Thursday, December 19, 2013
Trivial but
It's a nice enough ham salad sandwich on brown bread but was supposed to be a wholemeal roll with roast beef and salad- at least that's what my brain told my tongue and mouth and larynx to order at the cafe counter. Alas my own severe Central Scotland speech impediments cannot be translated clearly across the great divide of wide open lands and barren glens leading up to Brechin in the far north (About 65 miles away). You can understand how easy it is to start a civil war or carry out a decent tribal feud when there is so much simple but effective linguistic misunderstanding going on in the world.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
I wonder...
...if any of these carefully placed books might be copies of The Quran or Das Kapital or even The Hobbit?
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Busy with a piano
Mad but friendly, dark and liquorice microphone tells us in strange microphone language that we're all too busy with the seasonal nonsense to make any sense and then somehow send silly material out all over the place in blog form. We're also busy with a clever piano bit.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Dunfermline Daily Photo
Here's the Moon Kid's custom art installation and modified bench located on a public path a few yards from Dunfermline's own Carnegie Hall. This bench is available for use by the general public 24/7 most days, weather and advance bookings permitting. Suggested uses include: having a wee rest, sitting doon fur a fag, swigging Buckie, a five minute meditation interlude, dog pee venue, snogging a bird, a spiritual retreat (temporary), sorting out that troublesome shoplifting spoil, reading yesterday's Daily Record, adjusting yer kegs, spying on folks in cars, taking time out from sk8boarding, or just sipping a quiet can of fine Polish lager and scoffing a Greggs steakbake. The choice dear reader, is all yours.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Looking Forward
It's official, I'm looking forward to
Christmas this year (is that a new thing?). Perhaps it's age,
battered hormones, sense of entitlement, dutiful weather, unread
horoscopes and unseen alien interventions in my life all finally
coming together to celebrate both the great meaningless and the
mighty but tiny meaningful. The best of everything and worst of very
little, materialism, greed and relative safety, a new way of seeing
just punching me in the face. We're not so badly off in this badly
run country, that probably makes no sense but it's true. So forget
those media darlings, talking heads and political twats that have
annoyed the hell out of you all year. Most of them are just fuzzy
images full of ignorant wind and discoloured fermented urine. So dig
the pants out of Christmas despite them. Simmer in the unfair heat
and the oven like warmth, some strong red or amber drink, ridiculous
food and noisy bairns and ignored new toys, all scattered around in
some chaotic storm of warped religious nonsense with the promise of
scattered anti social snow. Nothing matters apart from driving out
any Winter demons that by now badly need driven out and then enjoy
the slow process of delicious blame, delight and extended recovery.
All I really need to do now to experience the most from this bizarre
and selfishly internalised festival is to get my car's exhaust fixed,
record an album, do a little shopping, go to work a few times, tidy
up, iron shirts, wrap up things, drive north, drive south, spend
money, have a few good ideas, find a tree, make things up on the
spot...etc. And don't forget out there, above the skies and for as
far as Brian Cox can clearly observe, it's only a big fat hologram of
a thing that we're seeing. Something about that thought gives me an
appetite for life.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
So another storm passes over
Songs that I've woken up to by mostly singing to myself in a comforting way (or possibly are being sung by weird and sinister celestial choirs stuck in a loop playing inside my head) this week:
Hue & Cry - Violently (no idea where that came from, truly awful).
Steely Dan - Deacon Blue. Turns up from time to time.
Frankie goes to Hollywood - Power of Love. Heard it on the radio.
The Smiths - Charming Man. Not a surprise.
Neil Young - There's a World. Hadn't even thought of this one for years.
Theme from Sir Prancalot - ?
Random and forgotten Christmas Carols. Putting it down to the time of year. It's better than having tinnitus I suppose.
This is never as bad as it looks. |
Friday, December 13, 2013
Somewhere in Central Scotland.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Beginning to look...
... a lot like a good time to form up a comprehensive to do list that I can sign up for. Of course it's a bit too early for the pre-Christmas panic, that's next weekend but I can hear it's still, small god-like voice whispering and nagging, hoping to get it's own way and break me down into a quivering shopping hungry mass. Amazon, eBay and Black Friday were not all they were cracked up to be, just lists of dumb gifts from the Generation Game conveyor belt brought up to date, digested and digitised. All the consumer mantrap things I said I would avoid this year, based on last year now surround me. Most of that rude learning I've so quickly forgotten. The simple solution is of course to take an afternoon off work and just go mad, the trouble is that the opportunity to grasp that precious, obvious and fragile moment is fading in a kind of comedy slow motion way, all vague and grainy and unfunny. So it's beginning to look a lot like panic.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Just a feeling
In the great and over arching cosmic wondering of it all it can sometimes feel like you're not really making any progress at all - sometimes plus and extra (ditto) ordinary sometimes and sometimes heavy plus. That of course is quite untrue, just a feeling you get. Ignore it if you can.
Monday, December 09, 2013
Bannockburn B&B
Not the actual mural. |
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Daily Dream Kitchen Photo
The elegant if understated swoosh of the wood and granite doubled up experience is clear to see. Ignore if you will the potential porous natures of the materials and the possibility of unplanned staining and the colour scheme (oh yes), for this is high art and high technology married into some awesome design consequence. While we're at it we can't wait to tell you about the unique blown glass shatterproof splash back experience.
