Wednesday, July 03, 2019
Painoforte
The placing of pianos in common spaces has become commonplace. It's a thing. Crowds gather and applaud as some tortured and misunderstood genius plays Rhapsody in Blue or Your Song at a railway station or covered shopping mall. Then they all go off and about their business with hardly a care in the world. It's so ... atmospheric and not as uncouth as busking or as some would have it begging with a saxophone. For this piano however that glorious experience is now unlikely, it sits on a brown field waste land, exposed to the elephants and at the mercy of crows and seagulls. This is a city centre jungle. There are no passers by or willing listeners. It's a slow death. Plink ... plonk.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Last Post of June
Friday, June 28, 2019
Something disturbing
Touched by the hand of Vlad: two warmly indifferent robotic psychos rub against each other and any kind of human sparks fail to fly. |
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Alternate Universe
We had to close, something escaped from one of the tubes. |
There's always a different version of yesterday anywhere you might look. The past is never in a steady state, it moves constantly. I can't quite put my finger on it.
Alternate Universe or is it alternative universe, perhaps a sham or an illusion or is all just a series of effects painted on and in essence adding nothing to an already bland universe? I'll never quite know. I'm happy to have the scales removed from my eyes but not my eyes removed from the scales. I'll say it again: all good art is just another form of the endless repetition held over in our daily thoughts, and so is the bad stuff.
"Sir, this coffee has hard edges, I'm sure you'll like it." |
Empire of the Scum. |
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Struggle
Thanks to Happy Toast. |
More Glasgow
Untrue Facts: Glasgow has more coffee shops than both Hong Kong or New York. |
Through the old stone archway a hotel can be accessed. Tradesmen use a less glamorous entrance that cannot be found. |
Monday, June 24, 2019
Glasgow umpteenth daily photo
In Glasgow the beauty business can be tough, some succeed, some fail, others simply fade away like cheap sunscreen over fake tan. This is my perfect selfie (I'm invisible). |
Sunday, June 23, 2019
From a distance
National diet, easy to consume: When viewed from a certain distance, many of Scotland's best views resemble a burger. That is of course our national dish, apart from the fact that it's seldom served in or on a dish and as an actual "nation" we still have a way to go. In other news I hear that Jeremy Hunt is visiting Scotland to discuss fishing rights with fisher-folks and also Heathrow's third runway with people who wish to fly. The future is already looking brighter for our wonderful, burger based land. Be of good cheer, our elders, betters, ex-Etonians and ex-scholars from Oxford know exactly what we need i.e. some lower form of wit than this.
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Take the blue chair
Another day, another cafe, another bicycle ride. Actually the first bicycle ride in about two years. We're not as green as we pretend to be. Cycling can be painful when you're not used to it. We sail along at about 7mph whilst the Lycra superheroes whiz by in coordinated speedy sweeps, swooping between dogs and errant children, far away into the distance before we can focus on their progress. (The cycle path goes on forever.) That's mainly because we're focusing on a) remaining upright and b) the nearest cafe/watering hole.
Once at the cafe I'm plonked down in the blue chair, it looks particularly attractive but once I'm sitting in it I forget that it's a blue chair, it's just a chair. I lose all awareness of it but remained seated. So does the chair cease to be blue when I'm sitting in it or is it always blue regardless of who is sitting in it? Or am I just forgetful when it comes to trivial things like the colour of chairs? Amazing how the mind works or doesn't.
Happy floats enjoying retirement. |
Welsh dresser in a strange land. |
Friday, June 21, 2019
Some kind of brutal
Years and years, a tale told on the BBC, set in a futuristic yesterday (there will be an alternative version played out via Question Time or something to redress the balance): The scene where the old granny has a colourful rant directed at her family but meant for everyone. "It's all your fault, you let it happen. When they introduced the automatic tills at the supermarket, you moaned, you didn't like it but you just got on with it and used them. Then there were no cashiers, they were paid off, more jobs gone..."
We moan a little, we grimace, perhaps we lose sleep, perhaps we think we see the point. We have some sympathy for the devil, whatever the form he takes. Business has to succeed (?), that's why they cut costs (staff), it's all for the common good. Maybe not. There's a relentless direction of travel here. A corruption, a subtle knife, an unspoken shift, a rot and a plague and worst of all a dumb and a stubborn self induced blindness. People don't really matter all that much...
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Geometry of Pasta
The shapes of pasta intrigue and amaze some people. Not me but I like the stuff, I just don't worship it or worry how it came to be. In an Italian restaurant yesterday I had a chicken salad, is that somehow sacrilegious or disrespectful? Probably not, as long as you ring up a bill and pay it promptly I guess it's OK, just doesn't feel quite right though.
