Morocco

So, I wrote a couple things while I was in Morocco. I was looking for something, and strangely enough I sort of found it. The things I wrote were from the beginning of the trip -- I was cold, uncomfortable, nihilistic, unable to relate to people, including my travel companion. By the end of the trip, I had happiness and peace. I'm having trouble holding on to those now, but I at least have more of an idea of how to get them back. Something about opening myself up not only to new experiences and places, but to people. Once I found what I was looking for, I stopped writing. I've started again since I came back.

13 Sep, Marrakech:
I want to lay in the middle of the square and feel the eyes, the mumbles, the concern and confusion of 1000 people so similar and yet so far removed. Now I remember I have been escaping my prescribed world since I was a child -- climbing mountains to free myself from the deafening thoughts of others, hiding in the woods, a vantage from which I can see them but they cannot see me -- a hill, a rooftop, the canopy of a tree. I can see a scenario taking me further and further into the glorious mysterious foreign unknown, until it is impossible to find my way back. It is already begun. A donkey is braying -- in pain or frustration? I cannot relate to the place from which I come. But isn't it just natural, isn't it the way it's supposed to go? I will go further and further into the vast mysterious unknowable unknown and it will only make the answers muddier, only make the confusion more palpable. What choice do I have? I can't live that prescribed life, I can't go home, one never can. My parents will grow old and die, and in due time I will follow suit. There is now way around this, the process has already begun. I'd like to lay in the middle of the square, the drummers and the dancers, acrobats and beggars and storytellers, gawking white tourists surrounding me and devouring me piece by piece, digesting me and turning me into their music, their energy, their confusion and their obvious answers (humility, prayer, fasting, faith), the light from their lanterns, their wonder and amusement, their roasted goat heads and snail soup and 1000's of years of history that seem to give them something more solid to rest on than what I've got.








15 Sep, Marrakech:
It is a bit of a violent shock to see how much I've changed in the context of another. It was that I could not find anyone else I could stand to give so much time to. The reality today is that I cannot seem to give anyone that sort of time. But I'm jealous too. Everything seems so straightforward - a good plan, thoroughly enjoyable work. What am I . . . scouting locations for films I'll never make, too wound up in my own inner life to make any sort of step forward. What a bore it all is. Everything. I am over-ripe and not yet blossomed. It is an utterly illogical contradiction. This place moves me, it gives me hope, it alleviates some of the darkness. This place is all sunlight and blue skies bright colors mind boggling patterns sand and mud and smiling faces hand holding humility and worship sacrifice and cleansing. It is so different from how I thought it would be and so important because of it. I am still so much more naive than I like to think which is a fucking beautiful thing to discover. I want to weep and scream and dance and even the fact that I feel these things without acting gives me some solace because it means I can still feel something and I am not so far down that I cannot see some light but I cannot feel for any one only for an anonymous multitude but at least it's a start. The steam coming off the lantern-lit food stalls catching the light and lighting the night and I want to sit here and not speak for as long as it takes because who knows when I'll be here again if I'll be here again and even if I am it will not be the same it simply cannot be the same because no place is ever the same as the first time, it cannot be. I want the blue-frocked man with the barbary ape on a leash and the drum circles and storytellers and women so beautiful walking down the road with linked arms in beautiful bright flowing robes that make me long for a moment to live in their shoes -- I want these things to make an indelible mark and move me to a place from which I will not return - move me forward and block the retreat so the only possible direction to continue is forward. So how do I explain to an irony obsessed technophile with a brilliant mind but no context to process what he's witnessing (less context, even, than me) that sometimes sincerity is infinitely better than irony that sometimes you just have to let things wash over you and come into you and the context you're trying to place things in simply has no relevance here, that there is no shame in embracing your naivité, no shame in saying I know nothing I have all questions and no answers I cannot make heads or tails of this this but it's ok it's natural it's the first step in a positive direction. Do I believe all that? No, but I'm trying.

