Two things you should be slow to criticise

"Two things you should be slow to criticise, a man's choice in woman, and a man's choice in work" as Paddy McAloon says on Jordan: The Comeback.

Never did i quite understand that line as i do right now. The complexity that some situations achieve can be so overwhelming that it's impossible to make a decision. Either choice can be justified at a particular level, so how does one know which is the correct one?

How we baulk at the office workers from the desks of our school classrooms! How simple it was back then, to think that destinies are something we have complete control over. Little did we know of the myriad compromises that make up an adult's daily life, watering down those pure and noble thoughts we once had as teenagers.

Most days i alight from the bus in the City, mortified that i have to be surrounded by such ugly buildings and dreary people. How supremely original i think of myself compared with these career driven fools. And yet, how do i not know, that behind one of these pink-shirt-blue-tied brutes, stirs a kindred spirit? There could be any number of truly creative souls out there, bludgeoned by the machinery of a financial centre, and their only aim, to use it, as i use it, to sustain and propel the flames of imagination, albeit in an altogether abstract way.

Again, in the youthful enthusiasm of a lad bred on Dawson's Creek, there lied a misunderstanding of what interconnected realities lay before him. Love, i am told, heightens the senses, yet lowers one's perceptions. Is it wise to fall disastrously in love, to plough all available resources into such beauty as one so defines, only to be rebuffed by common sense, and the cold light of day? Jerome K. Jerome, believes that affection is all one can hope for, a flat-lined flow of sensuality, rather than a swooping sine wave. Can one settle for affection only, and find passion and purpose elsewhere? Should it matter if one can be satisfied in all areas of one's life through many different means, rather than just one?

Such a Western impression. To believe, to even consider that a partner could provide everything one desires! Is it perhaps that we've debunked religion as the answer to everything, and now we scrabble around for a new idol worthy of our adoration? I had once thought that an ideal partner would be someone i could communicate with in such subtle ways, and would understand my articulated nonsense that would be taken as feelings. Now i am torn between that which a society has nurtured me to believing, and something that same society would think utterly base and devoid of humanity.

To see a couple, and to react to their choice in partner, is something i now abhor. It is no-one's business how they connect, or do not connect, as the case may be. Just as it is of no-one's concern how one makes a little money to get by.

Teenage ideals should be kept in the Mongolian wilderness, where life is truly simple.

Moonlighter

I have recently had the great pleasure of being introduced to a saxophonist composer of overwhelming depth and dark majesty, a man called John Surman. I saw him play at The Wigmore Hall a few months back, and it was an experience i shall never forget.

So often i concentrate on the lyric, and the pop composition of music, that i forget how potent jazz can be, when it's not noodling to infinity. I had enjoyed John Surman's set very much, but it didn't quite move me, until about half way through, when his string section, Trans4mation, struck up the intro for Moonlighter.

It plays for about a minute on maybe 2 chords, a subtle tension builds and holds, then the baritone saxophone cracks in, completely unexpected, but so soft, gentle, like an old dog with cancer that rests his clumsy paw for one last time on your knee.

That very moment, this intense surge of emotion welled up in me, and poured out in the form of a few tears. Indescribable emotion...i wasn't low on that particular day, but Surman manipulated me into feeling utterly despondent. That skill to invoke emotion in someone completely off guard, is one to be admired, and desired.

Unfortunately i can't find a link where you can hear this in full. However, i strongly urge you to buy this album, The Spaces Inbetween, certainly the best thing i've heard in the last year without a doubt.

Weep, and wallow.

Market Principles Do Not Discriminate

The London music scene is not really a scene as such, but more a collection of various cliques, that will exchange and initiate members depending on the hype surrounding the individual.

There is one main reason for this, and that is scarcity. Scarcity is the simple idea that when there is not very much of a certain resource, then the value of it rises accordingly. This we are all acutely aware of with the price of oil shooting through $135 a barrel yesterday. The opposite happens in London with musicians.

There are thousands and thousands of "musicians" in London, and just as many "bands". I'm sure your next door neighbour is in a band, if you were to by chance talk to them. There are also many venues. With so much choice...there is little focus, and hence, zero vibe. In London, musicians hardly ever get paid when they play, nor receive any consolatory perks...not even respect (though this is often justified depending on the goons that are performing). If i have to hear one more promoter tell me that i have to sacrifice a month of my life, by not playing any other night except theirs, i will take my razor to their Sales' cords!