Monday, June 17, 2019
Sowing the seeds
The ongoing battle to become the next leader of the Conservative Party has finally gotten to me. I cannot take any more "talk radio", any more punditry, views, interviews or predictions. It's not even a general election but it's somehow worse than a general election. I am therefore retiring from this dangerous and tedious audio part of public life and am, for the time being, becoming a musical hermit. This may of course end badly as I disconnect from life with all it's gallows's humour, back stabbing and fakery. I'm not sure I care. Music, whilst obviously a matter of personal taste at least offers a safe place to go when political fireworks are planned and are inevitably firing off in the wrong direction. Just to illustrate my point I'm listening mostly to Tears for Fears and I don't care who knows about it. There.
Saturday, June 15, 2019
Fish plays guitar
Above: A surreal advertisement depicting a fish playing an electric guitar. To the best of my knowledge this has not yet happened in the real world plus it is only a fanciful illustration trying to sell you a guitar. Sometimes people will say things like "life is so surreal" or that some event was "so surreal" or that they felt "surreal" (?). But it wasn't or isn't any of that, perhaps it was strange or unexpected, it jarred with the rest of what was going on or maybe just hard to understand. None of that makes it surreal. Surreal is not real, it is super real and we live in a world of "ordinary" real, "regular" real and far too may unnecessary bits of over use of inverted commas brought about by lack of imagination and of course that old faithful; laziness.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Return of the insects
Two wasp's nests, a giant spider and a lot of ladybirds: I'm in an optimistic mood, the insects are fighting back, maybe it's the wet weather, maybe it's the mild winter, maybe it's none of above. Perhaps my insect vision has grown and expanded, I'm seeing the world through ladybird coloured glasses, there's no credible explanation. The return and rise of the insects may save us all from Armageddon; the lack of pollination and the death of wild birds. Not noticing too many bees however, not sure when their big season is. The colony in the fields next door have been moved on by their shepherds, pastures new and all that. Anyway I've decided (as per yesterday's rant) on defaulting to optimism as the superior state of mental well being.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Optimism
Asda car park: Somebody who really likes cats or just fails miserably to understand that sometimes words have two meanings. |
So is there now an alternative case for more of a balance where science fiction carries a new and jarringly optimistic tone, where there are actual positive outcomes, where humanity isn't crushed, when we actually work together and manage to prevent doom and destruction falling upon us? In this other storytelling universe things actually work out, the good guys win (and not just the key characters we've been rooting for but everybody), there's a positive outcome. Is there anybody writing this stuff these days?
I can't say I'd expect this to sell but there has to be a safe adult fictional place outside of kid's TV programming. The constant dramatic bombardment of negative energy, awful outcomes and the bigging up of man's inhumanity to man wins every time. As Steven Hawking once said via his voice machine, "it doesn't have to be this way". Just think about that please, even for a few seconds before cynically dismissing it. Not all coppers, politicians, billionaires or scientists are bent or bonkers.
On reflection the original Star Trek had a more upbeat tone as it grew awkwardly out the 50's wild tales and it was of course cheesy and unbearable at times but it got us all addicted to some higher plan and purpose ... we just didn't realize that the rot was setting in. Now we are not so much what we eat but what we view.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Reckless Eurovision
It's a few weeks since Eurovision but that's hardly important. What is important however is this epic series of snappy renditions from a Eurovision that never was but one that probably should be. I don't quite know how else to put it ... a highly creative piece of mash-up art work?
Monday, June 10, 2019
The sky...
Normal |
Trippy |
The presenters spoke like primary school teachers and explored absolutely nothing with their tone-deaf, puerile scripts. It was so bad that I felt simply stupider after watching this half hour long accidental splashdown without any parachutes. Poor Patrick must be spinning in his grave at the very thought of a once flagship (if niche) show turning into a badly stated space travelogue for the under sevens as if read from a Ladybird Book. I'm not going back into the spacial vacuum of BBC4 to view this again any time soon.
Saturday, June 08, 2019
Super different tastes
I heard some young, bright, eager and slightly irritating young (Indy) musician using the phrase "super different tastes". She said that "we in the band have super different tastes". At around that point I concluded watching the interview/promo or whatever it was by hitting the stop button. Having said that here are two "super different tastes".
Three act drama
Of course and obviously it's stolen from Twitter, where else am I supposed to go to for content that's a bit broader based than own dull and narrow life experiences?
When you have clear, expressive pictures you don't need any words.
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