The Diary Idea

So the Brian Eno-inspired entry-per-day hasn't really got off to that great of a start. It'll be better once school starts, and I get into a routine. It occurs to me that I never gave any thought to what I would write about each day. Maybe I had an idea that I would generate random brilliant thoughts each day, even though that seems highly unlikely.

photos of my surroundings
details of new meals that I make up
meanderings on conceptual ideas I'm trying to work out
details of bike rides and walks that I do
thoughts on breathing and slowness

I had a beautiful late evening ride with headphones round to Ambury Farm the other day, when I'd come home vaguely depressed about things. And the ride made it almost entirely better. Listening to this:

And it was entirely magical, and beautiful, and time stood still and everything was OK. It was amazing. And it made me think: Justine absolutely hates this music. It grates with her. It makes her tense. And it has absolutely the opposite effect on me.

I think minimalism works for me because there's no logical, linear flow. It's like ambient music in that any part could be abstracted from the whole and it would still make sense. It's like a return to medieval music, before the onset of functional tonality (musical teleology, where chord and key changes give the music a direction and a sense of momentum and inevitability and - to an extent - tries to determine the listener's response to the music). Minimalism has none of that. No tempo or chordal changes. I think the artistic equivalent is icon painting - before the onset of perspective told you what to look at in a painting and in what order.

So, the other night, the Steve Reich piece was perfect. Divorced from any linear development, it placed me and forced me to stay in the moment, in the beauty and richness of each phase, confronting the moment. I wonder if anyone has called it the music of the eternal now?

Quick answer: no. Someone's used the phrase before, but in the context of a Gogol Bordello show. It sounds worryingly like an Eno-ism.

I'd have taken photos of the ride if I'd remembered the camera, but it was nicer without it.

magic in music: courage, honesty and taste

When I was a musician, people, naturally enough, would ask me what sort of music I liked. And I was painfully vague. All sorts, I'd say, which was true. If pushed, I'd say that I liked anything that was good, but the truth was my response to music was (and is) 100% emotional and intuitive, in a way that was hard to pin down. Some music would just make my breath stop and all the hairs on my arms stand up straight. Other music was clever, and well played, and well produced, and left me cold.

I used to feel a need to justify what I liked, and I don't really, any more. Because it was hard to, because there wasn't any objective pattern.

But what I think now is that I respond to music that I intuit to be honest and courageous.

As a result, I can appreciate that Coldplay are clever at writing songs that people like, but still find them the polar opposite of everything I think music should be. They seem like kids who found a book of how to write emotive songs, but never knew what emotion was. I'm not sure about that, of course. I've never met them. That's just how my gut responds to them.

What gets me is Bjork, deciding to do a tour with a harpist, an Inuit choir, a full orchestra, and two weird scientist looking guys. Total honesty and commitment to her vision, and you can see it in her interactions with the harpist - the total joy of nailing what you've only imagined.

What gets me is Nina Simone singing 'How it Feels to be Free', and particularly the second of half, and especially the end.

And what gets me, more than anything, in my favourite musical moment (even though it's not really a musical moment at all) is Dylan responding to the 'Judas' taunt: 'Play it fucking loud' and into 'Like a Rolling Stone'.

ALL of my hairs standing on end.

All of this could, of course, just be a fancy way of saying and justifying "I like what I like".  But it's a useful shorthand, and it aligns with the qualities that I admire most in people I know.

22 December

Back from holiday. Justine to work. Home with the kids, who are in good form, excited by the novelty of living in a house again.

Maja, studying her ice cube: I want to kill these molecules. I'm going to put them in the freezer for 3 years.
Me: But molecules aren't people. They might not mind being stuck in a freezer for 3 years.
Maja (surprised). Oh. Four years, then.

Took lunch to Justine, who'd forgotten (i) her lunch; (ii) her wallet and (iii) her phone. The downside of going back to work after 4 days of holiday. Then on to the Mangere Pools. Besides being free, these polls have the following to commend them:

1. It is always easy to find my children, because they are the only white ones there.
2. Flava FM on the outside speakers. Everything feels better with some summer party jams once in a while (once every six months seems to be about right.)
3. They're actually quite good, what with the outdoor slides and the orca inside.

Bought smoked salmon and flaked it in with baked potatoes, carrots and courgettes (and a shitload of olive oil.) Amazing.

Waiting for Mataoho

In a non-Seinfeld, non-ironic sense, this is a blog about nothing. It is my experiment in the discipline of paying attention to everyday stuff. It is based on the vaguely Zen notion that everything is interesting if you do it slowly enough for a long enough time.

It's also partly inspired by Brian Eno's 'A Year With Swollen Appendices'.

Unless I change my mind, I'm not going to advertise this. If you've stumbled across it, don't expect to derive any enjoyment from it. It'll keep going until I'm bored of it. At which point, logically, I should just write more slowly and for longer.