The Daily Grind

Curious as to what a cuttlefish does in the day-to-day? Here are the things I have done this week:

1. I drank a two litre bottle of Strongbow Cider in the Meadows park with my best friend. I was attempting to give him the authentic Scottish experience. This was followed by quite a bit of playground playing and silly-picture taking.
2. I went to a party at which both sushi making and naked dancing occurred. I am sorry to reveal that I neither made sushi nor danced naked. I was mainly a spectator, though I did participate in more silly picture taking.
3. I won a hat and a snack in a game of pool.
4. I hosted a pizza party.
5. I watched a movie by Jan Svankmajer called 'Little Otik'. I found this movie to be delightfully strange, but not entirely satisfactory. I also watched a movie by Alejandro Jodorowsky called 'The Holy Mountain'. I found the first scene to be quite satisfactory, as well as a scene involving the destruction of a toad and chameleon circus. However, the rest of the movie was a bit too psychedelic cheese for my taste.
6. I put my best friend on a bus to an airport to go back to the place where he lives and promptly had a total meltdown, after which I stayed in bed for the better part of several days.
7. I went to a contemporary dance performance at the Festival Theatre, which was incredibly lousy, the only redeeming qualities being that I got in for free and that there were some very fit male dancers to look at. Oh, I also had a couple free glasses of cranberry juice.
8. I went to a hipster concert in Glasgow featuring a band from Portland, Oregon called 'Menomena'. They had very nice posters inspired by the film, 'The Neverending Story' which is a good film. I participated in a conversation with the guitarist/keyboard player during which the following topics were discussed: the evolution of language; the existence of an ancient and tiny race of humans; the film 'The Neverending Story'. I also got drunk on Mexican beer and then took a cab back to Edinburgh with five other people because we missed the last bus and the last train.
9. I went to an introduction meeting at my college, had a little bit of a breakdown, kicked a wall, threw my coat down a flight of stairs, and in the end stacked six tables and eight chairs on top of each other in the middle of a large room. That last bit made me feel a little better. Nice symmetry I had going, too bad I didn't bring a camera.

Now you know.

art

About a month ago, I climbed up a mountain and cut off my hair. A little while after that, I went to Morocco for a week.

More in a bit. Meanwhile, please look at this: Yves Kline and some naked models.

useful tools

You know what? This blog needs more links. I've been reading some of my favorite blogs lately (like this one, and this one), and they all seem to pretty full of interesting, thought provoking, or just plain bizare links. It's time I started providing more than just my meandering thoughts on various insignificant matters. It's time I also provide useful tools to my faithful readers.

Half Nelson

Right, lest you think that I like nearly every movie I see, I must first say that the truth is, the good movies are the only ones I generally feel compelled to write about. Of course, that said, it is also true that I can find something redeeming in a huge percentage of the movies I watch. But then again, I'm not hitting the cinemas every weekend to shell out £8 on the latest big budget money-maker from the states...

I'm not sure why I'm going on about all this. I watched the movie "Half Nelson" the other night, and it's stuck with me like a hearty oatmeal spiked with razorblades. It's stuck with me in a way that no movie has in a long while. The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with it and its sort of pitch-perfect approach to incredibly rough subject matter. I've not been as moved by the climax of a film in a very, very long time (in fact I can't remember when I've been so moved), and I honestly can't remember another time that I've been moved to tears by a film and not felt at least a little bit ashamed or manipulated. This movie made me cry rich, wholesome tears I could be proud of, which were not brought about by the slightest tinge of sentimentality. It's not a pleasant thing; it's a squirming thing, but it is brilliantly executed.

fever dreams

Do you lie awake composing prose, or is it poetry you write in the middle of the night?
If I speak of prickly flesh and fever dreams, do you know just what I mean?
Does free association make you spend lost hours still, awake?
Can you say with certainty if yesterday was a dream or reality?
And when your open eyes glimpse the morning light, can you say with certainty who you were last night?

Budgie's Lament

Waiting for the bus in Saint Patrick's Square on Nicholson Street, I spied a swarm of pigeons and hovering seagulls alighting upon the top-floor window of a flat across the street from where I sat. The pigeons pecked and poked at some foodstuff, taking it in their petite beaks and shaking violently, as the seagulls swooped in and retrieved large pieces of the mystery substance. A symphony of caws and coos rang out over the bustle of mid-afternoon Nicholson Street. Suddenly, a frantic movement from behind the top-floor window caught my eye. It was an avian out-of-place. On the other side of this busy window perched a parakeet, pacing madly from one end of the window-sill to the other, bobbing its head and occasionally taking to flight, flapping impotent wings against the unyielding glass.

