will crush their free-thinking.

Watching the film came after a detailed discussion of Oxbridge policy (for some reason), and is all linked in - I consider myself very happy that I never had an academically-pressured upbringing. Certainly, I had to do my homework, but there’s a be-all and an end-all to life, and schoolwork ain’t it.

As a result of watching the film, I had a very enjoyable morning commute listening to Marah’s lovely If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry, from 2005. Of course, the Philadelphia band owe somewhat of a debt to Uncle Walt, if only for the gorgeous Walt Whitman Bridge, a luckless ode to the drifting away of one’s sorrows in the breeze of the Delaware River, with just coffee, cigarettes and seven dollars to the name.

The band is, in many ways, a ramshackle outift. It’s old-fashioned, rollicking rock’n'roll, with piano glissandos, slide guitar, whoo-whoo backing vocals, the works. It’s a timeless sort of sound though, and done with aplomb. It’s exactly the kind of thing my good buddy Knox Overstreet would crank up on Meeks’ ham radio, a soundtrack to whiskey-soaked bum days as authentic as anything Ryan Adams ever wrote. And while Dead Poets Society and Marah are not obvious bedfellows, there’s an abundant joie de vivre in both, an exhortation to make the most of the day and your life whatever circumstance in which you may find yourself, whether too rich or too poor; and both share an beautiful way with words - the film with those already written, Marah’s with those that trip off the tongue with the most fleeting moment of thought.

Lookee yonder! A big black cloud comes. Thunder on the horizon!

London has truly descended into its typical self-pitying state when faced with actual weather today; certainly, a couple dustbins are over and the plastic bags are whipping up a storm, but it’s not that bad, good grief. It’s a spot of rain and a little bit blustery - yet the weather report this morning advised not leaving your home unless it’s essential. Of course, I am an essential component in a well-oild machine, therefore I am 100% dedicated to my position. I am certainly not posting this from home. Not least because the internet doesn’t work.

Jeremy Beadle died. That was weird. It took me approximately two seconds to remember the joke about the Beadle clocks, which’ll probably rocket up on eBay. You know, one big hand, one little hand? It’s a quite impressive show of grief for Beadle really, given that when I was young he was fair universally reviled. Times change, though, the insidious grip of nostalgia is as strong now as it was during the spate of I Love The… programmes on BBC2. Next: Stuart Maconie reminisces about his love for You’ve Been Framed.

As I sit here in my little, appropriated staff-room (reclaimed from the depths of storage room oblivion), I am surrounded by the accoutrements of my life. Peter Carey is grinning at me; my lunchbox is now empty of last night’s leftover bobotie; plenty of fluids as I battle another minor cold; speakers not working; pictures of London on the walls. No plants. Life can seem awfully one-dimensional compared with the vastness of mortality, can’t it? Wikipedia is, of course, right up-to-date with Beadle, but I recall one instance when I looked up a certain property Tv show host, and it was reported that she’d been shot dead outside her home that morning. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, there’s a human being, exited from this scene. Of course, Ms Alsop is alive and kicking, Wikipedia’s notorious instability at it’s prime here, but when your final moments arrive, I wonder, what can you take with you? Food? Fluids? Books? A beautifully-appointed Victorian villa? But no exhortation to live life to EXTREME MAX here - I am happy trying to live wisely, and it is going rather well.

I ate curried goat at the weekend. It was fan-blinkin’-tastic. I ate it with rice and peas and fried plantain and I loved it. I sometimes view myself as an honorary Jamaican; I could quite happily live off jerk chicken or curried goat.

But, I am the whitest boy alive: I enjoy indie-rock and intellectual electronica; the only hip hop I really enjoy is the pseud-y head stuff like Prefuse73. I enjoy watching football but not playing. I live in Wood Green but I’m actually from the Hampshire countryside. I see no real need for political activism. I can’t dance. I enjoy fitting myself in with questionable, unnecessary stereotypes for no real reason. I Am White.

The concept of one’s boss going on holiday for 6 months should be appealing to the majority. But I’m not so sure. I work in an environment where the boss knows everything, simply by virtue of the fact that he’s been doing it for ages, and the rest of us are reasonably new. It’s all going to be a bit new to me, and there’ll be plenty coming over the next few months which definitely will be (ah, the joys of educational administration), but I’ll put my most steely gaze on and it’ll be no problem, I think.

The whole thing got me questioning whether I’m just a fundamentally lazy person, however. When is the right time to push oneself forward - I presume I’ll have to pick up some slack during this time, but I guess if I fired on all cylinders I’d probably make a good show of myself then when the time comes to move on, I’d be stood in excellent stead. But the next step for me would be to move into lower management, and there’s a massive swathe of my thinking screaming out, I can’t be bothered! So I think yes, I am a lazy man, but I’ll have to press forward and be as sound and as efficient as humanly possible. This might mean significant spells where there’s just nothing to do, but that’s the price I’ll have to pay. I guess. It’ll mean forward planning, probably ‘actioning’ things, and other verbs which should never be verbs.

I’m happy with a 9-5, one that pays pretty well, doesn’t cause any headaches, that sits on the back shelf from evening til morning. Does this demotivate me? I’m certainly no creative force, where I imagine once I could have tried to be. I’ve never continued with my podcasts, or my sound engineering, my mandolin sits idle, my piano gathers dust, my novel sits on page one, looking forlornly at its overly-contented author.

You know what? I really don’t care. My life is contented, and maybe that means that I’ll have to move up to management once housing-buying looms its head, or that maybe I’ll have to work late once or twice rather than slacking off to watch the Simpsons. But I’m happy to not worry too much about progressing my career or my learning or my creativity. That makes me lazy by the world’s standards, but I’ve got bigger, better thoughts on my mind, thoughts of love and life, happiness, peace and contentment that work and art and study would never replace.

So maybe I’ll just stay as I am.