Hype is the way a sales man can make more profit from essentially the same product that is being sold elsewhere in the market. Hype is disseminated through various channels that the general public "trust" or allow themselves to infiltrate their consciousness.

Let's not fool ourselves here, we're all wanting to make money from our "talents". It is business after all, based on profit, making as much as possible from as little investment. Just the same as farming fields, building cars in factories, online legal publishing etc.

Market principles do not discriminate, nothing is safe, there is no loophole for the arts that keeps them dignified and held in reverence.

Sustainable Shaving

A few weeks ago i took the plunge and bought a cut-throat razor and all the appropriate paraphernalia. Never had i shaved this way before, always behind those safety bars that the high-street brands seem to think necessary in their designs. As if the modern citizen isn't protected enough from calamity!

I've wanted to write about this new experience for some time now, and have thought about putting finger to keyboard at the start of every shave. However, i keep cutting myself, a lot to begin with, and now only once or twice per shave. Damn it, i'll write about it when i've shaved my face with not one nick, then i can tell the world how flawless it is!

Still, what prompted me into all this malarkey, was not Sweeney Todd, as some have suggested, but that disposable razors are just another example of unnecessary waste in this sea of futurism. Not to mention the good ones are bloody expensive.

With a cut-throat and a strop (a piece of leather that you run the blade along to sharpen it), one can shave for the rest of one's life without buying any new equipment. If you treat your razor carefully you can even pass it on to your adopted children.

I believe you could make your money back within a year, and have free shaves until the day you die. Once you get the hang of it, it's a bloody good shave, and a ritual that will make you feel like a true gentleman.

Yes, it takes longer than what you'd be used to...but why does that matter? It's a great excuse to idle for longer, to gaze at your well groomed facial hair in the mirror, and daydream of swooning, fine tweed-cladded young ladies that of course don't exist in "real" life.

*sigh*

Foot Fetish

"On the seashore, with storm impending,

how envious was I of the waves
each in tumultuous turn descending
to lie down at her feet like slaves!
I longed, like every breaker hissing,
to smother her dear feet with kissing."

Alexander Pushkin, from Eugene Onegin

Mellors’ Last Rant

"We’ve got this great industrial population, and they’ve got to be fed, so the damn show has to be kept going somehow. The women talk a lot more than the men nowadays, and they are a sight more cock-sure. The men are limp, they feel a doom somewhere, and they go about as if there was nothing to be done. Anyhow, nobody knows what should be done, in spite of all the talk. The young ones get mad because they’ve no money to spend. Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out. The pits are working two days, two and a half days a week, and there’s no sign of betterment even for the winter. It means a man bringing up a family on twenty-five and thirty shillings. The women are the maddest of all. But then they’re the maddest for spending, nowadays.

"If you could tell them that living and spending isn’t the same thing! But it’s no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage happily on twenty-five shillings. If the men wore scarlet trousers as I said, they wouldn’t think so much of money: if they could dance and hop and skip, and sing and swagger and be handsome, they could do with very little cash. And amuse the women themselves, and be amused by the women. They ought to learn to be naked and handsome, and to sing in a mass and dance the old group dances, and carve the stools they sit on, and embroider their own emblems. then they wouldn’t need money. And that’s the only way to solve the industrial problem: train the people to be able to live and live in handsomeness, without needing to spend. But you can’t do it. They’re all one-track minds nowadays. Whereas the mass of people oughtn’t even to try to think because they can’t. They should be alive and frisky, and acknowledge the great god Pan. He’s the only god for the masses, forever. The few can go in for higher cults if they like but let the mass be forever pagan."

Mr Mellors’ last rant, from DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Twiddling Little Machines

DH Lawrence, a man before his time. In a conversation between the Game Keeper and Lady Chatterley, in reply to a question she asks him about the common people, the proletariat:

"Their spunk is gone dead. Motor-cars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them. I tell you, every generation breeds a more rabbity generation, with indiarubber tubing for guts and tin legs and tin faces. Tin people! It’s all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping the mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They’re all alike. The world is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine fucking! - It’s all alike. Pay ’em money to cut off the world’s cock. Pay money, money, money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave ’em all little twiddling machines."

Little twiddling machines, twiddling little machines.