Friday, December 06, 2013
Hydrophobia
The cloaked and secret menace of the H20, ready salted, seaweed and sewage cocktail that at any given moment may engulf and indulge itself upon us and over us. We live in quiet, stoical fear borne from bitter experience but confident that come the day that the great and vengeful flood arises our super dog "Lassie" will waken us from our stubborn sleep with a gentle lick on the cheek (?) in good time before the Hellish torrent washes upon us all and destroys everything in it's merciless and dirty path. (At that point we head for the hills etc. led by that oh so smart yapping dog). The plan has a few flaws in it but we're working on them.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Low tide high tide
Calm and normal last Sunday. |
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Raw Materials
When I first saw these trees all lonely and entwined together earlier today, I had some really smart thoughts going on in my head. Mental pictures, concepts and all sorts of good cosmic stuff that made perfect sense to me at the time. Sadly I have now forgotten them completely, like they were just dumb birds stopping off on some random roof somewhere, but the trees are still in the same place so I guess that's all OK. Typical.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Excuse for a film
Tate Modern: Summery summary detail. |
Recording makes you sweat. You need an idea, you need ideas. Then they get built up and the timing has to work and the balance and the mix and the faith. The faith in your idea or at least the faith that says your idea may somehow come to something having followed due process, pain and endless accidental twiddling. During this time you pick up and put down musical instruments a lot and check the tuning and trip up on cables and forget quite how those various unfamiliar devices might do things. But it works, it all works eventually.
Monday, December 02, 2013
The rest is history
The books that I started to read in the Summer I shall finish in the Winter.
The guitars that I started building in 2013 I'll complete in 2014.
The music that I started to record in December I'll sort out...soon.
The soup that I made today is made today.
The phone that I switched off five minutes ago is back on now.
The laundry that I started is underway.
The TV show that I recorded is still somewhere on the Sky Box.
The journey that I began in 1955 is still going on.
The doodle that I scribbled is lost, someplace.
The idea I had in August is kind of forming up.
The photo that I took a few minutes ago is at the top.
The cat that I fed has run off outside to play.
The dessert I didn't eat is in the fridge...waiting.
The other cat that I annoyed is asleep.
The new T Shirt I received is on my back.
The uploads I attempted to upload are stuck.
The Christmas shopping is progressing, in a virtual sense.
The rest is history.
A huge and incredible bag of PB M&Ms. |
Sunday, December 01, 2013
The Puzzles of Caravaggio
Caravaggio's woman illustrates the strange arcs, cycles, angles and influences that govern our everyday moods, actions, outputs and creativity to a young disciple. We are all travellers on some vast cosmic highway but none of us can see the route or the destination, we don't even know quite where we came from. As a result there are quite a few collisions and there is much confusion, general uncertainty, friction, discomfort and unhappiness; and that's how it is but when it's good it's fantastic, deal with it. Look deep within the glass - the answer sits in there.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Cereal and Fruit
Friday, November 29, 2013
Well Read
I trudged through "Scotland's Future" or maybe waded or possibly crawled, I'm not sure. It'll never be up there with Scotland's favourite literary works however, that according to the 8000 who voted for it is Trainspotting and it is the best thing written in fifty years - no mention of the Oor Wullie Annuals or the Scottish League Review 84/85. Most people just see the chase sequence and hear Iggy and the Stooges I reckon - we Scots are easily led. So Scotland's Future is a summary of the 650 page turner that most voters will fail miserably to read, I'm not sure many will ever read the 45 pages in the summery. I really wanted it to be good, to be a clarion call for the cause (even if it seems daft) but all we get is a wish list, a set of voters bribes and nothing that couldn't form the average Euro party's manifesto anywhere. So we're promised (and these are repeated many times) changes over bedroom tax, childcare, an efficient tax system (?), reduced energy bills and no nukes in our wind farmed waters. This mantra is repeated on every third page just in case you miss it. There's no economic detail, proper numbers or an actual strategic plan. How it'll all be paid for and quite why the SNP assumes that the EEC, NATO and Westminster will happily agree to our demands is unclear, perhaps we'll kidnap the Queen or something, I may have missed that bit. It's a route map but without a route or map. If you need another view check out this, good old Robert McNeil seldom misses.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Quite Scary
This is quite scary. |
So is this. |
Yes I did print out a copy, I'm a serious person underneath it all. I am going to read this and try my best to understand it. For that to work however I will have to lose the vivid and persistent mental image of a fat and smug little Hobbit called Alex Salmond trying to launch a big document that tells how Hobbiton and the Shire should pull up the drawbridge on the old Brandywine River and remain quite independent from all those strange men, elves, dwarfs, orcs and wizards across the borders who so spoil the peaceful place that the Shire should really be. Those low and ugly foreigners with their fancy ideas, banks, golf courses, wars and messing about; it's more than any well mannered and peace loving Hobbit can take.
The rest of Middle Earth had better listen and take themselves off on a great flying feck because Alex and all the other Hobbits (he says) just want to live well from the income of their legacy fossil fuels buried deep in the seabed whilst trying hard (but without the use of any wizards, just oil company's money) to generate other forms of alternative and odd energy from the mystical powers of wind and waves and the great denizens of the deep. We'll use this to make heaps of black puddings to sell to the Chinese, there will be curried chicken for the locals and surplus whisky and wooly jumpers we can flog to the Indians and Canada. That's about it apart from the genetically engineered tartan bagpipes and the Dundee video games - and there will be no fecking shipbuilding.
Alex is now smoking his clay pipe on this wooden rocking chair, smiling and pondering quite what socialism might mean and if any of his fellow Hobbits are infected with this terrible disease, if so they'll pay. They will be punished one day, their bus passes, student fees and community charge assistance will get sorted out and abolished. Quietly he puffs and puffs and allows his saltire blue Tory smoke to blow serenely out of his arse to the accompaniment of his own cackling voice. Somewhere in the distance a piano accordion is playing an old lament via BBC Radio Scotland. "You've never had it, whatever it was," says the announcer.
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