I could find only one explanation to satisfy my curiosity. The owner of said frustrated budgie must have sprinkled foodstuff upon the window box before freeing her (I assume it is a her, an older woman in a flowered housecoat) charge from the confines of his (I assume it is a he, a young and pampered bird) cage. She will have sprinkled foodstuff in order to lure the wild city birds, so that they would alight on her window box and provide her young and pampered parakeet with an afternoon of entertainment. I say frustration, but I'm quite convinced she would say entertainment, or at least amusement. My conclusion is thus: Birds are funny, and so are people.

intro rising action climax conclusion

I have a night, or a week of nights, wherein the plot is lost, as some might say. I try to regain the plot, but busy days and intoxicated nights pull me further and further away. I have glimpses in the day, moments where I realize how far I've traveled from objective reality, but try as I may, I cannot seem to get it back. I need to sit down and write things out, plot things out, work things out, but day turns into week turns into month, and the knot in my stomach grows, and the scowl on my face, and the impatience and the confusion and the frustration, and nothing is resolved. Finally, walking home in the rain, I say to myself, I am ill, I mean I am unwell, I mean I am depressed. Things are not right. So I come home, and do some painting, and do some drawing, and write some email, and listen to some music, and finally it is time, and so I sit down to write.

Things are good, things are very good, for the solitary me. Work is progressing, friendships growing, food and drink and all is good. And for all the time I say to myself, this is all I need, right now this is all I need, suddenly it is not. Because, because lust is not love, and it is only a sometime temporary substitute, and as time passes by the illusion dissolves and I am left, once again, craving love. And now I see, I do not know how to love, anymore. The word strikes fear into my heart, the thought of the deed renders me frozen stiff. Things I was convinced I had overcome I have not overcome. Ghosts return to haunt and hunt, tease and taunt, complicate. The sour taste of sweat from his neck after a bottle of vodka is a sense-memory best left forgotten. The sickly-sweet smell of alcohol perspired in the night turns things on their heads, summons cruel and unnecessary dreams.

Peering through my skull's portals with mistrust, gazing into the minds of others and seeing only vast universes of electricity and anxiety, these things make it difficult to focus on the tasks at hand. There is something I'm missing. There is a trick of understanding I have not yet figured out, a trick of surviving that is eluding me. How do you love again?

The Scottish Grand National Festival is Decadent and Depraved

Red-faced men in fancy dress dig madly in their sporrans for bills to wave in my face. 'Give me three pints of lager, love, a lager tops, and two lager shandys.'

Valium-infused women in sequins and rhinestone incrusted sandals hobble to the bar, requesting, in their best impressions of a posh accent, 'one vodka with lemonade, one vodka with blackcurrant and lemonade, two gin and tonics, one vodka soda and lime, one vodka lemon and lime, a brandy and lemonade . . . do you have any white wine?' while the feathers adorning their disheveled hair give them the appearance of so many poorly-plucked hens.

Two men lock arms to legs and tumble across the carpeted floor, knocking their heads on the beams.

A group of men in kilts and women who have long-since kicked off their shoes put their arms around shoulders and sing along to the band covering 'Wonderwall' at the top of their lungs, before toddling rapidly back to the bar for another drink.

Pods of women sans shoes, with dresses half-unzipped, are strewn across the carpeted expanse, clutching vodka mixers and going on about sales on the high street, as their makeup runs in horror from their faces and the feathers do a desperate attempt to fly off their heads.

'This is a fucking freak show.'

It is a big race day at Ayr Racecourse. The ponies are running. The Scottish Grand National Festival is decadent and depraved.

Stop Making Sense

I've been re-watching the Talking Heads concert film today. I put it on once while I did other things, just to listen to the music and I was quite satisfied. But, I've been meaning to re-watch it recently, both in the hopes of learning something, and in the hopes of figuring out how to quantify its awesomeness. So I sat down to watch it properly, and for the umpteenth time my mind was blown. I often site 'Stop Making Sense' as the best concert film ever made, but I should also be siting it as one of the best films ever made, without qualifications. It's a bit of unfettered cinematic genius -- pure visceral joy. David Byrne is utterly mesmerizing, and no matter what your opinion of the Talking Heads (though if you have a poor opinion of the band, I might suggest you are out of your mind), you cannot deny Byrne's hypnotic power. While one expects a lot of quick cuts from a concert film, Jonathan Demme rightly sticks to long sequences of David Byrne that do not cut away.

In addition to Byrne, of course, the film is absolutely beautifully shot. It deviates completely from standard concert film tropes, coming on more like an art film than a long-playing music video. There are shots utilizing a long lens to flatten depth of field that are utterly mind blowing -- beautifully composed frames of band members, lit in monochromatic grays or blues, stacked upon one another, all different sizes, all playing their requisite parts.

(too bad about the Tom Tom Club interlude, but hey, nothing is perfect)

It's a great fucking movie, a brilliant film, an amazing concert, a fantastic band. Yeah. Makes me want to go out and film things.